Alamogordo, New Mexico,
A small town, about30,000 people.
But, it seems to attractmore than its fair share
of strange occurrences.
It's right around thecorner from where
they tested thefirst atomic bomb.
[explosion]
It's also the gravesite ofHam, the first chimpanzee,
and really the firstAmerican to go in to space.
And it's the placewhere this guy
broke the land speedrecord in a rocket sled,
which is cool,but also kind of strange.
Despite all of this,the thing that Alamogordo
is best known for is it'slandfill, the dump.
Because supposedly that'swhere Atari buried E.T.
the worst videogame of all time.
It's been described as theworst video game ever.
E.T. for Atari...
Today, we're going to talkabout the worst of the worst.
Here's our Top TenWorst Games Ever.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
Now here's the thing aboutET, it's widely regarded
as the worst videogame of all time.
[electronic vo]Worst game ever.
We have this, this myth,
or this legend of somethingthat happened 40 years ago.
[singing]♪Whoa,Do,Doodle,Doodle,Do,Doos
Son of a bitch, get outof the fucking hole.
If you grab a pieceof the phone,
the FBI agent keepsattacking you.
If you take a step in anydirection you fall into a hole.
And if you get out of thehole you fall right back down.
One of the major designflaws of the game
was that ET fell into pits.
Dang it, shit.
Oh, come on.
And guess what, it now livesout its days in a landfill.
It's rumored that decadesago truckloads of that game
were dumped in theAlamogordo landfill.
The idea that they had so manyof things and there was, they
were so unable to sell them,give them away or whatever,
they literally hadto drive them out
into the middle of thedesert and bury them like
a dead gangster... it's almosttoo crazy to be believed.
I think it's kind of silly.
Because it's urban legend.
It's just a great story.I think.
I believe that this storyendures because the
adults just don't get it.
And that's satisfyingto the young people.
Whenever you look at
what the reasons are forit nothing makes sense.
What drove someone to need tohide this stuff so intensely.
[digital sound]
When I was five yearsold, Pong came out,
and my dad got it for me,and my brother, and sister.
When the Atari 2600came out.
Atari!
I got every cartridge Icould get my hands on.
I played it constantly.
Atari was like XBOX andPlaystation rolled in to one.
It had an 80 percent
market share and the 2600was its killer app.
Adventure was probably myfavorite game for the 2600.
I spent three weekssitting in front of my TV
trying to find thefirst easter egg
ever hidden in a video game.
It looks kind of stupid now.
You were just a block.
You picked up an invisible dot
and carried it to a specialroom to discover the
programmers name.
But, to me finding that hiddenscreen was a revelation.
As an adult, I still playa lot of video games.
But, I also write and directmovies, thats my job.
I've worked on a lot ofbig comic book movies,
the kind they make a lot ofshitty video games out of,
and I even wrote some ofthe shitty video games.
But, I'm also fascinated bymyths and urban legends.
In fact ten years ago, meand this guy Werner Herzog
went to Scotland to findthe Loch Ness monster.
We never did find Nessie,but I still love an adventure.
Ecspecially to unravel anurban legend.
Today, video gamesare everywhere.
So, it might be hard to
understand my generationsobsession with Atari.
But, for us it was a gate waydrug to a life-long addiction
to video games.
And then, one dayit was just gone.
Some time in the mid-80's,it just disappeared,
and there were nomore Atari games,
and I always wonderedwhat happened.
Where did it go?
So, this is thefamous landfill.
Burial.
The final restingground of E.T..
Yeah, this is the place.
Uh, this, this road here.
This gate, this is exactlythe way the Ataris would
have came through,
through that ditchand up through here.
This is the only access in.
Back in those days itwas just pure desert.
And is there any wayto get through this?
Or we, I mean...
Oh yeah, it's a highsecurity gate, so...
Oh, tuck under, yeah Iguess that works.
Joe Lewandowski, hasbeen the garbage guru,
if you will, for anumber of years.
He operated various wastedisposal companies within
Alamogordo and Otero County.
And when it comes to theAtari graveyard I believe
he probably has more directknowledge than anybody else.
Joe's the guy thats advisingthe city and telling the city
and telling the city whereeverything is and I think that
he's the only guy that might beable to walk out to that dump
and point to a spot onthe ground and say,
this is where it's at.
So, so this whole area,this is where it's buried?
Some people don'tbelieve it's there.
But, trust me it's there.
You can kind of feel it,right?Is that just me?
Uh, that's pretty much you.
It's just me.
So, what are theseslittle boxes here?
Each one of little boxesrepresents where garbage is.
I see.
So, someone would write down.
Oh, thats where weput the Atari trash.
Thats where we put it.
Well, that's the problem.Nobody did.
We do today.
Um, so it's lookingfor it in a haystack,
in a pile of haystacks.
Pretty much.
And then, looking for aneedle inside that haystack.
And then find the needle.
So, it's two levels.
This picture here isactually out of the
old El Paso Times article.
This is actually thatday and that event
and when it actually occurred.
Now what we did is justto figure out, okay,
if this reporter, well shetook this picture here.
Then the reporter had tobe standing somewhere
in this area.
So, here's the two cells thatwe pinned it down to now.
So, when you come back herethey put the reporter
taking the picture, andyou make that line.
And what you're lookingfor it is to make sure
the line intersectswith the buildings.
Joe Lewandowskiwasn't just a guy
who knew his wayaround a dump.
He was also an amateurarcheologist,
kind of like Indiana Jones.
But, without thegun, or the whip.
See the newspaper photowas like the medallion
and Joe had used it tocreate his own version
of the staff of Ra, that canpinpoint the location of the
Atari dump, which is exactlyhow Indy would have done it.
Joe was clearly obsessed.
He believed in the legend.
He spent over three yearsconstructing a plan to dig up
the landfill and proveit to the world.
But, he wasn't a gamerhe wasn't trying
to find out why and that'swhat I wanted to know.
Why would the companythat I loved so much
decide to bury it's future.
The whole ET story is a verysmall part of the Atari story.
Let me go back, and explainhow Atari started out.
The videogame came becauseof the convergence
of me working inamusement parks summers,
while pursuing anengineering degree at
the University of Utah.
I knew the economics of thecoin operated game business.
They made a lot of money.
Nolan designed these incrediblyelegant circuits put together
in a way that's soclever that, you know,
modern engineers have ahard time, ah you know,
understanding orrepairing these things.
My partner and I Ted Dabney
started working onthe ping-pong game.
By the end of '72 we did$3-1/2 million dollars.
And then we did $19 million,and then we did $35 million.
It was a hockey stick.
This electronic mediumwhich was just beginning
had some traction with people.
And once you played some ofthe most sophisticated arcade
games of the day,and understood that
maybe there was a chanceyou could duplicate that
in a home game,your eyes got big.
Home videogames have been asuccess from the moment a
company called Atari launchedthis basic game, Pong.
Which has been imitated by atleast 40 other manufacturers.
They're selling likecrazy. 300,000 last year,
this year 3 million, nextyear 6, maybe 10 million.
We felt, well this maybe this isthe time to sell to a company
with deep pockets.
I was in my office at Warnerin 1976, the phone rang,
and it was a guynamed Gordy Crawford
and he asked the questionI've never forgotten,
would you guys beinterested in acquiring
a technology based fastgrowing entertainment company?
And I said, yes.
I didn't know what I saidyes to, but I said, yes.
And that led to myintroduction to Atari.
[digital sound] ATARI
What excited me aboutAtari wasn't Pong,
it was the chipset thatled to the Atari 2600.
Pong was sort of okay.
You banged up and back,and up and back.
But this meant you couldconstantly change the games.
And that was a veryexciting idea to me.
We introduced the 2600 in1977 with 9 cartridges.
♪ [music]
The home video game was avery close approximation of
the coin-op experience.
♪[music continued]
It changed the mindsetof the world.
Turning the television froma passive medium into an
active medium, that was whatwe knew we were doing.
And that was super exciting tobe the pioneers in that field.
It just blew people away.
And nobody knew anyof this stuff.
They made it up as they went,and they were good at it.
And it started everything.
♪ [music continued]
It was playing those games
that taught people thepotential of a computer.
Atari at some level broughtthe computer revolution.
♪ [music continued]
They started experimentallyhiring smart kids with this
idea that maybe they could comeup with other stuff to do.
♪ [music continued]
And they inadvertentlywere trying create
the job of game designer.
Microprocessor real timecontrol programming
is just where it's at.
So there's two kindsof things you could
typically do with thatin the early 1980s.
You can do missile guidancesystems or like we say,
kill people for12 cents a head.
[lexplosion]
Or you can make videogames.
Which I thoughtwas a much better
application forthe whole thing.
♪ [music]
What went on at Atarifrom the very beginning,
was basically the engineersare going to drive
this company because theyweren't just engineers,
they were creative guys.
They're like musiciansor movie directors.
They're artists.
Through luck or providence orboth they ended up with this
department of gamedesigners that became this
Dream Team at Atari.
These guys who made allof these classics.
Tempest and Asteroids andCentipede and Gauntlet.
And you know, think of a game.
The culture was these guysdo what they want to do.
One day I was standing at themen's room at the urinal
and I looked down and I saw apair of bare feet next to me.
And I looked, and here is aguy wearing a pair of shorts
and nothing else.
And I said, somethingand they said, oh yeah,
that's so-and-so, he'sa great engineer.
He doesn't like towear to clothes.
The coin-op engineers atAtari, they were great.
And on the consumer side
Howard was one of thebest programmers.
He was one of the bestof those engineers.
At the heart of the creativeprocess is the Programmer.
I tried to create basicallya sensory experience
that evokes a certainfeeling in the user.
I mean I tend to programfrom a concept.
I mean it was,I was made for this.
I mean it's just whatI was made to do.
[music]♪
January 11, 1981
I showed up for myfirst day of work as a
Game Programmer at Atari.
So do you remember the firstday you showed up here?
Absolutely.
My first office mates wereTod Frye and Rob Zdybel.
And I had an understandingthat there was a lot of dope
that was smoked atAtari when were there.
And so on my first day atwork I brought a joint
'cause I didn't wantto be, you know,
uh, I wanted to bea courteous guest.
And so I showed up...
Which by the wayis a good lesson
for our younger viewers.
If people are doing drugs,bring your own, so you fit in.
Tod walks in, shutsthe door, and says,
I'm going to get high in here.
So if you don't want to bearound this, you better leave.
No, actually here I said,I brought a joint.
And he sort of lookedat me and went
[makes noise]
I'm going to smoke somereal stuff. Okay.
That was my introduction.
That was my first day at work.
We wanted peoplewho worked hard
and yet had fun at doing it.
How do we mix up so that wedon't know the difference
between our work and our play.
The company's motto was,we take fun seriously.
But we used to say, wetake fun intravenously.
And, uh, they didn'tlike that very much.
No, I, I don't know why.
The party atmosphere wasactually a calculated
plan to incentivize.
I would set quotas.
If the quotas were metI'd throw a keger.
He would justroll out in a car,
go to a liquor store.
And they gave someonea company credit card
and they came back witha bunch of booze.
And we consumed it.
Over there is wherethe hot tub was.
Inside on the first floor,there's some great stuff
that went on in that room.
Over here, here'sthe hill that,
you know one day I waswearing a Dashiki shirt
which I was veryinto back then.
And I would do somersaultsdown the hill.
I might have had somecocktails that afternoon
at that point.
Did you know that you wereentering this crazy party
atmosphere that it would be?
No, even though Iwas told I was,
I had no expectation thatit could really exist.
The best recruiting tool wecould have for an engineer
was to bring him overto one of our parties.
Hey, how's it going?
What's happening people?
And they thought, hey,I'm a nerd.
There are girls here.
They're talking to me.It's good.
That was the culture.
These guys are the lifeblood of the business.
And they do what they wantto do. And that's fine.
In some ways things happenedto me over the course of
3-1/2 years here that made thenext 25 years really tough.
Because it establisheda standard of what
professional life and lifein general could be.
And I never let go of thethought that my life could
still be this or better. I justdidn't know how to do it.
It's really intense for me
to come back here.
This is the first time I'vebeen back here in 30 years.
And this was the place where Iwas introduced to what life
could be for me.
What a working life couldbe, what real creative
satisfaction could be.
What doing something reallymeaningful could be.
Those are all things that comeback to me in this moment.
And it's just very intense.
So, what reallyhappened in 1983?
People heard the rumors,but Atari denied the dump
ever took place and eventuallypeople forget about it.
But. with the growthof the Internet
and all it's best and worstlists, E.T. and its burial went
from small town gossip tofull blown urban legend.
By the mid 90's videosbegan to appear online
that seem to suggest that
anyone with a shovel couldgo out in the desert
and dig up the buried games.
That's what I thought too.
But it wasn't closeto that easy.
Joe had spent yearsresearching the burial,
if his information wascorrect the games were not
only deep underground, theywere covered with concrete.
Joe was still waitingthrough a sea of red tape.
But, if and when thecity approves his plan
to excavate the landfill,
he was going to needmore than just a shovel.
He would need giantyellow digging machines.
And a bunch of guys in hatsand vests to operate them.
This is a, one of the photosof the actual burial
when they did it.
So we're looking at like 15feet down to hit the concrete.
Under concreteit's mostly dirt.
It's just a, it's thebottom of the pit.
What's that thingright over there?
That's a motor grader.
A motor grader.
Yes. That's for reallyjust fine grading,
you know, like thehighways and roads.
And fine planing large areas.
So we conceivably mightneed that for this, right?
No. No.
But, I mean, you might.
you could bring it out before.
You might want to parkit so it's ready.
No, not really.
We're fine No,We'll be alright.
Oh, I don't know.Not my field.
I am concerned that Joe'smoving kind of quick
and we do need tothrow some brakes on
and slow it down.
The opposition comes from,um, environmentalists maybe
within the community.
And the concern is, is thatAlamogordo also may have
something else buried in thelandfill that may be hazardous.
And we may not know exactlywhere this location is.
Nobody really and truly has deadhonest records as to where
everything is buried out there.
And we're talking potentialmercury laced pigs,
malathion, possible DDT.
There's potentially lead inthere and maybe some other
dangerous metals that arein those cartridges.
I don't want to be in an areawhere we might crack open
a sealed tomb, so to speak,of these hogs where
mercury gas comes out.
So I don't want theStephen King novel,
oh we hit the wrong spotand all of a sudden we are
evacuating Alamogordo.
That is unacceptable to me.
If there's a problem that the
New Mexico EnvironmentalDepartment perceives,
we're not going tobe able to proceed.
[digital game sound]
Until I'm satisfied it's safe,it's not going to happen.
At least within my power.
I, you know, there's somuch power that I have.
♪ [music]
So for my first game
they wanted me to do acoin-op conversion.
Although I had only beenthere for about a week,
I went to my manager,
I said, you know something,I said, this game
Star Castle on the 2600is just going to suck.
I know it's going to suck.
And I said, but I thinkI can take some of the
key things that I thinkmake it a fun game
[digital game sound]
and rework it so that itwould work on the 2600.
And so they said,okay, go ahead,
do what you want to do.
So how did you learnhow to program a game?
I just read the manual andstarted writing the game.
No one had ever donelike a backstory
for a game before.
And thought this is my firstgame and I wanted to be
involved in every part of it.
I want to make it the bestgame it could possibly be.
So, I wrote this sevenor eight page story.
I stayed up all nightwriting this story.
Knocked it out.
And it was a science fictionstory about flies that
get on the first interstellarspaceships and mutate,
evolve and take over thesolar system but now
they're under attack by thisother monster and stuff
and that's the shortversion of the story.
So I thought, wellI need to name it.
So what I did was I namedYar because that's
Ray spelled backwards.
And Ray Kassar wasthe CEO of Atari.
Right, so I've got hisname keyed into the type.
And I thought Revenge,a great action word.
You know,so that's compelling.
And so that's how itbecame Yars' Revenge.
♪ [music]
When Yars' Revengecame out,
it was a hit.It was huge.
Games that could look likeYars' Revenge looks,
that could draw that kind ofstuff were like magical.
Even though Yars' Revengemight look primitive.
You know, it looks likethe Super Conducting
Super Collider comparedto a lot of the games
that were out thereat the time.
I remember the first timeI put the cartridge in
I was like, what is this?
It really was a very innovativeshooter of that era.
Getting a ship to fly around,so it's fun just to fly the
ship around, is a trick,especially on that hardware.
The enemy was cool and scary.
And it felt reallygood to defeat it.
You feel like it's yourvictory when you beat
those challenges.
And you feel like it's yourdefeat when they beat you.
And you'll keep comingback because you didn't
lose by being cheated.
You didn't lose 'cause thegame did something unfair.
You lost because youweren't quite good enough.
And all of the great gamessit right on that edge.
I remember playingYars' Revenge one day
and we happened on thistrick that let you,
if you were on this right spotat the right time in the game,
and it was in between levels,these initials came up.
And the initials were HSW.
To us it was someweird mystery.
Like we had to figureout what HSW meant.
And finally in one of the gamemagazines they published
what HSW meant.
And it turns out HSW meansHoward Scott Warshaw,
the guy who madethe game.
Yars' Revenge wasthe first game that
Atari ever did wherethe programmer's name
went out with the cartridge.
Yars' Revenge hada lot of firsts.
And that was justone of them.
Yars' Revenge is the bestselling original game for the
Atari 2600.
It sold something likea million copies.
Every reviewer at the timethought it was one of the
best games ever put out.
You know it made a lotof money for Atari.
In 1981, this is a companythat made operating
profits of something like$375 million dollars.
One of today's greatestmarketing triumphs in the
entertainment fieldis videogames.
If the business...
It was beyond comprehension.
The fastest growing companyin American history.
This was an explosion.
Even though, those of uswe're in the middle of it,
but shaking heads going,oh my God, this is amazing.
We were the most successfulcoin-op company.
We were the dominantconsumer company.
And we sat around literallysaying to ourselves.
What are thecategories of games?
What are the capabilitiesof the coin system?
Where is this industry going?
Everything that Joe has
put together on thisAtari graveyard,
so far seems to becoming true.
I am in favor of theAtari games being
dug up because it isthe largest myth
in the gaming world.
I believe that Joejust thinks it will
be an outstandingevent for Alamogordo
and a way for us toget on the map.
On Tuesday, Alamogordo'sCity Commission approved a
deal to dig in the old landfillwithin the next 6 months.
The City has given itsokay, and now the State
has given them approval.
Film crew will bein Alamogordo.
The documentary film crewwill start probing the dump
for their strange buriedtreasure at 9:30am.
[drilling rig]
So this is an impressivelooking machine out here.
What the hell is it doing?
What this drilling rigdoes is it goes down,
straight down, and ittakes out core samples
and brings up whateveris in the ground.
We've narrowed itdown from 300 acres
down to about 5 to 10 acres.
And so what we're doing now istrying to get it even closer.
'Cause we're looking forthings like somebody's mail,
you know, the postmarks, uh, newspapers,
things like thatlooking for dates.
And we're looking forSeptember of '83.
Nothing good yet.
Don't you think people aregoing to be disappointed
if we dig it up and we don'tactually find the ET games?
I mean wouldn't that be...
It would be very disappointingfor every, all of us,
all the work, 3 years of workput it into this thing.
So what do we do then?
You're just going to dig up thewhole landfill or something.
No, we can't, theEnvironmental Department
will not allow that to happen.
You're saying that there's apossibility that this could
turn out to be agiant waste of time.
I think I said it before.
I'll bet the car,I won't bet the house.
Most everybody, at leastin the Western world
has played a videogame of some kind,
they've gone to an arcade.
They know the Atari brand.
They certainly know ET.
And so I thinkthere's a universal
curiosity about this game.
You know, something did happenthose couple of nights in 1983
that I think it merits aserious investigation.
So why did I decideto go to Alamogordo?
I'm very much interested in theimpact that a particular game
or an industry has made withina cultural and social context.
What's striking about theAtari ET game in the
Alamogordo landfillis that they're
there and not in museums.
I think this is what excitesmany people who keep
this narrative alive, is theywant to get these items.
They want visible proof.
They want some kindof tangible evidence
that dump did take place.
I've been professionallymaking games since about '94.
But more than that,
I'm a, I'm someone whosebeen chiefly doing a lot of
historical work with videogames, trying to preserve
video games and get peopleto understand that video
games are more like art.
And so I've been doinga lot of advocating
preservation and education.
I always thought one day I'mgoing to get over and see
finally once and for alllike where it's buried.
I almost don't even reallyneed to know what's in it.
I almost want to keepthat mystery alive.
To me, under thatlandfill is actually
the burial site ofan entire industry.
Because what affectedAtari at the
time affected everyone.
And everything that I thoughtwas going on forever stopped.
And it stopped almost at thatsame moment that these,
whatever is there was buried.
So for me, I want to find outwhat, what's, what is there.
It's like opening theArk of the Covenant.
[laughs]
It's like, you kind of wantto look but is my face
going to melt off?
I don't know. I have told mywife that I will be going
to New Mexico.
And she asked me, why?
And I started toexplain, and she said,
I don't, I don't need to know.
[laughs]
You can just go do it.
You want it Ernest on screen?
Uh, whatever, Ernest islike my fancy writer name,
Ernie is whateverybody calls me.
Well, actually, alright, sowe'll use your writer's name.
How would youdescribe yourself?
Uh, a screenwriter, novelist,gentleman adventurer.
The thing about having an Atarifor me it was simulator.
Like I could simulate beingIndiana Jones or simulate
being E.T..
[digital game sound]
Having access to that andcoming from a family of
like modest means,and not having to,
you know, beg for quartersand just being able to play
as much as you wanted,that was such a huge
part of my childhood,and fed my imagination.
And that was theinspiration for,
Ready Player One, my novel.
The idea of what if WillyWonka had been a video game
designer and he heldhis golden ticket
contest inside his greatestvideo game creation.
And that all came fromfinding those Easter eggs
in all those Atari games.
I feel like a kid this pastweek like getting ready
to go to camp.
Alamogordo and theAtari graveyard.
For me it's like holy ground.
And that was when I realized my
DeLorean is alreadyin New Mexico.
I just have to fly to SantaFepickup my DeLorean from
George R.R. Martin,whose using it for the
Back To The Future screeningand drive it down to Alamogordo.
I could stop at thevery large ray.
Also, hit Roswell andthen go to Alamogordo.
And be there for theexcavation of the
Atari graveyard.
As soon as those, you know,tumblers kicked into place
I'm like the most epicroad trip of all time,
I have to go.
♪ [music]
It's like I'm Indy going toWestoros to meet Doc Brown.
And save E.T.
♪ [music]
[screeching tires]
[birds churping]
[horn honks]
Boom.
Uh, have a great drive, anda great time in Alamogordo.
George, thank you so much,I appreciate it, man.
My pleasure.
[engine starting]
♪ [music]
[tires screech]
♪ [music]
[tractor digging]
Right there.
There it is.
This is a good piece ofevidence because right here...
Is that the date right there?
Right there.
You got Sunday, October2, 1983 right there.
That's good, right?
Yeah, Atari was from the 23rdto the 29th of September.
So this is like a week later.
Well, it's not even a week,it's like 2 or 3 days later.
Well, I'm not thatgood at math.
Atari's would havebeen on the bottom.
Then garbage from thefollowing weeks would have
been piled on top fromthe following week.
Right. So where are the games?
No games yet.
No Atari stuff at all?
No, not yet, not yet.
Okay.
I love the challenges.I love the mystery.
I love the- -the especiallywhen people say
they'll never be foundor they're not there.
That just what makes thechallenge even better.
I put 3 or 4 yearsof this research,
the planning, the politics,the environment department.
I mean many, many, manythings to get to this point.
Yeah now, it's veryimportant we find 'em.
So back in the early '80smovie licenses for videogames
were just startingto come into vogue.
And I think Raiderswas the first one.
So they needed someone to doRaiders of The Lost Ark.
I think what happened wasYars was very successful.
And so they wanted meto do a big game.
And then it wasup to Spielberg.
So when I went down andmet with Spielberg,
and if Spielbergwould have said,
you know, I don't think he'sreally right for the game,
they would havesent someone else.
Can Indiana Jones escapefrom the forces of evil in
Atari's Raiders of TheLost Ark adventure game?
What was the reception of theRaiders of The Lost Ark game?
It was another amillion seller.
Raiders was huge.
I mean I can honestly say,
I'm the only programmerin the history of
Atari where every oneof my games that was
released was amillion seller.
The word meteoriccomes to mind.
And now,Steven Spielberg
brings us E.T.,the Extra-Terrestrial.
Spielberg says,man, you know,
my pictures they open slow.
And, uh, they build and thehold and duh-dah-da-da-dah.
And I just looked at him andI didn't know anything.
I said, not this one.
It was ET, I said, it'sgoing to open huge
and it's going to stay huge.
Okay, the movie comesout, it's a huge hit.
And we want to do thecartridge of it.
Okay.
You know, every time youtry to take some kind
of a property and moveit into another medium
for a pure profit motive,you get trouble.
Specifically, withrespect to games,
you know, it's like, oh youknow, like let's go see
if we can exploit thismovie as a game.
You know, maybe we couldmake extra money out
of a profitable franchise.
Now there was a negotiationgoing on between the
Atari people and thepeople at Universal
about what we weregoing to pay.
And Steve Ross who wasthe CEO of Warner
got in and whateverthe reasons,
he agrees to a dealthat is so off the
chart nobody believes him.
But he does it.
It was $20 to $30million dollars,
it was some crazy number.
Steve Ross basicallywas trying to woo
Steven Spielberg to cometo work for Warner
because he recognized thatSpielberg was a genius.
And that all playsinto this story.
But we, we acquired therights to E.T. and it was,
we had to have the gameout for Christmas.
And that's a problem.
One afternoon I'm sitting inmy office and a call comes in.
[phone rings]
And it's Ray Kassar.
And he's calling fromMonterey.
So I take the call
and Ray Kassar comes onthe phone and he says,
Howard, can you doET in 5 weeks?
And I said, yes I can.
And he goes:
Okay. In 2 days I want you to bein San Jose Executive Airport.
They'll be a Learjetwaiting for you.
Be on that jet, be ready topropose the game to Spielberg.
[phone hangs up]
During that meeting when Iflew down on the Lear jet
to go meet Spielberg andpresent the game to him,
even though weonly had 5 weeks,
I still wanted to innovate.
So I proposed a 3Dworld that the game
was going to take place on.
And the huge scope of whatI was trying to achieve.
It walks that line betweenreally trying to make something
happen and venturinginto the impossible.
And walking off a cliff.
The emotionality of thegame was supposed to come
out through the interactionof the characters.
You have the FBI agent who'sinterested in what you have.
That's why the FBI agent
just steals stuff thatyou were holding.
You have the scientist who'sinterested in who you are.
The scientist actually carriesyou back to the city,
because they want to study you.
And Elliott comes in to saveyou, there's times when you
can call Elliott andhe help you out.
And so those are the kindsof things that I had
that I thought createdpossibly some sentiment.
But, and at one pointSpielberg says to me,
he goes, you know,couldn't you do something
more like Pac-Man?
No Steven, we need to doa game that's fresh.
We need to do something that'sreally worthy of this movie.
It's not how simple tomake a complicated game.
It's how complicated agame can you make subject
to the constraint ofeasy learnability.
My job is to producea cartridge
that is going tosell for Atari.
A typical VCS game
at the time took5 or 6 months.
And this was goingto be in 5 weeks.
You might think, no, nobodycan do a game in 5 weeks.
Like most people in thedepartment would think.
But I don't think that way,I think, yeah I can do that.
The word hubris comesto mind.
I mean whatever it is Imight have been full of,
I was overflowing withit at that point.
Because if the game can'tmake the Christmas market,
the game is a total waste.
They're going tomiss their window.
So that was the big thing.
It was the, uh,$22 million dollar bet
that you could turn thegame around in that time.
I had a development stationmoved into my home.
So I could be basically workingon this game almost 24 hours.
We found that there was agood probability of success
if we took a coin operatedgame and just ported over
to a game that we couldplay on the VCS.
ET didn't have that.
[video clip]
Hello. Is some body out there?
ET, the video game.
Wow.
It's the video game thatlets you pretend you're E.T.
Okay. So the game is done.
And one of the conditionsI asked for was that
Steven Spielberg is the onewho approves the final game.
So Steven Spielbergplayed the final game
and approved it for release.
Howard, who was a, uh,a certifiable, uh, a genius
went off and about a numberof weeks later came
back with a conceptand a, uh, game plan.
And I was, I was amazedat how difficult it was,
and yet at the same timewhat fun it was to play.
You've played it?
I've seen the final game.
Are you happy with it?
Oh yeah.
Yeah. It's my favoriteOf course I'm biased.
I made the movie.
[laughs]
So, Steven Spielbergthought it was okay.
So, I thought, alright,I'm good with that.
And, uh, not that I'mblaming him for anything.
No, of course not.
But, uh...
But, it's his fault.
The videogame that letyou help E.T. get home.
Just in time for Christmas.
After E.T. was released
and there was a greatsense of relief that we'd
actually made the schedule,and everything was good.
And then the game wentout into market.
And it was very high onthe Billboard list.
And again, things were good.
I got E.T. I think itwas Christmas of 1982,
if I remember correctly.
And I thought I was like,gonna be the guy on the
street who had ETbefore everybody else.
It turns out everybody I knewgot E.T. that Christmas.
After a while people startgoing by me in the halls,
people from other buildings,people from marketing
and management and they'resaying things like,
you know, you knowsomething Howard,
you did a great job,we don't blame you.
That was reallysomething what you did.
You really camethrough for us there.
And we don't want you to thinkwe think anything else.
This is really isn't aboutyou, don't feel bad.
It's okay. It's cool.
And I'm thinking like, what thehell are they talking about?
E.T. was a really hardgame 'cause it was the
kind of game that, um,was brutal, unfair.
Uh, it didn't makea lot of sense.
I grew up in, in Londonand there was a video
game store in my town that,uh, let you rent them.
I mean I don't knowwhat the rental was,
like 50 pencefor a weekend.
And I still remember feelinglike I wasted my money,
because it just, it was bad.
People aren't liking it.
And people aren'tliking it a lot.
And what made it particularlybad was my memory
of the movie was so great.I loved the movie.
Everyone loved the moviewhen it came out.
It's a great movie, stillis, a classic movie today.
And so this massivechasm that existed
between the quality of the movieand the quality of the game
that it was based on, I thinkjust made it seem that
much more like aslap in the face.
Okay, well maybe itwon't sell $6 million,
maybe it'll only sell $4million or $3 million,
that'll be okay.
And then there's like returns,people are returning the game.
They made too many.
How many they madeI don't even know.
They made like 4million cartridges.
That means there could bemillions of carts coming back.
So what do you do withuseless, worthless product?
How do you get rid of it?
Bury it. That's apretty good answer.
Well career change isnot anything new to me.
I've been through a numberof different careers.
I actually went and got a uhCalifornia Real Estate License
and then a Broker's Licenseand I did that for a while.
And I did that justlong enough to know
that this was like the last
thing in the worldthat I wanted do.
And now I am alicensed practicing
psychotherapist in California.
And I am a very uniquetherapist in that I have a
Master's of Engineeringand I also have a
Master's of Arts inCounseling Psychology.
I mean I am the SiliconValley therapist.
I am very good at translatingbetween English and nerd.
And this is the firsttime, since I left Atari,
that I feel doing whatI really love doing.
So, it took me thirty yearsto get back to a place
I don't feel I'm a step downfrom where I used to work.
And thats many manydifferent jobs.
I know this dig is coming upand I'm going to be there
and I am going to bestanding right there.
And I am going to be litereallywatch my past be dug up.
And that's a weird kindof thing to anticipate.
My hopes are in one way myexpectations are in another
and I don't knowits going to be.
I really don't know whatits going to mean to me
when if something comesup if its there.
[tractor engines]
♪ [music]
[truck engine]
[tractors digging]
Part of Archeology isthat sense of community
and the fact that werehelping each other out um
to address these issuesthat were interested in.
And most of the time weredoing it on a volunteer basis.
It's going to be interestingto see how they' decide to
excavate in order to clear abetter area you know so that
we can get at morecontent that we need.
One of the workers down theredid confirm to finding a
Donnie and Marie poster.
Yeah, yeah. Which is awesome.
Well basically, becausewere going to treat this
is a salvage excavationwe will dig a trench.
We'll go through andexcavate the material
in the pits that we dig.
At which point we'll sendthem up to the tables
we'll sort throughthe materials.
We'll weigh it, countit, identify it.
And uh yeah, that's the plan.
So, what's happenedso far today?
Uh, basically I starteddigging in the hole and the
trucks have already startedgoing through the train.
So, just thatpeople understand,
and probably right now
I am cutting to anawesome diagram of this.
[digital sound]
There's like 20 feet of garbagefrom the top of wherever the
games are buried.
Garage and dirt.
Sorry. Garbage and dirt.
Um in the diagram it'sgoing to be pretty clear.
And so that all hasto be taken away?
Right?
Ya, we will get thevast majority of the
hole excavated out.
And so have we found anything?
Have we found anyAtari games or?
No, nothing. Nothing.Nothing yet.
And, and Son, I mean, youseem pretty nervous.
Right.
Are you?
Oh yeah, terrified.
Terrified.
Okay. Um, I'm gotta be honest.
I'm nervous as shit.
I don't know if that willhelp motivate you guys.
But, um...
Yeah, that did it for us.
Alright. Yeah, was that good?
We, we need to getback to work.
Great! Go team!
Son, calm down buddy.
♪ [music plays]
People say nerd or geek.
I say enthusiast.
I love things and I lovepeople who love things.
If you just spent all your timefocusing on all the amazing
like art and entertainmentthat's being made,
there's so much happening nowyou can't even take it all in.
♪ [music]
It's like the dig.
When I tell people like theright kind of people, about it.
Their like I can't believeits finally happening
and that your goingto get to be there.
You know likeI get goosebumps,
goosebumps, justtalking about it.
♪ [music]
♪ [music fades]
A local video gameshop in Austin, Texas
Game Over Video Games,
gave me every copy they had ofevery one of Howard's games.
Little known fact E.T. has thevery first official video game,
Easter Egg everin a video game.
Warren Robinett had thefirst ever in Adventure,
but he did that withoutanyone knowing.
Howard asked if he could put
Easter Eggs in the gameand Atari said yes.
If you go find the geranium
and you make thegeranium regenerate,
it turns in to Yar from Yar'sRevenge and he flies away.
First time that happened tome when I was 11 years old,
I shit myself.
And if you do it again itturns it to Indy from
Raider's of the Lost Ark.
So, Howard hid charactersfrom this game,
and this game, and putthem in this game.
Hello.
Good afternoon,welcome to the lodge.
Well, it's great to be here.
Are you guys checking in?
Absolutely.
Great. Can I get the last name?
Warshaw.W-A-R-S-H-A-W.
Howard.
That's me.
So, it's the day of theactual dig and my wife
and I are in a van on theway to the landfill.
It was a strange feelingand I was like nervous,
and I didn't reallyunderstand why.
But, I just had this sense.
Like a tingly thingthat something is
going on here today
and as we pulled in tothe landfill there were
already people there. there'smore people and as we go on
there's more people.
And it just keepsgoing and going.
♪ [music]
This has sort of felt like areligious pilgrimage to me.
Called up some friends and sayhey can we get down there.
And I asked my brother-in-lawif he wanted to go.
And I said heck lets doit. Lets check it out.
And my wife said whatever.
♪ [music]
It's one of those weirdmonumental video game
based events that only comearound once a century.
This is our generationsurban legend.
Billions of cartridgesout in the desert.
Growing up you always readlittle rumors about it.
I grew up playing an Atari whichmy babysitters had given to me
and actually had the E.T. game.
My friend and I, she and Ifor fun on the weekends
would actually drive around andtry to figure out where would
these Atari games be buried.
It's like the funof the legend.
It's like looking forthe Loch Ness monster.
What did you think
of the E.T. game when youplayed it last night?
Uh. It was awesome.
Cause in my opinion Ilike terrible games.
♪ [music]
To come back and relivethe feeling,
I got from the game issomething I couldn't pass up.
I just wanna learnabout the urban myth.
See if it's really buried outhere.
I just came out here to bepart of video game history.
I just had to see whetherit was true or not.
You have to be a specialkind of nerd to be able
to wanna to drive 28hours for a video game.
♪ [music continues]
The myth that ET the videogame for the Atari 2600
is the worst videogame of all time.
It would be so great to debunkbecause it's just not true.
And also to redeemHoward Scott Warshaw,
because he is anamazing video designer
and his game was great.
[laughs] Cool car.
Yeah, I like that.E.T.'s in there.
This morning coming to adump in a small town in
New Mexico.
There were people linedup to waiting to get in.
When is the last time yousaw a line of people
waiting to get in to a dump.
It totally took me by surprise,but, in a delightful way.
♪ [rock music continues]
You never go to a dump.
Unless your throwingsomething away
and here we are trying to findtreasure, buried treasure.
I think they'll find something.
The cartridges had to gosomewhere why not here.
There is a lot of openspace great place to dump
a million cartridges.
This is a definitepossibility there is games.
This is archeology for thetime I grew up so nostalgia
for anything from thatera is pretty high.
[tractor engine]
Now the wind is reallypicking up on cue.
On cue.
Uh, the weatherhere in Alamogordo
is awesome if youlike sandstorms,
and a impending doomfilled cloud of white.
Whoa.
[crashing sound]
Wow, this is getting brutal.
Yeah. Sorry, thisis, this is brutal.
It's getting very windy.
Basically what's happening isthe white sands are blowing
in from White Sands.
And, uh, covering everythingand it's really shitty.
They're saying this islike an historic wind...
Really?
Today,
That's what somebody told us.
To think were in themiddle of a sandstorm,
really this is what's going on.
And for me it was almost likethe big sandstorm right at
the opening ofClose Encounters.
Where people are wearingthe goggles and bandanas
and everyone is like gatheringaround because found
something and they can'tbelieve what they found.
Are we the first?
This is Tony Johnsonfrom Denver, Colorado
who ran up to mein my DeLorean.
And was like, Ifound something.
I found something.
And Tony is going togo down in history
'cause he found the firstevidence of Atari hardware.
Whoa, whoa, that's pretty huge.
Right, there it is my man.
Uh, ladies and gentlemen wehave an, an announcement.
So Tony, tell us whatyou just found.
Uh, an Atari 2600joystick top.
[crowd cheering]
So Tony,where did you find it?
Walking to the bathroom.
[crowd laughs]
So was it a surface find?
Surface, surface find.
Yeah, like we knowwhat a surface find is.
Right?
Well, a surface find is justsomething that, you know,
you're walking around, you'relooking down on the ground.
You see somethinginteresting, you pick it up.
It's totally out ofarchaeological context.
What are the odds that, thatlike blew out the hole?
I actually thinkthat's pretty good.
I mean the wind is blowingfiercely in that direction.
You know, the stuff iscoming out of the bucket.
You know, we've been findinga lot of interesting things,
the date fromaround that time.
Anything from Atari?
Uh, nothing from Atari yet.
How can you authenticate this?
Can you carbon date it?
[laughs]
No, it's much toorecent for that.
[digital sound]
There are really two thingsthat we could be dealing
with when taking a lookat these cartridges
if they're actually there.
The first thing is that theyjust loaded the trucks
with these cartridges, andthen they dumped them.
And that's the bestpossible scenario.
Because you can pull 'emout and I bet you most of
them will be playable.
You know, they're, they'vejust been in there for,
you know, since 1983.
Trashbags.
Stroh's beer cans,wood, tons of wood.
Were right aboutwhere we need to be.
But there's still no Atarito try this at all.
We've been here fora while already.
It's tedious, thewind is horrible.
We're wondering if they'regoing to find anything or not.
It's like a nylon cord. Uh,and a big red wrapper.
I don't think there isanything in that hole except
rattlesnakes and scorpions.
If it's buried, it is probablyfor a reason and it should
stay buried.
I wasn't thinking thatsomething was really
messed up until late '83.
To me Atari was nevergoing to go away.
It was this thing that wasjust part of my life.
And the thought that there couldever be a day where there was
no Atari, or no Atari 2600,uh, it never crossed my mind.
ET comes out and ETis not so great.
And somewhere toward the endof the year I'm starting to
wonder are we makingour numbers.
Which leads to one of theworst nights of my life.
On December 7, 1982I get a call from
Dennis Groth who wasthe CFO of Atari.
And he says, Manny,here's the new budget.
And it's a huge shortfallfrom what we had been told.
Warner Communications saidtoday that its once blooming
Atari business lost another$180 million dollars
in the third quarter fortotal losses this year
of more than half abillion dollars.
I'm starting to see enoughsigns in the company that
things were startingto unravel.
It was unravelinghard and fast.
And we didn't haveany ready solutions.
Several Atari executives,including Atari's Chairman,
Raymond Kassar, soldWarner stock shortly
before the negativeearnings announcement
and the decline in theprice of the stock.
Kassar denies any wrongdoing or impropriety.
But a number of stockholdershave sued Warner.
So they got rid of Ray Kassarand they brought in a guy
from Philip Morris.
And when he came in Atari had10,000 employees and within
about 4 months or 5 monthsAtari had 2,000 employees.
I really got that we had lost80 percent of our staff.
In the short run the marketis frequently irrational.
In the longer runhopefully it's rational.
The wild upside ride was over.
I did not understandthe extent of the
downside ride that was coming.
This is slipping away.
The train is derailing.It's not going to keep riding.
And what am I going to do next?
It was a big emotional blow.
It was my baby.
And I hated to see it abused.
New Media Magazinecredited E.T.
with destroying thevideo game industry.
That's interesting.
I think that's reallyinteresting that
I could be singlehandedlyresponsible for toppling
a billion dollar industry.
E.T. comes out, theindustry dies.
Howard's associated with that.
And I think that's, that'seffected his career and what
people will remember him for.
And that's, that's pretty bad.
The fact that a guy's careergot destroyed because he did
E.T.,given the circumstancessurrounding doing E.T.,
is completely unfair.
I mean it's sad,that's really sad.
There's this videogame Walk of Fame.
There's also the showcalled D.I.C.E where they
give out lifetimeachievement awards,
Howard's not in that.
He's not, he's not putin that same group.
They kind of keep him out withall these things and it's,
it's kind of a shame.
The day I left Atari,when things really fell apart
and it was over and I'mliterally carrying my garbage
out to my car to leavefor the last time.
That was a very depressingmoment for me.
Because I felt I was losing
the most importantthing in my life.
And I, I also knew
it was so unreal that I'dnever be able to recreate it.
The burial in Alamogordo isbasically Atari's funeral.
The burial of thosecartridges represents the
burial of that beautiful era.
And that may be what'sinteresting about it.
I don't know.
I mean that's a whole psychologyI'm not going to go near.
But, but it may bebecause it is about the,
the death of Atari,that's what it is.
And we can't control howthe past returns to us.
We may get somethingthat no longer
resembles an E.T. cartridge.
We may get somethingmonstrous, something twisted,
something decayed.
We may not even know whatwe're looking at
if unearth Atari's E.T..
Part of me feels that when you
finally crack open this placeand you start to look,
it's going to be a lotlike the Ark of the Covenant.
It's just going tobe a bunch of sand.
But another part of mehopes that what's found
there is going to lead to a lot
more understanding and a lotmore discovery about what,
what really happened.
Shit! Do you see what I see?
What's his name?
Joe, Joe.
What?
What is that right there?
They want me to come in?
Let's go.
So what's up?
Did you guys find something?
I should have broughtmy binoculars.
Can you show me?
They're bringingsome stuff over
to the archaeologisttable right now.
Let's see what's going on.
Can everybody hear me?
We found something.
Uh, the archaeologistshad confirmed it's from
1983 28 feet down, it'sthe E.T., the video game
intact in its box.
[crowd applauses]
It's an emotional, anemotional event that
backed up thislegend with fact.
And it's incredibleto be a part of it.
Good job Joe!
I wasn't nervous 'till we gotdown to that where he was
almost reaching his max limit.
But yeah, it was a big weightoff my shoulder when,
when that bucket came upand the ET was intact.
Congratulations there.
Thank you.
I didn't think you weregoing to find 'em intact.
But I thought for sure they'dbe crushed and ruined.
Now I got goose bumps.
And it's not becauseof the dust storm.
What's this moment like for you?
Look at all the excitementthat's been generated today
over something Idid 32 years ago.
It just, it's an immenselypersonal thing.
What it took to makethese games was a lot.
And this one was done in5 weeks, that was one of
the hardest 5 weeks of my life.
So I need a little moment.
And I'm just soexcited to be here.
A lot of these peoplewho were complaining
about E.T. they neveractually even played it.
And ever since then Iwould talk to people
and they would talk about E.T.,
and I'm like, well, haveyou ever played the game?
And it would come outthat they didn't.
They would just kindof continue this myth
of the game beingreally horrible.
It is a good game.
It wasn't the worst thatAtari had to offer.
There were like, I remembergetting a game called
Fire Fly.
[digital game sound]
That is the worstgame for Atari.
That's what everybodyshould be focusing
their efforts on, not ET.
Let met be clear, theworst game ever made was
obviously Trespasser.
So I just want to beclear with that.
With a shit load of justhorrible poorly made cranked
out Atari games to
call E.T. the worstone is just shameful.
In contemporary game culturewe like trashing games.
I don't mean puttingthem in landfills,
but verbally trashinggame design.
It's become fashionableto sort of regard E.T.
as the worst videogame of all time.
In fact, it makes everybody'slist as the number one.
And I'm going to go out on acomplete limb here and say,
and maybe people willattack me for this,
but I'd rather playAtari's E.T.
than any Call Of Duty.
You know, in context giventhe time and the situation
that Howard had to livein, to program that game,
it really is anastonishing masterwork.
He made an amazing fuckinggame that's a whole self contained
world in 5 weeks, that'seven more impressive.
I don't know any human beingwho could have turned E.T.
in the timeframes involved intoa really successful game.
He should be applauded for beingable to have done anything in
the time that was allotted.The scorn should be heaped
upon those who thought thatit was even rational to try
to build a cartridge ina month and a-half.
The analogy that peoplealways use for these
first timers, for peoplewho try something first,
uh, is the firstpenguin analogy.
Where the first penguinwho jumps down the hole
through the ice is theone who invariably gets
eaten by the seal.
But if there wasn'ta first penguin,
then the penguin is goingto be going out through the ice.
So it sucks to bethe first penguin,
but somebody's got to do it.
So, it turned out thatJoe Lewandowski
had been right all along.
The games were buriedalmost exactly where he
had predicted and nomercury filled pigs
popped up out of the ground.
So, the legend of theburial was true.
Or was it?
When the archeologistcataloged all the games
there were a bunchof E.T. cartridges,
but no where near themillions that were
such a big part of the legend.
In fact, E.T. made up 10%of the total games found.
The rest included some ofthe best games ever made.
Deafender, and Centipede, and
Yar's Revenge.
There was even one copy ofAdventure, which I snagged.
The burial wasn't a coverup or done out of shame.
It was a warehouse dumpdone by a company in
financial distress.
At the time the Alamogordolandfill was just the
most practical solution.
E.T. wasn't buried becauseit was the worst game ever.
People called it theworst game ever because
it had been buried.
And as a result it gotblamed for destroying
an entire industry.
The game and it's creatorhad taken the wrap
for a crime they didn't commit.
The notion that E.T. causedthe demise of Atari
is simply stupid.
It's just stupid.
Atari committed suicide,
it was not homicide.
And it wasn't theE.T. cartridge.
It was a concomitanteffect of a lot of
missteps in technology, indeployment, in marketing.
So, people say E.T. destroyedthe video game industry.
I'm sure I've heard that before,but it's just really funny.
No, the behavior pattern thatcreated the conditions for the
E.T. failure is what destroyedthe video game industry.
The cause of the fall wasAtari trying to sell
yet another 10 millionAtari 2600s into a market
that was saturated.
E.T. didn't destroyAtari. It wasn't good,
but it didn't destroy Atari.
That's one of thosethings people say.
And the reality of lifeis if enough say it,
it becomes thetruth for people.
A simple answer that is clearand precise will always have
more power in the world thana complex one that is true.
There's another E.T. 6 pack.
What I would like to seehappen is I would like to see
whatever remains are recoveredwill then find their way
into a museum in theservice and game industry.
Well, you know, theCity of Alamogordo
owns the games and whathave you that came
through there, by virtue of thefact they're in our landfill.
We might be able tosell them on e-Bay.
So if another terrible videogame needed to be buried,
would you be prepared to letit be buried in Alamogordo?
Absolutely, come on down,we'll bury your game.
Atari was the first greatconsumer company to come
out of Silicon Valley.
It was exciting,it was different.
It was the first engagementthat a generation
had with computers.
So, a generation grewup being introduced
to the computer ageby Atari games.
We brought a whole massivenew entertainment medium
into public consciousness.
So for a whole generation weare the definition of the
video game era.
And it's cosmic.
These guys neverreally got their due
for really startingthe whole industry.
Three lives wasinvented by a person.
Flying a ship around wasinvented by a person who
had to figure outwhat that was.
And it was so good that itwas copied everywhere.
And because it was copiedeverywhere and because it's
so ubiquitous it's impossible toremember why it was so special.
I think Atari's legacyis that we started the
Silicon Valley ethic ofengineers as rock stars.
It didn't exist before.
I think the casual cultureand the meritocracy
didn't exist before.
I believe these areunderpinnings of the
things that made andcontinue to make
Silicon Valley a specialplace in the world.
And, uh, and Ithink that Atari
will continue toendure as an icon of,
uh, of innovation.
♪ [music]
[garage shutting]