Trusted by over 1.6 million members since 2014 — why not join them?
∞ and beyond!
Staff Member
Moderator
SB Mod Squad ⭐
✔ Approved Releaser
Active User
Member for 2 years
HSW surprise appearance at the West Coast Gaming Convention.
He is standing in front of a life sized poster of himself, taken 30 years prior, while he programmed E.T.
He is holding newly released copies of E.T., programmed by myself for the 2600, and one cart by Gambler for the 7800 in which I also assisted.
For those not in the know, Warshaw was blamed by Atari for single handily destroying the company in 1983 due to E.T. being such a horrible game.
Atari filed bankruptcy and made millions (worth about a quarter trillion today) off insurance claims.
It was reported that Atari took all the E.T. carts they claimed were sold and buried them in Alamogordo, a landfill. 700,000 units of its unsold stock in a landfill near Alamogordo, New Mexico; this event became part of an urban legend that millions of unsold cartridges, mostly of E.T., were buried there.
Atari testified this never happened.
Warshaw went into obscurity.
Around 2009, my publicist requested that I remake E.T.
I said, no.
He hounded me until I said I would take a look.
I was surprised to learn Atari only gave Scott 2 weeks to make a production release, instead of the standard 6 month's.
I researched all the gaming complaints and discovered they were easily fixed.
I began to suspect that the creator of Yar's Revenge and many other famous games would have fixed the E.T. bugs on his own had he been given the proper time.
I recoded the game, fixing all the bugs.
It was beta tested and heavily scrutinized.
We were playing with fire. A game reputed to have destroyed Atari.
The game went into manufacturing in 2013, 30 years after the original sunk Atari.
Several other variations were also made and these were all unveiled through Good-Deal-Games.
At the convention, an unknown person began to cut in line, even in front of other VIPs.
He approached the table and said that he wanted the first cartridge.
The reps remained polite, told him he would have to wait in line like everyone else.
The man was insistent.
His badge did not identify him. It only identified he was a VIP too.
This went on for a while until one of the reps began to realize, this man, this unknown, was in fact very well known, he just hadn't been seen in decades. As the light dawned that the man insisting on receiving the first copy of the revised E.T. was the creator of E.T., the entire mood shifted.
Scott received a special limited edition cart signed by myself and others.
One week later, international news.
In 2014, Fuel Industries, Microsoft, and others worked with the New Mexico government to excavate the Alamogordo site as part of a documentary, Atari: Game Over. It was meant to put an end once and for all to the decade old rumors. It ended up changing gaming history.
On April 26, 2014, the excavation revealed discarded games and hardware. Only a small fraction, about 1,300 cartridges, were recovered, with a portion given for curation and the rest auctioned to raise money for a museum to commemorate the burial.
Atari officials later verified the numbers to be around 700,000 cartridges of various games, including E.T.
Warshaw has been vindicated after 3 decades of being villainized.
It was not a game developer who destroyed Atari, it was corporate greed and Scott was used as a scapegoat.
I am proud to have played a role in clearing his name and giving credibility to his game.
He is standing in front of a life sized poster of himself, taken 30 years prior, while he programmed E.T.
He is holding newly released copies of E.T., programmed by myself for the 2600, and one cart by Gambler for the 7800 in which I also assisted.
For those not in the know, Warshaw was blamed by Atari for single handily destroying the company in 1983 due to E.T. being such a horrible game.
Atari filed bankruptcy and made millions (worth about a quarter trillion today) off insurance claims.
It was reported that Atari took all the E.T. carts they claimed were sold and buried them in Alamogordo, a landfill. 700,000 units of its unsold stock in a landfill near Alamogordo, New Mexico; this event became part of an urban legend that millions of unsold cartridges, mostly of E.T., were buried there.
Atari testified this never happened.
Warshaw went into obscurity.
Around 2009, my publicist requested that I remake E.T.
I said, no.
He hounded me until I said I would take a look.
I was surprised to learn Atari only gave Scott 2 weeks to make a production release, instead of the standard 6 month's.
I researched all the gaming complaints and discovered they were easily fixed.
I began to suspect that the creator of Yar's Revenge and many other famous games would have fixed the E.T. bugs on his own had he been given the proper time.
I recoded the game, fixing all the bugs.
It was beta tested and heavily scrutinized.
We were playing with fire. A game reputed to have destroyed Atari.
The game went into manufacturing in 2013, 30 years after the original sunk Atari.
Several other variations were also made and these were all unveiled through Good-Deal-Games.
At the convention, an unknown person began to cut in line, even in front of other VIPs.
He approached the table and said that he wanted the first cartridge.
The reps remained polite, told him he would have to wait in line like everyone else.
The man was insistent.
His badge did not identify him. It only identified he was a VIP too.
This went on for a while until one of the reps began to realize, this man, this unknown, was in fact very well known, he just hadn't been seen in decades. As the light dawned that the man insisting on receiving the first copy of the revised E.T. was the creator of E.T., the entire mood shifted.
Scott received a special limited edition cart signed by myself and others.
One week later, international news.
In 2014, Fuel Industries, Microsoft, and others worked with the New Mexico government to excavate the Alamogordo site as part of a documentary, Atari: Game Over. It was meant to put an end once and for all to the decade old rumors. It ended up changing gaming history.
On April 26, 2014, the excavation revealed discarded games and hardware. Only a small fraction, about 1,300 cartridges, were recovered, with a portion given for curation and the rest auctioned to raise money for a museum to commemorate the burial.
Atari officials later verified the numbers to be around 700,000 cartridges of various games, including E.T.
Warshaw has been vindicated after 3 decades of being villainized.
It was not a game developer who destroyed Atari, it was corporate greed and Scott was used as a scapegoat.
I am proud to have played a role in clearing his name and giving credibility to his game.