selectparks - How E.T killed Atari

Ok that title is pretty misleading.

Nonetheless few remember the E.T game that essentially broke all consumer confidence in the company all those years ago; this includes those that actually played the game but have since had that part of their brain surgically removed.

You'd think that a game with impressive reputations such as "fantastically boring" and "astonishingly miserable", a game considered by many to be soley responsible for the supposed video-game crash of '83, would now be a precious commodity. Not true, unlike the artifacts of war, assassination and disaster we treasure in museums, the starting bid for E.T on eBay is about 1 US cent.

Rumour has it that Atari had no where to put all the returned cartridges sent back by disappointed buyers, so they buried them all somewhere in Mexico. Some cry urban legend, some say it's true.

Where's all this leading? To an interesting if not brief documentary on the history of videogames in those early years, covering the E.T story and more, uploaded to Google videos.

Watch it here. Thanks to Marta for the link!