E.T. Atari - The Myth is a reality

Corholio

Today a crew have been digging in the New Mexico desert to discover if one of gamings biggest and weirdest myths is actually true, if copies of the dreadful E.T. Atari game are actually buried in a landfill in the desert.

The photos below show that indeed it's true.

MitchKoobski

I once did a presentation on this in college and the lecturer considered docking me marks because he said I could have just made the whole thing up.

http://ie.ign.com/articles/2014/04/26/the-dig-uncovering-the-atari-et-games-buried-in-new-mexico-desert

A brief history: In 1983, the New York Times and other papers reported 14 trucks of unsold Atari products were driven from a factory in El Paso to a landfill.

This represented the end of an era. With Atari's business in ruin (thanks to a number of flops, including E.T. and a shoddy port of Pac-Man) and the general public losing almost all interest in home console games, 1983 was a bleak year for the video game industry. What's become known as the "video game crash" was due in large part to Atari's collapse, and E.T. was Atari's final, and costliest, blunder of that era.

Although the burial was widely reported at the time, Atari employees, including Howard Scott Warshaw, the rushed programmer in charge of getting E.T. shipped in just 6 weeks (games took 6 months or more to make in the early 80s), have disputed the claim. Additionally, if anything was buried, it was crushed and paved over -- even before the elements took their toll. Whatever the case, E.T.'s journey from shovelware to shovel is an important historical story that finally has an ending.

Duggy747

Wasn't there other games like Raiders, Centipede and a bunch of other Atari titles dumped there too as they were already going through a financial mess, as opposed to there being just a mass of ET cartridges because it was so horrible?

Still, a funny piece of video game history.

MitchKoobski

Yup. They found copies of other games too, it was just mostly ET.

TinCool

Wow, that was really interesting. Mad the stuff that goes on and to find the stuff 30+ years later

calex71

This made Miss Calex's night ....... "ha I told you" was her triumphant response to seeing this

zero19

Kinda wish they didn't excavate, I liked the whole mystery of it.

degrassinoel

someone had to do it..

Canis Lupus

So can they prosecute them now for illegal dumping :P

Corholio

Does anybody else get the irony of them finding aliens in a New Mexico desert? :pac:

Barlett

I'd always taken this as a given that it was true...it was certainly reported that way

Retr0gamer

Barlett wrote: »

I'd always taken this as a given that it was true...it was certainly reported that way

Yeah I felt that way as well. The story has been twisted over the years though. ET wasn't buried because it was crap. Atari were moving at the time and it was cheaper to dump their excess inventory than to move it with them. It's why there's more than just et in the dump.

CastorTroy

Any pictures of all the carts? All I've seen so far is one cart and some manuals

syklops

How bad does a game have to be for its creators to dump it in the desert? Pretty bad I reckon.

Thats pretty bad.

Dozen Wicked Words

syklops wrote: »

How bad does a game have to be for its creators to dump it in the desert? Pretty bad I reckon.

Thats pretty bad.

It looks a bit like E.T. (for a 2600 attempt), the game looks terrible though.

Amalgam

I played something ET related on an Atari 400 or 800, for longer than I'd care to admit.

Would the cartridges still work? ..isn't the air very very dry.

Corholio

CastorTroy wrote: »

Any pictures of all the carts? All I've seen so far is one cart and some manuals

All traded into CEX apparently.

CastorTroy

Time for another relaunch

I actually remember the ad and the song.

I think we should take this story with a pinch of salt, I am not denying the games were never there but c'mon finding hundreds of copies 30 years later among tonnes of other rubbish and as CastorTroy already posted only one cartridge has been shown so far.

Let's not also forget that this story is to promote a future documentary to be aired at a later date.
I also read a news report which commented on how around 200 people had turned out on the day to witness the event but conveniently only a few dozen were still around when they eventually 'found' the games. It just seems a bit staged that is all.

deathrider

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I think we should take this story with a pinch of salt, I am not denying the games were never there but c'mon finding hundreds of copies 30 years later among tonnes of other rubbish and as CastorTroy already posted only one cartridge has been shown so far.

Let's not also forget that this story is to promote a future documentary to be aired at a later date.
I also read a news report which commented on how around 200 people had turned out on the day to witness the event but conveniently only a few dozen were still around when they eventually 'found' the games. It just seems a bit staged that is all.

At the back of my mind there's a little green ET looking dude screaming "This must be a hoax. Is it April 1st again? You're being lied to", but it's hard to hear him over the sound of my wanting this to be true. It's so outrageous that it would just be incredible if it was entirely true. Perhaps people were shuffled away before the carts were found so that it wouldn't ruin the awe factor of the documentary by people filming it on phones/iPads/3DSeseseses/whatever and posting it on youtube.

Also, I reckon a "landfill copy" of ET would go for a ton of cash on ebay.

Stone Deaf 4evr

deathrider wrote: »

At the back of my mind there's a little green ET looking dude screaming "This must be a hoax. Is it April 1st again? You're being lied to", but it's hard to hear him over the sound of my wanting this to be true. It's so outrageous that it would just be incredible if it was entirely true. Perhaps people were shuffled away before the carts were found so that it wouldn't ruin the awe factor of the documentary by people filming it on phones/iPads/3DSeseseses/whatever and posting it on youtube.

Also, I reckon a "landfill copy" of ET would go for a ton of cash on ebay.

I reckon its 100% true, and that the story only evolved into something of a legend as the years went by where it was suggested that this was all done in the dead of night and in complete secrecy. If the waste management system over there is anything like here, dumps are well managed and records are kept of their locations and the general type of material that was dumped. It cant have been that hard to look at old Atari financial records and see that there was an invoice for transportation of stuff to a dump, and then to consult public records as to the location of the dump. not rocket science.