Once Upon Atari (2003) [NR]

Release Date:
August 10, 2003

Original Title:
Once Upon Atari

Genres:
Documentary

Ratings / Certifications:
US: NR 

Runtime: 120

The uncensored story of what happened behind the scenes at Atari

In the late 70s and early 80s, ET phoned home on Atari 2600 and became the video game that New Media magazine later described as having toppled a billion dollar industry. We know the industry rose again as a pale, commercial version of its old self, but… did you ever wonder what it was like back in the wild days when the titans of gaming clashed, not on Wall Street, but inside the minds of designers? Want to learn first hand how the barren valley south of The Bay gave birth to cult celebrity that died as quickly as it was born? Take the ride with the folks who made it happen. Walk on walls, smoke the evil weed, and plunge head first into the uncharted (undocumented) world that was game production back in the bad old days.

Additional information:

The Search Form


Video

Click each video panel to show or hide.

Although TheMovieDB might provide a key to a YouTube video, there is no guarantee that the video might be present at YouTube.

About the Movie Section

Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).

Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.

Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)

While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:

  • I added "runners up" to Top 10 lists, treating them as ties where applicable and numbering them accordingly at the bottom of each list.
  • Regarding those polls wherein "franchise" movies were submitted as one project until BFI's policy changed to regard them separately, I treated them as ties and renumbered the affected lists accordingly (e.g. the Godfather films).

Regarding profile removals and data corrections:

  • If you would like your profile removed from this site, please contact the source of this data directly, TheMovieDB. My assumption is: once it's gone from their site, it should soon be gone from this site.
  • If you would like to correct movie data on this site, please contact the source of this data directly, TheMovieDB. My assumption is: once it's corrected on their site, it should soon be corrected on this site.
  • For additional corrections and profile removals, please e-mail The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).

Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.

Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.