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."

Comments

Why, God, why?

[n1ywb]

Put 'em back in the landfill where they belong. Or better yet in an incincerator.

Re:Why, God, why?

[greg1104]

Well, first they tried to get the cartridges to levitate themselves out, but they kept falling back to the bottom of the landfill.

Re:Why, God, why?

[Opportunist]

E.T. wasn't as bad a game as it is now made out to be. It was bad, ok, but not that show piece of "worst game of all times" it's made out to be now. It just had a lot pushing against it.

1) Hype. The game was hyped like ... I have no idea if there has ever been anything hyped like that in contemporary history so younger... wait! SPORE! Yes, that about does it. No, not even close. Spore was hyped as the next best thing in computer gaming, the game to end all other games and whatnot... E.T. was worse. Way worse. It was like THE GAME for the 2600 would be coming, the ultimate pinnacle of computer gaming. If you won't have it, you'd be a NOTHING, your friends would not talk to you anymore, your dog would pack and leave ... you get the idea. The only thing they possibly didn't promise that this game would do is cure cancer. Nothing can possibly live up to such a standard, not today and by no means a game in that time and age back then.

2) Game-after-movie. Now, today games modeled after movies are usually rather well done. Most of the time, ok. Franchise holders don't want to tarnish their name with a bad game, knowing that their main audience for the movies is usually the same that buys the game, and the experience a movie goer has with the game that follows it may well be a deciding factor in the success of your sequel. Not so back then. Even until way into the 90s, games after movies were a surefire way to simply KNOW that they would suck donkey balls. There simply were never any good games modeled after movies. They were usually quick cash grabs that relies only on the movie title to sell. Also, considering that game budgets were tiny compared to today, the setback for the name already meant that for the game itself you only had a few pennies left. Usually games-after-movies were some kind of generic nondescript ripoff of an old idea with the movie hero somehow pasted into it. Often just by name only ("and this here is Rambo. He is. No, really. He has a bandana, see? Yeah, that white pixel that follows his head... somewhat...")

3) Rushed production. That game was rushed. Badly. The movie was out, the negotiations for the rights dragged on and the game needed to hit the shelves NOW or the hype about E.T. might lose steam before it's in. Nobody cares about a game for a movie of a year ago. And back then, movie and game were not being developed alongside each other, the game didn't even get designed until after the movie was halfway successful.

4) The big console crunch. While E.T. is usually one of the things blamed for the collapse of the video game market in 83, I dare say that it was less the game and more Atari buying its own hype. It seems they honestly believed that not only would everyone who owns a 2600 buy E.T., they even went as far as assuming that they'd sell 2600 units like hotcakes and that everyone would want at least one E.T. unit.

5) Complexity. When you play the game, you almost instantly get the impression that you're dealing with a very complex, very elaborate and very "rich" game. Soon after you notice that it has the depth of a wading pool, hiding behind an unnecessarily cryptic interface. After a while you simply can't shake the feeling that this game was supposed to be a LOT more but corners had to be cut. to the point where that square the game should be became a circle, so to speak. The gameplay hints at a lot more depth than there actually is, that the game's designer had a lot more planned for you, but time constraints and of course the limited ability of the console didn't let him deliver that promise.

In the end, what you have is a "could have been" title. It shows a lot of promise, actually, it also promises a lot, but it simply cannot keep that promise in the end. If anything, E.T. is a load of broken promises.

Of course, this leads to some heavy disappointment. When you expect a so-so game, E.T. would probably have delivered. When compared to other 2600 games, it's not really that bad a dud. It's a dud, no doubt

Re:You can find this game online cheap

[kruach aum]

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.

As nature intended.

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering you spent most of the game stuck in a pit, they were just returned to their natural habitat.

That word doesn't mean what you think it means

[pla]

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.

Re:That word doesn't mean what you think it means

[Billly Gates]

Atari denied it.

When prompted key Atari figures would not comment and the lead programmer said there is no way we would have done that.

Locals say otherwise.

I was interested and there maybe more gems there (like ET was a gem) like the experimental controller that never hit the market, documents, and other materials. Centipede was found there too. It looks like they just cleared a whole warehouse and dumped it.

So yes this qualifies as an urban legend.

Re:You can find this game online cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF are they digging this up for?

To make room for the surface tablets.

So where are the burial grounds for...

[theodp]

...Windows ME and Vista? :-)

Documentary deleted scenes

[linebackn]

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!

E.T Hype Fest

[l0ungeb0y]

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.

Re:E.T Hype Fest

[Billly Gates]

...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.

And then you had to watch Star Wars Episode 1 with Jar Jar and racing graphical effects in an unrealistic plot.

I went there in 2006

[huskerdoo]

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!"

Re:You can find this game online cheap

[clarkkent09]

It wouldn't work. Microsoft products can only be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom.

Re:ET's not that bad.

[The Snowman]

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.

Randomly getting stuck in a pit with no way out was fun? Or every screen being identical? Yeah I know 1983 graphics were not great but damn, at least make them different colors or something. Even at four or five years old I knew that game was a bucket of fail.

Re:ET's not that bad.

[antdude]

When I was a callow ant, I got this game for Christmas from my parents IIRC. I was all :) to get this game because I enjoyed the movie in the theater. I never understood how to play it like most people. My older friend did and told me how. It wasn't too bad. Not a great game. There are worse games like these: http://www.deafsparrow.com/201... ...

There's more than that in landfills

[hawguy]

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.

Re:ET's not that bad.

[TheRealMindChild]

and you _really_ have to read the instructions to play No kidding! Once upon a time, having a $50 Atari 2600, the only game I had was asteroids. At a yard sale, I picked up E.T. for $1, though it had no instruction manual. I played that for way way way too many hours, thinking I needed some secret hidden one last piece to the phone. Of course I never found it, the atari broke and I sold that E.T. cartridge at a yard sale for $1. Fast forward 25 years I pick up a 2600 in a nice clean original box, along with E.T. and several other games with nice clean boxes and instruction booklets. I took it all home and I broke open the E.T. instructions. All that time I wasted... there was no one more piece to the phone, I always got them all! You just had to go back to the very spot E.T. landed at the beginning of the game and press the button. I beat the game in 5 minutes.

Emulation to the rescue

[newsdee]

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.

Re:ET's not that bad.

[dmomo]

I liked the game too as a kid. It had its shortcomings which by the way are all addressed here. ET is no longer an awful game:

http://www.neocomputer.org/pro...

Re:ET's not that bad.

[Belial6]

The fact that you were not good at the game doesn't mean it sucked. I never found a pit that I couldn't get out of in that game. The game was better than 80% of the 2600 games made. It got panned so badly because it was too complex for most 2600 game players. As rsilvergun pointed out, you actually had to read the manual.

To make matters worse, the 'hard core' gamers that might have appreciated the game had moved on to the C64/Apple II where they already had 2 Ultima games to compare E.T. to.

Then the final nail in the coffin was the level of hype put on the game due to the movie left people completely let down.