Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. You and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and there's Jerry and it's like the
Speaker 1: holiday season. I feel great. It is Holidays with a
Speaker 1: Z and we're gonna do what we almost did for
Speaker 1: a short stuff. Oh yes, Chuck, you're commended for for
Speaker 1: that call. Well, I was just like I kind of
Speaker 1: wanted to do this one. Always is a long stuff.
Speaker 1: We don't have a show called medium stuff, yet we
Speaker 1: have a so so stuffed called Stuff you should Know. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I saw that documentary Atari game over a
Speaker 1: few years ago, and I also guested on tech Stuff
Speaker 1: and did a two part episode on the history of Atari.
Speaker 1: It's a good one with Strickland's great too, and um,
Speaker 1: we could probably do Atari on its own at some
Speaker 1: point too. I agree. I think we definitely should. But
Speaker 1: this is I mean, I was about to say if
Speaker 1: Strickland and I could get two episodes out of it,
Speaker 1: but you know how that guy goes on. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: he's the hardest working man in podcast business. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you that. Just ask um. So we're talking today about
Speaker 1: what is widely believed to be the worst video game
Speaker 1: of all time, except that it's not. Except that it's not. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's true. I love stories like this where it's like
Speaker 1: everything you thought you knew was wrong and really stop
Speaker 1: and ask yourself, how did you even know that this
Speaker 1: truth that you knew before? I love that man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: et the Atari video game. A lot of people it's
Speaker 1: that whole internet bandwagon thing. I think, Yes, worst game
Speaker 1: of all time. They try to bury it in the desert.
Speaker 1: It was so bad killed Atari killed the whole stinking industry, right,
Speaker 1: But it was just that bad of a game. But
Speaker 1: you've played it, no, Yeah, um, I will say this,
Speaker 1: it may be one of the one of the most
Speaker 1: disappointing games of all time. It could be, yes, um,
Speaker 1: because if you were a kid back then like me
Speaker 1: and you and you played Atari like I did, um,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a disappointment. It was greatly anticipated.
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of anticipation that was partial, you know,
Speaker 1: that was That was probably the biggest reason why it
Speaker 1: gets all the attention because it was et. It wasn't
Speaker 1: uh what was that game? Yeah? Or fast Food? There
Speaker 1: were so many bad video games for Atari. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: were a lot. It was awful. So will this come
Speaker 1: out and say, no, ET is not the worst video
Speaker 1: game of all time. There were a lot of worse,
Speaker 1: far far worse video games uh than ET. But like
Speaker 1: you were saying, as far as the anticipation went, as
Speaker 1: far as the lighttown went, as far as the loss
Speaker 1: of money, when you can understand how people would say
Speaker 1: this is the worst of all the time, but also
Speaker 1: the timing of its failure was so utterly, amazingly perfect
Speaker 1: that it just took it from worst video game of
Speaker 1: all time to worst video game of all time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like here atari in video home console game industry,
Speaker 1: you're not doing well, and I notice you're sinking. Let
Speaker 1: me tie this anvil around your ankle that shaped like
Speaker 1: ET's right. It's just really bad timing. So let's get
Speaker 1: into the story because it's one of the more interesting ones,
Speaker 1: and it features a great guy named Howard Scott Warshaw, who,
Speaker 1: if you've seen the movie Game Over you have probably
Speaker 1: come to really like and admire good dude, good dude,
Speaker 1: brilliant designer and like a just a genuinely great guy.
Speaker 1: Uh he um this the story begins back in two
Speaker 1: I believe. Um. Yeah, it was Uh. He was a
Speaker 1: design ord Atari. He'd apparently started out writing code at
Speaker 1: Hewlett Packard and it was very unhappy, so he made
Speaker 1: the move over to Atari, even though he had zero
Speaker 1: experience with game design, but he was really an exciting
Speaker 1: game designer because he came up with some really innovative ideas.
Speaker 1: Yes he Uh, Yours Revenge is one of the best
Speaker 1: Atari games of all time. Did you have that one? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I never played it. It's great. Great. It's kind of
Speaker 1: space invaderies or something. It's like a shooter thing, kind
Speaker 1: of yeah, single screen shooter. Well you're a h um.
Speaker 1: I guess you're a yar and you're this sort of
Speaker 1: bug like creature and um, instead of shooting at something
Speaker 1: to to chip away at it, you do it so
Speaker 1: with your body, so you just fly into this. Oh
Speaker 1: I think that went. Uh, you would fly into this.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, all this stuff was supposed to
Speaker 1: represent like a spaceship or a planet, but it was
Speaker 1: made up of you know, blocks and tubes, so I
Speaker 1: don't even know what it was. But your whole point
Speaker 1: was to make it smaller and you would fly into
Speaker 1: I know you're instead of yeah, shooting, you would fly
Speaker 1: into it. For my money, that kind of game the
Speaker 1: best of all time with Centipede. Cinnipede is great, it
Speaker 1: was great. I mean a lot of those games I
Speaker 1: played at ay when I happened upon an arcade, Galagha
Speaker 1: and Frogger and Cinipede and Defender like those are still
Speaker 1: really good challenging joun games. Yeah, ms pac Man, they
Speaker 1: just stand up still for sure. It's not like you
Speaker 1: go to Galagha or jous now and you're like, this
Speaker 1: is easy. What was I thinking? I was such a kid.
Speaker 1: There's still hard challenging games. And I think that's sort
Speaker 1: of the key to a good video game is it's
Speaker 1: got to be winnable, but it's got to be hard
Speaker 1: because the kid didn't want to, you know, a pushover,
Speaker 1: but a kid also wants to win. So Howard Scott
Speaker 1: warsaw knew this like he was a a game designer.
Speaker 1: He wasn't like a code monkey or anything like that.
Speaker 1: He was a game designer, an artist. I'm sure he
Speaker 1: considered himself, especially at the time, and he should have.
Speaker 1: One of the other things he was known for, um
Speaker 1: was he was the guy who realized that you could
Speaker 1: make a game way more enjoyable if you created a
Speaker 1: backstory for it. So rather than like, uh, drive this
Speaker 1: car there, you're actually running away from this gang of
Speaker 1: you know, international mafia guys who are trying to kidnap
Speaker 1: your girlfriend or whatever, you make up a backstory for it.
Speaker 1: The player reads this backstory and then plays, they care
Speaker 1: that much more about the person because their imagination is
Speaker 1: now kicked in. They're not just doing a mindless task.
Speaker 1: They're imagining what's going on in computer world. And he
Speaker 1: did that for for games, and he was one of
Speaker 1: the first, if not the first designer to create backstories
Speaker 1: and biographies for his characters and games. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: know what just now is sort of hitting me that
Speaker 1: um part of the appeal was the imagination of the kids.
Speaker 1: So like when you got the game Adventure or Asteroids
Speaker 1: and Asteroids you are a pencil drawn triangle right, shooting
Speaker 1: at pencil drawn um shapes, shooting pencils at pencil drawn shapes,
Speaker 1: shooting dots at pencil drawn shapes. An Adventure, you are
Speaker 1: a cube that flew around with an arrow attached to
Speaker 1: you that was supposed to be your sword. But when
Speaker 1: you look at the actual cartridge or the box that
Speaker 1: it came in. They had this great artwork of this
Speaker 1: night on a horse with his sword drawn or in
Speaker 1: in asteroids. This han solo like pilot, like cruising through
Speaker 1: a you know, an asteroid field, and that would kick starts.
Speaker 1: That kick starts the imagination of a ten year old
Speaker 1: and then they forget they're a cube or an arrow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes it that much more real. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: really really cool because the imagination can do some pretty
Speaker 1: amazing stuff with eight bites of graphic. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: for sure, um so uh. Warshaw figured this out, Yeah,
Speaker 1: designing worlds. He would design easter eggs into his games too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was in the first, but yes, no, but he
Speaker 1: he was an early person to do that. The Adventure
Speaker 1: was the first, I think, And in addition to Yours Revenge,
Speaker 1: he also already had a hit um in the Raiders
Speaker 1: of the Lost Art game. He had designed that and
Speaker 1: it's still play that so much. I read you did
Speaker 1: so from what I never played that one. From what
Speaker 1: I understand you, it was extremely difficult. You it required
Speaker 1: both joy sticks. Yeah, there was. I think I read
Speaker 1: somewhere that there were thirty three screens, which is on
Speaker 1: heard of. I could buy that um and that like
Speaker 1: people still have trouble beating it today. Well, it's really
Speaker 1: it was really hard. Um. I remember very specifically. There
Speaker 1: was one part where you were to parachute um parachute
Speaker 1: from one screen and it would all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you went to the bottom and you it would pop
Speaker 1: up and you're on the next screen going down and
Speaker 1: there's a tree on the left and you had to
Speaker 1: start that jump early, going hard left and hook onto
Speaker 1: that tree with your parachute. If you hit it the
Speaker 1: wrong angle, it burst your parachute and you would die.
Speaker 1: And if you didn't, you would hook onto it and
Speaker 1: slide perfectly. And it was probably one of the hardest
Speaker 1: things I've ever had to do in a video game,
Speaker 1: you know, as far as video gameplay though. Really it
Speaker 1: was very very challenging, but it was possible. So when
Speaker 1: you tried it twenty seven times and you nailed it
Speaker 1: on that like, you would run around the neighborhood telling
Speaker 1: all your friends that you nailed the parachute jump really
Speaker 1: really hard. But it was so hard that it was like, um,
Speaker 1: you would get frustrated. It kept you sucked. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: You're like, I know you can get it and that's
Speaker 1: where et messed up. But we'll get to that, okay,
Speaker 1: so um on June, it's funny. He remembers this the
Speaker 1: date on Juneo Howard's got warsaw I was hanging around
Speaker 1: Otari and he gets a phone call. He gets a
Speaker 1: phone call from the CEO, Ray Kassar himself. That was
Speaker 1: a big deal back it and Rake Star says, hey, kid,
Speaker 1: we know you, we love you. We've got something going
Speaker 1: on with Steven Spielberg. He remembers that you made the
Speaker 1: Raiders of the Lost art game for him. He thinks,
Speaker 1: you're a certifiable genius. But we have a special assignment
Speaker 1: for you. We want you to make the e T
Speaker 1: video game. Can you do it? Wait, don't answer yet.
Speaker 1: Can you do it in five weeks? Then he went sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said yeah, which I mean even today, you're like
Speaker 1: five weeks. That doesn't sound very long. That was less
Speaker 1: than a tenth of the time that it would normally take. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he had the little secret is that he had
Speaker 1: already called some other people in the company and said
Speaker 1: the CEO he has this, like, is this even possible?
Speaker 1: Or am I just crazy for asking this guy to
Speaker 1: do this? In five weeks because it takes five or
Speaker 1: six months. And they all said no, it's not possible.
Speaker 1: Then he said, all, I'm gonna ask him anyway, right,
Speaker 1: And and Howard Scott Warsaw didn't realize that they had
Speaker 1: already told them like no, they can't be done when
Speaker 1: he said yes, But he was locked in the punch
Speaker 1: and he was twenty four years old and full of
Speaker 1: full of exuberance and hubrists and all sorts of stuff,
Speaker 1: and said I can do this. So he did. And
Speaker 1: the reason we should say the reason why this the
Speaker 1: schedule was so shortened. Usually took five to six months
Speaker 1: for a game to be to be developed, and he
Speaker 1: had five weeks to do it. And the reason why
Speaker 1: it was because the haggling the deal um to get
Speaker 1: the rights for the et game for Atorry to purchase them,
Speaker 1: which they bought for twenty one million dollars, took way
Speaker 1: longer than expected, and they really wanted this game out
Speaker 1: for in time for Christmas. The whole deal. So because
Speaker 1: of the because the deal had worked all the way
Speaker 1: up into the summer and Christmas was on the other edge,
Speaker 1: they needed also several weeks to manufacture the actual cartridges
Speaker 1: and get them into stores. If you lay it all
Speaker 1: this timeline out, they left five weeks to develop a
Speaker 1: game from scratch, so they knew just the guy to
Speaker 1: do it, and it was Howard's got Warshaw, and Howard said,
Speaker 1: I'll give it a shot. I'm gonna do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And um, I should point out that when you say
Speaker 1: five or six months is the usual time, five or
Speaker 1: six months was fast. The usual time was more than that.
Speaker 1: Well you also probably had a team working on it,
Speaker 1: Like five or six months was the Rush version anyway?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think I think that the pretty delightful
Speaker 1: prog Rock version did that have a they should add
Speaker 1: their own video game. I'm surprised they didn't. They were like,
Speaker 1: right there, they did that wheelhouse, we would like game
Speaker 1: or something. We would know. There's no way we wouldn't
Speaker 1: know about the Rush twelve Atari game. So Warshaw gets
Speaker 1: to meet with Steven Spielberg in the l A and
Speaker 1: was not given direction or a brief. He meets with
Speaker 1: Spielberg says, here's what I proposed, this adventure game that
Speaker 1: follows the plot of the film somewhat where the kid
Speaker 1: is et playing the game. You are et and you
Speaker 1: got to go around and collect all these pieces to
Speaker 1: build a phone so you can phone home, and the
Speaker 1: government's after you, and these bad doctors are after you.
Speaker 1: It's just like your movie. And Spielberg was like, well,
Speaker 1: can't you just have him like running around eating Reese's
Speaker 1: pieces like pac Man? And he went, oh, there's this
Speaker 1: great there's this great quote where he's like, here, here's
Speaker 1: one of my idols, Steven Spielberg asking me to knock
Speaker 1: off pac Man for the ET game. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: g Stephen, couldn't you make something more like The Day
Speaker 1: of the Earth's to Burn Burn Um? So he he
Speaker 1: apparently had to do a little fancy footwork to talk
Speaker 1: Spielberg into going with his vision rather than a pac
Speaker 1: Man knockoff of ET, which who knows, may have may
Speaker 1: have sold a lot better, but it was he got
Speaker 1: him to agree to his vision for this game. He said, no,
Speaker 1: this is a groundbreaking movie. We need to make a
Speaker 1: groundbreaking game. And so Spielberg agreed to it, and Warshaw
Speaker 1: started to get to work. So we should probably take
Speaker 1: a break before Scott Howard. Scott really jumps in, alright, Chuck.
Speaker 1: So it's basically the beginning of July and Howard Scott
Speaker 1: Warshaw is the sole programmer for an et video game.
Speaker 1: Atari's biggest bet that they spent twenty one million dollars
Speaker 1: on the rights to that they're going to spend an
Speaker 1: additional five million dollars on the advertising budget, for the
Speaker 1: most anyone's ever spent on a video game up to
Speaker 1: that point. He's the only programmer who's going to make
Speaker 1: this game, and he has five weeks to do it, which,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, no one I'd ever done before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this was Atari was a giant at the time.
Speaker 1: Um if video if the video game industry was beginning
Speaker 1: to slip. It wasn't like the public didn't really realize
Speaker 1: that yet. The industry may have, but Atari held about
Speaker 1: eight of the market. Um they were at about two
Speaker 1: billion in annual sales, about three quarters of billion in profit,
Speaker 1: which is just unheard of. About two billion in profit
Speaker 1: in today's money. Yeah, so a ton of money. But
Speaker 1: they saw the writing on the wall. They knew that
Speaker 1: the personal computer like the Common or sixty four that
Speaker 1: could play games but also do a lot more was
Speaker 1: a real genuine threat to the home console. So I
Speaker 1: read a contemporary article in The New York Times in
Speaker 1: from Night three talking about this, and Atari said they
Speaker 1: did not see the writing on the wall. Well, one
Speaker 1: of them said, the first six months of UH three
Speaker 1: was one way. The second six months it was like
Speaker 1: we were in a totally different business. Yeah, but if
Speaker 1: you if you read interviews with him now, I think
Speaker 1: that might have been Oh the guy covering is well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think you want to go out in the
Speaker 1: press in the moment and say, hey, everyone, we're super
Speaker 1: scared investors, don't freak out, don't panic, You're right, Chuck.
Speaker 1: I feel a little foolish. Uh So they what they
Speaker 1: did was they set Warshaw up with um everything he
Speaker 1: would have at work, they set him up at home.
Speaker 1: So the only time he could not be working on
Speaker 1: this game was his very short drive over to the office.
Speaker 1: And he worked on it almost NonStop for five weeks.
Speaker 1: He had a manager that was assigned to him to
Speaker 1: make sure that he ate. That was I'm sure not
Speaker 1: the manager's only duty, but it was one of the
Speaker 1: manager's new jobs was to make sure that Warshaw ate
Speaker 1: every day. How about a waffle? Sure, whatever, Stop bothering me.
Speaker 1: Eats in the pit again. So for five weeks he
Speaker 1: worked almost like you said, twenty four hours a day.
Speaker 1: He said, it's the hardest he's ever worked in his
Speaker 1: entire life. And when five weeks came and went, he
Speaker 1: handed off his He handed off the game. He finished it.
Speaker 1: He he completed it in time. And it wasn't done
Speaker 1: in his opinion, or it would turn out in anybody's opinion,
Speaker 1: but it was done. It was a complete game that
Speaker 1: he had finished in five weeks, the et video game,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't just something like like a pac Man knockoff.
Speaker 1: He given real thoughts to it and created a world
Speaker 1: that was much different from a lot of the other
Speaker 1: games at the time. At the time, he it was
Speaker 1: a world like it was a cube shaped world with
Speaker 1: six screens, and so if you walked to the left,
Speaker 1: you knew you were going to end up on this
Speaker 1: other screen. If you walked up, you wouldn't end up
Speaker 1: on the other screen. It was a world that you
Speaker 1: were navigating, rather than say like Yar's Revenge, which is
Speaker 1: just one screen and everything's happening on the one screen,
Speaker 1: and it may imply motion or something like this. With
Speaker 1: with the e T game, you were moving from one
Speaker 1: area of this world to the next X. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is it wasn't. It wasn't new, but it was. It wasn't.
Speaker 1: It wasn't standard to have six screens, especially if you
Speaker 1: had five weeks to do it. Give we gut a break. Yeah. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it should. What I'm saying is that, um,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like some big revolutionary thing like the Raiders
Speaker 1: game was pre this and it had thirty something screen
Speaker 1: an adventure like kids were used to this by this point,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't like, oh wait, do they get a
Speaker 1: load of six screens? Like leaving the screen? I see,
Speaker 1: But I think he Scott Howard Scot Worshaw should have
Speaker 1: gone to everybody's house and been like, here's your copy
Speaker 1: of ETV games. Well, you know I made this in
Speaker 1: five weeks. Well he designed Easter Eggs in there too,
Speaker 1: And I kind of wondered, like how much time did
Speaker 1: he spen doing that with his own initials and like
Speaker 1: the Little Yards Revenge Flower. I hadn't really thought about that.
Speaker 1: I don't know. So he says the time was of
Speaker 1: the essence, though I just maybe put that last on
Speaker 1: the list. He says today that Hetty had one more
Speaker 1: week to just troubleshoot. He could have worked out all
Speaker 1: the kinks. He could have worked out the kinks in
Speaker 1: one more Easter egg. But he handed it out. He
Speaker 1: handed it off to Atari, and Atari said genius. They
Speaker 1: gave it to Steven Spielberg to play. Spielberg apparently liked
Speaker 1: it and in the game, Um, it wasn't It wasn't
Speaker 1: just some dumb clunky game. It was a mediocre game.
Speaker 1: But it was a game, and it was done, and
Speaker 1: it was out the door, and they got it out
Speaker 1: in time for Christmas. The cartridges shipped. Um. If you
Speaker 1: go back onto YouTube and search ET game add or commercial,
Speaker 1: it brings up some extraordinarily nostalgic ads of ET dressed
Speaker 1: to Santa Claus playing his own video game. Um of
Speaker 1: a kid like receiving the ET video game from ET
Speaker 1: out in the shed. Just amazing stuff. So not only
Speaker 1: is it like Christmas time feeling, but like Christmas time
Speaker 1: feeling Chris. It's nice. It's just like the the taste
Speaker 1: of ice sugar cookies swells from the inside of your mouth.
Speaker 1: You almost gag on it. It's so overpowering. So they
Speaker 1: they produce well, we don't know for sure how many,
Speaker 1: maybe as many as twelve million copies of this at
Speaker 1: least four million. That's part of the urban legend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think there's an exact exact number,
Speaker 1: but millions of copies of these were produced. Twenty one
Speaker 1: million dollars invested in the licensing, five million dollars in
Speaker 1: advertising and marketing, not just I mean, who knows what
Speaker 1: they paid Worshaw or for the actual production. I mean,
Speaker 1: I doubt if it was millions of dollars, but he's
Speaker 1: probably salaried. They sunk a whole lot of money into
Speaker 1: this thing and sold Okay, at first they sold about
Speaker 1: a half a million copies and then and I remember,
Speaker 1: you know you do oh yeah, oh, word got around
Speaker 1: and this was obviously long before the internet, like you
Speaker 1: could still sell some stuff back then, but where everyone
Speaker 1: realized it stunk. But and that's what was going on.
Speaker 1: But literally kid two kid two kid and cul de
Speaker 1: sacs and classrooms got the word that the ET game stunk,
Speaker 1: and it killed it. It did it is little kids
Speaker 1: killed it. They sold like a half a million copies
Speaker 1: right out of the gate almost and then it it
Speaker 1: peaked right there very quickly, right around the Christmas season, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, just think about that. Though. It was children
Speaker 1: led to the demise. It's not like kids read an
Speaker 1: article in the newspaper, even a review on the et game.
Speaker 1: It was kids going, man, that game stinks. What you
Speaker 1: bought that? Oh, don't buy it at stinks? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's terrible. And that happened like a game of telephone
Speaker 1: all around the country. That's really cool. Simultaneously, kids get
Speaker 1: things done, they do, man. So like you said, it
Speaker 1: happened pretty fast. They peaked at a half a million copies,
Speaker 1: and over time it managed to sell another million on
Speaker 1: top of that, So a million and a half copies success.
Speaker 1: I think it's like actually a Natari's top ten of
Speaker 1: best sellers. But the problem is, if this story is
Speaker 1: a story of everything or anything, it's not the story
Speaker 1: of a over overconfident game designer making a terrible game.
Speaker 1: It's a very confident game designer making a middling game.
Speaker 1: If it's a story of anything, it is of executives
Speaker 1: being drunk with confidence in hubrists that no matter what
Speaker 1: they put out. If it's tied to a hot property
Speaker 1: of like a movie or something, it's gonna sell. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what the game is, it's gonna sell. Problem one.
Speaker 1: Problem two was they forecasted based on that Hubrist too.
Speaker 1: So not only did they say it's gonna sell no
Speaker 1: matter what we put out, it's gonna sell bigger than
Speaker 1: anything we've ever put out before. And they ordered four
Speaker 1: million cartridges. Well again, it's sold a million and a
Speaker 1: half and two and a half million cartridges were sitting
Speaker 1: in warehouses. Not to mention once that we're starting to
Speaker 1: be taken back, because not only did did kids go
Speaker 1: I don't want this game, I want to take it
Speaker 1: back and took it, took it to the stores. The
Speaker 1: store started taking their games back to Atari. So Aster
Speaker 1: is like, wait, wait a minute, everybody, this is et
Speaker 1: the game. What are you doing? Put this in your
Speaker 1: and shut up? And people didn't listen. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: can hardly blame the executives. I mean they were like,
Speaker 1: Warshaw plus Spielberg is going to be another hit because
Speaker 1: we had it in Raiders, So I sort of get it.
Speaker 1: But it was it was just it was that timeline,
Speaker 1: right like that was that was the big problem. It
Speaker 1: was all the timeline. He could have created a game
Speaker 1: as good as raiders. Right, Yeah, I've given five six months.
Speaker 1: I'm sure even given two months, you probably probably could
Speaker 1: have made an even better game. But it was it
Speaker 1: was kind of a boring game. It wasn't that fun.
Speaker 1: There's a very famous quote from the New York Times
Speaker 1: um article in two where a little ten year old said,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that fun, which was kind of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's all you need to say. And it wasn't. And
Speaker 1: not only was it not fun, but um, and I
Speaker 1: don't even I guess you could call it a bug.
Speaker 1: It was. It seems more like bad design than just
Speaker 1: a mistake. Um. But what would happen as E T
Speaker 1: would fall into these pits and then he could levitate
Speaker 1: back out, But depending on which way you were or
Speaker 1: even how you're holding the joystick, the slightest little move
Speaker 1: would cause ET to fall back down into that pit,
Speaker 1: no matter what direction you went. Sometimes. Yeah, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't like all the time it was. Um. It happened
Speaker 1: enough though to where as a kid, Remember you asked
Speaker 1: me earlier if it was frustrating trying to parachute is indy?
Speaker 1: It was not because you knew you could do it.
Speaker 1: This was frustrating. Kids got frustrated because E T was
Speaker 1: falling in the pit and he would get out and
Speaker 1: he would fall in the pit. And then you do
Speaker 1: that enough times and you're like, I'm gonna play Yards
Speaker 1: Revenge or any of my other games. Do you have
Speaker 1: fast food? And kids put it down? Yea, you know
Speaker 1: they put down. Well, he didn't put down the joystick
Speaker 1: and go outside and play. That would be like the
Speaker 1: movie ending. They just popped it out and put in
Speaker 1: the game that they liked. So, um, this was this
Speaker 1: was a big deal for Atari, um because it came
Speaker 1: at at the worst possible time. And um, speaking of
Speaker 1: the worst possible time, let's take a break and do
Speaker 1: ad breaking. We'll come right back alright, Chuck. So, like
Speaker 1: I was saying, this came at a really terrible time
Speaker 1: for Attar, you kind of talked about how the personal
Speaker 1: computer industry was starting to eat into their profits big time,
Speaker 1: and um, they really needed this et bet to pay off.
Speaker 1: And not only did it not pay off, they lost
Speaker 1: tens of millions of dollars on this this It was
Speaker 1: a huge catastrophic bet for Atari, and the numbers are
Speaker 1: just stunning. In like you said in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: Atari's profits were two billion dollars in UM in today's money. No,
Speaker 1: that was yeah, the profits, I'm sorry, in today's money.
Speaker 1: Their gross was two billions UM. In the second quarter
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty three, they posted a loss of three
Speaker 1: d ten million dollars five thirty six million dollar lost
Speaker 1: for the whole year. By four the company had been sold.
Speaker 1: So it went from two billion dollars in profits to
Speaker 1: a loss of five hundred and thirty six million dollars
Speaker 1: over the course of a year. Yes, and it was
Speaker 1: not because of ET. But this is the thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it gets even worse. Hold on, we're not there yet.
Speaker 1: I'm getting excited. The whole video game industry actually went down.
Speaker 1: So there's something called the North American video game Crash
Speaker 1: of three, where not only did the did Atari go under,
Speaker 1: basically the industry did so the whole the whole industry
Speaker 1: in three had a three point two billion dollars in sales.
Speaker 1: By two years later they had a hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: in sales. It was a crash like that is a
Speaker 1: catastrophic crash. And like you're saying, no, it wasn't because
Speaker 1: of ET, but imagine this, think about this, All of
Speaker 1: that has been laid ever since then at the feet
Speaker 1: of ET the video game and Howard Scott Warshaw. People
Speaker 1: look at him and say, you ruined the video game
Speaker 1: industry single handedly. That's how he's thought of. I think
Speaker 1: that was the case up until like two thousand fourteen
Speaker 1: or fifteen, right, Yeah, I mean I think people in
Speaker 1: the know knew that that was not the case. But
Speaker 1: the popular pop culture opinion of him. Yeah maybe. But um,
Speaker 1: let's say E was a big hit. It would not
Speaker 1: have saved Atari. No, it might have like staved the
Speaker 1: bleeding a little bit, but would have been a drop
Speaker 1: in the bucket basically. Yeah. Um, I mean, I certainly
Speaker 1: feel bad for Warshaw. Um, but he has he's a
Speaker 1: good inning, So stick around for that. Don't go anywhere.
Speaker 1: After ET, he took some time off. He said that, uh,
Speaker 1: he just needed to sort of recover, I believe was
Speaker 1: the words he used. He went into real estate, uh
Speaker 1: and did not enjoy that at all. Um. And eventually
Speaker 1: he became a psychotherapist, and that's what he does today.
Speaker 1: He's a he's labeled the Silicon Valley Psychotherapists and sort
Speaker 1: of specializes in talking. He jokes that he's fluent in
Speaker 1: English and NERD, so I think kind of specializes in
Speaker 1: talking to Silicon Valley types, um about their work problems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: certainly a man that can identify you know. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a great psychotherapist. It seems like he definitely would be. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he definitely made peace with the whole thing, and
Speaker 1: I think he um. He very frequently jokes. I've seen
Speaker 1: it in more than one article that he says, Um,
Speaker 1: he kind of enjoys it when people say that Eats
Speaker 1: the worst video game of all time, because people also
Speaker 1: say that you yours Revenge is one of the best
Speaker 1: video games of all time. So he has the greatest
Speaker 1: range of any video designer ever. So he definitely has
Speaker 1: like a I think it took him a little while,
Speaker 1: that's the impression I have to make peace with it.
Speaker 1: But he made peace with it. And I think one
Speaker 1: of the reasons he was able to make peace with it.
Speaker 1: And I'm just armchair psychologizing here, but he um, realize, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've used it before and you said the exact same thing.
Speaker 1: I think too. Yeah, Um, he realized that it wasn't
Speaker 1: the worst video game of all time. And that a
Speaker 1: lot of the people who were saying it was the
Speaker 1: worst video game of all time didn't know what they
Speaker 1: were talking about, which has to be super liberating, and
Speaker 1: the whole world's like you ruined everything. And then you realize,
Speaker 1: like they don't even know what they're saying, you can
Speaker 1: just kind of let it roll off your back a
Speaker 1: little more easily. So the the cherry on top of
Speaker 1: this story, we mentioned this documentary Atari Game over Um.
Speaker 1: It is about the legend of the story of the
Speaker 1: et game, which continued after its demise, with this urban
Speaker 1: legend that Atari was so distraught and embarrassed by this
Speaker 1: game that they had all the remaining boxes shipped out
Speaker 1: and buried in the desert under submit. Initially, you're like,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make any sense. Why would it already spend
Speaker 1: all this money to do this when they could just
Speaker 1: burn them, sell them in the dollar been, do anything
Speaker 1: other than this weird plan to bury them out in
Speaker 1: the desert of New Mexico. Yeah, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people took it when it was kind of an initial
Speaker 1: rumor that like Atari was trying to bury their shame.
Speaker 1: That's how it just went that much further to point
Speaker 1: out how bad the each video game was. Atari was
Speaker 1: trying to bury it and forget about it. Uh So,
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven, there was um a party where
Speaker 1: there was an Atari former Atari person there and a
Speaker 1: guy named Mike Burns. I was talking to him and
Speaker 1: said something about, yeah, this urban legend that you guys
Speaker 1: did this, and apparently the answer was just sheepish enough
Speaker 1: to where he was like, wait a minute, that true?
Speaker 1: So did he did he fund this documentary? Is that
Speaker 1: how that worked? I think he he's a guy who
Speaker 1: makes things happen, he brings people together. I think yes,
Speaker 1: he definitely put some of his own money into it,
Speaker 1: but I think he also got others to to put
Speaker 1: money into it as well. Okay, I didn't know if
Speaker 1: he was involved in the dock itself or just financing
Speaker 1: the dig, but Zack Pinn made this documentary. Um. Zack
Speaker 1: pan a great, great writer. Um ironically wrote the movie
Speaker 1: Ready Player one, which talks about adventure and Easter eggs
Speaker 1: and all that fun stuff. So he's he's written a
Speaker 1: bunch of movies, a bunch of the Marvel movies and stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: And it was clearly a labor of love. This this
Speaker 1: documentary if you've seen it, uh, you know, Zack benn
Speaker 1: is like super excited about all this stuff. So the
Speaker 1: old Alama Gordo landfill in New Mexico has three hundred
Speaker 1: it's three hundred acres and then a hundred cells, which
Speaker 1: are these uh his holes, But they're just these big square,
Speaker 1: deep pits where you you know, if you listen to
Speaker 1: Our Landfills episode, then you know what goes on there.
Speaker 1: And they just dump stuff in there and cover it up.
Speaker 1: And the legend was that the e T is in
Speaker 1: one of these cells. And these days they chart it
Speaker 1: and it's mapped out so they know what's where generally,
Speaker 1: and if a cop comes and says, hey, there's some
Speaker 1: evidence from four years ago, they could say, oh, well
Speaker 1: that's going to be in this cell because it was
Speaker 1: from this area of town where it was picked up
Speaker 1: and we buried it here. Back then, they didn't have
Speaker 1: anything like that. No, it was like they just dug
Speaker 1: a hole, put garbage in it, covered it up, and
Speaker 1: went home. According to a guy named Joe Lee Wandowski
Speaker 1: and Mike Burns lucked out that a guy named Joe
Speaker 1: Leewandowski worked at the Alama Gordo um City waste department
Speaker 1: because he is basically the institutional memory of Alama Gordo's
Speaker 1: waste and he worked at the dump for so long
Speaker 1: that he had a pretty good chance of remembering what
Speaker 1: where the stuff was put. Um. But he was kind
Speaker 1: of like, no, we don't, we didn't document it. I
Speaker 1: have no idea, Leave me alone. And apparently Mike Burns
Speaker 1: is not the type to just be like, okay, I'll thanks,
Speaker 1: didn't mean to bother you. He'll keep pestering you until
Speaker 1: you do what he wants from what I under stand, um.
Speaker 1: And so he finally got Joelie Wandowski on board, and
Speaker 1: in just an astounding turn of good luck, Jolie Wandowski's
Speaker 1: wife had made a scrap book of Joe's time working
Speaker 1: for Alama Gordo's UM waste department that included pictures of
Speaker 1: the dump from around this time. So they were able
Speaker 1: to narrow down these hundred cells over three acres to
Speaker 1: two to just to which narrowed the search enough that
Speaker 1: they could actually start taking samples to try to Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a very big breakthrough. And if you watch
Speaker 1: this documentary when they're when they're taking these samples and
Speaker 1: they come across like newspaper clippings from that year and
Speaker 1: that month where these cartridges were supposedly buried. It's really exciting,
Speaker 1: it is, I gotta admit, it's like, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: Like they it's like finding buried treasure. So they narrowed
Speaker 1: it down. Uh, all of these people showed up, um
Speaker 1: fans the what's his name, Ernest Ernest Klein who wrote
Speaker 1: the book Ready Player one, He showed up in his
Speaker 1: uh Back to the Future DeLorean and Uh, it was
Speaker 1: a very big deal. They Howard uh Warshaw came in
Speaker 1: and he was there and people were just like embracing
Speaker 1: this guy instead of like it's not like he showed
Speaker 1: up and people are like, there is He's like this beloved,
Speaker 1: cherished dude. And I get the sense that this was
Speaker 1: a very big deal for his closure. Um, which is
Speaker 1: interesting because burying something is usually the closure. In this case,
Speaker 1: digging it up was the closure. And they did find
Speaker 1: uh game cartridges, which it makes you wonder like how
Speaker 1: this how they got there, how the rumor got started
Speaker 1: to begin with. Well, then the fact that there is
Speaker 1: some truth to it. Yeah, they feel like it definitely
Speaker 1: confirms the urban legend, Like Atari definitely did cover up.
Speaker 1: They did dump these these cartridges, but it wasn't just
Speaker 1: et cartridges, and it wasn't like the millions that they
Speaker 1: supposedly dumped, but they probably buried some elsewhere in either
Speaker 1: California or Texas or both. But it confirmed that, yes,
Speaker 1: this actually did happen. The urban legend was real, and
Speaker 1: at the very least, it gave Howard Scott Warshaw that
Speaker 1: closure year he got to see, you know, thirty something
Speaker 1: years on UM people were still vibing out on his creation,
Speaker 1: although in ways he could not have possibly predicted when
Speaker 1: he was spending that five weeks programming this game. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said he was full of gratitude. That's really cool.
Speaker 1: That's a very cool way to go through life, my friends.
Speaker 1: So let's oh man, you know, if you can remember
Speaker 1: to have gratitude, it truly does make you happy. It's insane.
Speaker 1: It's just remembering to be grateful is the trick. So
Speaker 1: they ended up a lot of these one on eBay,
Speaker 1: UM auctioned off. I think they sold about a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars worth of these things that went to the
Speaker 1: city of Elama Gordo. Of course, they owned him. It's
Speaker 1: not like they just gave him out to everyone that
Speaker 1: was there. They should have they should have given everyone
Speaker 1: one copy. I think some of the like Mike Burns
Speaker 1: and some of his crew, got some in. Alma Gordo
Speaker 1: kept some, but I think the ones that were auctioned
Speaker 1: were auctioned by Alma Gordo to go to a fund
Speaker 1: of museum. I would love a copy assigned cartridge, Warshaw.
Speaker 1: I mean, the most I think one went for was bucks,
Speaker 1: so we don't want it that bad. But no, then
Speaker 1: I'm saying like that's the most, that's the highest any
Speaker 1: of them went for. So you could probably give them
Speaker 1: for a couple hundred bucks if you tried. I wonder
Speaker 1: if he listens to the show. I hope so you
Speaker 1: never know, I hope so. I hope we cleared it
Speaker 1: up for your Warshaw, your legend, sir. Yes, hats off
Speaker 1: to send me assigned cartridge. Send to Josh needs one
Speaker 1: and thank you, buddy. Um you got anything else? No,
Speaker 1: it did. E T was not the worst game. They were.
Speaker 1: There were games that were so bad that you don't
Speaker 1: they were just in the dustbin of history. They were
Speaker 1: so bad, like Sorcerer, like you said, Manga is apparently
Speaker 1: pretty bad. Yeah, they were terrible, like all these not
Speaker 1: knockoff companies, but you know, ari Atari opened it up
Speaker 1: to where anyone could could design a game that fits.
Speaker 1: And some people say that that was one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why Atari lost market shares, because there's so much
Speaker 1: crud on the shelves and people were tired of buying
Speaker 1: Creddy games for bucks, and that they just oversaturated the
Speaker 1: market themselves. But they oversaturated with terrible stuff, oversetched well
Speaker 1: at any rate, that's e t the game. Not the
Speaker 1: worst video game of all time, but a heck of
Speaker 1: a story, I'll tell you what good one and hopefully
Speaker 1: gave you a little bit of nostalgia this holiday season. Yeah,
Speaker 1: feel that warm tingling. It's either a bladder infection or nostalgia. Uh,
Speaker 1: let's see, since I said bladder infection, everybody, it's time
Speaker 1: for listener man. Uh, this is a about bird poop. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: listen to the Olive Oil podcast and loved it very much.
Speaker 1: Living in Italy, I use it every day. That's my
Speaker 1: wonderful complexion and youthful looks. I want to tell you
Speaker 1: about a problem though, that we haven't rome every year
Speaker 1: and directly caused by olives. Every winter, the city center
Speaker 1: is home to millions of migrating starlings who spend their
Speaker 1: days out of the local countryside, eating olives and having
Speaker 1: a great time. In the evening, they come back to
Speaker 1: our warmer city center and sleep in the city center
Speaker 1: trees for the night. Great news for bird watchers, but
Speaker 1: bad news if you like to avoid being pooed on.
Speaker 1: The city gets covered in the stuff. And he sent
Speaker 1: me a video and of these cars parked on the
Speaker 1: street and it's literally looks like it was painted with
Speaker 1: bird poop, completely solid every square inch. That's gotta be
Speaker 1: bad for the paint. And yeah, it's really bad. H
Speaker 1: He said, what what has this got to do with
Speaker 1: olive oil? While the olive stones may not come out
Speaker 1: of the starling birds bottoms, but the olive oil infuse
Speaker 1: greasy pood does, and it makes driving along the roads
Speaker 1: almost some possible. I've fallen off my scooter twice in
Speaker 1: the past few years. Oh my god because of this,
Speaker 1: So I guess it's it's slippery oily poop. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: And that is from James in Room. Wow. Thanks James.
Speaker 1: That emails kind of petered out at the end there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was expecting a big finish, just oily poop. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: thanks regardless, and stay stay safe on your scooter there, James,
Speaker 1: he said, people use umbrellas and hats off to you
Speaker 1: living in Rome. Have you been around? Sure? When I went,
Speaker 1: I was like I could live here. Pretty great, I
Speaker 1: told Jimmie. She's like, maybe it's lovely city. It really
Speaker 1: is old world charm cats. What's what else? Wine food,
Speaker 1: beautiful people and seeing men and women at every turn
Speaker 1: that looked like runway models and they were just regular
Speaker 1: newspaper boys. Well, the fact that they do like a
Speaker 1: little twirl every once in war as they were walking
Speaker 1: really kind of sold it too. Yeah, and go challab bed. Wow,
Speaker 1: let's turn out weird. Um. If you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us, you can go on to stuff
Speaker 1: you should know dot com and hit us up through
Speaker 1: our social links. You can go to the Josh Clarkway
Speaker 1: dot com, or you can just send us a good
Speaker 1: old fashioned email to stuff podcast how stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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