X-Play - The Mystery of the Buried E.T. Cartridges

[NE146]

Anyone catch this episode?

 

Adam and Morgan Webb go and look out in the desert for the buried E.T. carts and in the process go over the 2600 (and bring up some of the 2600's poorer titles) and talking about the E.T. story and HSW selling his soul to the devil for $$$, etc. Even showing an Activision commercial for Laser Blast. Anyway it ends up being sort of a rag on movie cash-in videogames and how they haven't learned from "Father E.T."

 

Yeah they bag on E.T. (and the 2600 a little). But hey, with all the video shots, and gameplay synopsis..I think that's the most prime time tv coverage E.T.'s ever gotten in history!

[Lord Helmet]

I saw that episode a while back. Pretty funny stuff. X-play is the only show on G4 worth my time.

[Atari Charles]

Can someone who recorded the program somehow post the file somewhere for those of us who didn't catch it?

[panda_racer]

i wacthed it at my friends house and recorded it with tivo.. the best i could offer anyone is maybe a VHS of it...

[+Omegamatrix]

Check it out! They also got other air times listed on their site.

[Atari Charles]

I was thinking an avi or quicktime download posted somewhere.

[trusty]

Actually, I took offence to that X-Play episode. In my opinion, they spent way too much time Trashing the Atari 2600 and the subpar graphics capabilities it had.

 

Webb & Sessler need to take into account that they have a very large compliment of 'younger generation' viewers who take their opinions as fact. True, by today's standards, the 2600 graphics were horrible. But back in the day? Those graphics were bleeding edge for home consoles! They need to realize that without the Atari 2600, there would be no Nintendo, no Sega, No Sony Playstation, No X-Box!! Consoles like the 2600 & Intellivision etc... blazed the path and their viewers need to realize that.

 

On the good side, It really did spark an interest in the mysterious Landfill story. Especially since I lived in Alamogordo from 1973 - 1983! I WAS THERE!

 

SjN

[Brad2600]

Would be nice if one of these days, people simply forgot about the ET thing.

[supercat]

Actually, I took offence to that X-Play episode. In my opinion, they spent way too much time Trashing the Atari 2600 and the subpar graphics capabilities it had.

924455[/snapback]

 

Of all the machines in the world, the 2600 is probably the one whose graphics can be most improved by clever programming.<p>

 

The machine was designed for COMBAT. It wasn't designed to have more than five single-color objects and a low-resolution two-color playfield. Although things like "score" mode allow some graphics tricks that could not be done any other way, it's not needed for the purposes for which it was first used. On the other hand, the people who designed the 2600 probably didn't realize that the 6502 could do so many things on the fly.

[+Random Terrain]

I saw that episode a while back.

923230[/snapback]

Me too. I don't remember a whole lot about it. I remember bits of the drug movie rip-off and that the 'review' part of it was done from the point of view of the average pimply faced 13 year old of today who played the game for 5 minutes at the most.

[spacecadet]

Would be nice if one of these days, people simply forgot about the ET thing.

924537[/snapback]

 

Why? It's a bit of video game history. It shouldn't be forgotten. It's an example of video game/movie licensing gone awry. Publishers still take heed of the lessons from it.

[moycon]

It's a bit of video game history.

Video game fiction I believe is the term you ment to use.

 

Unless that is you have proof this is a true event, something no-one else on the planet earth has. Hee

[Brad2600]

Would be nice if one of these days, people simply forgot about the ET thing.

924537[/snapback]

 

Why? It's a bit of video game history. It shouldn't be forgotten. It's an example of video game/movie licensing gone awry. Publishers still take heed of the lessons from it.

924877[/snapback]

 

It's also annoying when people sign up for the first time and they just have to make a post about it without looking at any of the 100 threads on E.T.

[Raiu]

It just annoys me because E.T., while not the greatest game in the world, is not as bad as its reputation suggests. It failed because Atari overproduced it to the point of absurdity. Had Atari made a normal production run, it would have been considered a hit game. (It still wouldn't have been considered one of the greats, but it wouldn't have gone down in infamy the way it did).

 

Another part of it is that the kids (like me) who played it way back when had the advantage of the instruction booklet and the tip sheet that came with the game. The 12-year-olds playing it today just downloaded a ROM somewhere, and the game is complex enough (with no on-screen explanations like they're used to) to be confusing at first glance (for example, what do all those funny arrows and question marks and yelling e's at the top of the screen mean?), so that, combined with its reputation, makes them hate it immediately.

 

-DS-

[Atari Charles]

Someone should post the show in downloadable format.

[tantone56]

I remember howard scott warshaw saying that it isnt true at all.

[moycon]

It failed because Atari overproduced it to the point of absurdity. Had Atari made a normal production run, it would have been considered a hit game.

 

LOL And where are you getting your figures from? I suggest doing some brief research..... here's a good place to start.

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=66637

[Smiley]

With Xplay, Attack of the show, icons, and cheat I have fallen in love with g4tv.

 

However, even though morgan webb is kinda cute, I find her annoying; sessler acts like a moron on his show.....

Edited September 5, 2005 by Smiley

[Dones]

So now people are getting uptight about a T.V. show satirizing E.T.? Get over it guys. It's tv. Worse, it's G4! What more could you expect?

[trusty]

Not satirizing E.T per se. But rather satirizing Atari itself. Maybe it's just me but a network devoted to gaming should at least do some research on the history of video gaming, specifically console gaming and Atari's role in the birth of consoles themselves.

 

A gaming network should give credit where credit is due. Sega, Nintendo, Sony & Microsoft owe Atari their thanks for thier successes in the console gaming market and G4 knows it.

 

But hey, just my two cents...

SjN

[Lord Thag]

It was funny as hell.

[Raiu]

It failed because Atari overproduced it to the point of absurdity. Had Atari made a normal production run, it would have been considered a hit game.

 

LOL And where are you getting your figures from? I suggest doing some brief research..... here's a good place to start.

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=66637

925100[/snapback]

 

I read that topic. I don't see how it relates to my point. The point is that E.T. sold a lot of copies (three million copies, to be exact), which is why the game is so common today. The problem is that Atari produced eight million E.T. cartridges, far more than any other game they'd ever made. On top of that, they paid $21 million for the license to use E.T. in the first place, so they already started out in the hole.

 

Let me use simple math:

 

If you make a hundred copies of a game, and sell 99 of them, then that's a hit. If you make a million copies of a game, and sell 99 of them, then that's a colossal failure. Atari did the latter when they should have done the former. They created more E.T. carts than consoles that had been sold since the Atari debuted in 1977. That's why the game failed so spectacularly. Even if it had been the greatest game in the world, Atari couldn't possibly have sold enough with a run of eight million cartridges to make a profit. If the game had had a normal production run (which is, what, one to two million copies?), it wouldn't be so infamous today. In fact, it would have been a spectactular success, even with a subpar game. Atari basically put all their money on a single horse, then shot that horse in three of its legs (by paying way too much for the license, giving HSW only five weeks to make the game, and then making way too many copies).

 

Though, for the record, I don't believe the landfill story. It makes absolutely no sense from a financial perspective (the cost of transporting millions upon millions of cartridges from California to New Mexico, the cost of digging a hole big enough to hold them all (a hole over 64,000 cubic feet in size, assuming they're burying just neatly-stacked carts, and not the boxes), the cost of getting enough cement to cover that hole, and then the cost of going back and manufacturing millions upon millions of new cartridge casings to replace the ones they just needlessly destroyed). If the story said they dumped all the bare E.T. chips without casings, then *maybe* I could understand it, but not if full carts were destroyed.

 

-DS-

 

Edited after measuring an Atari cart and calculating just how much space five million of them would take up.

Edited September 5, 2005 by Raiu

[trusty]

Great Post Raiu and I agree. Except for your landfill theory. Here's why -

First off, the cartridges were transported from El Paso, Texas not California.

 

- Rumor has it the carts were deposited into two holes thus dividing them up.

- Steamrollers were used to crush the carts. Compacting = more carts /cubic foot.

- Snopes.com has verified this as true (For what it's worth).

- I personally lived in Alamogordo during the 'operation'. It was all over the news.

 

SjN

[moycon]

The problem is that Atari produced eight million E.T. cartridges, far more than any other game they'd ever made.

 

It's awesome that you don't believe that silly landfill fairy tale, but the above statement is wrong and the truth will just re-enforce your disbelief.

 

At most , Atari produced 6 million E.T.'s and that was just the first run, because in spite of the fact that everybody who bought E.T. to begin with returned the game, and in spite of the "fact" that Atari lost billions on E.T. they still felt it necessary to produce more, in any case E.T. production run was wayyy less than then Pac-Man's initial run (Pac-Man= 10-12 million produced) The Atari 2600 sold like 30 million units worldwide, and that's not counting the adapters for other systems that let you play 2600 games. Even if Atari HAD produced 8 million E.T.s it still wouldn't have been over produced. That information is in the thread which is why I felt it related to what you were saying.

 

Your explanation was well written however, thanks.