E.T. has been found in New Mexico

[TigerClaw]

The Urban Legend about Atari burying copies of ET on the Atari 2600 has finally come true, They managed to dig through the Landfill in New Mexico and they found a bunch of copies.
http://kotaku.com/e-t-found-in-new-mexico-landfill-1568100161

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--QH10KA6X--/j1uoqjumnnvyuaz4brmh.jpg

[electric_sheep]

Holly crap, this changes everything. Imagine what else can be true...

[xChri5x]

ALIENS! :o

[sdp]

I always thought this was just an Urban legend, I don't know why so many people always "discovered" this trivia recently, I read about it in magazines as a kid in the 90s and all the time it was mentioned on gaming websites and X-Play and other things in the early 2000's. Kind of sad the Urban legend was uncovered though since it made for a fun imaginary situation, in fact the AVGN movie is based on the myth alone and it's kind of ruined now, some things are better off as a mystery.

I'm also surprised no one ever discovered it before, apparently there's plenty of documents for permissions about it. With how obsessive some people are I'm surprised some community or person didn't do this years ago.

[Ninjinister]

When was this ever an urban legend? I'm pretty sure it was confirmed before any of you blokes were born.

[TigerClaw]

They are also shooting a Documentary about this.

[Peanut]

When was this ever an urban legend? I'm pretty sure it was confirmed before any of you blokes were born.

It's been up and down since the rise of the Internet. There were some high profile people in the industry, older ones, who were scoffing at the chances of anything being found right before all of this was going on. So, yes, it's been turned into an urban legend in the last decade at least.

[AT-Man]

I wanna hear AVGN's opinion about this.

[Refractive Reflections]

I'd still like to know, from a business perspective, why all those cartridges were all sent to New Mexico and buried there, rather than just cheaply dumping it at the local landfill. Unless the company was that desperate to hide the eyesore of so many unsold cartridges to protect their company's image.

[shuriken]

^^ The second one. The game was that bad.

[ObiWanFan4life]

^^ The second one. The game was that bad.

^ The game was bad, but not THAT bad. Now they have room for Ride to Hell retribution.

[Peanut]

I'd still like to know, from a business perspective, why all those cartridges were all sent to New Mexico and buried there, rather than just cheaply dumping it at the local landfill. Unless the company was that desperate to hide the eyesore of so many unsold cartridges to protect their company's image.

It WAS a landfill. It was chosen because they crushed their stuff before burying it and didn't allow picking. They buried it because they wanted to make sure people didn't know they were burying brand new stock, like you said, to protect their image. The reason there wasn't more put on top of it was because the well publicized dumping pissed off locals and made the town pass some laws that stopped dumping there.

None of it had anything to do with how bad the games were. Though their lack of quality, and especially the ridiculous amount of copies manufactured, led to the entire thing.

[Whatswiththeheadbands?]

I wonder what they are going to do with the copies they found.

[turtle1237]

Had a feeling it was fact, I really wanted to belive that they dump that game in a landfill in NM. But now we can rest at ease knowing its fact lol.

[snake]

:lol:
This is hilarious!

[Candy Kappa]

I wonder if any of the more better preserved cartridges are playable?

As playable as the game was of course.

[electric_sheep]

I wonder what they are going to do with the copies they found.

Probably put them in a museum, couple of them atleast. If anyone manages to get ahold of one of them he could sell them for a big price.

[ObiWanFan4life]

Probably put them in a museum, couple of them atleast. If anyone manages to get ahold of one of them he could sell them for a big price.

Who would want them? Why would they want with them?

[electric_sheep]

Who would want them? Why would they want with them?

It's a myth came to life it's one of the greatest video game legends. Someone's probably wa,nting one for their colection...

[The Stryker]

What will idiots who try to sound like insiders talk about now?!

God help us if a study comes out saying that Superman 64 is NOT "The worst game ever OMG you guys".

[Refractive Reflections]

It WAS a landfill. It was chosen because they crushed their stuff before burying it and didn't allow picking. They buried it because they wanted to make sure people didn't know they were burying brand new stock, like you said, to protect their image. The reason there wasn't more put on top of it was because the well publicized dumping pissed off locals and made the town pass some laws that stopped dumping there.

None of it had anything to do with how bad the games were. Though their lack of quality, and especially the ridiculous amount of copies manufactured, led to the entire thing.

Thank you Peanut. :) I guess I was wondering why not have the unsold products scattered in several different landfills rather than having them all in one spot in the desert, with so many semi-trucks delivering to that area, and thus inadvertently creating attention to a normally quiet area (and creating the urban legend)... even if the place had a no scavenging policy.

Meh, I guess hindsight is 20/20 though. :ohwell: Then again, I don't know the full story of it all. :lol: Thanks for the info as always Peanut! :)

[TigerClaw]

I wanna hear AVGN's opinion about this.
He posted about it.
http://cinemassacre.com/2014/04/26/e-t-atari-landfill-unearthed/

[Wingnut]

I knew this story would re-surface at some point.

This entire debacle always wreaked of horrible management and cocaine abuse, not urban legend. Still cool to see official confirmation, though. Imagine what the guys working the heavy equipment were thinking when they dug these up.

"Gonna miss dinner tonight honey, got called in. We're excavating video games from 1983."

[Lou 500]

Good, now they can dispose of them properly. To the incinerator!

[billbot85]

I used to own this game...

It's fascinating that this was once considered an urban legend, now it turns out to be true after all. I wonder if any of those cartridges would still work after being buried for so many years :tlol:

[Leo656]

I must be old. I only ever heard this reported as fact, never urban legend. I also heard most of the cartridges (it wasn't just E.T., it was a whole bunch of unsold games) that got dumped were crushed first. So they probably wouldn't work.

[Dawnatello Turtle Chick]

To answer a few questions others asked-

About 250 of the unearthed copies are given to the documentarians, the rest, the city of Alamogordo will be selling off to benefit the city.

Apparently, at least some of the copies (despite being crushed) are still playable- keep in mind the shipping boxes were crushed, which left a buffer of several pieces of cardboard between the crushing force and the actual game cartridges.

And apparently, once delving deeper, it appears (by reading not only the originally leaked article, but the other linked articles within that one) that it wasn't the "fabled" E.T. dump site necessarily, but one of several Atari company dump sites where company employees had been tasked with cheaply disposing of an overstock of unsold products- this one from the El Paso plant. So the majority of the ET cartridges are still unaccounted for, but are probably strewn about a few other dump sites like this or have otherwise been destroyed. We probably will never find out where all of them went, nor should we probably care too much about it...

This article (from the first article) shows near then end why they dumped the El Paso plant contents and how they had to have concrete poured over the dump site due to kids trying to pick out the dumped games.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/diggers-ready-unearth-ataris-et-games-0

[Shiro Kame]

That game, along with ATARI's Pac Man for the home console almost destroyed the gaming industry had it not been for Nintendo. That's what happens when you rush a project. (They only spent about 6 weeks on E.T., and was thus filled with glitches, and of course was so bad that that game ended up in a landfill in New Mexico)

[Wingnut]

(They only spent about 6 weeks on E.T., and was thus filled with glitches, and of course was so bad that that game ended up in a landfill in New Mexico)
Yeah, but we're talking about Howard Scott f*in Warshaw.

6 weeks? No problem.

[Dawnatello Turtle Chick]

Yeah, but we're talking about Howard Scott f*in Warshaw.

6 weeks? No problem.

Yes, but even he couldn't save the giant hot mess that was Atari at that time. If he'd had more time, they probably could have released a slightly more polished game and it *may* have been better received. But honestly, with as many financial faux pas and releases of absolute drivel (releasing games just to release games, without much thought given to quality) as they were making there at the end, even that probably wouldn't have made a difference. Atari was like Rome, so large they could only fall from within.... and that they did.

They gave us lots of really good titles, but towards the end, they just wanted to fling money at the drowning ship and hope we'd all keep buying games. Informed consumers everywhere cried "Et tu Brute" as Atari appeared to be manically playing their stradivarius whilst dancing about the burning ruins of our joy of gaming... We rebuilt it... but not in a day- and only with the help of Japan.

And thus ends my metaphorical history of gaming. :trolleye::tlol::tlol: