ATARI: GAME OVER Portrays the Downfall and Rediscovery of ET Game Cartridges in the Desert

Filmmaker Zak Penn has made a name for himself for writing numerous Hollywood blockbusters, including Marvel-themed movies X-Men and X-Men 2: The Last Stand, The Incredible Hulk, and The Avengers.

But he also grew up as an avid gamer, so he jumped at the chance to switch hats to directing for the enlightening documentary Atari: Game Over, which chronicles the disappointing demise of ‘70s and ‘80s video game pioneer Atari.

Game Over – which was made as part of a documentary series produced by Microsoft’s (now closed) Xbox Entertainment Studios called Signal to Noise – also documents the digging up earlier this year of millions of unsold game cartridges that were buried by Atari in the New Mexico desert after the company’s collapse.

“I literally just got presented the idea, ‘Hey, we’re going to go dig up these ET games in the desert,’ and I said, ‘I’ll do it,’ whatever it is, I’m in,’” Zak said about his quick decision to jump on board the project.

He said the two main attractions for him were: 1) he is a huge gamer who has been playing all his life, and grew up on Atari, 2) he likes projects dealing with “insane” urban legends that don’t make much sense. “They said to me, they don’t have any idea if they’ll find anything, so the movie might end up being pointless, which actually appealed to me.”

He said he initially had a plan for making a documentary about a pointless documentary, which would have been about the excavation of Atari products being a bust.

The documentary profiles Howard Scott Warshaw - whose story stands at the center of the movie – whom Zak immediately knew had the most compelling experience out of his characters.

“He created this game Yars’ Revenge – and one of the things Howard likes to talk about is that Yars’ Revenge was considered one of the best games ever made. And ET was considered the worst game ever made, so he kind of is proud of this huge disparity between his output.”

Zak disputes the widespread belief that Atari’s iconic video game ET is the worst title ever made. “It’s not actually, and that’s partly what the movie’s about – is how this false myth of it being the worst game ever came about. I mean, it’s not good, but it’s so far from the worst game ever, it’s crazy.”

He points out that the perception that ET was the worst video game ever didn’t even come about until 20 years after the game went away. “It was kind of retroactively declared the worst game ever because it had been buried – and that’s kind of the point of the movie,” Zak said.

A parallel is profiled between the digging operation of old Atari cartridges and a major part of the actual ET game - when players fail the ET character gets stuck in a landfill seemingly forever.

“It’s kind of this hall of mirrors, everything kind of reflects back on itself… that fact that everybody tries to get out of the hole, you fall back in. We actually had that problem as we were digging it up – it looked like the excavator was going to fall into the hole because of the winds.”

Watch the full interview to also hear Zak compare his work on scripted film vs. documentary projects and the unique challenges he faced making Atari: Game Over.

Guest Bio

Zak Penn’s career began as a screenwriter when he sold his first script, Last Action Hero, at the age of twenty-three. Since then, Penn has become known for his work on numerous films based on Marvel comics, including X-Men 2 and X-Men: The Last Stand, The Incredible Hulk, and The Avengers. He has also dabbled in other genres, writing scripts for disparate films such as P.C.U., Behind Enemy Lines and Suspect Zero.

Penn’s shift into independent cinema began when he collaborated with his idol, Werner Herzog, on the script for Rescue Dawn. Penn directed and co-starred with Herzog in Incident at Loch Ness, his award- winning “hoax” documentary about the legendary director’s attempts to make a film about the equally legendary monster. The Grand, Penn’s second completely improvised film, was his third film with Herzog, and featured an eclectic cast including Woody Harrelson, David Cross, Ray Romano, Cheryl Hines, Dennis Farina and Gabe Kaplan.

In addition, Penn co-wrote the original story for Antz and produced the animated film Osmosis Jones. His first foray into television was the critically acclaimed SyFy Channel original series “Alphas” starring David Strathairn. His most recent endeavor was video game documentary Atari: Game Over, which recently premiered on Xbox Live.