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ET found in landfill [Xbox troll = ban]

Aaron D.

Member
Incredible discovery in the gaming pantheon.

Part history, part urban legend. 100% confirmed.

Both the game and its disposal method are synonymous with the Video Game Crash of '83.

Simply awesome to have the mystery uncovered.
 
This is pretty awesome. I remember a few weeks ago they were talking about it taking months/years? of trying to get the go ahead to dig. Awesome to see they pulled it off and actually found some copies. I would love to own one.

congrats.
 
nelsonilroo.jpg

This is quality.
 

Kariodude

Banned
It's odd. The legend was that ET was such a horrible game that they took a ton of them and buried them. That legend was debunked with this dig. There are all kinds of Atari games down there. It's not just a landfill filled with ET cartridges so that obviously wasn't the reason for burying them in the first place.
 

Axass

Member
Great day in video game history, I always believed the legend, I'm glad it's finally proven true...

...though I can't shake the feeling that's somehow a bad omen.
 

Converse

Banned
Funny enough, this is the first thing Microsoft has done in a long while that inspires some respect in me, gaming-wise. I know PR plays a big role, but when you can get yourself a little publicity while investigating gaming's past and bringing that past to the forefront, that's a win-win. It goes a long way toward legitimizing the medium as a part of culture.

STOP TROLLING THE XBOX ONE, YOU ARE NOT THE FIRST PERSON TO MAKE THE JOKE AND IT'S STILL NOT FUNNY

I would love to see a little more attention paid to Wii U threads, if repetitive trolling jokes are bannable. It seems that the majority of them devolve into vitriol that has little to do with the topic at hand, often thanks to the same group of trolls -- people make jokes very similar to the (bannable) ones made at the Xbox One's expense in many, many Wii U threads. It makes it hard to intelligently discuss the topic at hand.
 

kirby_fox

Banned
What I find the most insane about this is that out of the entire landfill they somehow found them in not that much time. They've only been at it for weeks, right? That's insane luck to dig in the right spot. Most landfills are huge and it'd be a miracle to find anything.

I bought a copy of ET for 50 cents back in high school because of how bad people said it was. Don't even have an Atari to play it on- but damn it, I have the game!
 

Tempy

don't ask me for codes
It's odd. The legend was that ET was such a horrible game that they took a ton of them and buried them. That legend was debunked with this dig. There are all kinds of Atari games down there. It's not just a landfill filled with ET cartridges so that obviously wasn't the reason for burying them in the first place.

It never was just ET. They buried their unsold stock, and that included many other games. ET is one of the many Atari 2600 games which were both bad and overproduced - causing the market to be flooded with crapware and retailers to return stock.
 

BriGuy

Member
Was this thought to be a myth? I thought I'd seen a video of it being buried a few years back...

Yeah, I don't get all the hoopla either. This has been trotted out as one of those "did you know..." facts that I was fairly certain that everyone with more than a passing interest in video games did in fact know. I wasn't aware anyone regarded it as an urban legend.
 

Alienous

Member
There was a cape of concrete.

What does this mean? It was buried with other 80s memorabilia? Or that it would be hard to fake?

Three decades seems like a long amount of time to set up a hoax. And, perhaps I'm interpreting it wrong, but I'd expect more wrapped copies. There's supposed to be a million, right?

I don't know. This doesn't seem like a great confirmation.
 

tapedeck

Do I win a prize for talking about my penis on the Internet???
Ha, this is pretty awesome. Im surprised so many people thought the story was fake though.
 
I thought the story goes that they bulldozed the cartridges and poured cement over the landfill. I guess that was just fluff to make the story seem more exciting.
 

sangreal

Member
What does this mean? It was buried with other 80s memorabilia? Or that it would be hard to fake?

Three decades seems like a long amount of time to set up a hoax. And, perhaps I'm interpreting it wrong, but I'd expect more wrapped copies. There's supposed to be a million, right?

I don't know. This doesn't seem like a great confirmation.


it means the landfill was capped (covered) with concrete 30years ago (allegedly to stop looting of the atari crap). it's like a giant time capsule
 
No wonder why Warner Bros. were so eager to sell Atari to Jack Tramiel. They must have lost billions on unsold Atari games.
They have nothing but themselves to blame. At is peak Atari was the third source of income for Warner, then in 1983 they lost more than 500 millions. They introduced the Atari 5200 at the wrong time and with a lot of problems (mostly the horrible control), they rushed key games than ended doing more harm than good (Pac-Man and ET for example) and finally they did nothing to control the ammount of horrible games avalible.

People still complain a lot about the Nintendo seal, but thet thing was really important at the time to avoid another disaster.

I always pictured in my mind about 100,000 of those inside that hole...not about 20...dream crushed ;)
They've found hundreads of them, check the latest posts.
 

Caladrius

Member
It was the early 80's people or companies didn't really recycle or generally gave much of a shit about the environment or rather were not regulated to do so like they do now.

Probably.

It's baffling to me because it seems like they could have recouped some costs by reusing or selling the raw materials from the old cartridges.
 

Sasukekun

Neo Member
While I would be interested to watch a docu on this, there's no way I'd buy an XB1 to do so.
Great find, and a great way to smash an urban myth, but it's not the sort of original TV programme that's going to sell a system/idea.
 

m@cross

Member
So why does this matter to anyone other than to prove the game sucked so they buried the unsold ones? I am sure it is not the first game to hit a landfill and it is not like it is surprising that this game would be one of them.

What is really sad? How little it has decayed after that many years... my god.
 

thefit

Member
Probably.

It's baffling to me because it seems like they could have recouped some costs by reusing or selling the raw materials from the old cartridges.

You keep thinking in modern terms, at the same time this was going on my dad was changing the motorr oil in his camaro and draining it down the street.
 
Wait, people actually thought this was only a myth? I just always assumed it was true. In any case, this is awesome that they actually found it.

But uh... what are they going to do with them afterwards?

You keep thinking in modern terms, at the same time this was going on my dad was changing the motorr oil in his camaro and draining it down the street.

That was common back then? That's pretty terrible (not your dad, but the fact that such blatant pollution was acceptable).
 
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