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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
To determine the truth value of a proposition, namely whether or not Atari buried a shitload of bad video games under the literal earth. Not so that those games could then be played.
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.
WTF are they digging this up for?
To make room for the surface tablets.
...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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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!
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.
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!"
It wouldn't work. Microsoft products can only be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Maybe I'm missing something but why is this such a big deal. Landfill is an obvious place to dump a bunch of stuff you don't want. Or did Atari not use an existing landfill but sent people out to dig a hole specially for these cartridges?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
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.
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
This should've been billed as: "Worst video game ever made, recovered with Microsoft sponsorship."
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
The game was incredibly hyped up - every game magazine was talking about it as if the messiah was about to return. One of the problems was that the cartridge box art was way ahead of what the console systems could do. On every game, everyone expected the graphics to really look like the box art. Then you'd find the game levels were usually a black rectangle surrounded by colored walls with a few obstacles and some scrolling.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I remember Solaris even if vaguely. That was a tough game. I remember you would have to conquer solar systems and move to others which were progressively more difficult. I remember that after a certain point the controls were all reversed: at that young age I was done, I kept screwing up when I got that far. My older brother was able to keep going but that was still a tough game -- but not dumb bugs like ET which was basically unfinished.
Raiders of the Lost Ark was also tough. If I remember correctly you had to solve a bunch of puzzles and collect artifacts all before nightfall when the door to the city closed and you were stuck with lethal enemies. I remember the tsetse flies being one-touch lethal. I never could beat that game either.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!