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Posted: Apr 27 2014 12:20 am

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/diggers-ready-unearth-ataris-et-games-0

Associated Press wrote:

ALAMOGORDO, N.M. (AP) — A decades-old urban legend was put to rest Saturday when workers for a documentary film production company recovered "E.T." Atari game cartridges from a heap of garbage buried deep in the New Mexico desert.

The "Atari grave" was, until that moment, a highly debated tale among gaming enthusiasts and other self-described geeks for 30 years. The story claimed that in its death throes, the video game company sent about a dozen truckloads of cartridges of what many call the worst video game ever to be forever hidden in a concrete-covered landfill in southeastern New Mexico.

The search for the cartridges of a game that contributed to the demise of Atari will be featured in an upcoming documentary about the biggest video game company of the early '80s.

As a backhoe scattered a huge scoop of 30-year-old trash and dirt over the sand, the film crew spotted boxes and booklets carrying the Atari logo. Soon after, a game cartridge turned up, then another and another.

In other words, they found the lost E.T. cartridges, among numerous things buried by the former video game giant. For years, I've believed it to be true, as many websites claimed it true, but the pictures definitely confirmed it. What are your thoughts of this story?

UsaSatsui's Youtube Channel · Posted: Apr 27 2014 01:24 am

I was unaware there was a dispute about it. I had read it absolutely happened and there was even a big concrete slab in the desert they poured over it because they didn't want scavengers there. Atari dumped a fuckton of stuff off there when they were going under just to get rid of it, and it's not surprising some of the things dumped were ET carts - they did have a ton left over.

Posted: Apr 27 2014 12:00 pm

I was also unaware of any dispute. I seem to recall someone who worked for Atari at the time confirming it many years ago. I was reading about this and apparently Microsoft had a part in paying for this documentary. Good for them for taking the time to fund something about video game history.

Posted: Apr 28 2014 02:13 pm

Meh.

I've heard that the whole exhumation is a ploy by Microsoft for original TV programming, but other than that.

Title: Comic Author Joined: Dec 12 2008 Posts: 1179

I've been hearing from folks that the entire dig has been a farce, as far actual archaeology is concerned. Seems that archaeology students dig up old landfills all the time, and all sorts of things about this one have been very off in a lot of ways. Stuff like, the speed at which the dig happened, the amount of documentation of what was dug up, preserving the dig site (while most things here were quickly removed from the site before being documented), and the fact that they did not find a single location with millions of any single cartridge, E.T. or otherwise, like so many reports from the time claim. To that end, they didn't even report finding hundreds of thousands of them, or even tens of thousands. From what little info has been revealed so far, it's looking more like retail leftovers that were found, rather than the mythical dump site so many claimed it to be. That there even is so little info released so far on it is questionable in itself, something like this, especially in this internet age, should have facts like the whoa already available.

This was very much a publicity ploy and a show put on for entertainment value far more than it was anything trying to actually be remotely scientific about it.

Posted: Apr 28 2014 11:20 pm

I didn't suspect it was rehearsed that far.