Hawk269
Member
Yar's Revenge. That game was a breath of fresh air when it came out on the 2600. So many good memories. Demon Attack from Imagic was also a big favorite of mine.
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ET found in landfill [Xbox troll = ban]
- Thread starter Wario64
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Yar's Revenge. That game was a breath of fresh air when it came out on the 2600. So many good memories. Demon Attack from Imagic was also a big favorite of mine.
Cthulhu_Steev
Member
They could chip it for use in 3D printers and make limited editions of plastic ET models holding up an ET cartridge. They could give them to competition winners, and that young kid they made play the game on a dusty TV.
Or make some Major Nelson bobble-heads.
Love Demon Attack, it was like the Phoenix giant bird stages but far better when you hit a perfect shot. I loved the silver Imagic covers as well.
Although it probably went Activision > Atari > Imagic in cover preference for me. They still hit my nostalgia gland in the same order, I think the Activision patches have a lot to do with that as well.
MightyHedgehog
Member
Do you mean Demon Attack? Or Demons to Diamonds? Imagic's game was amazing, just as their other releases and the only true competitor to Activision on the platform after Atari kinda-sorta abandoned major releases.
Yars' is probably my most played A2600 game. Apparently, it started off as a Star Castle conversion only to be modified into something just as great.
Demon Attack was the first home game that felt like it could almost be in the arcade.
Hawk269
Member
I agree. Back in those days, great games just appeared. I was at home playing my 2600 when a neighbor came over saying he played this awesome looking game at a hardware store that sold video games. He said it was called "Demon Attack" and came in a silver box. I convinced my sister to drive us to the hardware store so I could check it out and I bought the game on the spot.
What made it impressive was the animation and the clever use of color and how they mixed the different available colors (which was limited) to make it look the way it did. I just remembered keeping an eye for any game that came in a shiny silver box because I knew it would me an Imagic game and it would be good...and sure enough almost everything they released was pretty damn impressive.
I really wish an artist would use all that junk and create a memorial, reminding us of the consequences hubris and mammonism can have.
Edit: But then again, the landfill itself is quite a testimony to the sins of the past. Would be kind of interesting if Microsoft paid for a proper recycling of the materials, that is quite an opportunity to show they are willing to literally clean up the mistakes earlier companies have made there. To take it to extremes, they could create something positive for gamers from the recycled material, like limited editions of their console that they donate to orphans or something ^^
Bigfroth
Member
100% agree great game.
Hawk269
Member
So how many Old Gaf do we have? It is great reading replies to playing these games and the memories of them.
Ludicrous Speed
Banned
It definitely was in question. That was an urban legend for years.
Bigfroth
Member
HeHe turned 40 last month, One of my favorite games was Adventure that game lit the spark for my love of fantasy RPG's.
Oh man. It is a pity he didn't found it first for his movie.
Hawk269
Member
Adventure was a great game and it also started my love for RPG's. Back in those days it was a refreshing change to most games that had a static image and just waves upon waves of enemies, which was still great back then, but when Adventure came out it was really different.
PopcornMegaphone
Banned
37 here.
At the time Adventure blew my mind. It was unlike anything I had ever played. Remember the easter egg?
Bigfroth
Member
I remember my piano teacher's son had a Atari 5200 and I would stick around after my lesson. I was just amazed at how awesome the games looked especially Pacman compared to the 2600.
While there have been lots of legends surrounding the dumping in the past 30 years, papers had covered the fact unbambiguously right at the beginning, for example see this NY Times article from 1983. There are scans of at least two other articles (even with photographs of the site) from other newspapers in this very thread.
My guess is that many newswriters preferred to keep the myth alive while there always has been strong evidence that the thing has happened - with the only question open being how many / what games (or consoles or prototypes) they buried.
I still don't understand why this was a big deal and considered an urban legend. It wasn’t like some big secret, rumored about for years and yeas. It was a real thing that Atari did which pissed a lot of people off in New Mexico. They even passed a bill because of the dumping Atari did. The only thing that needed to be confirmed was if millions of E.T. and Pac-Man carts were buried along with the Atari Mindlink. Did they find any Atari Mindlinks? Because THAT would be incredible.
It’s cool that they dug up these up and that some may still be playable. All considered, the quality is still pretty good on that stuff.
It’s cool that they dug up these up and that some may still be playable. All considered, the quality is still pretty good on that stuff.
I'm not part of Old GAF, not even close. I'm 28 years old, but my first video game console was an Atari 2600. My parents bought it for me for Christmas. Back in the day I was always "outdated" by one console generation (So I got a NES when the SNES was released).
So I played a lot of the great Atari classics when I was a kid despite being born way after the console's time. I even owned the infamous E.T. game, and I didn't mind it too much.
JetBlackPanda
Member
I'm 32 and my generation was really the NES. However I got into gaming thanks to my uncle who had a 2600 and I played the hell out pole position, pit fall and yes E.T.
Such good memories.
Such good memories.
YourExWife
Member
Hey, I can see myself! I'm to the right of the mayor in the third pic with my back to the camera
That was a pretty neat event. Shame about the technical troubles they had with the xbox for the first couple hours though. The funflicks dude that provided the screen and projector was next to me in line Sat morning at the dig. He was a pretty cool guy and apparently is actively trying to get more interesting community events like this one coordinated.
SenjutsuSage
Banned
So this is what was happening in this thread. I remember just taking a quick glance and then leaving until I realized that it's majornelson in one of those pics and it's apart of some original xbox programming documentary.
That's pretty cool. Now the thread title makes a lot more sense to me lol.
That's pretty cool. Now the thread title makes a lot more sense to me lol.
That would make an epic tag for an E.T. game t-shirt
Lol, I'd buy that. Or a T-shirt with a screenshot of E.T. in a hole and the caption underneath just says "RIGHT?".
Same here. Some time in the mid-90s my mom passed down to me her original Atari Video Computer System(before it became known as the 2600) and her collection of games, which wasn't huge but the majority of the bigger games were there. I think one of the main reasons she gave it to me was because at the time the TV set I had in my room was the only one in the house that could use the VCS without extra equipment required, all I had to do was connect that A/V box to the screws on the back of the TV and play. It was so strange going from playing games on the SNES and PS1 to playing Air Sea Battle and Circus Atari and Journey's Escape. They were all so primitive. And Pitfall!, oh God how I spent so much time trying to master Pitfall!.
D'ultimate
Member
If reading through this thread has not explained or demonstrated why this is a big deal then perhaps this thread is not for you.
I'm really confused, GAF.
Was the rumour "Atari buried some games in the New Mexico desert" (for which there is documented evidence) or that "Atari buried 1,000,000+ (crushed?) copies of ET because they couldn't sell it" (the rumour as I understand it)?
It seems there is evidence for the former, and not yet the latter, but people who are skeptical are being called out. The idea that Atari buried miscellaneous excess stock in a landfill is much, much less interesting than the idea that they buried millions of copies of a bad game. I'm not seeing any myth proving here.
Analogy-wise, it would be like draining the Loch Ness and finding that the monster is a slightly larger than normal seal. "How did it get there? Myth confirmed!". No. No it bloody well isn't. It isn't the Loch Ness Monster, according to descriptions.
News from 30 years ago doesn't exactly work like today, for one. So besides the "news" coming from a couple local circulations... The ET burial came mostly from word of mouth. After the burial all we heard was denial. Sometimes we heard they disposed of them in such a way that nothing could be recovered.
Just because people found scanned local historical articles (which probably happened in the last 10 years) doesn't mean the urban legend didn't exist. The legend always was they dumped them in the desert. We didnt know which desert, I certainly didn't. A good majority of people just repeated what they heard and the majority of video game fans weren't even alive when the burial happened.
Even after all this time and finding the historical articles we never had definitive proof that they buried the carts, if they crushed the carts or if they cemented over it. Sure we look back at clues pointing towards a high probability of the event occurring, but proof rules over everything.
Was it just a landfill for excess inventory? Was there really millions of ET carts there because it bombed? What is being done is helping prove the validity of everything.
SkylineRKR
Member
The 2600 was fairly fun. We had one in the 80's. Our faves were River Raid, Defender, Pitfall 2 and Wizards of Wor.
Tried to shortcut in Pitfall 2 for hours, but I never succeeded. Beat it legit though. Pitfall 1 was a bit weird.
TheBaronOfNA
Banned
No old GAF (I'm 25 years old) but I used to play with my mother and her old Atari 2600
Digital-Hero
Member
This Raiders of the Lost Ark quote is fitting in a sense.
Belloq: "Look at this. It's worthless [E.T.?] - ten dollars from a vendor in the street. But I take it, I bury it in the sand for a thousand (32?) years, it becomes priceless."
Oh totally, was just being thread specific. Yar's Revenge is one of my favorite 2600 games
And HSW gets a bad rap for ET, but the truth is the powers that be gave him a horrible deadline to work with. He's an amazing talent, and a very good guy!
SenjutsuSage
Banned
Hawk269
Member
WTF???
alfredofroylan
Member
Not really, the guys that dig animals are called Paleontologists and they dig for a few weeks actually, most of the job is done in museums, universities, labs, etc.
TwEE-N-Toast
Banned
This kid can't be having fun.
The glare on that tv must be hell.
Black Door
Banned
Skeptical of what? Why would video game companies and some podunk town lie about game cartridges being buried in the desert (short of having to answer to some curious fellows at the EPA?)
Seriously, I think this forum has the most mind-boggling responses to this newspiece out of all the ones I've read over the past day or two. The sea of grey names trying to turn this into a console war doesn't make us look good to the outside world either.
kerotan_eater
Banned
Oh jeez ...
But they are digging up hundreds of thousands of cartridges from decades ago - that still is over 9000 in my books, how can that not be impressive? Think of the millions of bits lying there for all the years, that's gotta count for something!
eyeball_kid
Member
And Raiders of the Lost Ark, probably the first real RPG on a home console. That game was incredibly complex for its time.
cyberheater
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b&jy77VjiKn$#F
Member
Heh. Good stuffs.
First game I played was Basketball for the 2600 when I was visiting my cousins in NY for the holidays. They had a bad habit of chewing the rubber off of their controllers.
Later on my aunt (who was living in Texas) bought a 2600 for her family (one of the wooden paneling ones) and I would play it whenever I was over her house to visit. After that, her daughter (a different cousin) started living with us and she brought that 2600 with her. She was pretty territorial about it, but we both had our own games. A few seasons later I got my own Coleco Gemini (the one that came with Donkey Kong and Mouse Trap) and there was peace. I was there when Pac-Man and ET launched, and I remember the "crash" which was the best thing for a kid, since you could pick up any game you wanted at a Woolworth's for a buck.
Oh and around 1986 my cousin gave me her old wood panel 2600, but by then I was seeing commercials for something called the Nintendo Entertainment System
Forgottonone
Member
Looks like they didn't bury them very deep.. Also I thought it was millions or hundreds of thousands. Maybe they're saving the good content for the show.
Fine Ham Abounds
Member
After giving the thread a good full onceover, I'm confused how this became an urban legend at all. I don't understand how something with so much documentation retroactively becomes reported as a rumor for decades.
MightyHedgehog
Member
Because, simply, no one could prove what was buried there until now. It was just rumors, and very little known about what was there other than it was buried somewhere.
Probably just how any thing drifts into the realm of myth. The people that were there moved on with their lives for the most part. It then became a second hand gaming culture kind of thing spoken across early BBS services and through schoolyard games of telephone. The story sounds kind of unbelievable, so some people were naturally skeptical, and let's not forget that there wasn't really much of an online presence in those days, and what little there was didn't have the mass access or infrastructure in place to document events such as this. And since the consensus was that it was an urban legend, people took that as fact.
Fine Ham Abounds
Member
Yeah, I'm going with the no internet being a major factor.
I do certainly feel silly not knowing about the articles in the local papers and what-not, but the first article I ever read about this was one that called it a rumor.
I'm looking forward to whatever doc comes out of this, even if it's a cheesy 10 minute deal stretched out to an hour or something.