Once Upon Atari

Once Upon Atari: How I made history by killing an industry by Howard Scott Warshaw

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


In the early 80’s, the Atari home video game system was just about the coolest thing ever.

In 1982, my family had one. We played games, shoveled snow to buy new ones, traded with others, went to stores looking for the next new game. I remember my dad staying up half the night to “flip” Pac-Man: when your score is so high that they run out of numbers and it re-sets. If you were a kid in those days, this is what you did. We played Atari and was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before.

Howard Scott Warshaw is something of a legend within the Atari community, having written the hit Yar’s Revenge, Raiders of the Lost Arc, and the infamous E.T, The Extra-Terrestrial Video Game. It is this third game that gained the label “Worst Video Game of All Time.” There is an Urban Legend that it was so bad that Atari buried it somewhere in the desert; that it was so bad that it single-handedly tanked the entire home video game industry in 1983.
And Once Upon Atari is a book about that.

There are many, many reasons for the video game crash, which he talks about. And there are more than a few reasons why this urban legend is false (why would a company go through the expense to bury something in the desert when it would be cheaper and easier to simply throw them in the trash? But hey, we are getting ahead of ourselves.) Warshaw details his days and experiences in the hallowed halls of the Atari Headquarters. It is a dream job at first. But it is only a matter of time before things go downhill and it starts with a leadership change.

But it is also an engaging history of a unique time when the home video game system was a whole new frontier. People were going crazy for the Atari system and Pac Man and Missile Command and a whole slew of new and (at the time) state of the art games. And Warshaw describes a fun, chaotic office full of fun people…and this is where the magic happened.

Interspersed within the story is the story of the 2014 archaeological dig into a garbage dump in New Mexico, where the ET video games were rumored to be buried….

The game itself has an interesting history. The hit movie was turned into a game where you move the little alien around and try to assemble pieces of a phone to “phone home” while avoiding the scientist and the FBI man who try to take away your supplies or capture you. Many players found it frustrating because of the ease with which you could fall into one of the many pits stationed throughout the game. It could be really annoying. But as someone who grew up playing that and many other games from the period, it really wasn’t dramatically worse than many other games that were out at the time.

But the important thing to remember is that through a series of cascading missteps Warshaw only had 5 weeks to complete a task that should have taken at least 10 months.
The story of the ET video game is a story about what happens when a company is run by the new management who doesn’t understand the product. There are many pearls of wisdom throughout that could be applied to certain enterprises today:
“When people think a core department in their company is unnecessary, it’s a sure sign of corporate pathology. A well-run company considers everyone’s input and MAINTAINS A STAFF WORTH LISTENING TO (emphasis is mine.).” Page 257.

Once Upon Atari is a delightful book, Warshaw has such a great perspective on his eclectic life (he’s a therapist now!), as well as a great sense of humor about it all. He wears the badge of Creator of the “Worst Game Ever” with a cheeky sense of honor.

Highly recommended for both the nerd and the non-nerd alike.







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