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Atari: Game Over now available for free online

By Salehuddin Bin Husin - on 24 Nov 2014, 10:27am

Atari: Game Over now available for free online

 You can watch the video online through any browser with Silverlight, or save it and watch on Xbox One.

Atari and E.T. have attained mythical status in the video game industry, though probably not for the reason they'd want. Sure, Atari would be remembered as the company that brought home video gaming to the limelight, but it's also the company that most blame for the video game crash in 1983. Some even go a step further and cast that blame solely on one game, E.T.

E.T. was expected to be a great game. Atari gambled heavily on E.T. bringing in millions that it backed it with major hype and advertising, all for its upcoming Christmas 1983 release. Developed in just five weeks (it took a few months typically to create a game, even back in the 80s), the video game got the approval of Steven Spielberg (E.T.'s director) himself. From all indications, E.T. was going to be another Atari success story.

That obviously wasn't the case and droves of cartridges were returned back to Atari. In fact, there's even an urban legend that says that Atari had so overestimated demand for the game that they'd created more cartridges than they'd know what to do with. Faced with the premise of tons of cartridges eating up valuable warehouse space, Atari got rid of them the Mafioso way. They took the whole lot to a garbage dump in the middle of nowhere, dug a hole in it and chucked everything inside.

That's obviously where Atari: Game Over comes in. It seeks to prove whether there really is a boatload of unsold E.T. cartridges buried in the Alamagordo dump. It has interviews with the creators (it even has a cameo of A Song of Fire and Ice's author George R. R. Martin), as well as history about the game and of course, the dig itself.

It's definitely an interesting watch if you're into gaming or even history in general. Besides, it's free and you don't even need to jump through a lot of hoops. Just go to the link on a browser, log in to your Microsoft account and then click play (you have to accept the Silverlight access permission pop-up). Then sit back and watch the documentary.

Source: Xbox Wire

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