25 Dumbest Moments in Gaming

[Ze_ro]

The "I, Robot" Story:

 

Back in 1983, Atari made an arcade game called "I, Robot" (See the KLOV entry here). It was the first arcade game to use filled polygons I believe (Take that Hard Drivin'!), and it was a fairly complicated game. Most likely because of this confusion, and the strangeness of an entirely 3D game, it didn't do very well in the arcades.

 

Rumor has it that Atari manufactured 1,000 "I, Robot" machines, but only 500 of them were sold. The rest were sitting in a warehouse gathering dust. Atari didn't want shareholders to see all these unsold machines, so they decided to ship them to Japan. However, the machines never actually made it to Japan, as the crew of the boat had orders to push all the machines overboard halfway through the Pacific. Thus, Atari wasted 500 arcade machines in order to avoid shareholders questions. Nice going Atari.

 

I admit, it's not as big a mistake as their Nintendo deal, and it's not as famous as their E.T. burial, but it's a pretty ugly story nonetheless. By the way, "I, Robot" is emulated in MAME, and is actually a decently fun game... just too ahead of it's time I guess. Give it a try if you get the chance.

 

--Zero

 

PS - Damn, I can't talk about "I, Robot" without sticking it in quotations every time, otherwise it ruins sentances

[tom2600]

Thanks for retelling the story Ze_ro! I had never heard it before. I have played it recently on MAME and it is a pretty cool game, albeit a little hard to control with my keyboard. No question, it was technologically ahead of its time and an underappreciated game. At least the fishies in the Pacific will appreciate it. :wink:

[Ze_ro]

I've never actually played the arcade version, but I imagine the control doesn't translate well.

 

I also can't verify the whole story... it might be complete rumor for all I know (KLOV verifies the "trip to Japan", but doesn't mention the burial at sea). Sounds pretty typical for Atari at the time though. I would imagine that if they DID do this, they probably salvaged the cabinets and just trashed the boards themselves. I think Atari used the cabinets for some other games.

 

And after reading that KLOV entry, I finally noticed the Big Brother and 1984 references... weird...

 

--Zero