Continuing our Video Game series, we'll unpack the tumultuous tale of Atari, through the eyes of Howard Scott Warshaw, whose boundless ambition led to the mythic E.T. video game fiasco. But before you think it's all doom and gloom, we'll lighten the mood with a whimsical wander into the off-kilter art of taxidermy. It's a wild ride that promises both insights and belly laughs, so come along and discover why everything—and we mean everything—deserves to "give it a grandpa".
Continuing our Video Game series, we'll unpack the tumultuous tale of Atari, through the eyes of Howard Scott Warshaw, whose boundless ambition led to the mythic E.T. video game fiasco. But before you think it's all doom and gloom, we'll lighten the mood with a whimsical wander into the off-kilter art of taxidermy. It's a wild ride that promises both insights and belly laughs, so come along and discover why everything—and we mean everything—deserves to "give it a grandpa".
I'm not currently pregnant yet, but the episode isn't over.
Speaker 1:That is yoddent, gentlemen, let's broaden our minds are they in the proper approach pattern for today? Negative, hello hi hi back to dispatch Ajax.
Speaker 2:This is jerry not skippin.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, phil Harman is no longer with us. I'm sorry if this is breaking news people pass away, it happens.
Speaker 2:Oh, come on, I don't know, welcome back to dispatch.
Speaker 1:Ajax.
Speaker 2:I'd skip, I guess. Yeah, we are continuing our further adventures of a dittlin tweak throughout the game verse. Today we shall travel back to the magical year of 1976 oh see, we've got two today, correct there are two stories for your gentle listener ears that's true.
Speaker 1:One will happen in 1976. And you say six, right, is that what you think I said? I know, I don't know, I'm ADHD. I could tell you could have said 1845 and I wouldn't have known.
Speaker 2:I just it was the grand year of 1845.
Speaker 1:The video game industry was just burgeoning the mongolf your brothers had the balloon high in the air we're years away from the Louvier brothers watch Hugo. I don't remember what you said, but I know that might take place relatively after that, around 1982 yes yes, in damn it.
Speaker 2:Before his story, mine shall take place where, yes, before the vile video game nasties of mortal combat or grand theft, auto or even the night trap that was it.
Speaker 1:That was it. I was just adding. Yeah, I was like something's gonna come and nothing came.
Speaker 2:No, I was just kidding. I was giving colors, that's all I was. I was gonna bounce off that color for a little more splash.
Speaker 1:But a little downstream color a lot of that's a deep cut. Yeah, yeah, a little Shane Careuth there yeah, well, it's just a primer, really, to get us going oh, I would name a third movie, if there was one.
Speaker 2:I think I've seen it twice, but I don't really remember a whole lot the only thing I remember was like schooling out the intestines of the. You know this no, I don't remember that at all what?
Speaker 1:what do you talk to me? Yeah, there's like a scene where they're like this one person that like they're cranking a spool and pulling out the intestines of another.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter it to be a fever dream? I don't pretty sure that's upstream color you're not thinking the cell are you, because that happens in the cell oh, I'm thinking the server.
Speaker 1:The rainbow again. Oh, it does happen in the cell, doesn't it? No, I'm not thinking so because I barely remember anything from that movie. Pretty sure that's upstream color with the pigs, uh-huh, you don't remember much better either.
Speaker 2:All right, maybe we should watch the film again before.
Speaker 1:I think we should probably see it again. Yeah, that's probably true.
Speaker 2:Well, we'll have plenty of time until this next film comes out, but I don't remember what I was saying. Oh yeah, but before, before the controversies of excessive violence in video games ruining society, there was a time when things were simpler. There's a time when Atari's gotcha in 1973, a simple maze game with dots and little maze lines, caused a little hubbub because on the cover of the arcade cabinet was a man who seemed to be chasing after a laughing woman. But the controls, the sticks, were actually in the forms of fleshy globes made to look like breasts.
Speaker 1:Benny Hill music played, constantly gackety sacks. If only Atari could have had Benny Hill music on all of their games it would have been better, especially, uh, asteroids or yarr, I don't know yarr oh, we're gonna talk about yarr actually in my story, so let's is it gonna be a goo monster that's gonna take yarr away this time, oh um all right and harvest.
Speaker 2:Why are you here?
Speaker 1:no, it is not going to be an oil monster. Unfortunately, it's going to be her raging ego. I think that that ruins all of that. Uh yeah, it's like the other dude from Miami Vice. When he quit Miami Vice, he had a home theater built again enormous theater in his house dedicated solely to to show future movies that he was going to be in. Holy shit, we should check and see how that went.
Speaker 2:Um it's constantly showing uh, shane Cruz third movie. I think that's what's on on repeat and all of David Caruso's work. Oh, yeah, it's just jade on luke well, that's. That's an interesting choice that's just only movie.
Speaker 1:I could think of things yeah he had to be in something.
Speaker 2:Isn't he not like on um NCIS the bayou or something?
Speaker 1:oh, csi Columbus, ohio apparently he was on only on NYPD blue for like a year yeah, it was a very chevy chase scenario, a very chevy chase christmas which I have seen so many times. It's one of those classics you always go back to.
Speaker 2:Bill marie punches it backstage fascinating folks made it is sit on grandpa skip's lap and have him tail the tail. We'll do it later. Right, we'll do it live. Uh, fuck it. We'll do it live. Fuck it, man, let's go bully, uh. After Atari's gotcha there was also shark jaws 1975, which, uh was an unlicensed adaptation of jaws the video no, the film.
Speaker 2:I know, surprise, surprise, where it garnered a little bit of hoopla due to its violent nature, as there was a shark trying to eat you on the screen. What's with all the hoopla? What's with the hoopla? Who let the hoopla in? But now, the first video game to really garner some backlash was the 1976 arcade game death race is this the roger korman death race?
Speaker 2:uh. So there's a little bit of controversy uh where that that name came from. A lot of people assume that it is uh based off of the 1975 roger korman film death race 2000, uh, and which. If you don't know what death race 2000 is, it was uh a, I don't know. I guess you could call it a sports film kind of kind of it's in the in a far future of 2000, you have uh kind of transcontinental races and racers who are trying to get from point A to point B, but as they're they're traveling and film crews are following them on their journey, they are also gaining points by murdering pedestrians with their cars and you very grand death's auto yeah, yeah, uh, or I wore uh.
Speaker 1:Death race um, um perfect, yeah, it starts sliced alone. And uh, david keridine, by the way yeah, yeah, uh it's.
Speaker 2:It's a solid film and, I'd say, better than the multiple sequels and remakes that came after it.
Speaker 1:Well, I think most of medjays this day, if I'm right, so you can say that, uh, I think, um, I would say the death race 2000 is very much like, um, you know, uh, early automobile races, like before das car and all that stuff, what people would race from. You know place to place?
Speaker 2:uh, you know, in the 20s, uh, mixed with, um, uh, the running man mm-hmm, yeah, there's, there's a lot of like the uh over the topness of like a professional wrestling and over the top, yeah, and over the top, uh, a lot of hats would slice alone uh, if he wins the race, he also gets the custody of his child it's true, and the heavyweight title hey, it's the only title to have, so and uh, whatever yeah, um okay, so death race the video game.
Speaker 2:Uh, it came from um a company called exedy, which I think was excellence in dynamics shortened okay, in 1975 they had, uh, put out some earlier games, um, one being destruction derby.
Speaker 2:Again, this is arcade cabinet. You had two wheels, you had gear shift, you had pedals on the floor, so it's kind of like an early racing simulator. But in this game you tried to smash into other cars. Now they had destruction derby. They license it to chicago coin to then put in in their slew of arcades. Uh, they re-release that under the name demolition derby and did quite well with it.
Speaker 2:But exedy couldn't quite keep up with the demands and weren't quite making as much as they hoped to make with their licensing deal. Uh, so they came up with a new game. This would be called death races again. Whether it was based on the movie that came out the year before or not, not quite clear on that. There's also an urban myth that it was originally called pedestrian during its development, but that does not seem to be concrete and having any legitimate backing from the creators when they were interviewed later.
Speaker 2:But in this game you are a racer and you are trying to use your car to hit what are called gremlins. They were supposed to be ghastly skeletal ghouls that are running around the screen and you would have to use the car to run over them. When you did, they would shriek and howl and their presence would then be replaced by little tombstones to show that you had murdered them or these murdered them. Brother, run over, yeah, you're not, you're not, no, it's not. Uh, you're not looking out for gremlins or elcominos or the feedback we're ten toes. No, these were supposed to be ghastly creatures that you were murdering. Again, it's a 1976 arcade game. It's a little stick figure. Is what you're smashing? That kind of have a skeletal face, you might say, and the arcade cabinet is made to look like there are cars racing down roads, kind of look like Transylvanian graveyards, and they have grim, reaperish figures in the background. So I guess that's what you're led to believe that you are murdering with your automobile. And the game did okay.
Speaker 2:But it quickly guarded some interest from outside parties, mainly like those in the Associated Press, which ran stories about how this new game it centered on chasing down pedestrians and that you would gain points by murdering people with your automobiles. Now the creators, they pushed back on this, saying hey, we made it so that it wasn't people, we specifically made a game where you are trying to hunt down these, these ghouls, and kill them, but those in the media, of course, got on their high horse. The New York Times point out that even the National Safety Council and opinion of the game's potential impact. That behavior psychologist named Gerald Drieson of the National Safety Council noted that 9000 pedestrians had been killed on the US roads in the previous 12 months and that this game might lead to more, as people would want to emulate the automobile that they see on the screen, and that violence on the TV is passive. But when a gamer steps into the role of creating violence, as a no longer spectator but an actor in the process, that it that they could only shudder to think what will come next if such a thing is encouraged that it'll be pretty gory. Yeah, that's exactly how things played out.
Speaker 2:Atari also got in on this and they talked about how they were not planning to pick up the game or to let it be played on their system. Essentially, what they were saying is what is fantasy violence? When you are shooting a tank or a fighter plane or racing cars? That's fantasy violence. When you are actually in the process of attacking and performing violence on what appears to be another human like creature, that is something that goes beyond the gameplay that they wanted to be a part of and that it isn't something that they hope to encourage in the coming years of video gaming.
Speaker 2:Obviously that didn't come to pass, but the game did garter some interest. Again, any type of press is good press. There's talk that they originally had a thousand machines sold and maybe that went up a couple hundred or maybe even another couple thousand after the controversy. But it did smorgasbord some interest. It didn't last too long.
Speaker 2:It did not get picked up for remake for the PlayStation or the Sega Saturn, which adds some of the garners of interest in remakes.
Speaker 2:But those remakes were canceled in 1996 and hasn't really been emulated ever since. But you can still find it at some. I think there's one in New Hampshire that is like a video game museum kind of thing and they have some arcade cabinets there for it. But it does stand as the first in a long line of video games being misconstrued for their supposed violence, what that might actually turn out to in real life situations, and then the games being taken down and slowly done away with due to that. It's sad when you now look at violence in video game, just like on their Wikipedia, you get into the 90s and then almost all that you see after that on their webpage is school massacres, lawsuits, school shootings, mass shootings, as if that it's some type of one to one correlation or that it is the thing that is driving the Susano school shooting or the El Paso massacres, because someone might have driven over a shrieking gremlin, that now you know, decades in the future we have mass murders.
Speaker 1:Yeah it's nothing to do with the lauding of gun culture and the ability for crazy people to very easily access assault weapons.
Speaker 2:It's probably yeah, I remember when I was murdering men with my bare fist because I couldn't stop playing Street Fighter II. I had to see if that thousand hand slap really really did the job.
Speaker 1:I really got sick of saying okay in 15 minutes. Yeah, I was your manager and I took all the money to help your widowed sister-in-law.
Speaker 2:You're the reason I painted myself green and then started emitting electricity from my skin. Sure, that wasn't paint. I'm pretty sure to know this is the the beginning of video game controversy, and it's unfortunately never stopped mimicking. You know what they found atrocious and vile in comic books and books and movies and TV. Yeah, it's always something.
Speaker 1:No, you're forgetting about the great Pong massacre. Pong aside, what are all those? Tennis pros killed each other and the adults.
Speaker 2:I mean obviously John McAruel. He was the most gentle loving man on the tennis court up until Pong came out, and then it became a raging sociopath Monica Sellis.
Speaker 1:That was directly a result of Pong. That's another.
Speaker 2:Ponger there. I mean, that's the whole reason.
Speaker 1:That was it Joey Butifuco who just to spread all this life in the 90s.
Speaker 2:That's what we got Bobbit. That cheat, that cheat, yeah, it's. You know all the ice skaters getting kneecap because of all, I guess, yeah, video game. So the end of society as we know it.
Speaker 1:Obviously we remember when society ended in 1994.
Speaker 2:So but what year did it almost end Skip?
Speaker 1:2000?.
Speaker 2:Well, perhaps a little bit earlier, perhaps it had a friend who came from far away, looking to return home, perhaps, and Mother Russia video game plays you.
Speaker 1:And country. So tennis players debut. We're just humming along with the transitions there.
Speaker 2:We're backing in the first transition.
Speaker 1:It's a Seinfeld reference.
Speaker 2:They're all Seinfeld references all the way down.
Speaker 1:And it's Seinfeld, Seinfeld, Seinfeld, Larry David, Seinfeld, Seinfeld, Seinfeld.
Speaker 2:With George's and Bosco all the way down, my friend.
Speaker 1:But for our second half we're going to talk about subject of an urban legend, but not the way to eat there isn't. A lot of people have talked about this, but we've got a little bit of a different angle on it. So, gee, how 94. T, you were 94 years, I was 94.
Speaker 2:I was a child at heart, though, and no, I was a small child. I don't even remember the first time I saw it. It's kind of always around.
Speaker 1:You and I are the archetypal audience for that movie because we were little kids. But we were there when it came out in theaters and IT.
Speaker 2:Oh no, I was just stupid, stupid stuff. I know it's sometimes. The stupid stuff needs to stay in my head, doesn't need to come out of my mouth. That was one of the times, so I moved along.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you remember, but even reading comic books back then, the back page advertisement was an alien not eating Reese's Pieces. You remember that? No, I don't. Yeah, I'll find a picture so that you can see it. Let's see.
Speaker 2:See you in a minute.
Speaker 1:Why would they be spelled with two Ks? Just throw a third one in there, why not? Why not? Yeah, okay, I signed it. There were two different versions of it, but one was more iconic than the others. So this was at the back of every single comic book when we were kids. See, if you remember it.
Speaker 2:I do vaguely remember it, but I don't remember being that prevalent.
Speaker 1:Well, it did premiere in Star Trek number 14, five by DC Comics, which had a total of 16 copies out in the world.
Speaker 2:So this alien, he kind of looks like a little goblinish thing. He has a hairy nether region which, like hair pants, he has on a pretty slick shoulder chest piece ensemble and lovely little like military mohawk on his head.
Speaker 1:He really looks absolutely nothing like ET in any way, shape or form, which makes me think that that has to do with other licensing issues, which is ironic, because the only reason that he used these pieces was because there was a weird licensing thing about using M&M. So this is what they originally wanted to do in ET. So this was a big thing. I remember seeing this in the back of a lot of comic books, but maybe I have the outlier there. I don't know if it's funny.
Speaker 2:I think I remember something else ET related that we're about to speak about and add to Titan for that, more in comic books than I do this. Whoa interesting Okay.
Speaker 1:Well, so we were right at the wheelhouse for this film. Obviously Steven Spielberg was the hottest thing going film wise and he put do no wrong in the of Hollywood. And I do have unpopular opinions, I think, about that film. It's not because I think the movie is bad or anything, because it is a fun family romp or whatever. It's also the beginning of Steven Spielberg's like shameless commercial tie in habit that he has, which I think jumps the shark somewhere.
Speaker 1:Oh, I know, I know it rears its ugly head, manifested by Ready Player One, but he probably jumps the shark around Jurassic Park, if I had to guess. Hmm, interesting, because it is. That's a movie where he actually even comments on his own shameless commercial tie in some of the talks of its lefty out of the plastic lunchbox, and that's exactly what he did for that. Hmm, I'd have to say that was the saturation point, maybe the jump the shark moment. Interesting part so, which is one of my only real complaints about Spielberg, is that he's just shameless. I mean, you look at my minority report. They added in a scene with a fight in a car manufacturing factory.
Speaker 2:That's the one that really always stuck out to me because it's not in the story at all.
Speaker 1:It doesn't belong to the movie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean this always felt maybe because he is so closely in touch with George that I don't know. I always just had a feeling that there was a business model that was transported over.
Speaker 1:You can't fault George Lucas for his original reason for doing such a thing, but his obsession with that also ended up ruining the Star Wars franchise. Right, I think Spielberg unfortunately created a model that other people would follow forever after that that you can tie in products and famous companies without it being perceived as schlocky or desperate. Honestly, I think this movie signaled the end for his credibility as an auteur, just because of that very specific thing. But that's just me. I told you it's unpopular.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty. No, I mean it's an opinion to have. I don't know if I would completely write them off based off of that, but I can understand how it would leave a bad taste to your mouth.
Speaker 1:Yeah he didn't put any Burger King ads in Schindler's List, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't. But anyway, but he did. This is a very, very, very, very popular movie. I personally, even as a child, thought it was a little ham-fisted and schlocky myself.
Speaker 2:I know, I'm just imagining you as a little ebert. You know if you're sued on, you know going to the theater and my oversized.
Speaker 1:I remember even after my parents get buying me stuff for ET man, louis were kids. It was the crown jewel of geek culture, media stuff for kids. I remember I had my Temple of Doom poster on the wall, my Superman 2 poster, I had my Raiders of the Lost Art sticker book, my R2-D2 clothes hamper, my and you wonder why you've turned into what you've turned into Exactly my Star Trek trash can. And then, of course, I had all this stuff my parents give me which actually turns out today is very valuable but recently burned up in a fire. So the thing about it was when I was a kid my parents should be close and goutters. They'd be like awesome, you know, my aunt showed me jaws and I couldn't swim in her pool after that.
Speaker 1:But ET was like oh see, you're this kind of guy. You know it's just such a kid's movie that it was disappointing to me that that's an unpopular opinion, that I understand that. And I was like, wow, the girl from Firestarter are weird. You know, is it a pre-Firestarter? I think it is. Actually I could have said, oh, john Barrymore's granddaughter, whoa, we are Tina Fadden.
Speaker 2:I think you would have been a little too young to really remember to form that much of an opinion, at least on its initial.
Speaker 1:Well, I think I formed my opinion based on all the garbage movie tie-in stuff that my parents gave me, but maybe this is less about the films and more about what you became inundated with and you weren't a favor of which.
Speaker 2:then, salad leaves Eat your ET cereal John.
Speaker 1:No, at that point it was Mr T cereal. Let's get it straight.
Speaker 2:I pity the extraterrestrial who doesn't eat Mr T cereal.
Speaker 1:Other TVs make a fessertie hidden by his arm.
Speaker 2:What was an ET cereal?
Speaker 1:It was like a, because I remember later, when Reese's Puffs came out, it was the same fucking thing.
Speaker 2:These look like brown cat food with like Lucky.
Speaker 1:Charms.
Speaker 2:Yeah, lucky Charms is 100% cat food, except for the marshmallows.
Speaker 1:But anyway, this is in our wheelhouse. At that same time was, of course, the burgeoning phenomenon of video games and arcades. We had also home consoles, which we touched on a little bit in our episode about Night Trap ET, and a lot of people have touched on this. So we won't go too far into the recycled story that everyone puts out every six months about being one of the worst games of all time, but we would be remiss not to talk about it at least, and we want to propose an alternative urban legend to the deals with this game. So the reason I brought up all the commercial tie-ins and stuff about this is because Steven Spielberg himself was very hands-on personally with commercial tie-ins for ET, which included him being almost completely editorially controlling of the video game tie-in, the one calling the shots about what he wanted. Steven Spielberg very specifically wanted a clothe of Pac-Man, because that was the only video game that he used. Okay, boomer, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1:And so he went to one of the only people who actually had experience in this field, not sort of a young startup, but an actual, you know, experienced video game designer or programmer, a man named Howard Scott Warshaw, who later went on to do the tie-in game for Raiders of the Lost Ark, which I've played and is also pretty difficult and a lot of people hate. But it's not bad, it's just hard. So Warshaw wanted to go through school as fast as he could and then make a ton of money doing what he did, because very few people did, and his idea was that he wanted to retire by third. And so he went to college, got a master's degree in engineering and then he moved to Silicon Valley at the beginning of that whole revolution and in 1981, he was hired by some strange new startup called what's it called?
Speaker 1:It's Atari. What Atari, I think that's how you pronounce it. I think it's A-T-A-R Wine. They had to change it for copyright reasons. Nobody knew why, and of course it was one of the first Silicon Valley startups, which is now kind of like the state, or I don't know, I don't know, I kind of loved it.
Speaker 1:It was so dumb it's dumb, I want to keep it. And of course at that point they had just come up with the Atari 2600, which was the first popular video console. Not the first, obviously, because there was, you know, famcom and a lot of other home consoles came out long before that, in the early 70s. But Warshaw's job was to design video games in general, of course. Basically at that point all you had was things like Hog. So he decided, instead of just basic tic-tac-toe type puzzle games or even oversimplified interaction games like Pong, he wanted to do something that was innovative and had a narrative structure, and at that point there were no plots. I mean, you named the plot of asteroids and sure you could say, oh, I know the plot of Space Invaders, but it's not really a plot, it's more like an elevator pitch, they think. So he wanted to make it feel more like a movie. This comes from NPR. This is quote by Warshaw. I tried to make every single thing on the screen move and pulse with color and sound. He really wanted to blow people's minds. Now his first game was a game called Yars Revenge and I've played this many times in the Atari 2600. I played it in the arcade. I actually don't like this game all that much, but it was very popular. Essentially, you're playing a giant mutant space dragonfly oh it's Saturday night again, eh Right, exactly that was last week and you're trying to kill a giant monster of some sort. It was so strange and sort of out of the blue that it was a huge hit. People was visually striking and it was way different than a lot of stuff that could come before. And so, of course, warshaw like screamed to the top of the industry as Atari's most popular programmer.
Speaker 1:Now Atari landed the rights after an expro-sh-i-ating, long negotiation about money, I think spurred on more by Spielberg than the actual studios. They landed the rights to make the video game version of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and so of course, he got the gig. Nowadays this is standard, but this was the first time ever that somebody had made a video game based on a movie. And Warshaw was 23. Really, I don't know. Yes, it took him 10 months to design the Raiders game. He wrote the code, he interacted with Studio Back Force, he reprogrammed or revised it and when it was all said and done, he finally presented it to Spielberg.
Speaker 1:Another quote from the PR. He looks up and means is it's just like a movie? I feel like I just watched a movie. Wow, spielberg, that's. Do you know what a movie is that's? And then Warshaw recalled I thought oh my god, steven Spielberg likes my adventure game. It is just like. Oh thinks my adventure game is just like a movie. And to me that was the ultimate compliment I could possibly receive on this work.
Speaker 1:Spielberg had requested that I do ET. So fine, I'm not gonna argue. But what had happened? The negotiations for ET had run very long. Now that Indiana Jones game is difficult and ironically, pitfall, which is satire somewhere in there of Indiana Jones, was a much more accessible and playable game for the masses and much more popular than Raiders. But it's based on the original Raiders game Now.
Speaker 1:So Atari and Spielberg they had, because he was in creative control. They had this nightmare of negotiations over rights and money and it went all the way to the July of that ET too. Problem was they wanted it out in time for Christmas. July to December, you think okay, that's a decent chunk of time. I guess the problem was when you deal with programming, revision, reprogramming, manufacturing, advertising and shipping and everything else. His window for creating ET was five weeks. Wow, yes, he made Raiders in 10 months.
Speaker 1:So the CEO of Atari called him and said quote this comes from Warsaw. We need an ET game and we need it for September 1st. Can you do it? And I said you bet I can. What are you gonna say, no, yeah, exactly, you're 23,. You just made the hottest game of the world. I would. You can, of course, hear him say yes, this is good, go to. I don't know exactly what I was full of at the time exactly, but whatever it was, I was overflowing with it and I believed I could pull it off. I mean the hubris of it. The idea was like I don't know what I was full of. This thing is.
Speaker 2:We call it cocaine nowadays.
Speaker 1:So at this point especially, this wasn't really discouraged or thought of as unwise, because Atari was one of the fastest growing companies in America. It grew into one of the most profitable companies going. According to NPR, quote its profits were soaring and bonus checks were rolling in. Inside the headquarters were drugs and sex and booze Called it, and then from Warsaw he says quote it was ridiculous, excessive sort of fall of Rome kind of environment. It's like we work or something. It's just Where's that or not? Now quote.
Speaker 1:Another issue with me is that it's not enough that we're going to do something in five weeks. I wanted to do something that was a step up, not just an add-on, and so he created this elaborate story about this. You know, I don't blame him for doing so, because he wanted to do something that was remniscent of the movie and that had a narrative he could follow. How else do you make this? Pat Bent doesn't have a plot. Yars revenge doesn't really have a plot. You have a thing, you do and you solve the thing and that's about it. So this one was different in that he wanted to extend the experience of watching ET. So he created this elaborate world for his video game version of ET to exist in Boy. It didn't work out too well, as it turns out. So that's it. We'll get to the exact plot of the game here in a second.
Speaker 1:But so he does this whole thing, or he creates the game and lays this whole storyboard out and he flew into his ballet to show Spielberg in person this concept thing, a huge presentation. And Spielberg just looks at him and goes, quote couldn't you just do something like Pac-Man Puna? Uh, uh, go fuck yourself. Uh, that's more for Mbpr. But Warshaw was furious. Just to give you an idea of how full of myself I was at that point, I'm sitting there with Steven Spielberg and I wanted to say well, gee, steven, couldn't you do something like the day the Earth stood still, god, you couldn't, you fucker.
Speaker 1:Eventually Spielberg, apparently wounded for this dig, sighed off on his shapersuit. Okay, so he, jeweled, I'm sure, by cocaine, coffee and cigarettes, built a game development system into his house and worked on it literally day and night, probably sleeping a couple hours a night. Quote, I would say work-wise, it was the hardest five weeks of my life. Well, no shit. So the premise of the game is that obviously you play ZT and you're trying to find four different components for a in Star Trek. They would call it a subspace communicator.
Speaker 2:Even my call it a telephone, it's an interplanetary phone.
Speaker 1:Yes, Brian, yes, your ED phone, blah, blah, blah. So they just, they, just, they just. You gotta find the four pieces, I guess. If it's a phone you're like, well, here's the rotary dial, here's the receiver, here's the cord, and they come out and like so, it's just, it's a space ED. Interplanetary subspace communicates to you know what? I would like that movie more.
Speaker 2:I believe they call it haters gonna hate.
Speaker 1:Keynote speaker, the haters bald. This year he's trying to track some of these pieces of this radio thing and he's being pursued by scientists and FBI agents, just like in the movie. I doubt they ever replaced the guns with walkie-talkies like Spielberg did. And he's got an energy meter right, so if he runs out of energy he dies. So obviously I mean started tying into the narrative of the cell and the only way that he gets energy in the game is to pick up Reese's pieces and eat them. Hmm, tasty, right, so it I mean on paper. That's a pretty great tie into the movie, especially since this is at such an early stage of video games. This narrative and this play wouldn't even add up to an app nowadays, but back then. This is innovative. This is really, really interesting.
Speaker 1:So the problem was the game was rushed big time. Atari was way too ambitious with their schedule and so it didn't work out very well. Atari had these expectations for you to try to compare it to the box office sales of the movie, which is a really bad idea, especially considering how fast they put it out. So because of this, it's often called one of the worst games of all time and one of the biggest commercial failures in video game history, to the extent that it is often tied to the absolute collapse of the video game bubble of 1983, which is very similar to the comic book bubble of the early nineties and the dot com bubble in 2000. And this game, of course, is held up often as sort of a cautionary tale about the dangers of too many chefs. The thing about the game is, it's so now we're going to get into some fun stuff, because it was such a commercial disaster. That that's one point. Basically, no one played it, no one liked it. That's just kind of how it went. Of course it did put a big dent in Atari and, to be perfectly honest, atari never quite recovered from its dominance. Nintendo kind of filled that void pretty soon afterward, and Atari of course still exists and they put out stuff. They tried to come back in the nineties with the Jaguar and Link systems, but that approach was a moonshot and it didn't quite work out either.
Speaker 1:So there's an urban legend around this game because of its abject failure. This is referred to as the Atari video game burial or the ET Game burial most commonly. The urban legend, as it goes, says that it was a mass literal burial, a mass grave of unsold Atari video game cartridges in somewhere in the southwest or the desert, as if it was like nuclear waste or something Right, exactly, yes, or good fellows or something you know. And so the rumor was that everything buried was unsold copies of ET the Extra Terrestrial this is kind of ironic as well as unsold copies of the Atari 2600 port of Pac-Man, because it was also terribly received. Now, the funny thing is it was true In 2014,.
Speaker 1:Fuel Industries, microsoft and others worked with the New Mexico government to excavate this supposed burial site as part of a documentary Atari game over, and on April 26, 2014, the excavation actually revealed discarded games, hardware and computers. Atari literally buried the game in the desert like a dead hooker. Only a tiny amount of the number of games were recovered from this excavation in 2014, which was still 1300. So they must have buried a million copies of this game, or tens of thousands at least. It's impressive, it's insane. And, of course, at another point we'll talk about the Nebraska Horde of games too. I think we touched on that last time anyway and so, after these were discovered, they were auctioned off to raise money for a museum to commemorate the burial of ET the Extra Terrestrial. Now, that is an urban legend, though it turned out to be completely true. The real urban legend behind the game, I believe, is more that it's considered one of the worst games to play. Based on further review and objective analysis, it was just received really poorly.
Speaker 2:I mean, looks pretty bad. So graphically not great. Also, I love at the end of the game, at least what it says. According to the manual, the game ends when ET runs out of energy or you decide to quit playing.
Speaker 1:And you were absolutely correct, instead of just me sitting down and breaking it down. This game is available to play online in a browser. You can play it for yourself. To show the dichotomy of the opinions on this game, I will give you quotes from two different sides. This is a quote from a redditor named Sunblade10.
Speaker 1:This isn't anything definitive. It's not like the ultimate review of the game or whatever, but it's. It's a good example of how the everyman playing these games felt. When the game came out, says quote, if you have not played it, you could never know the pay. If he misspells something, I'm pretty sure he's supposed to say imagine, but he put imaging. Imagine.
Speaker 1:You're seven years old with a joystick with one button and a stick that is so rigid it could hurt your hand, but you're so excited to be playing ET because you enjoyed the movie. The game starts with the midi of the theme song and you get even more excited. Then the game starts and you have to collect pieces of the communicator in order to send your little friend back home. You start off on your quest to find the communicator pieces and you fall into the first pit. By the way, that is the number one complaint about the game, you push the button to extend ET's neck to make him float out of the pit, but every time you hit a wall it knocks you back down into the pit where you lost energy that you can't replenish. Now you keep trying to get him out of the pit and if you're, you should get him out of the pit and if your luck and reach the edge, you golden.
Speaker 1:But more often than not you hit the wall before the edge because of how hard it was to control. Then you would sit in the pit with no energy and float out of it and slowly come to the realization. The game would just keep playing with no way to get out of the pit and I've read this from a lot of people who have played this game so you reset and try again and then reset again until you lost all your energy, until you rage, quit and started playing Pac-Man, which I thought was funny, hmm, lovely. That is a very common complaint about that that once you get caught into one of these pits you fall into, it's very, very difficult to get out. Okay, and this comes from a website called Indiegamerchickcom.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:That sounds cool. She does review what she calls the definitive review and actually just came out recently. This came out in January of this year oh no, I'm sorry, january 24th of last year and she has quite a different take on the whole thing. Basically, she starts off the thing by saying, like her dad showed her playing Knife from Outer Space and how it hyped it up, it was the worst movie of all time. And then she watched it and was like oh, there are actually way worse movies than this, but it just kind of considered the worst of all time. You know Right, just like the room and stuff like that. And then it says ET for the Atari 2600 isn't really that bad, it's just boring like a morpheus. I mean it's bad, but because it's boring and she goes on to say, quote, and it's not even complicated, boring the object is to locate three pieces of your phone and then, well, phone home, define the phone pieces.
Speaker 1:You have to deliberately fall into various pits in the game, then stretch your neck out and hover out. Most of the pits are empty and, whether they are or not, it's a slow climb out. Of course you'll just as often fall into the pits accidentally, since they're all over. It's such an obviously doomed for failure playing mechanic to begin with, and that's before you get to having the threat of falling back into the hole hanging over you. Who, boy? She says yeah, it's not so much the falling in the pits that wrecks ET, it's the sheer volume too many and how easy it is to fall back into the ones you've climbed out of too easy. Now I did play several rounds of ET without rewinding or save states and that's where I realized the falling back to the pits is what really destroys the game. So once again, this is this is the universal sort of critique on it. She says this could have been fixed by having you not be able to fall back into the same pit you're in without leaving the screen first or hell. Just have each pit filled with the same pit. Fill up once you hover out of them permanently. This is to fix everything, but it would sure take the edge off To win at ET.
Speaker 1:Once you have the three phone pieces, you have to search around the map to find the randomly generated spot where you phone home. You go to the starting screen and click the correct spot on the ground. That doesn't sound too bad. But when the rules get in the way. You can neither phone home nor catch the spaceship. If any humans are on the screen and they're relentless. The FBI guys will take a BZ-Rune phone if they touch you, while scientists will take you up to the building screen. While you can click spaces to make them walk back to their spots, the timing is practically left up to chance as to whether any will show up when you're trying to catch the spaceship. Well, she actually goes up to say she doesn't blame Warsaw at all. It wasn't his fault.
Speaker 1:This specific add on here comes from the Atari Age website forum. It's just posted in 2019. This comes from a user called Atari Person 23. Gameplay is not bad. You just have to read the manual, just like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Solaris. I didn't know they made a Solaris game. Is it also four hours lost? I don't think it's based off the remake with George Clooney.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it has nothing to do with that. I was really kind of hoping, actually. Yeah, in fact, that probably would have predated, would it have? Because Solaris was 72. But there might have been a video game before, raiders of the Lost Ark based on a movie oh, as I was doing some digging while you were talking, because it looks like Star Trek Phaser.
Speaker 1:Strike. I have played Star Trek.
Speaker 2:Phaser Strike? Yes, I think it came out in November 1979. Are you referring to?
Speaker 1:the handhelds. I am Okay, that's very funny that you bring this up, because I had that handheld, that's right. Okay, it was the microvision. I used to have that game. The interesting thing about the microvision was it was a game console. It was about I don't know, I'd say 10 inches long, it was brown plastic and it was rectangular but it was rounded on the edges and the main interface part was early LCD, but instead of cartridges the games were all encoded into faces for the system itself. So it lacked a face around the interface, and by that I mean it had an indention cut out for where the screen would be and then the period below it, and then in the console itself you had a knob and so each game would be. You would put a new face on the game on the console and then you'd play the game based on that, which I thought was really cool. But once you started playing it, it essentially was the same gameplay as those old Tiger handheld LCD games from the 90s.
Speaker 2:Not quite up to that level of.
Speaker 1:No, no, it was all pixelated. It was just pixels, but it was a unique system and, funny enough, when I was a kid, after reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I always imagined that's what it should look like. When my parents' garage burned down, I found a microvision with face or strike in it, and I was like, god damn it, this would be so much more than me now. I could totally sell this or play it. Or play it, you're right, except for the fact that's not based off a specific movie.
Speaker 2:That's based off of a yes, but it did come out in conjunction with Star Trek 1, the motion picture the motion picture, sure, but it's just called Star Trek Phaser Strike.
Speaker 1:And, yes, you make a good point.
Speaker 2:you could say that but yeah, well, I mean, even if it wanted to, it was so bare bones, it has nothing to do with Star Trek whatsoever. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean even early Atari, oh no, and now that's early Sega. Star Trek games were more intricate and true to the concept. So this person says you just have to read the manual, just like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Solaris to also very Sophisticated games, and people say falling in the holes is annoying, but that's because you're moving the joystick up. It says in the manual to not do that, so take two minutes of your life to read the fucking manual. Gameplay is also fast-paced so you can't wait around too often in one spot, otherwise you feel depressed because you have to one press reset or two. Let minutes of your hard work disappear.
Speaker 1:Gameplay is actually fun, entertaining, but not the best of adventure games. For that do adventure All right, or Raiders of the Lost Ark or Sword Quest. Et is good enough for me to recommend, despite it not being the best. It's considered one of the worst games to play because a mainstream people had a hard time figuring it out and B because it was a commercial disaster, which I think was coincidental when the game industry collapsed in 1983 around the time this game came out. I think it was just that was going to happen. Either way. I think this game just sort of like took on the brunt of the blame for it. We see other examples of that throughout media, none of which are coming to mind but I know exist. Honestly, based on what I've read and looked into, it seems like it's far from being the worst video game of all time. So if you want to find out yourself, you can go online and Play it in a browser today. Figure out if you like it or not.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna say no.
Speaker 1:You're gonna say no, don't go play it, or.
Speaker 2:I'm saying no, I don't like it?
Speaker 1:No, sir, I don't like it.
Speaker 2:Mr Horse, that's a. Mr Horse.
Speaker 1:And it's funny because, like the review I just read, this person goes out of the way to say, quote ET will be remembered as the scapegoat for Atari's tragic demise, which I agree with him. That's not why. It's because it wasa Bubble that was bursting, quote. But there are far, far worse games. Just try karate or Inca gold, which I played. It sucks. Those games will make ET look like a masterpiece. Also try dish aster, which I'm guessing is like cleaning dishes. I Horrid exclamation mark. So before you call out ET, tried those games. You'll start crying for ET, begging for it. In fact, et please.
Speaker 2:This is my ET on your gal face.
Speaker 1:Oh, is that Reese's peases don't melt.
Speaker 2:Look at that. I'm tired of doing the begging for ET, me too.
Speaker 1:The only thing. That's very funny. The first person to respond to this on this forum says, first off, nice work on the review. Secondly, I think you're right on the six month schedule for someone posting a thread about ET being labeled the worst game of all time. So that's why I didn't. You know we're not gonna get too far into it, but you know the real urban legend is that it's the worst game. There are way worse games. There are unplayable games. It was just the symbol for bad, or at least failed games.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's scapegoat?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a scapegoat, and that is ET, and it was buried in the desert, rightfully or not. It was literally buried in the desert for 30 years. So so, or 20, some years, no, 30 years, about 30 years, how old are we? Goddamn it? Too old, I'll tell you that too fucking old man, ordinary fucking people man. Yep, so that's our latest installment in our Vigie games series, because we want you all to know that we are old men, but we still know these days we cover all of the culture.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's why we're covering video games from 1979.
Speaker 1:Before we were born.
Speaker 2:You know it's what the kids are into. No, these damn kids.
Speaker 1:Anyway, we should probably close this episode.
Speaker 2:Anyway, this episode's done, done with it, fuck it. It's done with it before I opened it.
Speaker 1:Flip's table over.
Speaker 2:Uh, thank you for listening to dispatch Ajax. Please like, share and subscribe. I guys, have you listened to episode before, because I say the same thing every episode when she's back up to the last episode.
Speaker 1:Listened the end, but it's an episode how episodic things work. I've brushed my teeth before. Why do I need to keep going? I did it once.
Speaker 2:So I did it. How many orgasms do you need, man?
Speaker 1:We've reached the peak, the pinnacle.
Speaker 2:We're done. We did it. All right, move along.
Speaker 1:What more do we have to?
Speaker 2:prove Uh. Please like, share and subscribe if you would mind. Rating us five long neck et's on the favorite podcast app of your choice. Ideally, uh, apple Podcast would be great. Please share with your friends if you think they'd be interested and come back next week month year for our next Bachelor shenanigans audio wise. Please share this with a scorned widow if you find a Forlorn dog on the street missing an eye who looks like benji. Please give him a podcast.
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Speaker 2:No, no, give the grandpa. He needs to hear it. He's. He's done eating stray people you find off the street. Give it a grandpa. Give that a grandpa, give it a grandpa. Give me five grandpas On the phonogram of your choice, just reach under there, give it a grandpa. Come on, let's go out to the shed. Hey, honey, honey, give it a grandpa.
Speaker 1:That's the subtitle for dittle of this week. Give it a grandpa, hey hey, give it a grandpa. Toy and get the diesel fuel All right. Well, uh, that's our dumb show. Please make sure you're accurate. It is accurate. Please make sure you face your tabs this year to clean up after yourselves in some sort of reasonable degree. Don't forget to support your local comic shops and retailers, and from dispatch agents we would like to say give it a grandpa.
Speaker 2:Fair wizard, please go away.