When I was a kid, video games made their mark in a huge way. I always loved going to arcades and dumping quarter after quarter into anything from Pac-Man to Gauntlet to Tron to Spy Hunter. Arcade games were found in bowling alleys, convenience stores, laundromats and, of course, stand alone arcades. To have the opportunity to bring these things home was a godsend to a kid like me. The first company to build a system for these games was Atari, and there was a 2600 in thousands of lucky homes. For some reason, Atari died off and was usurped by Nintendo, Sega and other systems. Most of the blame, until now, has been thrown onto one infamous game based on a favorite movie alien.
A legend has floated around for years that after the dismal failure of Atari's E.T. game, they buried millions of copies in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Director Zak Penn decided to investigate this claim, along with the entire story of the rise and fall of Atari. The company started simply enough with Pong. If you don't remember Pong, it was a very simple paddle game that resembled tennis. More games were created with the same simple 8-bit technology, and new designers joined the fold. Howard Scott Warshaw was one of them. He was the creator of the popular Yar's Revenge, which hosted the very first Easter egg in gaming history.
