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Landfill Copies of Atari's 'E.T.' End Up On eBay

Posted by timothy on from the spooky-desert-music dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "In the early 1980s, Atari made what seemed like a slam-dunk bet: a game based on E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, one of the most beloved (and highest-grossing) films of all time. The company was so sure it had a hit in the making, in fact, that it manufactured millions of E.T. game cartridges, which flooded store shelves just in time for holiday shopping in December 1982. The game sold well at the outset, but it didn't sell well enough: By early 1983, Atari still had 3.5 million unsold cartridges on its hands. Embarrassed by the failure, Atari dumped those cartridges into a city landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. In 2003, Canadian entertainment company Fuel Industries received permission from Alamogordo's town counsel to excavate the landfill for the long-lost cartridges. Now some of those cartridges have surfaced on eBay, selling for $50 and up; if you ever wanted to own a little slice of video-game history, now's your chance." (You might recall the news from earlier this year that some copies of E.T. had been found.)

4 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Store Returns by Tempest_2084 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just to clarify things, the cartridges dumped at Alamogordo were returns from retail stores not excess inventory from Atari. Many of them still have store stickers on them. There were never millions of ET cartridges dumped at Alamogordo, they were a mix of titles (2600 and 5200) and not in the millions.

    1. Re:Store Returns by MartyGoldberg · · Score: 4, Informative

      The city of Alamogordo: http://www.alamogordonews.com/... The person who dumped the cartridges in the first place: http://www.kboi2.com/news/loca... http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/... One of the archeologists on site running the dig: http://www.dailydot.com/geek/e... And the forthcoming documentary itself (which a rough cut was shown at Comicon, and Classic Gaming Expo), first presents that "mass burial of ET" myth and then deoncstructs it to show what was actually buried there.

    2. Re:Store Returns by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Informative

      Besides as somebody who was in retail at the I can tell ya that not that many of them ere returned by stores, many of the middle men distributors started going tits up around that time and caused a mass panic which in turn caused the bubble to burst and caused the big crash of 84. I was grabbing up Atari carts at 10 for a buck and Coleco at 4 for a buck at the time, not to mention formerly $80+ handhelds at $3-$5 a pop so i was using the pay from my part time job to haul out bags full of the stuff!

      For those that wonder why the crash happened it was a bubble, no different from DotBomb or any other bubble and just like those it was based on bad business practices, in this case "stock and swap". For those that have never heard of it here is how S&S worked....because retailers were SERIOUSLY leery of stocking a "toy" with such a high cost of entry AND high cost of consumables the distributors came up with a new business model...you stock our stuff and if it don't sell by the end of the quarter we give you new stuff. This way the retailer didn't worry about not knowing the difference between the A-Team and Zaxxon, because if they picked some losers this round no worries they will get NEW titles at the end of the quarter until the stock is all sold, why we can't lose!

      And THAT is what bit them right on the ass, that "we can't lose" attitude brought on by S&S. From 77-82 they kept making bigger and bigger piles of money so by the end of 82 the local Magic Mart I helped out part time (anybody remember Magic Mart?) even though we were in a town of less than 15k they were stocking 5 consoles and over 300 titles, not including handhelds, we are talking close to 100k if not over at a time when you could get a 5 year old car for less than a thousand, so we are talking serious money involved here. Well all that money brought in your fly by night companies (just like DotBomb) like US Gold, companies that had no business in gaming like Quaker Oats jumped in with their own dev house, it was nuts. Well it wasn't long after that S&S fell down, some of the middle men distributors started failing about that time because they took the old stock to companies like US Gold for new carts only to find empty buildings, and when the retailers found they couldn't trade their old stock for new and that half of their inventory was "Skeet Shooting" style dreck they went full blown panic and started dumping everything at fire sale prices hoping to recover a little green before everybody took a bath.

      Well its no wonder so many game companies went tits up then, you think I was paying $30 for a new cart when I was getting 100 Atari for $10, every Coleco they had for $2.50 and 4 handhelds for $10? Not a chance in hell, I was buying games by the shopping cart buddy! A few of my friends was smart enough to listen to me and snatch the Coleco with the Atari add-on (normally $150, fire sale $15) and we loaded the hell up! But it was NOT the shitty E.T. game that caused the crash, it was bad business practices combined with a "can't lose!" attitude, the same thing that caused the DotBomb and the financial bubble and the real estate bubble and probably every other bubble in history.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  2. Re:Great box art! by Charliemopps · · Score: 4, Informative

    So go here: http://www.thecoverproject.net...
    Then to kinkos...