The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 139 - The Story of Atari (REVERSE)

Episode Date: December 16, 2015

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine the Atari video game company. SOURCESTOUR DATES REDBUBBLE MERCH

When you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? You could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it. That in-law sweet guest house where your parents stay only part-time Airbnb it and make some money the rest of the year whether you could use a little extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. Hello! You're listening to The Dallop. This is a bi-weekly podcast where some

weeks I explain a story from history to my friend... Dave Anthony. You didn't say your name who knows no idea. Did I say? No you didn't say who you were. I'm Dave Anthony. What are you starting you say hi I'm welcome to The Dallop. I'm Dave Anthony. Yeah okay here we go. We'll keep this all in. People love this part. Ha me ha ma ha ma ha ma. Hello! You're listening to The Dallop. This is a bi-weekly podcast where every week or some weeks I Gareth Reynolds explain a story to history to... What? You've been in the room when I've done this right? What did I do wrong that time? The whole thing's just it's off. You're listening to The Dallop. This is a bi-weekly podcast where every week I Gareth

Reynolds explain a story to my friend... Dave Anthony who has no idea what it's about. Yeah that's you fucked up bad too. That was a fucking woo. Gary. Do you want to look here to do? I'll do one bottle. People say this is funny. Not Gary Gareth. Dave okay. Someone or something is tickling people. Is it for fun? And this is not gonna become a tickly podcast. Okay. You are Queen Fakie of Haight-Up Town. All hail Queen Shit of Liesville. A bunch of religious virgins go to mingle. And do what? Pray. Hi Gary. No. Has he done my friend? No. Have you airy fifth? Fuck you. 1943. Nolan Bushnell was born into the world in the suburbs of gorgeous Clearfield, Utah. Bushnell grew up in a working-class area outside of Salt Lake. He was raised as a Mormon

but was not fond of his religion and his surroundings. Early found he was a little different. You said 1848 right? I said 1943. Oh 1943. It was all the same. No they're very very different. February 5th, 1943 was when he was born. Jesus Christ. I mean even I retain more than that. Let's just get back to Nathan. Okay. He was a little bit different than everyone in his town. For funny, he liked to play pranks. Like the time that he convinced everyone there was a UFO invasion by Ben Franklin-ing a 300 watt light bulb to a kite. The prank later ended in an alfalfa field farm where Bushnell had led the police

department to. Wait. Yeah. What? Okay. Go ahead. No, no. So he put a light bulb on a kite and was it a thunderstorm? There must have been a storm. There must have been some sort of storm. And then the cops chased it? And then he convinced people that it was a UFO and then it ended up that the cops chased it and chased him. Was he with the kite? So he's with the kite? I think he was with the kite. I just assume he's with the kite. If he just like tied the kite down and they came and were like holy shit. He's a terrible prankster so far. That's a great prank. He also wouldn't stay Mormon for long. He became what he described as a heathen after an argument

with a priest over religion. So that happens a lot. Yeah as that should happen. Straight to heathen. You will learn Bushnell is a pretty fucking awesome dude. As a teen Bushnell worked at an amusement park where he would watch people lose their shit over ring toss and ski ball and games like that and the fun of this environment would stick with him forever David. Oh good. For college Bushnell ended up attending the University of Utah as an electrical engineer. A ute. But one day Davey Gravey, that's you, everything would change. Bushnell walked into a department lab where people were playing space war on a mini

computer. Essentially the first game ever. Bushnell was shocked by it. When it was finally his turn he played and he couldn't believe what he was seeing. He was manipulating this digital spaceship and shooting the digital enemies. Holy fuck. Imagine and he was controlling it. Now with his hands not with his mind. No sorry I should be clear with his hands. It was no mind. I'm sorry. Because it seems like a guy who might control it with his mind. No no no no no hands all hands. So he saw this and he knew that people would lose their shit for something like this if it was in like the amusement park that he used to work at. Sure because

he's seen people go crazy. He'd seen people freak out over ring toss. Yeah. Which you're sussing a ring on a bottle. I think that's a ring toss. You get a prize. It's like the goldfish game where you throw the ping-pong ball into the goldfish bowl and then the goldfish dies on it. You don't have to explain the the simplicity and awesomeness of carnival games to me. Okay. I get them. All right. Cool. So he so he wanted to do this but he had no way of doing anything near that. Computers were far too expensive and he didn't have that kind of money. It was all just an impossible thought in his dreamer head until one day

when he met Ted Dabney. Here we go. Dabney worked with electronics in the Marine Corps and had an inexpensive way to bring Bushnell's vision to life. Dabney had figured out a way to change a TV signal into a bunch of dots and squiggles with nothing more than a video board and that would do. Seriously? They had a plan. Yeah. Okay. These are guys that I don't understand. Like these are guys who look at something and go oh yeah I can turn this into something. Yes. Whereas I would look at a TV screen and go that's there's a lot of snow on there. Yeah. Yeah. Well and essentially like if you think about it like you know all

that stuff you can do with computers if you can just do that on a TV monitor like if you're able to you know work with that and that's kind of what Dabney brought. I feel pong coming. You should not. Hold on I need to make some quick revisions. So Bushnell and Dabney went to work and they made their own coin operated. Wait is this gonna be about me because I was the first kid in my neighborhood to have pong. No this is not. What an ego on you. It's about me. No Dave this is not a fucking. I'm not doing a dollop on you that you don't know about. I can't remember. I'm finally doing one about me. This is good. Now if we did it

where you did one about me there is still a chance I would have no idea what the topic was. Not until it was over. Yeah not until it was over. That's me. And then Jose was picked. So Bushnell and Dabney went to work on their own coin operated space war game that they called computer space. Uh-huh. Catchy name. Bushnell had the vision for what the actual device should look like. It was going if it was gonna attract people away from conversations and bars and public places he wanted to be sexy. So what they ended up building would be the standard for all upright arcade games from then on. Are you taking a selfie? Yeah.

Good God. Are you even listening? This dude designed the first stand-up arcade game. You self-involved prick. I was listening. Listen about me. Let me take selfies. What are you parasolting? What's your fucking phone down? If there's a dollop about me I feel like we should take pictures of you. It's not about you. Okay. Good God. It seems like it might be about us. So what they ended up building would be the standard for all upright arcade games from then on. Asteroids. Upping the sex appeal for the public. Bushnell decided to launch the game with an ad featuring a sexy model and negligee. And the rest is history. Huh? Okay, wait. What? So it's an

arcade game to put in arcades. It is the first, yes. And he's gonna make an ad for it in a magazine or a TV ad? Just ads, you know? It's just a hot chick in negligee standing next to an arcade game. Not only an arcade game, something called computer space. Okay. Nothing makes my nipples harder than computer space. I mean, these guys are geniuses in some ways and not geniuses in the other. Yeah. They definitely was, they're not getting laid is now crossing over into... So are you telling me you're shocked that computer nerds didn't have a grasp on how to appeal to men? It is kind of, yeah. Unfortunately, the game flopped. What? I

don't think it had anything to do with the ad campaign. People didn't understand the look of the game. They didn't really understand the concept. They felt that it was too complicated. Was it called, what's it called? Space Camp? It was called computer space. Space Camp is honestly better. Fuck, I love computer space. Hey. After that flop. Yeah. You want to go down to the the Dairy Queen and play some computer space? Oh man, for sure. It doesn't work at all. Computer space. Sure, there'll probably be a model and a lingerie there. Wait, is that where you take a computer and put it into space? Yeah. Okay. That'd be amazing if

that's the game. You've won. What? You just moved it over there. So after the flop, they decided they weren't going to take no for an answer. So on June 27th, 1972, in Sunnyvale, California. Fucking it all happens in Sunnyvale. Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney filed the incorporation papers and moved their items into a 1700 square foot office space in Santa Clara, California, the heart of Silicon Valley. This was the beginning of Atari. Apple. This was the beginning of Atari. Listen to me. I know it's gonna be Apple. Good God. Atari was mainly launched from something that Bushnell saw at a trade show. So he

saw this video game system called Odyssey, which was essentially a basic video tennis game. And Bushnell had just hired an engineer named Al Acorn and instructed him to build their version of that. So having learned from his first endeavor, Bushnell wanted to keep this far more simple. So basically the idea was two digital paddles, one ball, players hit the ball back and forth until one player misses and then the other player gets a point. It's Pong. First one to ten wins and I'm sure you think it sounds silly. You're like, I've never heard of this game before. No, no, this is about me. This ends up about me. Acorn, who

called himself an anarchist from Berkeley, went to work. Well, this is what anarchists do. Fuck you, government. If there's ever a great example of an anarchist, it's a guy making two digital paddles hit a ball back and forth. Take that. That's fucking anarchy, man. Take that, Congress. And you're right, David. The fruits of their labor would be a little game called Pong. Pong, the first coin-operated arcade game. But how could they know if people wanted it before it went wide? That's true. So to find out, they set it up in a dive bar to see the results. What about putting a naked lady in a picture next to it? I'm

sure that was definitely talked. I mean, that's when they fired the ad department. So I was thinking, maybe we go with a girl and launch her at you. That was your idea last time. I know, but I like them. Congress, she's really cool. I just want to meet her. She says, if I keep getting her work, she might touch my dick. Someday. Touch it. Touch it. So they set it up in a dive bar and within an hour, Bushnell got a call from the bars manager who was pissed off because the machine had stopped working and people were upset. Panicked, Bushnell sent Acorn to the bar and Acorn quickly figured out the problem when he opened

the front of the machine and realized that it had been clogged with quarters. The game was just too popular. So they had already learned how to monetize it. Like they didn't just put it in the bar for free. They had it all set up with coin and everything. Yes, yes. So shit was fucking, they didn't have a big enough hole. We don't have a big enough money hole. You know, we didn't make a big enough hole. Maybe if we put a girl with lingerie, get out of here, Doug. Get out of here. No. It's just getting some of my things. She'd be great. So this gave Atari a lot of confidence in the game, so much confidence that instead of sort

of outsourcing this, they decided they were going to build the machines and put them into bars and restaurants by themselves rather than licensing it to other companies. Right. So in 1973, Atari got a line of credit from Wells Fargo and started an assembly line. But Atari only had four employees and they had 500 Pong machines that they were contracted to build. Contracted through who? Like they went to different bars? Yeah. They just went to different bars and they were like, International too. Yeah. I mean, it started small, but orders for Pong machines started flying. So people started hearing about it. People saw the ad with the girl with lingerie.

So guys who own bars would go to like a bar convention. Yeah, they go to. They'd be like, they go to Barcon. Hey, Larry. They go to Barcon and they'd be like, hey, Larry, what's going on with your bar? You know, there's this no machine these guys put in where you put a quarter in and then you get digital paddles. What are you talking about? Like a jukebox? No, you dumb fuck. Listen to me. A jukebox. Yeah, it sounds like a jukebox. No, it's a game. You put money in. Yeah. It's a game. It's like a shuttle. The shuttle board. Air hockey is what your gestures are saying. Or you're jerking off someone because you just keep moving one hand back and forth with the shuttle board

or the stand. Not on the love boat. Do you own a bar? No. I didn't think so. Why are you at Barcon? I just love Barcon. So they had to make 500 Pong machines, but they only had four employees. So not content in waiting for a want ad to run, which would take four days, Bushnell drove to the local unemployment office and hired all the homeless, the hippies, and the homeless hippies that he could find. That's amazing. He had a job to do after all. Despite admitting the drug testing should probably have been made a part of that vetting process. No, no. Bushnell and Atari popped out 10 Pong machines a day. Wow. Pretty good, right? That's pretty good for a bunch of homeless degenerate, you know, and otherwise. And only

every now and then you would find a guy like living in one at the end. You'd be like, but hey Hank, this is where I keep my vodka. No, buddy, we're gonna need you to come out of there. I can fit in here with a bottle. No, don't get out of there. We need to make the coin thing bigger. Okay, we can't send this one to China. So the machines would cost $300 to build. That's Atari would sell them for $900. At the time was pretty crazy. I'm going to say that's a 20, 15% profit. Yeah, I do. I know. You're good. You're good. It was an international phenomenon to orders are coming in from all over the world. Atari also operated a few machines locally to keep the quarters coming in for whatever reason. But Bush now is paranoid about the people that he

was sending to go collect the quarter. So he insisted that anyone who went to go empty a machine carry to hatch it. Okay, wait, I'm gonna need you to back up. What part? I thought February 5. I thought that he was worried that the guys who were going to get the money were going to steal it. No. But he's worried that people are going to attack the guys getting the quarters. Yes, he's worried that the people he's sending to go get the quarters are going to get attacked. He's like a situation from the 1850s where the Wells Fargo stagecoach is cruising across and someone comes out and attacks them. That's what he sees. Hatchets. You know what, there were so many fucking quarter robberies in the 70s. Oh my God, they were huge. Yeah. I mean, this is of course,

dime robberies happen in the 50s. But in the 70s, it was a quarter. And there were whole gangs just built on taking quarters. Bigger than Studio 54 were quarter crimes. We'll never forget the quarter crimes. So Atari was growing faster than Al Falfa on a farm that Bushnell had led the cops to and needed a bigger space for all of its new employees. So the company... Wait, okay, go. Yeah, you get it. It's just fun. So the company moved to a roller rink nearby and it became a real fucking party house. Bushnell was... Was the roller rink still operating? No, not operational. Okay, because that would have been... Now we have a movie. Well, buddy, we got a movie. It turned into like a party house. So it wouldn't surprise me if

there maybe was roller skating. Bushnell was a real fucking hippie. He wore bell bottoms to work and he didn't really care much for rules. Drinking was allowed at work. So it was pot smoking. Oh, sorry. There actually wasn't much not allowed. Bushnell told his staff, quote, I don't care when you come to work. I don't care if you come to work. I don't care what you wear. I don't care if you bring your dog. I don't care if you bring a six pack. Get your job done. You're an adult and I treat you like an adult. I've actually totally agree with that. Totally. Why would you care if someone is doing whatever they're fucking doing? A guy could be sitting there mainlining cocaine, killing monkeys, and as long as he gets his job done, like if a guy is doing

an eight ball a day and shooting like nine monkeys with an AK-47 out back, you are starting to lose me. But getting, but at the same time getting the machine built. Yeah. What can you complain about? The monkey murder, the murder of the monkeys. That's an issue. I gotta be honest. They were looking at him weird. That's still that's a lot of monkeys. But I agree. I do agree. I think if you have like people who are like, like this, like, you know, they have to, their job is to like, it's not like they're driving a bus. No, exactly. So you can just shut you to get your fucking work done. If you work for me and Gareth, you can mainline all day as long as you get your job done. And as long as there are no monkey murders because we're looking for interns. Again,

we're going to talk off air about the monkey problem because that is a huge issue. So Pong blew up. Bushnell would, I mean, it just Atari started to blow up like Bushnell would have most of his business meetings in a hot tub near his house. As he said, it was a wild environment. It was post flower power revolution, women's liberation, no AIDS yet and lots of company romances. Oh, no AIDS yet. Remember? Those were the fucking days. That's probably why he was killing all those monkeys, right? For some reason, Atari became quickly known as a party company. Bushnell promised to tap a keg every Friday that they hit their quota. And basically this was beer pong before beer pong. Because beer and pong. Yeah, I get it. That was part of our culture. Smoking pot and doing

a lot of cocaine. Al Acorn said our attitude was work hard, play hard. So they were doing cocaine. They were doing a lot of cocaine. Yes. However, in 1974, a problem arose. Well, Bushnell was brilliant with his mind in the tech space. Business was fairly new to him. And he failed to copyright Pong circuit boards. Oh, Jesus. So what this meant? Oh, my God. This meant was that anybody could try to produce their own Pong machine. So all over the world, Pong machines were being ripped off. Only about a quarter of the machines in the market were actually made by Atari. What a fucking idiot. So shit got real fast. And Atari was starting to think that they were going to have to file for bankruptcy. Things got so bad that Bushnell had to cut wages for his assembly line workers,

which resulted in workers arriving in shirts that simply read fuck you. Yeah, it's a point. Point made. I mean, they probably couldn't afford more letters with the way they're being paid. It took a toll on Bushnell's personal life to causing a divorce between him and his wife. I can't believe he was married. I mean, I gotta be honest, that's the most shocking thing I've heard in this whole story. Two daughters. So with little choice, Bushnell saw only one way to save the company. A bit of a Hail Mary. Confused the thieves. He began to mess with the names on the chips inside the game. Atari essentially would switch chip names or create new ones to make the game harder to steal. And when other companies would want to copy it, it would fail.

And it worked. Atari was saved. So they thwarted people by fucking up the inside of their machines. They would put a chip in there that was wrong. They would mislabel chip. They would mislabel it. And so then when someone tried to put it in, it wouldn't work. So then more of the people who were trying to rip it off, they would, you know, yeah, be like giving them a wrong recipe. So it saved them. So then in 1975, Sears Realbook approached Atari about the idea of making Pong game consoles that people could use in their homes, which was a fairly revolutionary idea at the time. We're getting around to me now. Okay. Dave Anthony. Bushnell showed up to the meeting with Sears in jeans and a t-shirt. The Sears guys all wore suits and ties. But in no time,

Sears started seeing things Bushnell's way. One of their first visits to Atari, Bushnell divided them into two teams and they raced around the conveyor belts in boxes. The two companies went into business together. Sears? The Sears guys got into boxes and had a box race. Yeah. At Atari. Yeah. The guys were in suits and ties. They only got with Bushnell enough. Yeah. And they were like, let's box race. You guys want to box race? Okay. Okay. We don't do this at Sears. Okay, cool. And then they're doing blow like faster with the fucking box, dude. Everyone's nose is bleeding. Fucking hate Macy's. Don't get me started on Macy's. Oh, that is what they talk about like at a Sears Coke party. Oh, yeah. Yeah, problem with Macy's

is the guys like rubbing his gum. Macy's good. Macy's not great. Atari went to work and began designing a home TV version of its Pong arcade game. Should have said JCPenney. Oh, okay. The home Atari version of Pong had a sporting color, an onscreen score, an audio from a built-in speaker inside the oddly shaped pedestal console. And it turned out to be one of the hottest selling items for the 1975 holiday shopping season with people waiting several hours in line to purchase it. Yeah. Pong. We're talking about Pong. At first Sears wanted to sell 50,000 units, but demand was high enough that Sears quickly asked Atari to produce 150,000 instead. Holy shit. Atari topped more than $40 million in sales. Now, again, David, a home Pong game was a big F

and deal at the time, but Atari wanted to grow. They knew that they were killing it in the home gaming business, but Bushnell also wanted to focus on our arcade games. He felt like that was a good market as well. So he hired teams, a team of designers to help conceive and create games. His staff were self-described nerds, but these nerds worked hard and played hard. Slowly, but surely, they began coming up with great games and doing the same thing that Pong had done in bars and arcades. Games like Tank and Indy and 800 and even a video game adaptation of the movie Jaws, which I'm sure was behind. I don't remember that one. Among Bushnell's staff. How does that one work? Jaws? I mean, honestly, my guess. I think I have a recollection of it. My guess

is there's sharks coming up at you and you try to swim across. I guess, right? Yeah. I mean, that's all it could be. Unless you're the shark trying to eat people, but I don't think people had that fucked up attitude yet. Yeah, I think yeah. I think the people wanted to be the hero. Among Bushnell's young staff was a young nobody named Steve Jobs. Bushnell was taken with Jobs early and promoted him to work on a game called Breakout. Here we go. Bushnell offered Jobs a five grand bonus if he could use as few chips as possible. So Steve Jobs went to his friend, Steve Wozniak, and he helped him. The team did end up getting the bonus, but Bushnell and Atari were the winners because the game was said to have turned pong on its side. Basically, it was a

video game version of Racquetball, which was very popular at the time. A few months later, Job and Wozniak approached Bushnell with an offer. For $50,000, Bush could be the third partner in a computer company they were starting called Apple. I would jump in. I would jump on this. While Bushnell liked the guys, he passed. Why would you jump on that? It sounds stupid. Apple. Who's going to name a company Apple? Exactly. What he said was that he basically passed on it for the right reasons, but regretted it. And that investment today would be worth... He's going to live in a garbage can, right? He's going to live in a pong machine. That investment today would be worth $670 kajillion billion dollars. So not much. Not much. Not much. Real money. However, there was still the

dream of being able to do what they did with pong with all of their other games. Was there a way to bring games into the comfort of the consumer's home, Dave? Bushnell thought so. Chip Technology had changed, and Bushnell thought that Atari could make a console that could use multiple games by exchanging cartridges. However, the cost of something like that would be huge. Bushnell couldn't cover the whole cost. So to pull it off, a 33-year-old Bushnell needed more money to cover the cost of production, and there was only one way to get it. He had to sell Atari. So I think I saw heroin. Sell heroin. He had to sell Atari. Sold Atari. To make Atari. To make Atari bigger. So that's just what Bushnell did. Atari was hot, and Warner Communications knew it. They wanted to buy Atari,

so to show them how much they wanted, the Warner Company set a private jet back to pick up Bushnell and some of his other hippie friends, and when they got on the plane, they're set Clint Eastwood, who, along with his girlfriend, were headed to New York to screen Eastwood's latest movie, where he squints angrily. When the team landed, they were given the VIP treatment. They got rooms on the top floor of the Waldo for Storia and even got to watch Eastwood's film with Eastwood and the company. That's not bad. They already won. That's pretty good, right? They should give Atari up for that. They did. He sold it. Bushnell had just started Atari four years earlier, and now had just sold it for $28 million. That's not enough. Which is a lot for back then. Is it? It was back

then. You're not wrong. Part of the deal, though, stated that Bushnell would still be the chair of Atari, a deal which got him $15 million. Oh. Yeah. So it's kind of the best. Yeah. Well, I tell you, it's fired. Well, and with that, with the $15 million that he got, he bought a boat and a private jet with the same name. Well, that's what you do with your money. He bought and he named them both. Well, what else are you going to name your boat? He didn't, I haven't told you to name yet. Atari. Pong. Fuck it. Jumping in. Finally, in October 1977, it happened. The Atari video computer system model number 2600 was made, meant, was set to make its debut with a retail price of between $199 to $229. The system was a multi-processor-based programmable game console. It included

two joysticks, two paddle controllers. It came with two player games and 27 variations called Combat. The console design was cool and hoped to have a selling life of two to three years. That year, it sold 250,000 units. The next year, Atari overestimated its sales and only sold 550,000 out of the 800,000 they had produced. Uh-oh. Quite the miscalculation of Atari's part. However, Dave, that would not be the last time. Atari's eyes were bigger than the consumers. Don't say it. Don't say it. Steve Liebman. He's the first guy in the first guy in my neighborhood to get Atari. Okay, good. We'll let that, we'll, we'll keep that in mind. Frogger. For what it's about you. Great. Good to hear. Frogger. Great game. Bushnell hated the era when they made 800,000

only sold 550,000. He hated the era and he began to worry that Warner was putting too much emphasis on home gaming and not enough on broad appeal of Atari. After locking horns for long enough, Bushnell left the company that he had started. By 1982, Atari was worth two billion dollars. Bushnell walked away. 28 million. He sold over 28. Two billion. Bushnell started a new business venture, uh, sort of like public gaming. He opened a restaurant called Check-E-Cheese. Okay, I gotta go. What? What? The dude doing cocaine, making sears, racing boxes, having hot tub meetings. And he opened up Check-E diseases. He opened up Check-E-Cheese. Oh my god. Do you have any kids? He's sickened. I mean, I don't think it is designed. He was like, and the ball pits where everyone

goes to puke. Every kid will puke in the ball pit. He fucking, he went from creating one of the greatest things ever to one of the worst things ever. Check-E-Cheese is a great stuff. I mean, that was huge. It's a fucking hell pit. Yeah, but I think, I think you are judging, I will say this, I think you are judging Check-E-Cheese today on what Check-E-Cheese was back then. Check-E-Cheese used to be great. Now it is basically you're inside a rat's anus, but it used to not be. Yeah, now it's a concentration camp. Yeah, now it is actually, I do believe that they are killing people in the back. Still though, with all that going on, in 1979, people seemingly began to realize that this console could do way more than just what the VC, way more than just what Pong was doing,

and the VCS was the best-selling Christmas gift that year due to its exclusive content, and one million units were sold. The hits kept coming. Games like Code Breaker, Hangman, Space Invaders, Breakout, Centipede, Miss Pac-Man were all names that started to captivate the fan base. As things were cooking at Atari, they hired a new game designer, a man named Howard Scott Warshaw. Howard was a graduate of Tulane University. Warshaw finished his bachelor's degree within three years with a double major in math and economics, and he got a job at Hewlett-Packard before taking a job with Atari. Warshaw saw quickly that he became a standout at Atari when he presented them with his first game called Yars Revenge. Do you remember that game? Nope.

Yeah, I don't need it. I mean, I don't know. I remember Atari a little bit, not a ton. Oh, I remember it a lot. Like, I remember, like, I mean, it was around when I was a kid, but it wasn't, I think it was coming, you know, it was coming off of Atari. You were going into television. So, the game, Yars Revenge, the game had a great narrative and was accompanied by a comic book explaining the history of the game. Basically, Dave, Yars Revenge featured insectoid space, an insectoid spaceship, YAR, sure, that was ranged against an enemy ship, Kotile, encased in a defensive barricade. Wait, you're talking about Scientology. So, YAR avoids nasty missiles while shooting at or nibbling at the shield. This nibbling

powers up a super weapon that can be used to destroy the Kotile, which itself powers up an attack YAR from time to time. And at the end of the game, you become Tom Cruise. So, you want to get to that level. You want to either be David Miscavige or Tom Cruise. That's right. At the end. You're Miscavige. Now, go find your wife! You're clear. Go find your wife! You can marry a woman. Uh, Warsaw admits that the first round of development of the Yars game did not go great. Quote, the control scheme sucked. The problem was in trying to maneuver the ship while controlling the weapon. So, people who played it early found it a little irksome and difficult.

But instead of trying to fix the particular problem, he changed the entire game. Warsaw was a perfectionist. And it should be noted that he had no experience in game development. All he did to get ready to program games was read the programming manual for the 2600. What? What? So, he's a fucking genius. Well, he's fucking scary. He should be put down. These are kind of the guys who can ruin the world. Well, do you want to shoot him out back with the monkeys? Yes. Uh, and YAR, YAR's revenge was huge. When it hit the market, it blew up and it didn't, it didn't go to your town. Uh, it is still thought of by a lot of gamers as Atari's best game.

Really? Yes. So... Frogger. You really like Frogger? No. Pitfall. Now, Pitfall, if I remember, is where you kind of swing on like vines across holes, right? Yes. Yeah, I remember that. Much, it's, it's the closest thing we had to Indiana Jones. Buckle the fuck up. Scott Warshaw had gained the confidence of his bosses and was given the task of adapting Indiana Jones' Raiders of the Lost Ark as a video game. The film had cleaned up at the box office that year, so Warsaw gladly accepted the challenge and immediately was sent to Universal Studios to meet with Steven Spielberg. So, the two met up and over a game of YAR's, they discussed the ideas for the Raiders of the Lost Ark video game. Shortly after, Howard began coding his

Epic Treasure Hunt. The intrepid archaeologist, Mr. Jones, begins his video game quest unarmed, but soon he picks up his trademark whip and is battling snakes, detonating grenades, and diligently scouring the marketplace for handy items. Now, as you and I both know, Dave, when you hear the description of a game like this, there is a chasm between what you're hearing and what it actually looked like. The Indiana Jones character looked more like a yellow squirt of piss, and his whip looked more like a stick than anything. But still, people want apeship. Quote, when I was coding Raiders, I really tried to get into character. I wore the hat and I had a real 10-foot leather bull whip. Man, it was so loud, like a gunshot. If people were

snooping around the building, I'd sneak up behind them and I'd crack that whip. They'd jump out of their suits and they'd be like, hey, how you doing? Well, this is what the guy who, I know the guy who made Frogger did that, too. Just a frog. That's the thing that I know is most guys who are creating an Atari game, they would dress up like the character. There's a cuber, there's a whole miss-packed man is walking around. So we lost another Frogger in traffic. Why don't we keep pushing them into traffic? That's the idea. They're not supposed to go to traffic. I know, but they don't have to do that. They can just program the game. What you're saying is absolutely accurate. It's hard. He should have backed away when he saw the cars coming. It's hard

to cross the highway when you're not in a Frog outfit. Can I tell you something? I think it's going to be worth it when people see how great Frogger is. Okay, we need another guy, though. We got to hire another guy. Yeah, no, we lost four Froggers today. I mean, I'm not saying that it's a good plan. So when Warsaw went to present the game to Spielberg, hit the Indiana Jones game, Spielberg approved of the game. In June, 1982, just prior to its official release, he previewed Warsaw went and previewed Raiders at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. Oh, it's going to blow up. By screening a specially filmed demo of himself completing the game and providing a running commentary as he went. It particularly impressed one member

of the audience. I played the tape to Spielberg and at the end of it, he turns to me and said, wow, that was really great. It's just like a movie. It was one of the most gratifying moments of my entire life, Warsaw said. Spielberg was not alone in his admiration. The game went on to be another million seller for Howard. But its success was a double-edged sword. See, this would not be the last time Spielberg and Warsaw would work together. For a 1982, a little film called E.T. was getting ready to hit the world. You've never heard of E.T. No. The movie E.T. The extraterrestrial. I know what an extraterrestrial is. Yeah. But do you know the movie E.T.? No. Let me walk you through it. It was a hit from the day it was released, and it quickly became

one of the most beloved movies of all time by people who don't have blackened hearts. You're saying about ordinary people. Nope. E.T. The film was about a 10-year-old boy, Elliot, who befriended a little lost alien. Elliot named the alien E.T. This is where it should start clicking for you. And did his best to hide him from the adults. Soon, Elliot's two siblings, Gertie and Michael, discovered E.T.'s existence and helped. You're thinking of Chappie. You know the deal. Rises pieces, phone home, fly the bike in the basket, finger lights up. Most people know the deal. You don't, but it would be important for you to know that. I've seen Chappie. It sounds the same. Chappie. Oh, God. Jesus. Chappie.

Insanely violent movie. Chappie is? Yeah. They totally, whoever marketed it, it was insanely violent. So like they got to marketing and they were like, this is too violent. Make it look like a film with heart. We're in Goofy at all. I'm Chappie. Yeah. That was not the movie. Chappie shout out. So the storyline of E.T. had its beginnings in director Steven Spielberg's own past. When Spielberg's parents divorced in 1960, Spielberg invented an imaginary alien to keep him company. Well, I mean, who hasn't done that? That's just classic divorce kid stuff. I know when mine split. Hey, what about not telling people that? That is one of those things that he probably said was like, I just said it one time. One interview should not have done that. I was on board with Spielberg

for a while. The opening weekend of E.T. was huge. It grossed $11.9 million, which now sounds like nothing, but used to be a lot of money. And E.T. stayed at the top of the movie charts. These were before multiplexes. That's right. Yeah. This is before that. E.T. stayed at the top of the movie charts for over four months. At the time, it was the largest grossing movie ever made. The new Atari was also a fan of E.T. They saw huge potential to follow up the success of the Raiders game with an E.T. video game. They thought E.T. could not only be bigger, but could be a huge holiday seller. Well, you just, I mean, you make a game of him phone at home and you nailed it. Yeah. He just L zero and he's like, mom, you left me. I miss you guys so much. I invented a little

Jewish director to hang out with. Wow. So they wanted to make the E.T. video game. But for some dumb reason, Atari waited a long time to negotiate the licensing rights for E.T. with Spielberg. Spielberg wanted Warsaw to make the game. These talks kept going and going and going, and they continued deep into July. The price of the license, once agreed upon, was a measly $22 million. So now Atari had spent $22 million on the game. They needed to have done by September 1st in order to get it ready for a Christmas rollout. What's the date? This is the end of July. They need to have it done by September 1. That's not a thing. So it's a little that leaves them a little over five weeks for development. That's not a real thing. Games normally took

four, five, six a year to develop. But here, Atari had painted themselves into a corner. They wanted this to be the holiday seller they envisioned. So with only five weeks left, they needed to get a developer to say yes to completing the game and undertaking the task. This leads to a burial in the desert. In late summer of 1982, Kasser, who was the new head of Atari, called Warsaw and offered him a chance to develop the game. E.T. was an emergency situation that the company created, said Warsaw. They paid too much for the license and left us too little time to do the game. Regardless, Warsaw accepted the challenge. He was on board. Now, compounding the already tight deadline, Warsaw had a mere two days to come up with the game's design

document before presenting it to Spielberg in Los Angeles. Two days? I mean, he had two days to come up with the game. He had two days to come up with the whole idea of the game and then go present it to Spielberg, let alone having to put the wheels in motion. All right, so you get on a bike, you ride your spaceship. Cool. I'm in. That's it. That's really bad. Thanks. The presentation to Spielberg. Why wouldn't they just say, hey, think about the idea we're negotiating? Why don't you already start thinking about it? Yeah, that's so true. He already worked through the fucking company. But you know how these places, I mean, you know how like a big dumb company is. They're probably like, I don't think, I think that's, I think they're generalizing. They're probably,

they probably are like, at that point, they're like, we don't want to waste money having someone develop a game that we might not never do and we may never do, you know. Don't negotiate it, motherfucker. Okay, you think you're talking to them, you're talking to me. The presentation to Spielberg went less than stellar. We're presenting the idea. I laid out the whole plan and at the end of the presentation, Spielberg looks at me and says, couldn't you do something more like Pac-Man? Warshaw said, in retrospect, that might have not been such a man. Oh, where he's gobbling up Reese's pieces. Yeah. Like essentially, yeah. Yeah. He's like, to make me shit. And he was like, no, this is a mission to take advantage of every minute as,

as at his disposal. He had a developer workstation installed in his home. By the way, if I am remembering correctly, they went to M&M's first and said, hey, can you put M&M's in this? And M&M said, no. Is that right? Yeah. And then they came up Reese's pieces. So stupid. Yeah. God. A lot of fuckups around. Another, another, another black flag in the sands of M&M's. The whole movie changed America. I agree. So Warshaw got the developer workstation installed in his home. He intended to make the game an innovative adaptation of the film. And Atari liked what he said and thought that it would achieve high sale figures based on the connection with the film. Or no sale figures. Well, you don't know that. Why? He's already come up with it in two days.

Okay. It sounds pretty good. Two days, two days is normally how they do it. Atari, Atari had produced around 4 million cartridges of ET, although they never expected to sell them all. They considered a degree of overproduction sound if it meant that people could be guaranteed to make a purchase in any store. And retailers were encouraged to get their orders early. Yep. Indeed, sale figures were initially impressive and in countless Christmas stockings in American children, that American children were opening gift wrapped on Christmas. Everybody was excited to fire up their Atari with ET. Running over their console, putting it in. Yeah. And then ET did. But I also love the idea that they were like,

it is better to have enough than to not have enough. Like if you think about like today. Yeah, that's completely wrong. Like in the market, not only do you not do that just based on finance, but you also want to have the thing where you're like, where the fuck is it? I can't find a tickle me Elmo. You want it to sell out. Atari wanted everybody. Everybody gets one. So they made four million cartridges and kids started playing them. As in the film, the game starts because ET crashed to earth in his spaceship. The object of the game is to guide ET around the map searching for three pieces of his phone. There are a total seven different screens. Some creams screens contain wells or pits. The three pieces of his phone are down these wells.

So it's wise to check every single one of these pits. Once you had the part, you'd be able to find the phone and phone home. It sounds really easy and fun. No, it doesn't sound fun. Sadly, it was far too easy to fall into the pits. And once you were in a pit, you couldn't get out. So getting out of the pits was the pits. So it's like jail. It's ET in prison. Like once you fall in a pit, you're fucked. He's supposed to levitate out of the pit, but that was easier said than done. The little fucker could not get out. It was a design flaw due to the rush that Atari put on it. Whoops. So gamers would repeatedly fall back into the pit during which time scientists and FBI agents would just appear from out of nowhere,

re-abduct ET. Wait, what's happening? And after that, you would lose all the phone parts you'd collected and have to start all over again. So it sucked and people hated it. And then the Hell's Angels would come in and just murder you at the bottom of the pit. You know what it's like when you have a game that's working? I mean, I don't play a lot of video games, but when you have one that's working and you're frustrated by it, you can't beat the main thing, whatever the fuck it is. Yeah, it happens all the time. But imagine one where you can't get off of the first screen. There are games where you're playing along, you're playing along, and all of a sudden you walk into this place and you're supposed to do

something different you've never done before and you just walk around this room going, what is happening? Yeah, but there's normally something, you're gonna figure something out with those games. Sometimes you don't, you just like fucking, you go look it up online, which you can't do back then. Well, I cannot imagine for little kids like, oh my god, it won't get out of the well. And then it gets arrested? Honestly, like for little kids to hate a video game of ET, it has to be really bad. Yeah, I also just love the the idea that you fall in these pits and you're like, God damn it. And then an FBI agent just comes down there and takes away all this shit you've been wearing. You're like, I hate, I hate this game. So ET is

often cited as one of the worst video games ever released. Making kids hate the FBI on top of it all. Yep, listen, that's, I mean, we're dealing with that right now. Angry parents were soon driving back to stores and demanding a refund on retail stores were then left to send the cartridges back to Atari. With customers returning the unsold cartridges in the millions at an alarming rate, ET posed an immediate problem for Atari. Suddenly a game with a retail price of $49 was being sold in dollar bargain bins at stores. And by the time Atari pulled the plug $49 $49 back then, I guess, yeah. Holy, I was supposed to be the hottest. I know, but that's how much games almost cost now. So Atari eventually pulled the plug and losses on the ET game were around

a hundred million dollars. ET. Well, this is what happens when the suits are in charge. It's true. I mean, the, yeah. And if you think like I was saying before, like that Bushnell, like what he was saying was don't just concentrate on the home video game market. Like he saw Atari as a brand and they put all their eggs into ET's leaky fucking pit basket. Is that the name of it? That is. Yeah. No, I wouldn't eat these leaky pit basket titles. Terrible name. Terrible name. Doesn't work. I mean, it actually works for what they're saying. It actually is an accurate title. You know what? Now that I played the game, it makes sense. It's a terrible title because the game's awful. So what were they going to do with four million ET games? What would Atari do with all

them? This now I know the rumors started as a myth. As both myths go, Atari was so ashamed of the game that they internally made a decision to bury millions of unsold cartridges in the New Mexican desert and cover them with a slab of concrete. Could that be though? When you hear it, it sounds so crazy. Why would they do it? Yeah, cover it up. Like it's a fucking murder. Like it's a murder. Like it is a murder. So as with most myths, this is what they did with Hoffa, was with most myths, there was no real logic to it, but it caught fire. It became a joke. And it further hurt the feelings of Warsaw, who carried guilt over the game with him, even though it really wasn't his fault because he had no time. So Warsaw believed that the

Atari Silicon mass grave was nothing more than a rumor. Doesn't make any sense. But as soon as you see it come from a place of making sense, you're losing touch with Atari, he said, laughing. But honestly, what company in financial trouble does that? That's why I always figured it wasn't there. As the years went on, people wanted to know if it was true. Was there really an ET landfill in New Mexico? Oh, my God. Why did the rumors persisted so much? We may never know. Would be the attitude of people had until years ago. But a movement grew. It grew momentum. Believers wanted proof of the existence. And skeptics wanted to put it to bed. So finally, this is Gamergate. This is Gamergate. So finally, the rumors were to be put to rest

when in 2014, Microsoft funded a documentary, which was to involve an excavation of the landfill site. Warsaw himself made the trip to see if it was true or not. Hundreds of gamers showed up. It was like a concert. During vicious sandstorms, a team of archaeologists began to dig for their ark. Nothing was found for a while. As the dig went on, they pulled up a newspaper. From 1983. Oh, shit. The same year the burial was thought to have taken place. Who buried you with a newspaper? A good sign that they were on the right track. Is that a good sign or just weird? The dig took ages and ages. And then Eureka, the diggers confirmed that they had found it. Atari had, for some insane reason, buried all the ET games in the desert. The Alamogordo burial,

that's the name of the city it was, did include ET cartridges among many other titles. James Heller, the former Atari manager, who was in charge of the original burial, was also on hand at the excavation and later revealed to the Associated Press that 728,000 cartridges of various titles were buried. And I don't know why they put newspaper, but they basically did a layer of concrete and then they did a layer of junk of newspapers and just other bullshit. To hide, to hide some of the people, yeah, because they were so embarrassed by ET. Who does that? What are we going to do with these games? I remember hearing about this before they had dug it up and hearing it and it was such a crazy... I only heard about,

I heard about when they dug up all the ET games, but I didn't hear, I'd never heard of anything until then. I remember hearing it and it was such a weirdo. It happened like a couple years or a year ago and I remember hearing about it and I just thought that's weird, I never thought about it again. They buried it. But apparently you thought about it a lot. Thank you. So there it was, a company that was once considered the greatest technology company in the world had been reduced to burying games in the sand like Jose does with his waist. Atari had made video games what they were and now a video game ET landfill in New Mexico is confirmed. For Warsaw, the dig was somewhat therapeutic. He tried to shake his ET past, but when he saw the fanfare and all that were drawn

to the dig, he got the monkey off his back, not because someone shot it Dave. True classic gamers, true classic gamers defend ET the game. Once, once you could get away from the pit issue, Warsaw had made a pretty good game. They came out with like an online version where they fixed it where you can actually play the game instead of spending your life in a goddamn pit. The ET game still in its original box is sold for $1,537. Holy shit. The interest in the game has gone global. Online bidders from other countries including Germany and Sweden snapped up the items. As a matter of fact, a museum in Rome opened an exhibit on the dig that includes dirt from the landfill. In the gaming world, ET is and was nothing short of a phenomenon. Warsaw has left

the gaming game and he now works as a successful psychotherapist in Silicon Valley and like our sweet Hugh Glass, yeah. I'm sorry, did you say the gaming game? Yeah, he left the gaming game. Okay, go ahead. And like our sweet Hugh Glass, Leonardo DiCaprio has been in talks to portray Bushnell in a bio book and a biopic. Well, that's definitely a movie. RIP Atari. RIP Atari. That's it. That's the story of Atari. That's fucking insane. And Nolan Bushnell. So Atari doesn't exist anymore as a company? It does not exist as a company anymore. I don't think. I mean, I think there might be some like small version, but it's definitely not, you know. I mean, it went under. And the truth is that like the more you read about this stuff, the more that

it's like this, like you were saying, I mean, it was Apple like Atari was Apple. Atari was doing all those things that were on the right track. It's just that when Bushnell left, right, that was it. That was it because the suits took over. So the deal is that he sold love. He's, I mean, he's, you know, he made a shitload more. Right. He made fine. I mean, he made Chuck E. Cheese. So he's, I mean, anybody who invented Chuck E. Cheese, but that dude is a badass. Yeah, that's pretty impressive to go, to go from Atari to Chuck E. Cheese. Yeah. That's some shiznit. So there you go. There's our reverse dollop. That was good. Yeah. I like your stories. I'm going to go. And this is my room. I'm going to go. I'm going to get out of here. And this is where I'm staying.

All right, buddy. I got a phone home. The pit. And I want to say one more thing. I want to thank my friend, Alex Burns, for helping me with some of that story. He gave me some interesting factoids for that. So thank you, Burns. Nice job, Ali. His name's, sorry, bud.