Citation Needed - The Atari Video Game Burial

Episode Date: November 18, 2020

The Atari video game burial was a mass burial of unsold video game cartridges, consoles, and computers in a New Mexico landfill site, undertaken by American video game and home computer company Atari, Inc. in 1983. Up until 2014, the goods buried were rumored to be unsold copies of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, one of the biggest commercial failures in video gaming and often cited as one of the worst video games ever released, along with the Atari 2600 port of Pac-Man, which was commercially successful but critically maligned. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

No, it's, it's about midwives, I guess. Midwives? Is that the wife between 1st and 3rd? What's that refer to? I think so, I wasn't sure. Yeah. E-G phone, huh? Jesus Christ, what is that thing?

It's E-G-Holy shit! E-G-E-T isn't real? What the fuck? That looks like fucking E-G-E right there. Ha-ha! I've got you guys. What the hell did you do to yourself, Eli? You look worse than usual. Oh, I'm ET.

That's, yeah, that's not a costume. That's, you know, I don't know what that is. What, I don't know. Yeah, no, I got a surgery guy. That sounds like what that is. That, yeah, yeah, he took a few vertebrae out of my lower spine, put him in my neck. surgery guy. That sounds like what that is. Yeah. Yeah. Took a few vertebrae out of my lower spine, put them in my neck. And looks painful, man.

So painful. Oh my god. See, so you have no idea. You also took my forearm bones out and made them into my fingers. Yeah, that's a horror to look at. That's, yeah. Well, if it's hard to look at, you should feel what it feels like. Let me tell you.

No thanks, man. No past. No thanks, man. No pass, hard pass. Oh, you know, maybe honestly this was not such a great idea. It hurts. It hurts so much. But it might be worth it because this week's show is about the ET video game. You guys have to play with me now. Yeah, they buried that fucking game in the desert.

Yeah, yeah, they did. Did you? Okay, not my best desert. Yeah, yeah, they did. Did you? Okay, not my best idea. Nope, not your best. I'll get those shovels again. Hurry. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed. The podcast we choose to subject read a single article about on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts.

Because this is the internet, and that's how it works now. I'm just a casual observer here, and I'll be hosting tonight, but I'm not alone. First up, two men who are dying just to have a little bit of ethics in gaming journalism, you know, and he. No, no, no. And by ethics, we've been penises obviously. Yeah, this is right.

It's just normally employed. Also, I've probably nothing Ben Shapiro's wife put him a wet in the china as a disease. He's going to be a man again. Also, I'm probably nothing Ben Shapiro's wife put them away. Yeah. I'm going to mention that again. Also, join us tonight. Two guys who have buried a lot of inanimate objects. Tom and Eli. John.

Okay. She knows. No. No. I'm still in the end of it. The order of operations there doesn't matter as much as you might think. At the end. That's all the same.

Folks, I know we talk a lot about Eli's potentially starving child, but did you realize no one needs to get high or he can't stand to talk to any of us long enough to podcast and you'd like to learn how to buy no happy plants. Be sure to stick around till the end of the show. Don't take it personally, guys. That's true of all non-feelign entities. And with that, all the way, tell us, Tom, what person-placed-being concept phenomenon or event? Who are you talking about today? We were talking about the Atari video game, burial.

Okay, and Noah, you're still clearly pissed off about an eight-bit game that disappointed you 38 years ago. Are you ready to find and get this off your chest, man? Okay, it was... When I described a fucking game, you'll understand why yes. Anybody paying attention to my topic selection on this show knows that three of my favorite passions are video games, 80s history and fucking disasters. Not to be confused with disastrous fucking, which I can confirm Noah is not a fan. Don't send me a fucking video if you don't want notes.

Okay, laughing face emojis are not useful notes. I wish you'd stop. I feel like you got the message. Okay, anyway, video games, 80s disasters. It was never a question of if I would do an episode about the ET video game for Atari. It was a question of if I would do an episode about the ET video game for Atari. It was a question of when I would do that episode and the answer is now. And you know, why? Because America finally deserves it. You've earned it the electorate.

I voted for TurboGraphic 16 and I want to like, you know, other side of the coin, now they're gonna get campaign funding next time. So, positive. Alright, so this story starts with the Godfather of Video Games, Nolan Bushnell. Nolan Bushnell is largely credited with creating the video game industry after he had this idea for a TV tennis game, an invented pong. And by invented, I mean, describe the idea

to an engineer he'd hired. And by having an idea for, I mean, saw an early prototype of some other company's TV tennis game. Back with intellectual property was a square and two rectangles. Oh, okay. So now we can't steal ideas and hire people to repackage them

without some judgey Mcjudger sin getting involved. I hate judges. Never. So much. So mean. Never. Since he's Gregor, Gregor episode, man, I've really gotten a hate for judges. It's been tough.

No, this is not quite as direct a ripoff as I'm making it sound, but it's at least a, you know, six figures worth of out of court settlement level of ripoff. Regardless of how it happened though, Bush know it comes up with pong or rather Al Alcorn, the engineer that he hired comes up with pong. And they have a working model that's super fun to play. So they mount it in a makeshift cabinet, slap a coin box on it and test market it at a bar called Andy Caps tavern in sunny bail, California.

His story is famous. The next day they get a call that the machine's broken. So Alcorn rushes over to see what the hell happened, right? He's super worried. Turned out, so God damn many people had crammed quarters into the box that it was full and you couldn't shove more quarters into it. So he fills his toolbox with some of the quarters, tells him it's fixed that he leaves. The owner's like, uh, I'll fix it myself next time.

I don't know. So yeah. All right, so within a few days, we're got around that there were lines of people waiting to play this game when the bar opened up every day. And then it's some aggressive word of mouth though, like, hey, you hear you can play electric tennis over And you can't tap her

Well electric tennis not my day drinking has purpose what yeah Exactly it already has a purpose. Oh, okay All right, so I'll be successful pong bush. No starts the company that would define the 80s more than any other cocaine and Bushnell starts the company that would define the eighties more than any other cocaine and corporate. Well, yeah, but actually, yes, but they called it Atari. So, but, but of course, if you live by the higher a smart guy to rip off somebody else's idea, you die by the higher a smart guy to rip off somebody else's idea.

And it wasn't long before every amusement company in the country was cranking out pong clones. Now, Atari managed to recapture some of this magic with a home version of pong, but the same thing happened there and pretty soon there were so many manufacturers turning out the same product that there wasn't enough profit to keep anybody afloat. Then they launched patreon.com and the rest was history man just the rest of the history is. All right.

So Nolan Bush know went back to what he does best, paying better engineers to rip off other people's ideas. And this time, he stole the idea of the Fairchild Channel F. See, by then, TV games had been around a couple of years, but they were dedicated system. Like, you bought a game that you could hook to the back of your TV. It was an interesting time. Some mom would just be like,

honey, why does your friend have a welding mask and torch for the swimmer? You're right, yeah, you're a sex fan. You know what, I was fine, it's fine. This that's how I do it, I don't know how that works. It's a simpler time. So, yeah, so you had that one game, you played it until you got bored,

then you had to buy a whole other system to hook to your TV. The channel app was the first game system to employ interchangeable cartridges. I mean, we laugh, but at this point, our Nintendo switches are basically just our wives animal crossing machines. I wouldn't say we've gotten that. Okay, no, that's fair.

That's fair. Okay, so the channel left was crazy innovative, but it had one big problem. It was utter shit. Right? Like the games just fucking sucked. The novelty of being able to move a thing on your TV with a little stick was expected to do a ton of the heavy lifting, right? So it didn't have a killer app. It didn't even have like a serious wounder app, but Atari already had all the hottest games

in the arcade going for it. So when they said about creating their own Carfage-based system they decided to be exactly as powerful as it would need to be to play their hit game breakout and not one Fucking molecule of Silicon more than that. I thought it'd be in that pitch meeting for the system What about if we take all the fun of watching colored bricks disappear and bring that excitement home? No way. Oh, yes, but wait there's more there is No Wait, I thought you just said you'll buy it anyway Yeah

Atari it's either us we're talk to your wife Atari, it's either us, we're talked to your wife. G.C. be more interesting. Whatever you guys, I'm gonna go invent Apple computers and have it stolen by Steve Jobs. What do you think? I mean, yeah, exactly. W. Heath for dangling that tangent in front of me must push past it. All right, so the end result of that effort is the Atari 2600. Now you might be thinking 2600, what?

No, well, go fuck yourself. No, I wasn't. It's not 2600 anything. In fact, it wasn't even called that at the time. It was actually rebranded as the Atari 2600 when they released the Atari 5200. As a way of saying that this new console was twice as good as the old one, but the numbers don't refer to anything at all.

Retro gamers pretty much all call it the 2600 now, which is why I'm using the name, but when it was first sold, it was called the Atari Video Computer System or Atari VCS. And even that is only what you'd call it if you were like a store owner ordering some of the phone. If you were a customer, like coming into that store, asking for one, you just called it a Atari. So the 5200 is like the popular vote. It doesn't matter what the number is, no matter what.

Exactly. Yes. No, do I understand you right? Is that they started numbering it at the 5200? Yes. Yeah. And then went back and called it. Why wouldn't they call it the two?

Because Commodore 64 was out at that point. And they want to sell. They didn't know we had a fixed or four? Exactly. Way bigger numbers. So that's literally what's up. Commodore 64 was out at that point and they want exactly way bigger number That's literally what's a bigger number than 64 shot him out guys I like that bill 52 hundred you Joe with your 128 work going we're going 52 It's not even a pot. It's fine. We want just yeah, just Yeah, I'm like 6000. What am I made a fucking money over? Yeah, I'm stuck you six thousand. Also not a power.

What are you talking about? We're doing one twenty eight. I didn't say prime numbers. What's wrong with you? It's fine. Now as much as I'd loved to drill into the specs on the Atari 2600. I have been warned not above the top. No, don't worry, Noah, you lost me at video games. I was just, this entire series has just been to like, try to put you to sleep to get

you on an airplane. I'll, I'm Mr. T, you know, so, okay. So I won't say much, but I have to say this. Okay. The Atari 2600, the gaming console that defined the 80s and kicked off the largest entertainment industry and the history of the world had 128 bytes of RAM. That's amazing. Yes, you heard that right and I said that right.

I did not mean to say kilo before that or even Cento. I'm talking about bytes. And for those of you who don't know what that means, given a standard character set to work with, 128 bites would be almost enough memory to write these fucking sentences. Ha ha ha ha ha ha? Yeah, so just for context, that's salmon. That's salmon. In order to watch one frame of 4K video,

I will kill you. That's about 1 60th of a second on a modern TV. In order to watch one frame, you'd need about 70,000 battery points on three things. And watch the rest of that one second of your movie. 70,000 a cary-twin and And watch the rest of that one second of your movie you need about four million more 26 Right, yeah, all right. Yeah, still be sure

Yeah, yeah But despite having lasted one four millionth of a movie second to earth of, the Atari 2600 was a fucking phenomenon. It was released in 1977 sold over a quarter million units in its first year. In 1979, they sold over a million. And that's just systems, right? The whole point of the cartridge model was that the real money would be made selling the individual games. And by 1980, between the games and the consoles, Atari brought in over two billion dollars or $7 billion in today's money. It was at the time the fastest growing company in the history of the U.S. Man, the only way they could have sold more would be to time they're launched for Christmas

in the middle of a pandemic. Right. But there was a problem brewing. Or action, there was so goddamn many problems. We're going to deal with just the one for the moment. See, the company was making literal billions, but the programmers were making 20 grand a year. Okay, so Atari set around this letter at one point,

all the employees, it's kind of like a, you know, look how bad our company is, letter, and it set out the individual earnings on a per game basis. And some of those programmers started looking at this shit and they're like, huh. So that game that I was entirely responsible for creating made 20 million bucks. And I got a thousandth of that. That's weird.

And that turns out that's still how capitalism works though. I mean, it hasn't really changed much. Right. Right. But it'd be great if that's how cap. Yeah. But okay. But so for disgruntled programmers, go to the boss. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it.

I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it.

I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it.

I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. You fuck all about programming or engineering or video games. Hex styles guy? Yeah, no knowledge going in this. Nice. So, the real cloth guy who can head up the new hard division. That's exactly the decision that was made at time Warner. Yeah. So, they come in, they demand that like they be credited with the games that they create

and get a commission on each unit that sold, which is fucking eminently reasonable. Right? But Kassar told him to fuck off. So the four programmers told him to fuck off back. They went off to start their own software company with beer and hookers and they called it Activision. And right after it was founded, like within months, it would take Atari's title

as the fastest growing company in American history. Damn. And this is back when you had to tackle a guy for loot boxes. So they really, you actually had to mail in pictures of your high scores that send you patches. So it's all exciting. And we've seized the means of production. Okay, I guess it's just this computer

that we carried out. Sorry. Kind of hoping that'd be a little more impactful. All right. Well, that's a higher sum of programmers to explain. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. To this day, yeah, right. Okay, so this left Atari in a pretty fucked up position, right?

The 2,600 was notoriously hard to program. They just lost a few of their best and most experienced guys. And what's more, they now have to compete with another company in the market that they created and that other company didn't have to incur any of the cost involved in actually designing and manufacturing a fucking game system. But Atari wasn't afraid of a little competition, especially after their lawsuit failed and it became clear that they weren't going to be able to stop actors. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, it's always funny to me how big business wants unfettered capitalism until they lose control of it and then yeah, suddenly They want to fatter the shit Better and no taxes and unions are fucking part of capitalism. That's labor competing back Yeah, because we're all asshole exactly right tell your uncle Frank at your shitty zoom Thanksgiving Okay, so look, Activision was at the time the pinnacle of quality gaming or home gaming at least, right? Their games were more polished, more complete, and more fun than anything else going. I mean, like the best of our Tari's in-house games were at least as good, but with Activision, you basically knew you were going to get a high

quality game. With Atari, total crap shoot. No good kids. Do you want dungeon quest or bootbeat? Yeah. That was the choice. Of course, what started with high bootbeat. Yeah, we always got fucking bootbeat. All right. So what started with higher quality games led to the opposite. By and large, nobody knew if they were getting a fucking Atari made game or an

active vision made game or an Activision made game or one by any number of other startup software developers that along with a couple of high-profile misses would put the entire industry on a course to crash back to Earth. So fucking hard, they would wind up underground. Well, we've gotten to this weird place where workers sees the means of production by putting each other in head locks. So let's take a quick break for an apropos

of nothing. Gentlemen, I called the board to dismiss an electronics together because this new video game thing is here to stay. But boss, we ain't never made none creative. Yeah, we make cathode retops. And the finest damn copo-y in the nation. I know, I know, but that's just ain't enough anymore, huh? We need to make games for people to play. So who's got an idea? Uh, what about sports? Like, maybe people would want to play soccer or a football in a, in a, in a game? Ah, it could go on and play the real thing and the sunshine in every, don't be absurd.

Reddit. All right, all right. What about something that involves fantasy and time travel about a kid trying to Save a princess who everybody's gonna think it's like his name, but it's actually the princess's name Too high concept you lost me next. Oh, I got going I got one Maybe a game about an Italian who beats the shit out of a bunch of hurdles. What? What do you say? No stupid stupid, sorry, sorry, sorry. Somebody else go. Guys, these are terrible. Ideas, we need something that's gonna last,

something that people wanna play in 10 years, 50, 100 years. Okay, how about, Boop beep, the block moved a little on the screen. What do you say? Jesus, yes. Let's dedicate the whole company to a copy. Yeah, I agree. I like Boop beep.

Yeah, sorry. Boop beep. Wait, beep, boop. No, Boop beep, it's dedicate the whole company to a copy Boopie wait beep boop no boop beep. It's the other way around Boopie yeah, okay, I like it. I like it. Sorry an Italian guy who beats up hurdles. It's so we could fuck a lady Not better not better. He's Italian. I don't know more now Well, when we left off, workers in Atari had to pee in bottles so they didn't take up too much time away from coding. When are they going to bury their games in the litter box? Noah, what's that going to happen? All right. Okay, so we're almost there.

So the year has 1982, video games are everywhere. Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, and Cuba were raking in money at the arcades, and Atari was still the king of the console. But there was a ton of money to be made, and everybody wanted it. Basically, every company that had ever sold it a god damn Wire was hopping into the scroll and market so a consumer heading to the store for a video game system was confronted with a glut of systems So in addition to the 2600 you also have the Intellivision the Coleco vision the Vectrax the Odyssey 2 Astrocade Create a vision Arcadia 2001 and the Channel F. Not to mention home computers like the Atari 400,

Atari 800, TRS 80, Vic 20, and Compodore 64. And since pretty much everything I just mentioned is significantly more powerful than the Atari 2600. Atari also put out its own 5200 to compete with the higher end systems. So they were competing with a hundred different companies including themselves. So podcast.

Stop. Yeah. No, no, there's still money to be made in video games. So. All right, but it wasn't just that there was a lot of systems. There was also a lot of games. And yes, if you kept up with the latest and greatest in the video game media world, you might know like which games were going to be worth a shit, but that was 11 people in 1982.

Yeah, and Noah was two of them. So I was only one of them, one, hello. But more often though, games were just being bought by grandma's who like heard little Timmy likes the Atari, right? And for every good game that Activision Atari or Imagic was putting out, there were 38 shit games that Bob's video game programs and massage services.

Oh, grandma. A jigsaw puzzle video game. You shouldn't have. You really shouldn't have. I love it so much. I want to frame the receipt. Grandma, can I have it? Let's see.

Alright, so to be fair to Bob's video game programs and massage services. Okay, this is the first time in this essay I've wanted to reach for my. Yes. Yes. But like, so not all the really awful games were coming from third party vendors.

I mean, at one point, Atari did like Rubik's cube the video game. What? We're in Atari did like Rubik's cube the video game. What? Where did you solve a Rubik's cube? Okay. And they sold it for way more than a Rubik's cube. That's amazing. They made a Rubik's square. They turned it into a square. Yes, you won't write. Yes, exactly. It wasn't three dimensional. Yeah. And and by the way, if you think they were just counting on like the name Rubik's cube to sell it, I should point out that they originally released it in 1982 as Atari Video Cube. And didn't manage to secure the licensing until 1984.

She's. Okay, though, to be fair, I just looked it up and a copy of Madden is about $60. And an actual football cost about 15. Though to also be fair, a copy of Grand Theft Auto is $30. and Kyle Rittenhouse's bail is $2 million. So, I don't know if we should draw these comparison. Let's think it out.

Let's think it out. So the game, WWE $2K $60, right? Spandex pants $30, and Chris Benoit's fan. Holy shit. Oh, shit. Oh, okay. Oh, shit. Oh, okay. How did you make that darker?

How did you make that darker? Damn it. All right. So of course, it's impossible to talk about terrible 1982 Atari 2600 games without mentioning the notoriously awful Pac-Man port. Okay. So for two years, Pac-Man had been dominating the arcades. It was the most beloved video game ever made.

It remains the de facto symbol of the entire fucking decade, right? And yet for two years there was no home version of it, but eventually Atari ironed out the rights with the game's Japanese creator Namco and finally released in March of 1982, a home port of Pac-Man. And after waiting for two goddamn years and Finding out that the fucking thing was gonna be released the same time as your goddamn birthday and for going even getting a goddamn Present on the fucking day because you were waiting till the store had the Atari cartridge that your dad was probably gonna buy any fucking way Atari released the most half-ass attempt fucking way. Atari released the most half-bash attempt at the pack man. It's sorry, Pac-Man didn't need dots. He ate

dashes and I'm not even kidding. Yep. Yeah. Exactly. Oh, oh, so get the rights to dot. It's so much worse than that. No, it's going to go into it. I'm sure. So it's so bit. Okay, so here's the biggest problem. They gave the pro limber a whopping five weeks to program the game Which is insane given the technical limitations of the system But even worse Atari kind of overlearn their lesson after their best programmers ran off and found an activation

So they offered this due to royalty, but it wasn't based on how many copies were sold It was based on how many were made what? Yeah, and Atari was so sure that this game was going to be a smash hit that they made 1.2 million copies. Even though, and this is true, there were only a million Atari 2600 system owners. They just assumed it was going to be so fucking popular that at least 200,000 people were going to rush out to buy a system so that they could buy the Pac-Man game or Some people would buy two cartridges so they could play one while their friend was blowing the other

No, that's not fair cyberpunk 2077 was also gonna release for the system any day day. So I'm going to come out. All right. So, but instead of being the killer app that Space Invaders was a Tari's Pacman was a fucking dud, right? Some of it was just that the graphics were shit Pacman hate wafers. The instruction wafers, they call them. It looked like somebody had just punched him in the lip. He faced. way he looked. And when you went up and down, he would still face to the left or something. Like he wasn't looking where he was going. And it's annoying as all that was, players probably wouldn't have gotten over it

if the gameplay was at least true to the arcade version or close, but it wasn't. Right, the ghost didn't act the same. The maze was wrong and didn't make any fucking sense. The cutscenes were missing. The sound effects were brutal. Oh, so bad. It was a horrible, it is like a failed clone of

bombination that would have begged the real Pac-Man to kill it if he ever happened along okay that's rather a lot guys can we all promise not to bring up the Pac-Man cartoon before no was a lot pressure normalizes I don't want to know the sounds on that Pac-Man thing on that Pac-Man game, on that Pac-Man game, it seriously sounds like your computer crashing every time he eats a dot, it's the worst sound in the world. It's so bad. It's 1984.

I got it. I looked it up. I don't, I guess maybe it didn't play enough Atari. It was so bad. But I like that invented strafing. Apparently. Yeah, it's a big deal golden-knife straight Okay, but so his baddest Pac-Man was it was nowhere near the flop of ET a game so bad It is often cited as the worst video game of all time and possibly the most overrated movie of all time. I fucking hate that movie. That was not a good

Star Wars. That's the most overrated movie of all time. You know as much as I loved it It absolutely does not hold up even a little bit. It's so hard to watch. Yeah, I'm actually with you I love that movie as a kid, but yeah, no, okay, so to be clear, ET does not deserve the title of the worst video game of all time, but it probably is the worst video game that like Anyone ever looked forward to playing. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty bad But it isn't the King James Bible for Game Boy. Thanks grandma. Thank you What is a new revised standard version of stupid bits? You got it now I want to do an essay on wisdom tree games, but I won't. Yeah. So, the English language doesn't really have words to describe how disappointing the ET video

game is and for good reason, right? Human beings should not be trusted with anything that powerful, but suffice to say it was shit It was it is literally impossible to enjoy even ironically It consists of walking around for like one or four seconds before you fall into a stupid fucking hole And then just when you're getting out of the fucking hole you fall back in the same Fucking hole you fall back in the same sense In the end if your head touch the whole you fell in it so

Yep, yeah, yeah, just when you were thinking what the fuck is going on some dude would show up and carry you away And the game is over and you lost and That was the entire goddamn experience It sounds a lot like 2020 the video game when you say it like that Yeah, at the end of the game when you lost Rudy Giuliani shows up to sue you It was so bad they actually needed to call for season I should point out by the way that this is not just like my embittered experience with it. Reviewers at the time, even called it benotonous, convoluted, and in name, even by 1984, it was ranked as the second worst Atari game of all time.

It has enjoyed a spot at or near the top of worst games ever lists ever since. Yeah. And for those of you wondering how bad a game has to be to make that list, two others on that list from a casual Google are rape theme. Yep. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not doing that essay either. So, all right. And now to his credit, the guy who programmed this game was a fucking genius. How it's got worse shot was the creator of yards revenge, which is a strong contender for best game on the 2600. It's not. It's a good one. It's, but it's a strong contender. And already he had handled a major movie property in his raiders of the lost art game, which is, it's no yards revenge, but it's still a pretty fun game. Even with the bizarre two joystick inventory nonsense.

Let it go. No, he's dead. Everyone involved his dad. No, he's not dead. He's still alive. No, he's dead. He's not dead. No, he's not. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah All right, but so like with with ET they gave Shaw all of 23 goddamn minutes to program the fucking thing having totally failed to learn their god damn lesson

about Pac-Man they gave him less than five weeks to complete development and to be honest his concept was shit right like this game was like even if they give him a year to work on it it's still would have been a shitty game just probably not a historically shitty game if they gave him a historically shitty game. If they gave him a year, you could have made it over that first hole. Yeah, right. I'm with an up to Kilo, you could make it to the second hole.

All right. All right. All right. So that made for two high publicity flops in one year for Atari. They poured money into marketing on both of them. And though they sell more than a million copies of both games, they still wound up with huge stockpiles of unsold and returned cartridges that quickly

started collecting dust. Now, it doesn't really take long for Atari to decide that they don't want to pay to warehouse those anymore. So they quietly took the guy to blow the dust down. So he's walking up and down the warehouse. We threw the warehouse. We're just through the shirt. Okay. All right, so they quietly load up several truckloads of unsold merchandise and they take them to a landfill near Alamagordo, New Mexico and buried them.

They meant to do this quietly, but it wound up being reported in the New York Times, which is the opposite of quiet. So, where's look, a shitty pact we important, a shitty or ETA game, we're not enough to do in the company, right? I mean, hell, it technically still exists now. But it would continue releasing ever-sadder consoles until the mid-90s, but their failures were major contributors to the larger video game crash of 1983 that wiped out a ton of smaller companies and their high profile

failures combined with the increasing prevalence of home computers. That's what we called them back then people home computers. Because people didn't think that below and you're home. Anyway, that let a lot of industry observers to doubt that there was any real future in the dedicated video game console, a characteristic that PC gamers maintain to this day. Yeah, PC master race. Oh, really?

You're a big PC fan. You have a 2005 MacBook and the only game you own is Stardew Valley. What are you talking about? Oh, yeah. All right. So fire, wire and monster cables. What are you do? I can hear the

Okay, so officially Atari denied the infamous game burial for a long fucking times for decades. The whole idea kind of like surfed the edge of urban legend until eventually a couple of documentarians got permission to dig up the site and prove once and for all whether or not the shit was down there, it's sure enough between a layer of concrete that Atari had poured to cover their shoes. Apparently thousands upon thousands of unsolved games were discovered. They made recovering their games harder than playing them and that's saying something. That is.

I was kind of hoping for like a Capone's vault moment though, like where there's digging through all the trash and garbage is breaking through and breathlessly finding more garbage. That's that's what you got, man. You haven't played ET as to probably you don't understand. That is what happened.

So that documentary about a video game company biting off more than it could shoot and suffering from an embarrassing failure was originally produced by Xbox Entertainment Studios. But unfortunately they went out of business before they could finish. I was just distributed by somebody else. And no, if you had to summarize it, you learned in one sentence, what would it be? It's amazing that I've ever been. It is amazing. Are you ready for the quiz? Sure why not?

All right Noah, which of the following items was dealt with the same way as ET the video game extra cartridges? A, the Chernobyl reactor quag... I was talking right there. There's more answers. They're just gonna depress me more. We'll go with A that is correct literally a concrete over the top. Just like a

shunned over the tree. Yep. All right, Noah, I googled this ET game and I watched someone on YouTube play it to get an idea of what we are dealing with here. What one simple improvement would make playing this game more fun. Hey, Beetle alcohol syndrome. Oh, Jesus Christ. That's a lot. We need there to be a bee.

I'm really like a bee. Hey, keep it whatever he wants in there. It's going to wind up on the editing floor. It doesn't matter. I don't know what he means. I mean. That. I know marginally better. No, uh, uh, what video game also spent a lot of time underground? A, Frogger, B, Spade Runner, C, Deo's excavator, or D.

Yeah. Mole position. All right. Well, the retro gaming theme, it's got to be A or D. I'm going to go D. Mole position. It is. Mole position. Congratulations.

Awesome. Frogger. All right. Noah, what could Atari have done to make E.T. a smash hit? some frog or Or Alright Noah. What could a Tariya have done to make ET a smash hit? Hey Called it a souls like so that everyone would insist that it was brilliant falling in those holes over and over And I love it Be

Take a neutral stance on the Chinese government murdering protests Oh, shit. See, same company, treat its female employees like garbage and then play the victim whenever anyone makes it. Yes. Yes. Weird. Or D, let the studio behind No Man's Sky make the trailer. All right, obviously it's D because they come on like as bad as ET was, it's still better.

Ooh, I'm afraid it is S-A, souls like genre. Oh, alright. Oh, damn, so close. That's right, and that means next week, it's Tom's turn to writing essay. Yeah! Alright, well for Tom, Heath, Eli, and Noah, I'm Cecil. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week, and by then. Tom will be an expert on something else.

Between now and then, you can listen to all the other shows you'd produce, like the Skating Atheist, The Skeptocrack, God of the Movies, D&D Minus, Cognitive Dissonist, or you could watch my cooking show, Seasoned Liberally on You To Get. And if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod, or leave us a five star of you every weekend. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citation pod dot com.

And then the Italian guy throws his hat on their heads so he can control them. Don't you seriously, you got to get back on your medication. Dinosaur them. No, you're seriously you got to get back on your medication. Dinosaur slave. No.