Jamie Russell - Generation Xbox: How Videogames Invaded Hollywood

Published by Yellow Ant

Copyright Jamie Russell 2012

Jamie Russell has asserted his rights
under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988
to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved.
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First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
Yellow Ant
65 Southover High Street, Lewes,
East Sussex, BN7 1JA

www.yellowantmedia.com

Cover by Matt Hobbs of Rumpus Graphics
Typeset by Yellow Ant

ISBN 978-0-9565072-5-9

This publication and its publisher are not affiliated
with, nor have been authorised, sponsored or otherwise
approved by the Microsoft Corporation.

Xbox is a trademark of the Microsoft group of companies.

Generation Xbox

How Videogames Invaded Hollywood

Jamie Russell

For Louise, Isobel and Alice, my three muses - with all my love
And in tribute to two inspirational women:
Morag Grisotti (1914-2012) and Doreen Whitehouse.

It was almost finished before it started...

On Thursday 22 September 1983, a fleet of 18-wheel trucks rolled out of a non-descript manufacturing plant in El Paso. They trundled through the streets in a single column, engines groaning as they eased onto Route 54 and headed north. Their cargo? Millions of Atari VCS cartridges including E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, the most hyped game in the companys history. Their destination? A landfill site in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Arriving in the desert dump in the mid-morning heat, the trucks emptied their once precious loads. Millions of black plastic cartridges, none much bigger than a cigarette packet, scattered into the dust. Each bore an artists impression of the wrinkled prune face of E.T., the alien star of Steven Spielbergs blockbuster movie. A few minutes later, they were flattened and crushed into a mangled mess of twisted plastic, microchips and torn labels.

Among the debris were computer hardware, game cartridges and other leftovers from Ataris bloated inventory. Were covering them with garbage and then with dirt, said Ed Moore, one of the waste management employees on duty on that tragic but historic day. Ive been crushing them as fast as they dropped them off the trucks with my Caterpillar. Its kind of sad. Chances are Ed wasnt a gamer; probably his kids were. But maybe he felt moved - like so many moviegoers had been - by that alien face as it stared plaintively up at him from the abandoned cartridges.

Spielberg had designed his extra-terrestrial for maximum emotional effect superimposing, so the story goes, Albert Einsteins eyes onto a picture of a five-day old baby. Here in the New Mexico desert that ancient-yet-vulnerable visage still tugged at the heart strings. But there was no Elliott to save E.T. this time. There was just Ed; and he had a job to do. He threw his Caterpillar into first and drove forward again. He couldnt hear the sound of cracking plastic over the throbbing chug of the machines engine.

When Ed was finished what was left of the mangled cartridges was scooped into a landfill pit. Then came the cement. A thick layer was poured over the crushed remains to prevent any salvageable pieces being looted. Even still, by the weekend, there were reports that rescued E.T. and Pac-Man cartridges were being hawked around local stores. Despite the dumps no-scavengers policy - and a security guard whod been specially hired at Ataris request - a few carts had escaped the cull. The rest werent so lucky.

Ed chugged his Caterpillar across the dump and repeated the process over and over again. Each truckload cost Atari $300 to $500 to dispose of but the real price paid by the fledgling videogame industry ran into the millions. The VCS 2600 game of E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial, the brainchild of Steven Spielberg and Atari, poisoned Hollywoods love affair with gaming overnight and crashed the nascent business itself. Since 1983, the story of the buried Atari cartridges has become enshrined in videogame lore. Although contemporary reports in the New York Times and Alamogordo Daily News detailed the dumping, Atari never officially confirmed events. Manny Gerard, former co-chief operating officer for Ataris owners Warner Communications, concedes it was probably true - a simple matter of waste disposal rather than some dirty corporate secret. There was overproduction because everybody thought E.T. [the game] was going to be the greatest thing in the world. At some point you realise youre better off just destroying them than trying to sell them at 5 to some guy whos going to come and take them away.

Armchair historians of the 8-bit videogame era remain fascinated by the desert burial. On the internet, a group of true believers even hatched half-baked plans to excavate the site in the hope of discovering archaeological relics from videogamings early history. As one poster put it on an ongoing AtariAge.com forum thread that has been running since 2005 - the legend of the buried E.T. cartridges is the videogame industrys grassy knoll.

If it had been a different cartridge that had been buried, would the interest be so acute? Probably not. The Great Mass Burial of E.T. resonates because it marked the Icarus-like fall of Atari and the early videogame industry itself. But most of all it stands as potent image of the troubled, on-off love affair between videogames and Hollywood that continues even today.

Back in 1983 Atari was owned by Warner Communications, the parent company of the venerable movie studio Warner Bros. Atari had been hailed as the future of the entertainment industry. Games like Pong and Asteroids were supposed to end Americas obsession with movies forever. It didnt quite work out like that. E.T., one of the earliest attempts to translate a blockbuster movie into a blockbuster game, fell flat on the prune face of its eponymous alien. Warner Communications stock nosedived and Atari, which had once generated more revenue than Warner Bros. Studios, suddenly became a millstone around the conglomerates neck. The major motion picture studios rejoiced. They had fretted that videogames would eclipse them. Now they watched as the bogeyman they had feared was unmasked as nothing more than a paper tiger.