Let me begin by trying to explain something I don't seem to be able to sum up in a single word (Maybe one of my many readers can tell me what I am trying to say, in the comments section below). Do you know that feeling when you've done something horrible wrong? And you just try your hardest to hide the fact, but when someones eyes fix on your face, you can just tell they know what you've done. That is what I am looking for, in a word.
Up to this point in time the video game industry had glided along hastle free, not being caught up in any massive dramas or cover-ups (that could be the word). Sure, the commotion caused over the full-frontal nudity of Puck-man only a few years earlier in 1980 was something you are still hearing about in the news today when someone mentions violence caused by video games, but that is still considered a mere drop in the pond when it comes to what happened next.
The story that you all know and some of you accept, is the story of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial created by Howard Scott Warshaw(If he was the extra, who was the first? Hah!). Atari existed as a very large corporation, as evidence of this I cite the CIA World Fact Book for Personal Computer ownership in the United States for the year 1981, which to date, is the only year that 100% of the US population had at least one PC per person per household. To put that in to perspective, only 68% of the US population has a PC right now, you parents were more tech savvy than you.
But I digress, for those of you that don't know the story it is that of the speculated landfill, where millions of unsold copies of the Atari 2600 game E.T. ended up. In 1982 the E.T. video game was released in small quantities to the press to critical acclaim. The game made many technical advancements on the Atari 2600 and was lauded as a master-piece of it's time, with an amazing plot never before seen in a graphical adventure (prior to this games with any storyline substance were released as text adventure games).
But what went wrong? Steven Spielberg. Steven Spielberg was a little known man with ambitions to make it big in Hollywood, who at the time was working for a small video-game publication known as 'Atari News'. With the help of his computer programmer friends, Steven Spielberg reverse-engineered the Atari 2600 game and managed to steal a text file contained within, which detailed quite well the entire plot and script for the game. Within the year and before the official release of the game, Steven Spielberg had released a movie which was loosely based on the game.
The movie is a success, and Steven Spielberg is somebody. But only weeks after the release of the movie, and amidst a litany of law-suits, the game was released to the public. To avoid any legal action against himself, Warshaw changed minor story elements within the game. Surely, if any positive was to come out of this, it was that the E.T. brand was absolutely massive. Unfortunately this happened at a time of global financial recession, and when it came to entertainment it was either a movie or a video-game, not both. Many people in the public felt that Warshaw had ripped off the movie and tried to radically re-create it in his own image to fool the public in to thinking it was his idea.
So great were the merits of this game based on the press release issue, that Atari spent nearly every last dollar it had earnt in computer sales on copies of this game (Remember that Atari at this time was bigger than MicroSoft). The publics demand did not meet expectations, and Atari was beginning to lose value on the stock market as worried investors twittered together, scared that their returns would be copies of the E.T. game. In a store room that took up most of the US state of Nevada, at least 50 million copies of the game sat waiting for store orders. It was estimated by Nolan Bushnell himself that every American citizen would want at least one copy of this game for themself, and so it was that almost that many copies were made.
Losing millions of dollars every day in storage costs, Atari eventually had not a cent left. With no money at all and the price of landfill at a premium, Atari were forced to find a free alternative. This was to bury every unsold copy of the game in a giant hole which was known as Texas (since then a bustling city has spouted from the plastic remains). I tell you this, and with what I expect to be shock, I continue by saying that this is not the true horror that occured within the video game industry. For what is less well known that the true story of E.T., is the story of what happened next.Image: Photograph of buried games.
After the great video game crash of 1983, which was blamed solely on the events previously explained, Atari underwent massive change and was actually sold. The original staff were not to be seen at the new Atari Corp., but instead all disappeared. Disappeared just like the stock of games. It is rumoured that to hide any link between the Atari games in Texas and the missing employees, they were all killed and then buried in the Australian Outback. This truly is a shocking look back at history, but is one that people have to sometimes take.
