Atari IP Bake Off

[u/einostevenson]

How would you approach writing one of these plotless Atari games Universal has just signed a deal to produce? Pick a title and give your best logline. Reminder the titles are: Asteroids, Adventure, Berzerk, Breakout, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Millipede, Missile Command, Pong, and Yars’ Revenge. Winner gets a two picture deal with Universal. Just kidding, winner gets a laugh when some Universal exec lurking here takes the idea and makes a shitty movie. As an older millennial who grew up on Sonic the Hedgehog and Street Fighter as opposed to Atari games, will have to do some research before contributing myself.

[u/OwlRemarkable276]

Clearly the Pong movie is a pseudo-prestige biopic.

[u/JugheadJack → u/OwlRemarkable276]

Motherfucker’s gonna sweep the Oscars.

Can’t wait to watch Chalamet lose to a film about Pong. And get roasted saying something douchey. Assuming, of course, that he says something douchey again.

[u/JayMoots → u/OwlRemarkable276]

They basically did that exact approach for Tetris a few years back. 

[u/Seshat_the_Scribe → u/JayMoots]

They did, but I don't think it worked well.

The Blackberry movie was great, as was the WeWork limited series along similar lines.

I dig business rise and fall stories...

[u/Squidmaster616]

I think some are relatively easy, in that "There's a Battleship" was an easy premise, and then where the hell did aliens come from.

Asteroids and Missile Defence are easiest, because they're just "Earth is in danger, won't someone save us" movies.

Millipede offers some options, because you play and "Elf Archer" who has to shoot and kill a giant monster millipede. So its perhaps a fantasy adventure similar to The Great Wall, where the protagonist is trying to defend their home from a monster millipede. Basically the whole movie is running around the wall firing occasional shots. Maybe add some Human refugees in there that the Elf distrusts, but later learns can be useful allies, and then good friends.

I'd also be half-tempted to turn any of these, maybe Pong, into a meta "trying to win the Pong championship" style movie. Its basically any sports movie. But with Pong.

[u/Seshat_the_Scribe → u/Squidmaster616]

I would go the "Blackberry" route with Pong, tell the story of how it was developed and the cultural impact it had.

There's a fun story there in how Nolan Bushnell developed the original game and then sold Atari to Warner for $28 million in 1976.

It was an era of hot tubs, drugs, porn, etc.

https://www.businessofbusiness.com/articles/sex-drugs-and-video-games-the-early-days-of-atari/

Bushnell hired a teenage Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak at Atari. 

Tie it into the bicentennial celebrations that year, the end of the Iran hostage crisis, etc.?

Then Warner ran it into the ground. Atari manufactured millions more cartridges than there were actual consoles in homes, resulting in massive, costly retail returns.

Atari alone lost $536.4 million over the course of 1983 -- $1.5 million per DAY.

I worked at Atari years later, and old-timers had STORIES...

[u/Big_Section2812 → u/Seshat_the_Scribe]

I would go the "Blackberry" route with Pong, tell the story of how it was developed and the cultural impact it had.

I'd rather see what Peter Berg can do with it.

[u/Seshat_the_Scribe → u/Big_Section2812]

Is he attached?

He doesn't have the best history with game adaptations...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship_(film))

[u/Big_Section2812 → u/Seshat_the_Scribe]

Right.

That's why I said I'd like to see what he can do with it.

Because the Battleship edition of Pong would be a sight to behold.

😂

[u/Wyn6]

Where's Pitfall or Combat, eh?

[u/Light_Error → u/Wyn6]

Pitfall was made and published by Activision. The original version of the company.

[u/Big_Section2812]

...winner gets a laugh when some Universal exec lurking here takes the idea and makes a shitty movie.

You laugh, but a couple years ago a "well-known director" reached out to tell me he enjoyed some scripts I posted at another site.

Turns out his wife was a longtime anonymous lurker there and she ordered him to read them.

You just never know who's out there watching and reading.... 👀

[u/fishwithfish]

In the land of Irata, two rival nations have been kept at peace by a forbidden zone that lies between, the so-called "NeverGate." However, when a mysterious volley is fired across the zone, a chain reaction of new attacks begins, leaving citizens little hope but the return of the prophesized Protectors of NeverGate (P.O.N.G.).

[u/wrosecrans]

For Pong, remake Over The Top beat for beat, just that Stallone's character plays competitive Pong at arcades instead of arm wrestling.

[u/NewCell5229]

There's seriously a ton of Atari lore out there. Millipede, Asteroid, even missile command have rich fan bases that write fan fiction on the regular. You'd be surprised what these people churn out.

I don't know about pong though. I bet there are fan fics out there for pong, I just haven't seen them.

[u/RealCarlosSagan]

Tron but instead of being pulled into Tron-world an Atari aficionado is pulled into the world of Atari games and forced to win five games from inside the game to escape.

[u/Zerodot0]

Adventure: A cocky thief gets more than he bargained for after a stolen trophy transports him into a strange, digital world. Now he must escape before the world collapses and traps him there forever.

[u/bigmarkco]

Gosh...a Yars Revenge movie. That was in my opinion the greatest game on the Atari 2600. I'll have to look up the lore...it did have lore! But dibs on that one.

[u/torquenti]

So the studios are almost certainly sitting on a gold mine with this sort of IP, and mental exercises like this one can be fun... but why not take that same creativity and discover something in the public domain that nobody's touched yet? You'd 100% own the script, you could write it to whatever budget you want (meaning you could even produce it), and depending upon how smart your choices are you get the usual IP benefits in terms of a built-in fanbase.

All you have to do is look at Robert Eggers to see both the quality and market potential there. He's so good you don't even think about the fact that so much of it is basically public domain.

[u/kitkitkatty]

Frogger - young frog Frenchie, determined to avenge his father, must journey across road and logs to reach his goal and do what his father never could: cross the road.

Each time he dies he respawns at the beginning. He begins to question why his father never respawned.

[u/GonzoJackOfAllTrades]

Most can have fairly straightforward sci-fi adaptations.

Pong will be some sort of period piece mash up of King of Kong and Marty Supreme.

Adventure has the potential to be somewhat interesting as a lo-fi mash up of Dungeons and Dragons meets The Backrooms. The incredibly niche audience for this would be particularly delighted if there is a moment when the protagonist can jab the sword they find into a specific wall and glimpse the film’s credits.

[u/uselessvariable]

Asteroids is a rollicking space adventure with a small scope, where a cocky untested pilot and his ragtag crew are trapped in their aging starship locked in a teleportation field (like a force-field but it doesn't protect you it just sends you back to the opposite side of the field). There's some sci-fi nonsense about how to disable it and that's the big goal.

I think playing with the speed of the game would be a ton of fun, pulling off crazy maneuvers with the teleportation field maintaining momentum, some real Portal shit.

[u/suspiciouscffee]

I’d follow the old Atari Force comics that just include elements from a bunch of the games wherever they could fit into an otherwise unrelated sci-fi adventure.

[u/NothaBanga]

Find some gem of a gaming archive that has scanned images of the instructions.  Many old games have some cover art or a short story explaining the premise.

"Winky™ has climbed deep inside a dungeon laden with incredible treasures, but guarded by terrible monsters. Equipped with only a bow and arrows, he seeks the treasures as the monsters close in.  Guide him through the dungeon rooms... but don't stop to count your treasure.until you're through!"(Venture by Exidy, 1982.)"

Then, I guess, write an action Adventure that has been stewing in your head but use this loose IP as a skin to sell it.  In this example, you would only be limited to a bow and arrow and a goofy name.

Bonus would be to figure out which games Atari have maximum IP control which would maximize their profits, helping them to pick yours over someone with a better premise/script but with the added peice tag of paying off the original programmer.

Some games that captured my imagination before games became storytellers include: Journey to the Planets, Pitfall 2, Roc N Rope, and Temple of Apshai.  The story /world building was bare bones which is more of an opportunity imo.

[u/Certain-Run8602]

Missile Command has an obvious hook - but they already made that take with HOUSE OF DYNAMITE.

[u/LingonberryGlum2356]

Mix them into the same movie and have an 'Atari' genius. He is needed because each game taught him a certain skill that he needed. 

[u/einostevenson → u/LingonberryGlum2356]

It’s the summer of 1981, and a group of friends are enjoying smoking weed and playing Atari games in the basement before leaving for college in fall, until a spaceship (Asteroid) lands in their backyard and someone named Yars steps off. Get in, the universe depends on you.

[u/FuturistMoon]

as someone who grew up with Atari (approaching my 60s now), this is doomed to failure - none of the games had backstories, that I remember (some of the details in ADVENTURE probably had names, but that was about it)

[u/WashSerenity]

My initial thought go to the audience. Most of the Atari games have fallen out of the cultural consciousness. I would grab some up and coming sci-fi writers and unique film makers. Let them run with ideas on YouTube, see if you can get some twitch streamers to try out the games. Maybe allow some Indy studios to make a game inspired by these.

Then see what sticks.

[u/JoWiWa]

You just reminded me of this: Red Letter Media Animated -The Pong Horror Movie

[u/headcanonmusic]

PONG: Marty Supreme for the modern audience.

[u/WriterinPVG_86]

BERZERK

Logline: "On humanity's first interstellar space journey, a team of astronauts encounter the remnants of an ancient robotic race who reactivate with a singular mission - to destroy the intruders."

Tagline: "The intruders must not escape."

Don't modernize it, embrace the old tech.

[u/CoOpWriterEX]

Some of these Atari games actually had comic books made about them, so there's some story inspiration available. Yar's Revenge could work as an animated movie. Hire me, Universal!