The other day, producer/director Zak Penn tweeted that the documentary about the infamous 1982 video game adaptation of Steven Spielberg's "E.T." that was rather erroneously blamed for the collapse of console gaming 30 years ago will premiere Nov. 20 on Xbox Live. Penn's announcement tweet is below:
Atari: Game Over premiering Nov 20 on XBOX #ataridoc
— Zak Penn (@zakpenn) October 31, 2014
The "Atari: Game Over" documentary separates the truth from the mythology of "E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial" for the Atari 2600, one title among a multitude of cartridges and hardware buried in a New Mexico landfill. The game was a rush job, designed and developed by Howard Scott Warshaw in just five weeks and meant to hit shelves in time for Christmas, 1982. It has been purported for many years that the game was such a disappointment (along with a dreadful Pac-Man port) that it destroyed the dominant console business Atari had built in North America...but many other factors were involved as well.
Last April, the filmmakers employed a crew to excavate the Alamagordo, N.M., landfill where Atari had trucked thousands of unsold cartridges to be crushed and buried. "Atari: Game Over" is partly about that discovery, and also about the life and times of programmers like Warshaw, who were there at the outset of console gaming in the U.S.
The documentary is a production of the now-defunct Xbox Entertainment Studios, which was shuttered in July following a huge reorganization at Microsoft that saw 18,000 employees handed pink slips.
