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Extraterrestrial
Trash - Is it the worst game ever?
Is it really
the worst video game ever? I mean come on.... really? In short... yes.
Why is the better question and as the saying goes in real estate; Location!
Location! Location! E.T was the blockbuster movie hit that became the
highest grossing film of all time in 1982. Atari being over confident
from having had the best sales year in its history in 1981, seeked the
rights to produce a video game of the movie. Atari reportedly paid between
20 to 25 million (an extremely high figure in those days) for the rights
to make the game.
A fact
overlooked by most pundits of Atari is that CEO Ray Kasser was against
the idea of making an action game based on the movie, however it was
not Kasser's descion to make and the deal went forward. After the deal
was complete, the programmer named to create the game was Howard Scott
Warshaw. Warshaw wanted to make a story driven game based off the emotional
undertones of the movie but ultimately had to scrape his plans due to
very short development time.
Due to
the time it took to get the rights to make the game, Warshaw had just
5 weeks to program and test the game before the September deadline as
to ship the product before Christmas. Atari's egotism, short development
time, and a big cash incentive toward Warshaw (in the tune of $200,000
dollars) led to a half finished game with a strange goal set and less
than straight forward game play. Warshaw was not a novice (having developed
Yars Revenge and Raiders of the Lost Ark on the Atari) but his unholy
creation of E.T. is widely considered the straw that broke the camel's
back.
However
that is not really the whole case. Atari made semi-descent sales of
E.T. game carts but no where near the predicted sales.
The Pac-Man Factor
- The other factors that destroyed Atari.
The game
E.T., widely sighted as the worst game of all time, was not really the
only factor that broke Atari's dominance of the market. There were a
few other catalysts involved, one being the urban legend of Atari's
production of E.T. game carts. This legend claims Atari made 12 million
E.T. games and only had 10 million Atari VCS 2600 consoles sold. Well
that's not entirely accurate, in reality Atari really did do this. Not
with E.T., but producing 12 million Pac-Man game carts.
Seems Atari
thought the wild popularity of the arcade version would sell consoles
if a home port was made. Truth is that maybe Atari would have sold more
consoles if the port of Pac-Man was faithful. Pac-Man for the 2600 was
panned for having bad graphics, poor gameplay, and not bringing the
arcade element to the port.
Another
key point is that the market had a hand in this as well. The market
was being flooded with cheap copies, blatant rip-off's, and many poorly
made titles. The consumers were tired of more Pac-Man clone games and
the market was starting to slow in retail sales. This is where Atari
shot themselves in the foot, Atari forced retailers to place the next
years order in advance, claiming they would be unable to maintain stock
without this measure. This forced retailers to guess at what they would
be selling and making many retailers over order games and consoles.
In 1983
the market collapsed, and Atari was stuck with a huge inventory of returns
from the retailers that couldn't sell the products. Atari needed to
clear out/close some warehouses, and need to toss some trash... in a
landfill in New Mexico.
9/25/83 - Dumping
Day and the Key Players
Okay, now
we are moving onto the hard evidence, but first I must give you the
list of key players.
Browing
Ferris Industries (BFI) - The waste company in charge of the landfill
in Sept. of 1983. They are now a subsidiary of Allied Waste out of
Texas.
Pete Block - BFI spokesperson for BFI in Sept. of 1983.
Bruce
Entin - The Atari spokesman in 1983, he has continued to neither
confirm or deny the dumping took place.
M.E.
McQuiddy - The now legendary missing reporter for the Alamogordo
Daily News, all attempts to contact/find her have failed.
Daniel
Malone - Alamogordo city manager in Sept. of 1983, and he was
also in charge of the landfill.
Henry
Pacelli - The mayor if Alamogordo in Sept. of 1983.
Donald
E. Carroll - Current (2006) Mayor of Alamogordo, and city counsel
man in Sept. of 1983. He is an eyewitness to the events of Atari's
dumping.
Eric
Baldorama (Spelling?) - An employee of Alamogordo, he sat down
for an interview with Bruce of the AtariAge forums to help confirm
the story. (See part 5 for research citations and sources and Part
4 for the video.)
Howard
Scott Warshaw -
Programmer and designer of the E.T. Atari 2600 game. As recently as
October of 2004, Warshaw expressed doubts that the dumping of millions
of copies of E.T. ever took place, citing his belief that Atari would
have recycled the parts instead in order to save money
Ed
Moore -
Interviewed by M.E. McQuiddy, employee of the BFI landfill (first
newspaper article).
Jack
Keating - Manger/Owner BFI in 1983.
That covers
the key players in this story. One fact that cast much doubt on this
story is the missing reporter. No one has been able to find her, even
the Alamogordo newspaper can't find information on her. But now you
know the people, onto the real evidence.
9/25/83 - And
then there was McQuiddy...
Atari obviously
wanted to do this very quietly, that's why the remote landfill in a
small town that allowed no salvaging and covered the trash nightly.
It seems that Atari forgot the power of the media, as a local reporter
was on the case. Presented here are pictures of the news articles published
in 1983 detailing the dumping.
From
the Alamogordo Daily News, published Sept. 25, 1983.
From
the Alamogordo Daily News, published Sept. 25, 1983. (Pictures from
the article above.)
From
the Alamogordo Daily News, published Sept. 25, 1983. Enhanced version.
9/27/83
- And then there was McQuiddy... Part 2
The
following article was published a few days later by McQuiddy, it details
the city's outrage at the amount of waste dumped in the landfill. A
text version is presented here because the scan is a little difficult
to read but the link that follows the story is the full resolution scan
of the newspaper.
Alamogordo
Daily News
September 27, 1983
City
to Atari: 'E.T.' trash go home
By
M.E. McQUIDDY
Daily News Staff Writer
The
Alamogordo city comission is taking a strong stand against "extra-territorial"
garbage, and will be considering an ordinance to limit the amount
of out of area dumping in the sanitary landfill at its meeting tonight.
The ordinance has been proposed in the wake of the dumping of 11 ssemi-trailer
truckloads of Atari computers, cartridges, and assorted parts from
an El Paso warehouse in the dump since last Thursday.
Apparently
BFI had told the city after being pressed on the issue, it was expecting
three truckloads a week. However, no one is exactly sure how much
trash will be expected before the operation is completed. El Paso
Atari officials apparently refused to confirm or deny the dumping,
and referred any queries to California.
Bruce
Enten of Atari in California said today Atari is sending scrap merchandise
to the Alamogordo dump. "It is by-and-large inoperable stuff."
He explained sometimes people send back merchandise, which for one
reason or another does not work.
Enten
said the Atari plant in El Paso has shifted from manufacturing to
recycling "scrap and defective merchandise from across the country.
Conceivably, a tape sold in New York coult turn up in Alamogordo."
That
which cannot be fixed is destroyed. "After we finish this operation,
we will have to determine where we do it in the future. I won't tell
you there may not be some of that stuff that's good in the items sent
to Alamogordo, but most is not,"
Enten said. "The majority of the stuff is cartridges." Atari
has different procedures for disposal, sometimes recycling and sometimes
destroying, but it needs to be done. "For instance, if the grocery
has bad vegetables on a Sunday you might see cartons of the stuff
out back. We've got to dispose of the stuff."
"This
is the first time we've come into your area in New Mexico," he
said. Enten said he did not know how much Alamogordo would expect
in the dump before the current operation is completed. "We did
not ask the city manager to invoke the emergency clause," said
commissioner Guy Gallaway. "We also didn't want to exclude the
city manager being able to help the county or other communities within
the county in the cae of an
emergency. But we don't want to be an industrial waste dump for El
Paso."
BFI
officials had said their rationale was that Atari was paying them
from $300-$500 a truck to dispose of the trash. City fathers wondered
about the new trench at the dump. "It is mammouth," Gallaway
said. The ordinance will be up for first approval tonight.
Click
here for the original newspaper scan (JPEG image).
9/29/83 - McQuiddy...
Evidence that she is real!
To follow
the old newspaper rule, you need at least two sources. I have dug up
(really paid Google $3 bucks to get to read it) an article written on
9/29/83 published in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Proof that at least
McQuiddy is a real person, this man interviewed her!
Philadelphia
Inquirer, The (PA)
September 29, 1983
Section: NATIONAL
Edition: FINAL
Page: A01
A VERY BRIEF VIDEO SALVAGE GAME
Roger Rapoport, Knight-Ridder News Service
Atari
Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., which for about a year has had a hard time
selling its video games, is learning that it isn't easy to throw them
away, either.
In
the past five days, the company has dumped about 20 truckloads of
video-game cartridges in a landfill near Alamogordo, N.M. As word
of the dumping got out, kids in that town of 25,000 began robbing
the Atari grave, coming up with cartridges of such games as E.T.,
Raiders of the Lost Ark and Defender.
Company spokesmen insist they are not throwing away unsold inventory,
but rather are discarding defective cartridges and those that were
returned by customers. Not true, according to many in the area who
say, to their delight, that they have found perfectly usable cartridges.
Whatever
the case, the company and the operator of the dump site decided Tuesday
that enough was enough. What was left of 2,000 cubic yards of cartridges
and other equipment was buried under $2,500 worth of concrete.
Atari
spokesman Bruce Entin said one reason for the dumping was that its
plant in El Paso, Texas, about 90 miles from Alamogordo, recently
became a center for returned and defective goods. But he said he would
not be surprised if some of the dumped cartridges worked.
"This
is product that is returned by the customer to our remanufacturing
facility," he said. "Sometimes buyers erroneously return
working merchandise. But the vast majority of what is being buried
in New Mexico is damaged."
But
Sherman Davis, facilities director for another company, Imagic of
Los Gatos, Calif., described burying discarded video-game equipment
as unusual.
"I've
never heard of anybody doing that on a mass basis," Davis said.
''We've never done that. I assume that they're just thrown directly
in the trash after they've been broken up."
Entin
said he did not know whether any other Atari trash would be buried
at the Alamogordo dump. But he indicated that the company would have
to determine where to dispose of products in the future. "This
is the first time we've ever used this site in New Mexico," he
said.
Apparently,
Atari chose the Alamogordo dump thinking it was a remote location
that would cause few problems. But in recent days the scene assumed
Keystone Cops overtones as kids tried to sell cartridges they had
found, and police tried to round up the scavenged merchandise.
"Atari
cartridges began popping up all over town last weekend," said
Marian McQuiddy, a reporter for the Alamogordo Daily News who broke
the story. ''There were mountains and mountains of cartridges on the
floor of the town dump. Some worked and some didn't."
Police
first became aware of the situation when youngsters began trying to
sell cartridges at a local Atari outlet.
The
police began confiscating the equipment "thinking it was hot
merchandise," McQuiddy said.
But
state law does not prohibit scavenging in New Mexico dumps, and the
officers have returned the games to the players lucky enough to find
them.
"The
police have been giggling a lot about this," McQuiddy said.
Pete
Block, marketing manager for Browning Ferris Industries, which operates
the dump, said he felt that the matter was being blown out of proportion.
"You're talking to a garbage man. We're quite used to having
companies bury surplus material at our waste sites," he said.
Some
people in the industry, such as Bob Goldberg, marketing manger at
SKU, a major software distributor in Berkeley, Calif., indicate that
product dumping is not all that unusual.
"Almost
every company has to get rid of surplus goods from time to time,"
he said. "Sometimes they will discount them to liquidators at
$2 to $3 apiece. Another approach is to barter for media time, (advertising)
space or plane tickets. And it's not unheard of for companies to simply
trash products. Sometimes that is the cheapest way to go."?
New Development
(11/26/06) - M.E. McQuiddy Found
A reader
of this website sent me and e-mail with an article they found. M.E.
McQuiddy was unfindable because she passed away earlier this year of
illness. The obituary confirmed she worked for the Daily News. To bad
she will never know that her one little article caused all this. So
in interest of the story, I publish her obitiuary here from the El Paso
Times.
El Paso
Times
Published on January 17, 2006.
Marian
Elizabeth McQuiddy
Marian Elizabeth McQuiddy, 53, of El Paso Texas died of extended pulmonary
complications at a local hospital, El Paso, January 15, 2006. Marian
was the daughter of Arthur R. and Aleen Hinkle McQuiddy, Roswell,
NM. She was born in Los Angeles, CA, March 21, 1952. She moved with
her family to Salt Lake City, Utah and subsequently to New York City,
NY where she was an honor student at Spence School. She graduated
with distinction from New Trier High School, Winnetka, IL and chose
Purdue University for her undergraduate degree in Journalism, Radio
and Television, graduating Cum Laude. At Purdue she was President
of the Purdue Radio Network and President of Tomahawk Women’s
Honorary Society. In a 20 year newspaper career she worked on the
Roswell Daily Record, was Sports Editor for United Press International
in the State of Iowa and Editor of daily newspapers in Indiana, Michigan
and the Editor in Chief of the tri-county Portage Wisconsin Courier.
She returned to New Mexico and subsequently moved to Alamogordo where
she was Sports Editor on the Alamogordo Daily News, winning numerous
journalism awards including three prestigious E.F. Schaeffer Awards
from the New Mexico Press Association. While there she was the first
woman President of the Sertoma Club. Marian was a natural teacher
and graduated Cum Laude with a Masters Degree in Education from New
Mexico State University. She was a dedicated teacher at Socorro High
School for the last nine years and was recognized by her peers for
her enthusiasm and her devotion to her students. She also taught at
El Paso Community College. During her life, Marian was active in the
Episcopal Church, numerous community groups and professional organizations.
While in El Paso she served as moderator of the Board of Deacons of
the First Presbyterian Church. She was a founding member of the National
Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the state of NM, a member
of the DAR, and the Junior League. Survivors in addition to her mother
and father are her sister Amanda S. McQuiddy Kent and her brother-in-law
Nicholas Coburn Kent. Other relatives include: Rolla R. Hinkle II
(Marge), Julie S. Hinkle, Rolla R. Hinkle III (Rosemary), and Madison
M. Hinkle (Susan). Graveside services will be conducted by Father
Robert Tally, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, at South Park Cemetery,
Wednesday January 18th at 2pm. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests
a memorial to the Marian E. McQuiddy Journalism Scholarship Fund at
Socorro High School, 10150 Alameda Ave., El Paso, Texas 79927 or to
a charity of your choice. Burial services will be under the direction
of Ballard Mortuary and Crematorium.
My deep
sympathy to her family. May she rest in peace.
9/29/83 - The
New York Times Published a small article as well...
Some
Thoughts at this Point...
Here
I presented the evidence from the event published in 1983. Some people
would feel this is enough to confirm the story, except the massive amount
of people that still think it was a hoax. I have to admit, when this
was all the evidence I had I still doubted it as well. Most of this
evidence is from 1983 and from a limited number of sources, which makes
it slightly unreliable. So for the next part I will present the "glove
that fits" evidence to confirm all that you read here!
Move
Along to Part 4
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