Atari was at the top of the video game business in the 1970s with arcade games like ‘Pong,’ ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘Asteroids’ and their home console, Atari 2600. But after the company’s founder Nolan Bushnell sold the company, and was later replaced as CEO, the company went downhill. Several engineers left to start other companies, including Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who began Apple Computer. By the ’80s, the company had to bury truckloads of its failed ‘E.T.’ game in the New Mexico desert. ”’Video Game Invasion: The History of a Global Obsession,’ a two-hour documentary executive-produced by Palisadian David Carr and his business partner David Comtois, traces the industry’s bursting upon the scene in the ’70s, followed by its many ups and downs. At age 39, Carr has lived through the evolution of video games from their infancy to today’s $20 billion-a-year industry. ”The documentary premieres Sunday night on GSN (formerly the Game Show Network) at 6 and 9 p.m. GSN (Channel 108), which is expanding beyond just game shows to video games, dating games and reality games, came up with the idea. ”Carr and Comtois lined up 40 interviews with video game pioneers and experts. ‘All these folks were off-the-wall, wildly colorful pioneers in a business with no boundaries,’ Carr told the Palisadian-Post. ‘We couldn’t have asked for better subjects.’ ”He traveled around the country to conduct many of the interviews. ‘There’s no consolidated place for the video game industry. There are little shops all over the world.’ ”The documentary, named on TV Guide’s ’10 Reasons to Stay Home This Week’ list, is hosted by professional skateboarder Tony Hawk, co-creator of ‘Tony Hawk’s Underground’ video game. ”Using archival photos, old-fashioned consoles and lots of video game footage, the documentary begins with the primitive video games which were created in the ’50s and ’60s. In 1972, the Magnavox Odyssey was introduced, a home TV console with a primitive ping-pong game. The kit came with plastic overlays to put over one’s TV screen and create different games. ”Around the same time, Nolan Bushnell founded Atari, and Al Alcorn developed ‘Pong.’ They built on the concept by adding sound and a score and the ability for the ball to speed up over time. ”’Pong’ was a hit in arcades and Atari’s ‘Space Invaders’ soon followed, which had the innovation of a high score display. Then came another Atari hit, ‘Asteroids.’ ”The Japanese game makers exploded onto the scene with ‘Pac-Man,’ which featured a memorable character that could be licensed. Nintendo came in with ‘Donkey Kong’ and ‘Mario Brothers,’ followed by ‘Super Mario Brothers.’ Meanwhile, several other companies joined the competition. ”The next important phase came in 1982, when the TV console was replaced by the personal computer as the most popular mode to play video games such as ‘Tetris.’ ”The documentary also covers the Senate hearings on violence in video games, which led to the rating system, and the next wave of TV consoles such as Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox. ”New and ever-more-inventive games, such as ‘Sims,’ which allows the player to create his or her own characters and run their lives, followed. And now a new generation of games is available on cell phones and PDAs. ”’The pioneers of video games’Trip Hawkins, the founder of Electronic Arts, the biggest publisher of video games, and John Romero, who created ‘Doom’ and ‘Quake”are now involved in cell-phone gaming,’ said Carr. ‘It’s the new frontier of video games. ”’These pioneers are used to working with rudimentary computer processors. Cell phones right now have a similar lack of computer power. ‘Tetris’ is a great computer cell-phone game.’ In Japan, Carr said, interactive cell-phone games are especially popular. ”Carr has lived in the Palisades for 12 years with his wife Carol and children Stephen, 10, and Jacqueline, 7, who attend St. Matthew’s School. The family is very active at St. Matthew’s Church. In addition, Carr is a coach in the Palisades Pony Baseball Association and the Santa Monica Bobby Sox girls’ softball league. ”Carr believes that video games are popular because of their increasingly lifelike graphics and audio and the interactivity of video games, compared to more passive media. ”As a parent of young kids who play video games, Carr hopes the documentary helps demystify the new world of video games for parents. ‘In general, there is a lot of fear among parents. It takes education. I love the movie ‘Raging Bull,’ but I won’t take my 10-year-old son to see it. I love ‘Halo,’ but I won’t let my son play it. As more people understand ratings and the different video game genres, parents can catch up a little bit.’ ”He and Comtois, who met at Boston University, founded Beantown Productions 13 years ago. The company specializes in creating marketing for television, and makes promos for shows like ‘Seinfeld,’ ‘The Simpsons,’ ‘Cops,’ ‘King of the Hill,’ ‘Pyramid’ and ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ The two are currently working on a TV show that will allow viewers to play a video game within the context of the 30-minute program. In the course of this, Carr has rediscovered video games for the first time since playing Pac-Man in high school and has been playing them as research for his show. ”The producers also hired a full-time researcher to find old footage and photos of early video games. During the eight months of working on the documentary, they found numerous old consoles and video games on eBay and played them in order to get footage of the different games. ‘We created our own museum of the history of video games in our office,’ Carr said.
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