Atari: Game Over

On the surface, this documentary directed by Zak Penn seemed to be about the urban legend of Atari dumping thousands of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial 2600 videogames in a landfill in 1983 during the big gaming crash of the time. While event did happen, and the film does cover it, it also essentially tells the story of the rise and fall of Atari.

Much of the doc concerns game designer and programmer Howard Scott Warshaw, who not only designed the E.T. game, but also the equally lackluster Raiders of the Lost Ark game. His real claim to fame is of course one of my favorite Atari games, Yar's Revenge, which in turn was based on my favorite coin op videogame, Star Castle. For no other reason, the man is a legend.

I remember playing E.T. back in the day, or rather back in my Atari day, which was actually the mid to late eighties when I purchased an Atari 2600 wannabe retro system called Gemini. I bought E.T. for a dollar at the Berlin auction (that's Farmers Market for the Cherry Hill folks) from a gigantic stack of E.T. games - obviously copies spared from the landfill.

There's much talk in the documentary about the game being too hard, too complicated, and most of all, just plain unfair. Much is made of the game both being the worst one in history and being a miracle of engineering, having been designed in just five weeks.

Having played the thing both then and more recently, I have to admit to not seeing the allure in either direction for E.T. It's not good or bad, it's just dumb. No matter what you do, you fall in a pit, but that could just be me, as I am just notoriously bad at videogames. Either way, I was bored and frustrated.

This is a pretty cool doc, with lots of insight to the early days of Atari, and what eventually toppled the videogame titan. Bonus - look for Ready Player One author Ernest Cline driving to the landfill site in George R.R. Martin's Back to the Future DeLorean. It doesn't get much more quirky cool surreal than that.

The Demo, Not the Movie II

Continuing my quest to play videogames based on movies and not get disappointed, I decided to give Back to the Future - Episode 1: It's About Time a shot. Firstly I was put off by the ugly cartoony graphics and even moreso by the punny title, but let's put that aside.

I did like the music from the movies, and the voicework, all originals I think, in the opening cinematic. Or is it just the opening cinematic? This is actually a whole lot like watching a movie with choose-your-own-adventure capability. It gets old pretty quick - especially when you don't know the right answers or choices. It's a lot like being an actor in a movie where you didn’t get the script, and nobody else is prompting you.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I only have the demo so I didn't get to play much, but I don't see it changing later on. Good mystery, good plot, I like the music and voicework quite a bit, but all in all, a bust.

Finally, Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime gets the prize for being the loudest and most annoying game of all, and that's even before one hits the start button. As I scroll through all my downloaded games, bits of music and backgrounds from the games come up as I pass the titles. Every time I pass by this one, the refrain to Ray Parker Jr.'s "Ghostbusters" screams out of the television, making anyone not prepared or warned jump out of their seats. This game almost made it onto The Rejected list just for this several times.

Thankfully the music in the actual game is of a lower volume. The Ghostbusters portrayed in the game are not the ones we know from the movie or the cartoon series, although they are outfitted in the same way. The opening depicts these new anime-like Ghostbusters in a comic booky intro before actual gameplay begins. Gameplay is pretty lame however in my opinion. The characters are small and distant, similar to Voltron reviewed earlier, or the first versions of X-Men and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES. Not good.