Atari E.T. Burial to be Excavated

In 1983, the Atari video game company was in financial trouble.

The market was saturated with extremely bad games, too many pong consoles and the consumers were tired of paying high prices for underwhelming products, leading to a market crash. People refer to this as the Video Game Crash of 1983.

In short, Atari had over-produced millions of copies of Asteroids, Pac-Man and E.T (considered one of the worst games in history) and even worse, customers were returning these games en masse wanting refunds. Stuck with millions of unsellable games and consoles, they decided to bury it all at a dump in Alamogordo NM. In an effort to prevent looting, apparently it was crushed and concrete was poured on top. Wikipedia

This has always been a subject of interest among the retro-gaming community, and we will apparently get to see what's inside the grave.

Alamogordo's City Commission approved a deal with Canada-based film production and entertainment company Fuel Industries to excavate the Atari dump site and create a documentary surrounding the Alamogordo landfill legend.

According to the contract, Fuel Industries has access to the landfill for the next six months, which would cover the 30-year anniversary of the alleged dump. Source

Awesome! I can't wait to watch that documentary and see what's down there... I predict that some stuff could still be intact. Boxed Atari games and consoles can sell pretty well on eBay depending on the condition.

Thought I'd share this for the ATS gamers, cheers!

Love stuff like this. I've been watching a couple really good documentaries on Netflix about the arcade and pinball boom back in the day.

i read that the burial of those ET games is just a myth and in truth they just re-used the cartridges.
i think i read it in a comments section though, so i've no idea.

reply to post by Rikku


I heard it was a myth as well, but it's apparently true.

Here's an article from September 28, 1983 in The New York Times.

The company has dumped 14 truckloads of discarded game cartridges and other computer equipment at the city landfill in Alamogordo, N.M. Guards kept reporters and spectators away from the area yesterday as workers poured concrete over the dumped merchandise.

An Atari spokesman said the equipment came from Atari's plant in El Paso, Tex., which used to make videogame cartridges but has now been converted to recycling scrap.

reply to post by Dominar


This will still not undo what a crappy game E.T. was...

Now Pitfall was epic!

Why am I the only one that LIKED the game ET???

reply to post by HomerinNC


You're not, it was one of my favorite Atari games... although I never could figure out exactly what the hell I was supposed to be doing and E.T. died every time!

One of the first video games I ever played.

It was/is soooo awful!!! It's pointless, you can only do 2 things. Make your neck grow, and die. That's it.

reply to post by dave_welch


Haha you're right, I remember getting so frustrated with that game. I recently picked up an Atari 7800, I'll have to add ET back in the collection and play it for nostalgia's sake lol.

To be honest, the majority of those games were pretty terrible... Thank you Nintendo for saving the market and bringing us the NES

Originally posted by HomerinNC
Why am I the only one that LIKED the game ET???

It might have to do with age. To this day, i'm a pretty picky gamer, but I loved the ET game at the time. I was 7-8 if that was released in '83, so maybe you just had to be in that sweet spot where you don't know any better and were obsessed with ET at the time? The game is actually kinda coming back to me now, and i'm LOL'ing inside a bit (I know, that doesn't make sense.) need to find an emulator with it and reminisce a bit!

ETA: regarding the documentary-to-be, I can't see myself watching it. Anything of this sort will always be haunted by the disappointing memory of Geraldo excavating "Al Capone's locker" for hours on end to find absolutely nothing.

Blow on the cartridge and put it in.....see if they'll play.

reply to post by Dominar


I'm not so sure about that. Pitfall, Asteroids, Kombat, Space Invaders, Missile Command = Fantastic games!

reply to post by Dominar


that is awsome do we have any numbers on how much of what was buriedthere? does that make sense i sure you all know what i mean

reply to post by dave_welch


So true! That's really all I remembered about the game. You would fall into a pit, hit the red button to make your neck grow and start to levitate, but in the end E.T. always died. Then apparently Elliot would find you and the game started all over again. I think I liked the game only because I was determined figure out how the hell to beat it. Sadly I never achieved that goal and it has haunted me ever since....poor E.T. ....I let you down

Hmmm... A game with no point you say?

I simply must have it! XD

I like video game oddities...

reply to post by dogstar23


I remember using ET's teleport ability to zip out of trouble when the govt agent was about to grab you lol

Hmm, this is interesting.

Apparently AVGN (Angry Video Game Nerd) will somehow be involved in the excavation for his new movie. He just tweeted this...

AVGN Movie Teaser - Landfill Excavation