I really didn't know what to expect from this film. I had heard about the search for the Atari games buried in a landfill and never gave it much mind after that. Curious as to what happened, I decided to give this movie a look when it came on Netflix.
This documentary is the strangest piece of propaganda I have ever seen. It tries to salvage the reputation of ET The Extra Terrestrial, largely regarded as one of, if not the worst video game of all time. In doing so, it skews factual information and presents minority opinions in an attempt to give this a new reputation.
I grew up in the 1980's and I was very excited when I got ET for my Atari 2600. Being 8 years old, I had seen the movie and loved it and I was so into video games that it seemed like an unbeatable idea. However, after several hours of pain and agony, I gave up on ET. I would come back to it several times later in life, never with any improvement.
This movie skews information to exonerate ET from its role in Atari's "death." When the games are found in the landfill, the narrator remarks that only 10 percent of the games were ET. He then lists other popular games that were found, such as Defender and Centipede. Conveniently, however, the percentages found for any of the other games are not mentioned. They then present this as proof that ET didn't kill Atari. You then get about three people talking about how great the game is, including one guy who you don't know and never will remarking how he'd rather play ET than Call of Duty. Well, so would I and I don't like either game.
The narrator never makes the obvious point that the reason there were more games than ET in the landfill is because the landfill was filled around the end of Atari, Inc's existence. Atari got rid of a lot of unsold games and ET represented a larger portion than any other game.
So, if you want to get an actual unbiased account about this, this movie will not provide that. It's clear purpose is to try to make this horrid video game look good.
This documentary is the strangest piece of propaganda I have ever seen. It tries to salvage the reputation of ET The Extra Terrestrial, largely regarded as one of, if not the worst video game of all time. In doing so, it skews factual information and presents minority opinions in an attempt to give this a new reputation.
I grew up in the 1980's and I was very excited when I got ET for my Atari 2600. Being 8 years old, I had seen the movie and loved it and I was so into video games that it seemed like an unbeatable idea. However, after several hours of pain and agony, I gave up on ET. I would come back to it several times later in life, never with any improvement.
This movie skews information to exonerate ET from its role in Atari's "death." When the games are found in the landfill, the narrator remarks that only 10 percent of the games were ET. He then lists other popular games that were found, such as Defender and Centipede. Conveniently, however, the percentages found for any of the other games are not mentioned. They then present this as proof that ET didn't kill Atari. You then get about three people talking about how great the game is, including one guy who you don't know and never will remarking how he'd rather play ET than Call of Duty. Well, so would I and I don't like either game.
The narrator never makes the obvious point that the reason there were more games than ET in the landfill is because the landfill was filled around the end of Atari, Inc's existence. Atari got rid of a lot of unsold games and ET represented a larger portion than any other game.
So, if you want to get an actual unbiased account about this, this movie will not provide that. It's clear purpose is to try to make this horrid video game look good.