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E.T. Found In New Mexico Landfill
skipkent sends this news from Kotaku:
"One of the most infamous urban legends in video games has turned out to be true. Digging in Alamogordo, New Mexico today, excavators discovered cartridges for the critically-panned Atari game E.T., buried in a landfill way back in 1983 after Atari couldn't figure out what else to do with their unsold copies. For decades, legend had it that Atari put millions of E.T. cartridges in the ground, though some skeptics have wondered whether such an extraordinary event actually happened. Last year, Alamogordo officials finally approved an excavation of the infamous landfill, and plans kicked into motion two weeks ago, with Microsoft partnering up with a documentary team to dig into the dirt and film the results. Today, it's official. They've found E.T.'s home—though it's unclear whether there are really millions or even thousands of copies down there."
Put 'em back in the landfill where they belong. Or better yet in an incincerator.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
WTF are they digging this up for?
I was hoping, for just a moment in though, that possibly this is the news I have been waiting for. Proof of alien life. Instead, it was something better! I can now tell my uncle I was right about the landfill!
pretty sure I played this game. no wait. dug up games on a landfill site, that was it, different type of game.
Considering you spent most of the game stuck in a pit, they were just returned to their natural habitat.
An "urban legend" refers to something that sounds true, but may or may not actually have happened (though usually not, and when actually real, usually they blend several unrelated events into one narrative). It usually has a moralistic component to it, where somehow the naughty teenagers or the careless company or what-have-you gets their just desserts.
By contrast, the burial of ET in the desert meets none of those criteria. Atari dumped millions of cartridges in the New Mexico desert to dispose of them, we have an abundance of documentation from the era that it really happened, and the only "moral" to the story involves not expecting your developers to cover your $12M bet with their own asses in the month before Christmas.
Otherwise - Very cool, to see these recovered. Now they can properly recycle them as eWaste, rather than just letting them slowly leach lead into the ground.
not trying to bash Atari but making a million cartridges is kind of a waste of raw materials. hope the materials in the cartridge didn't seep into the groundwater at least. i don't blame Atari thought because they thought the game would become popular.
...Windows ME and Vista? :-)
It's really not. I had it as a kid and enjoyed it. It could have used another 3 months polish (there's a rom hack floating around that does just that) and you _really_ have to read the instructions to play, but as a kid used to nothing more complex than Space Invaders I loved it. There were multiple screens (a big deal back then) and several different gameplay elements (also a big deal). I suppose it doesn't hurt that I bought it on clearance post crash, but I was so young it didn't occur to me that $5 bucks wasn't much money for a game.
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E.T. Needs Your Help!
What you won't see in their documentary is the part where after digging the big hole, they accidentally fall in, and can't get the heck out!
I'd expect to see 1000's of eBay sellers offering E.T. *Rare* vintage Atari game from now on, Seller location: New Mexico....kind of like all those phones that people tried to sell with "Flappy Bird" installed.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Considering that the AVGN just did a movie based on this legend, I wonder what his reaction will be?
And the masses cried out, "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0!"
As a kid in early 80's, I remember the unprecedented media onslaught around E.T., which was a harbinger for things to come.
They had cross over promotions for everything from Reese's Pieces, McDonald's Happy Meals, Breakfast Cereals, Lunch Boxes and Underoos.
While watching Scooby-Doo and other afternoon cartoons, then it seemed nearly every other ad on TV was either a tailer for ET or ET related.
And then... the big day came, the Movie came out and with bated breath I waited in one of the longest lines ever at the theatre for what was surely the greatest movie ever made. Only to find myself half asleep in a dark movie theatre waiting desperately for the most boring piece of sappy ass garbage to end so I could go home.
And that day in 1982, a 10 year old boy became jaded and cynical.
It was truly a "Drink your Ovaltine" moment.
I wonder what kind of safety precautions they used. Many landfills have to have vents drilled deep into the ground to keep methane from building up or it can cause an explosion (the vents look like tubes sticking out, they're usually tipped green). I'm kinda curious how far down they had to dig. They kind of skimp on the details. The picture of the guy holding up the game doesn't look like a typical landfill I'm used to seeing, I wonder if it really was a landfill, or just a junk yard dumping ground.
My wife and I were driving across the USA in late 2006 (the last day of 2006 even). I accidentally/intentionally routed us about 400 miles out of our way to pay a visit to the landfill. I had found the address on the net. We got there and I couldn't quite find it, then realized all the suburban build up was probably blocking it. Sure enough, behind the Sonic was the remains of the landfill. My (patient) wife stayed at the Sonic while I spent a couple hours wandering around the landfill site. She didn't have the same level of excitement about it that I did.
I found bits of trash, but no Atari cartridges. I took a lot of photos and video that I need to get online. (now 7 years later). I have one there though:
http://www.humanclock.com/news...
After we got back home to Portland I put up a blurb about it on my website. The very next day I received an email from a guy in Brazil who excitedly wrote: "WOW! YOU ACTUALLY WENT THERE!" I showed the email to my wife and said: "Look honey, I am not alone!"
FFS
Being serious here, are there legit copies that exist out in the real world or is this it? If there are others, leave these in the ground. They will be rotted beyond belief at this point. There is really nothing to be gained in that case.
I'm all for digging up the 'only copy in existence' to stick in a museum, but i dont think that is what is going on here.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
My mom threw away my old Atari 2600 console in the late 1980's along with a dozen cartridges. If anyone wants to mount an expedition to recover it, I can tell you approximately where it's buried. Oh, and there were some umm... magazines with it that I used to keep under my bed, you can keep the 2600, but I'd like to have the magazines back for educational purposes --I haven't finished reading the articles.
THAT
My parents never bought me a game console, but a few of my friends had them, and I had two friends with 2600's that had that cart. I recall trying to play it, and yes, immense frustration. You'd walk around on a 2d map with a grid of rooms, and random rooms would be trapped. I could spend 10 minutes trying to levitate out of a trap. My friends usually had better luck, because they'd been playing it so much more, but even they would average several attempts to get out of a single trap. I can see why peope would return the game. Ten minutes of that and the cart came out and something else went in.
iirc, the trick was to let go of the levitate button AND hit the only correct exit direction, at precisely the moment you emerged from the hole. Otherwise, you'd fall right back in. (I never did really get the timing down, I only got out on rare occasion, I think due to luck) After a few attempts, you'd be out of energy. I think elliot would magically stop by with a handful of reeces pieces or whatever, at a cost of your score, but all that did was extend the frustration. It was impossible to beat the game without both a good memory and escaping several traps. If you had difficulty with the (random) map, you could easily have to deal with dozens of trapped rooms.
Imagine climging up a ladder and just as you peek your head over the roof edge someone is swinging a shovel at you. You have a split second to dodge the shovel and pull them off the roof or you're falling. Now repeat that 15-20 times. That was 90% of the game.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
He's self-resurecting.
This story reminds me of this guy who has fixed the game by ROM hacking: http://www.neocomputer.org/pro...
Quite an interesting read if you're familiar with (or wondered about) Atari or assembly programming.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Speaking as someone who solved the game without the instructions; I can say with certitude that it was the most godawful thing I have ever played. If this thing had a budget of a few hundred dollars, I wouldn't have minded, but the rights alone COST $25 MILLION DOLLARS. To put this in perspective the budget of the E.T. Film was 10.5 Million Dollars.
That in particular annoyed the shit out of me... but I still played.
They have disabled ipad zoom on their size and I am not wearing my contacts.
This should've been billed as: "Worst video game ever made, recovered with Microsoft sponsorship."
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
a museum buried in a landfill.
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
As a teenaged employee at our town's only computer store, my boss had me order a large number of Atari 2600 games for Christmas 1982 thinking I knew what would sell. He told me to go wild. I think I ordered some number in the teens of the E.T. cartridges because the movie was so popular, I thought it too would be a sure hit. That was the title I ordered the most of. Most of the other cartridges I ordered sold well (I recall Wizard of Wor sold out), but not E.T. and my boss held me responsible for the poor sales. I quit a few months later.
Not completely anyway :). At four or five you're gonna have a hard time with ET. It's surprisingly complex, especially for an Atari 2600 game. The only things that are comparable are Raiders of the Lost Ark and Solaris (and Solaris doesn't count, it's a 16k cartridge, the larges the 2600 ever had) :)
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"Famous" and "infamous" don't mean the same thing. Look them up. There's nothing "infamous" about this landfill or the legend. Please quit misusing this word.
Back in 1983, your games didn't "Phone Home".
Looks like they should have been left buried.
I hope for the next project they dig up the landfill of the 2700 Apple Lisas. That would be interesting to see.
He's gonna take you back to the past
To play the shitty games that suck ass
He'd rather have a buffallo
Take a diarrhea dump in his ear
He'd rather eat the rotten asshole
Of a road killed skunk and down it with beer
He's the angriest gamer you've ever heard
He's the Angry Nintendo Nerd
He's the Angry Atari Sega Nerd
He's the Angry Video Game Nerd
When you turn on the TV
Make sure it's tuned to channel three
He's got a nerdy shirt and a pocket pouch
Although I've never seen him write anything down
He's got a powerglove and a filthy mouth
Armed with his zapper he will tear these games down
He's the angriest gamer you've ever heard
He's the Angry Nintendo Nerd
He's the Angry Atari Sega Nerd
He's the Angry Video Game Nerd
He plays the worst games of all time
They're horrible abominations of mankind
They make him so mad he can spit
Or say cowabunga, Cowa-fuckin'-piece'a dog shit
They rip you off and don't care one bit
But this nerd, he doesn't forget it
Why can't a turtle swim? Why can't I land the plane?
They got a quick buck for this shitload of fuck
The characters names are wrong. Why's the password so long?
Why don't the weapons do anything?
He's the angriest gamer you've ever heard
These games suck so bad, he makes up his own words
He's the angriest most pissed off gaming nerd
He's the Angry...
Atari
Amiga
CDI
Colecovision
Intellivision
Sega
Neo Geo
Turbo Grafix 16
Odyssey
3DO
Commodore
Nintendo Nerd
He's The Angry Video Game Nerd
Were you excited when they found the ET cartridges in the landfill in the desert? YES NO
30 years later and nothing has really happened inside that landfill, just a pile of toxic shit in a gigantic hole. One of tens of thousands.
THAT is the real tragedy here. We just throw shit in holes and move on.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
This really seems to justify electronic software distribution. I am always annoyed when I need to download several gigabytes, but just burrying thousands of cartridges can't be true.
Am I the only one who read that headline and whose first thought was that they were talking about the remains of a real extraterrestrial from the supposed flying saucer crash in New Mexico in the 1950's? Maybe I should turn in my geek card. (BTW, I knew about the ET game cartridges in the land fill but I hadn't paid that much attention to the story so it didn't register that way at first.)
Sure fine, good - they found the carts from El Paso that were buried in New Mexico. Did you know that hundreds of thousands of others were also "buried" in a cavern near Kansas City? A consignment operation with actual-underground storage near KC is STILL selling Atari games they picked up decades ago. You can get some even today - and they haven't been crushed : http://www.oshealtd.com/atari.htm
linked to in the main article (Yes, I actually read the article) seems to of been incorrect, it doesn't appear that the excavators had to break through any concrete (the article doesn't mention any, nor do the photographs appear to show any), However the NYT article about the dumping specifically states:
"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."
I wonder if the NYT story was inaccurate on purpose to prevent people from scavenging the site for 'free' games and computer equipment by making everyone believe the site was 'entombed' in concrete.
http://www.nytimes.com/1983/09/28/business/atari-parts-are-dumped.html
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
Wait, are some of you even saying there were ANY good Atari 2600 games??
I think I still have the theme from "Skate Boardin'" stuck in my head from 20 years ago...
and even dumber ones who post to complain about how "dumb" the news was?
This Game is not for a kids.. ))) but game is very interesting.. i will play and test... tnx for posting.
Mass grave site of E.T.'s found in New Mexican desert? I'm not surprised. Roswell anyone?
To find the Ark, you had to locate the mesa it was on. To locate the mesa, you had to search random baskets until you found the head piece to the staff of Ra then you had to get the Inca grappling hook from the spider cave (which you find my using a grenade to blow a hole in the right side of the first room. If you get trapped in a cell in the lower corners just go back and forth at the bottom while pressing down and you will find the secret passage out. The treasure room is on the upper right wall via a secret passage that you have to search for by doing up and down while pressing right), before the spider cave door closed slowly over several minutes, and then use the Inca to navigate the mesa field to the bottom and enter the map room by going down exactly in the middle. Then you had to stand in the right place while having the headpiece active when the sun appeared and a dot would show you the location, which changed each game. Then you had to go down and escape the Nazis back to the market place so you could bribe the Black Sheik to take you to the Black Market so you could purchase a shovel and then you need to get back to the normal Market and buy a parachute. Then you had to get another Inca from the spider cave, all the while the door is slowly closing. Then you grapple through the mesa to the location shown to you in the map room. Then you jump off the mesa and activate your parachute at the right time to navigate into the opening on the left but not hit the tree. Drop the parachute before the thieves steal all your gear. While dodging the thieves, go the the dirt pile at the bottom and use the shovel to dig up the ark.