E.T. Atari Landfill Film Kicks Off Xbox Documentary Series

[Michael Epstein]

E.T. Atari Landfill Film Kicks Off Xbox Documentary Series

Xbox Entertainment teams with up award-winning producers to make non-fiction movies about, what else, video games.

Xbox Entertainment Studios, the division bringing original TV-style content to Xbox One and Xbox 360, has announced plans to produce a documentary series with award-winning producers (and cousins) Simon and Jonathan Chinn. Simon and Jonathan's production company Lightbox will oversee the series, with different directors taking the helm for each film.

The first entry in the series, directed by serial comic-movie writer/director Zak Penn, will focus on the legendary Atari landfill. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, here's the short version: The E.T. Atari 2600 game, widely renown as one of the worst games ever made, sold so poorly that Atari discretely dumped "millions" of copies into a New Mexico landfill one fateful night in 1983.

Another media company, Fuel Industries, was awarded permission by the city of Alamogordo, NM to dig up the dump site earlier this year. The documentary will feature footage of that excavation. According to Xbox Wire [http://news.xbox.com/2013/12/ent-xes-lightbox], the film will also seek to "place the urban legend of the burial in the context of the precipitous rise and fall of Atari itself."

Xbox Entertainment, has already announced two other series: A live-action Halo series produced by Steven Spielberg and Every Street United, a reality show about playing street soccer in different places around the world.

According to Microsoft entertainment and media president Nancy Tellem, the first episodes of some Xbox Entertainment series will premiere in the first half 2014. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/130549-Microsofts-Original-TV-Shows-Debuting-on-Xbox-LIVE-Early-Next-Year] Shooting for the documentary begins in January, so this probably won't be among them.

Source: Xbox Wire [http://news.xbox.com/2013/12/ent-xes-lightbox]

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[Thaluikhain]

Heh, wonder if they'd be able to dig up any working copies of the game. Excepting that nobody would want to play.

...

Hang on, games are so old there's sorta kinda archaeology going on?

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

ET was not that bad a game by atari standards. It had gameply issues in that the pit collision was really unforgiving but overall it was really decently made.

The problem was that there was this gillion dollar marketing campaign behind it (sound familiar?) so the game itself couldn't possibly live up to the hype.

Also for the record the best atari game every made was Cosmic Arc

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

If someone does find a copy, immediately send it to Dan and Arin of Game Grumps.

They have to be forced to play it, it will be their Sonic 06.

 

[Leemaster777]

Interestingly enough, any working copies of the game that they manage to extract from that landfill might actually be collector's items to the right person. It IS a rather large piece of gaming history.

It's funny how those games were so worthless in their time that Atari buried them in a landfill, but nowadays, they'd actually be worth something to collectors as historical trinkets.

The irony. It's palpable.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

If someone does find a copy, immediately send it to Dan and Arin of Game Grumps.

They have to be forced to play it, it will be their Sonic 06.

I don't think Atari cartridges are made out of Nintendium. Odds are that 30 years of moisture underground have ruined them.

Hang on, games are so old there's sorta kinda archaeology going on?

Never thought I'd live to see the day.

Also does anyone else get the vibe that Xbox Entertainment Studios is doing this to feel good about themselves?

"No matter how bad it might get, no matter how many jobs are cut... At least we aren't Atari."