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[Dai101]

Atari then went the extra step and crushed them and (reports say) covered them in concrete to keep people from going out and recovering cartridges, and putting them on sale, taking away from Atari's sales.

Yup, more info here:

n September 1983, the Alamogordo Daily News of Alamogordo, New Mexico reported in a series of articles, that between 10 and 20[12] semi-trailer truckloads of Atari boxes, cartridges, and systems from an Atari storehouse in El Paso, Texas were crushed and buried at the landfill within the city. It was Atari's first dealings with the landfill, which was chosen because no scavenging was allowed and its garbage was crushed and buried nightly. Atari's stated reason for the burial was that it was changing from Atari 2600 to Atari 5200 games,[13] but this was later contradicted by a worker who claimed that this was not the case.[14] Atari official Bruce Enten stated that Atari was mostly sending broken and returned material to the Alamogordo dump and that it was "by-and-large inoperable stuff."[12]

On September 27, 1983, the news service UPI reported that "people watching the operation said it included cassettes of the popular video games E.T., Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, the consoles used to convey the games to television screens and high-priced personal computers."[15] The news service Knight-Ridder further reported on the looting of the dump on September 28 by local kids, stating "kids in this town of 25,000 began robbing the Atari grave, coming up with cartridges of such games as E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Defender, and Bezerk."[16]

On September 28, 1983, The New York Times reported on the story of Atari's dumping in New Mexico. An Atari representative confirmed the story for the newspaper, stating that the discarded inventory came from Atari's plant in El Paso, which was being closed and converted to a recycling facility.[17] The reports noted that the site was guarded to prevent reporters and the public from affirming the contents. The Times article never suggested any of the specific game titles being destroyed, but subsequent reports have generally linked the story of the dumping to the well-known failure of E.T.[2] Additionally, the headline "City to Atari: 'E.T.' trash go home" in one edition of the Alamogordo News seems to imply some of the cartridges were E.T., but then follows with a humorous interpretation of E.T. meaning "Extra-territorial" and never specifically mentions the game.[12]

Starting on September 29, 1983, a layer of concrete was poured on top of the crushed materials, a rare occurrence in waste disposal. An anonymous workman's stated reason for the concrete was: "There are dead animals down there. We wouldn't want any children to get hurt digging in the dump."[14] Eventually, the city began to protest the large amount of dumping Atari was doing, with one commissioner stating that the area did not want to become "an industrial waste dump for El Paso."[12] The local manager ordered the dumping to be ended shortly afterwards. Due to Atari's unpopular dumping, Alamogordo later passed an Emergency Management Act and created the Emergency Management Task Force to limit the future flexibility of the garbage contractor to secure outside business for the landfill for monetary purposes. Alamogordo's then mayor, Henry Pacelli, commented that, "We do not want to see something like this happen again."[14]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_dump#Burial

 

[eyeball_kid]

Not impossible at all, I beat the game back in the day with just the basic instruction manual and no extra help. Not a good game, but not all that cryptic. Indiana Jones was a FAR better game, one of the few full adventure games on Atari, and more complicated too. Definitely need the instructions with that game, but in those days people *read* the instructions, they were seen as part of the game, not something optional to skip. People enjoyed the instructions just as much as the rest of the game.

Totally agree. E.T. wasn't very cryptic. Boring as hell, yes. But it wasn't that hard to figure out what to do.

Raiders of the Lost Ark was damned hard. I beat it, but after a long struggle to figure things out. But I loved Raiders, it just seemed like a leap over what other 2600 games were doing. As I said earlier, I'd call it the first true console RPG.

 

[Fox_Mulder]

Why would you be skeptical about something like this? Can you actually come up with a good reason why they would fake it?

It's simply an assumption based on the facts that tv shows are often fiction and that I don't find absurd it's all a mise-en-scene with marketing purposes.
But probably I'm too distrustful.

 

[charlequin]

This is the most cryptic game on the 2600 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNsC_HIgkOs

I must've played this game hundreds of times as a kid and I never got close to finding the ark. ;_;

 

[saunderez]

It's impossible to figure out what to do on your own. It's way too cryptic. What a horrible game. Atari did the right thing back in 1982 and put E.T exactly where it belonged.

Reminds me of the Superman game. I couldn't figure out what to do at all, and my copy was second hand and came without a box or manual. I'd just go into the phone booth and turn into Superman then fly around various screens over and over. Good times.

 

[Corto]

It's simply an assumption based on the facts that tv shows are often fiction and that I don't find absurd it's all a mise-en-scene with marketing purposes.
But maybe I'm too distrustful.

It would be the most elaborate, convoluted, and meaningless mise-en-scene for such little payback. This is a piece of pop culture, of a sub-niche portion concerning video games culture. It's meaningless outside of our little world of video games hyper-literates.

 

[Dishwalla]

They manufactured more copies than there were systems to run it on (they made the same mistake with Pac Man),

Actually Atari only manufactured around five million copies of E.T.(of which around 1.5-2 million were sold). Only Pac-Man was overproduced with more cartridges made than 2600 consoles available at the time, and by the time E.T. was released stores were already stuck with millions of unsold Pac-Man cartridges and even more returned copies of the game.

 

[Raist]

i'm skeptical that's a genuine story. Especially with Major Nelson involved.

Most of the TV shows we watch nowadays are fictions.

As much as I take many things Nelson says with a grain of salt the size of mount Everest, I don't think they'd fake that stuff. Even ignoring the pile of evidence there was to these games being there in the first place.

 

[shandy706]

Pretty cool.

Though when you think about it, archeologists routinely dig up animals from millions of years ago so it's not that impressive I guess.

Since when did archaeologist go digging up animals from millions of years ago?

Derp

 

[PopcornMegaphone]

Amazing.

 

[Papercuts]

Since when did archeologist go digging up animals from millions of years ago?

Derp

They're actually planting fossils themselves.

Wake up sheeple.

 

[eyeball_kid]

Actually Atari only manufactured around five million copies of E.T.(of which around 1.5-2 million were sold). Only Pac-Man was overproduced with more cartridges made than 2600 consoles available at the time, and by the time E.T. was released stores were already stuck with millions of unsold Pac-Man cartridges and even more returned copies of the game.

I can see that. I clearly remember as a little kid walking into a department store, I think it was Gottschalks or something, and seeing a giant display with several 2600 consoles and a giant banner reading, "Pac-Man Fever!" just kind of randomly stuck in the middle of the perfumes or men's underwear or something.

Sadly, Pac-Man, like pretty much every 2600 arcade port, was abysmal. The 2600 was second-rate hardware, even at the time, and it was only a fun experience because 1) it was the first "modern" console with color and such, and 2) studios like ActiVision (I know, right? there was a time when that name was a synonym for videogame quality) producing great games despite the limitations of the hardware.

 

[Aaron]

I played so much 2600 Pac-man as a kid I dislike every other version. It's imprinted in my brain.

 

[Kirlia]

I played so much 2600 Pac-man as a kid I dislike every other version. It's imprinted in my brain.

I'm really sorry.

 

[joeyjoejoeshabadoo]

I'm shocked they found them. After I heard about the doc I thought for sure it would end up like Al Capone's vault. All the hype and build up just to find nothing.

 

[SwiftDeath]

Huh I feel odd in that from the first time I heard the story I thought it was probably true

I mean we're talking 1983. If you were a large company that needed to dispose of some bad product, seemed perfectly reasonable to me

 

[Joe_Incognito]

I apologize if this has already been mentioned in this topic. However, the hardcore Atari fan community knew the truth about this story years ago.

Here is a LINK to a very informative topic over on Atari Age forums.

In this topic you can read accounts from people who actually worked for Atari. There are also newspaper clippings from the Alamogordo newspaper which talk about Atari utilizing the local dump.

The TLR of this massive topic is basically this. Atari dumped thousands of carts in the landfill. They weren't all ET, there were many other games. Many of the games were defective products and returns. The products were crushed and covered with cement to keep people from picking the games out of the trash and returning them to the stores.

It also busts the myth that ET is the worst game ever made. It's not even close. It's not even the worst Atari 2600 game, not by a long shot. It also kills the idea that ET sold poorly, it did not. It was just over produced. The people behind the recent dig do not seem interested in telling the real story. It would seem they would rather preserve the urban legend for entertainment value.

Anyway, I hope some of you visit the Atari Age topic. It's a great forum filled with people who really know their Atari history. (Basically because many of them were there at the time.)

 

[PopcornMegaphone]

The people behind the recent dig do not seem interested in telling the real story. It would seem they would rather preserve the urban legend for entertainment value.

Thanks for the forum link, I'll check it out. That said, shouldn't we reserve judgement of the doc makers until the doc is released?

 

[MrCunningham]

I apologize if this has already been mentioned in this topic. However, the hardcore Atari fan community knew the truth about this story years ago.

Here is a LINK to a very informative topic over on Atari Age forums.

In this topic you can read accounts from people who actually worked for Atari. There are also newspaper clippings from the Alamogordo newspaper which talk about Atari utilizing the local dump.

The TLR of this massive topic is basically this. Atari dumped thousands of carts in the landfill. They weren't all ET, there were many other games. Many of the games were defective products and returns. The products were crushed and covered with cement to keep people from picking the games out of the trash and returning them to the stores.

It also busts the myth that ET is the worst game ever made. It's not even close. It's not even the worst Atari 2600 game, not by a long shot. It also kills the idea that ET sold poorly, it did not. It was just over produced. The people behind the recent dig do not seem interested in telling the real story. It would seem they would rather preserve the urban legend for entertainment value.

There used to be a couple different websites in the past that would be dedicated to finding the ET burrial site, pretty sure one of them did have this location scoped out as a primary spot, but of course they never had the permits or the money to dig it up and find out. I personally don't see how it could have been an urban legend, there really were a lot of first hand accounts from employees and news stories from that point in time to prove that it happened.

ET really isn't the worst game ever made, in some ways it was rather original. When you look at the game, it's almost a rouge like in some respects, But when you look at what this game represented in the industry, then it can fall under worst game ever made category. ET was an expensive project for Atari, they did dump a lot of money down on the license and advertising. Then they through a single developer on the project with less than a 3 month development time to make something from scratch. Atari was banking on the name alone and pushing rushed development time to hit a Christmas release date. This, things like the awful Pac-Man 2600 port an the non-stop flood of bad third party shovelware were what did Atari in.

 

[charlequin]

studios like ActiVision (I know, right? there was a time when that name was a synonym for videogame quality) producing great games despite the limitations of the hardware.

It's increasingly difficult to remember these days that ActiVision and Electronic Arts were small studios started for the explicit purpose of respecting and promoting the talent of individual game designers.

 

[Megatron]

I apologize if this has already been mentioned in this topic. However, the hardcore Atari fan community knew the truth about this story years ago.

Here is a LINK to a very informative topic over on Atari Age forums.

In this topic you can read accounts from people who actually worked for Atari. There are also newspaper clippings from the Alamogordo newspaper which talk about Atari utilizing the local dump.

The TLR of this massive topic is basically this. Atari dumped thousands of carts in the landfill. They weren't all ET, there were many other games. Many of the games were defective products and returns. The products were crushed and covered with cement to keep people from picking the games out of the trash and returning them to the stores.

It also busts the myth that ET is the worst game ever made. It's not even close. It's not even the worst Atari 2600 game, not by a long shot. It also kills the idea that ET sold poorly, it did not. It was just over produced. The people behind the recent dig do not seem interested in telling the real story. It would seem they would rather preserve the urban legend for entertainment value.

Anyway, I hope some of you visit the Atari Age topic. It's a great forum filled with people who really know their Atari history. (Basically because many of them were there at the time.)

Did they actually find any concrete when they dug the games up?

 

[8bit]

Has anyone fallen in the landfill? Is there footage of someone flailing uselessly trying to escape their doom?

 

[Warm Machine]

Two takeaways I have from this:

It proves there is no away. Throwing something away, burying it, etc doesn't get rid of it. It just hides it for someone else to find it later.

Physical media is terrible. No one cares about plastic carts. Games are manufactured on a such a massive scale that few games ever end up rare. Valuable media is only that which has tiny production runs.

 

[amardilo]

I really want to see this documentary now. Hopefully it's the documentary will be a bit serious and not be too sensational (more interviews and less "You'll never guess the shocking truth we found under the ground!").

 

[Lego Boss]

This has already been documneted in Game After by Raiford Guins. It's a recent academic cultural studies text where he interviews who witnessed the whole thing first hand.

I'm surprised, with gamers usually been so well--informed that that this book appears to have passed you all by:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0262019981/

In all honesty, it's a brilliant read for anyone interested in history of gaming/retro gaming (very US-centric though, we need an equivalent for Europe/UK).

 

[lifeexpectancy]

From the OP:

https://twitter.com/kobunheat/status/460158489998815233/photo/1
"There is so much stuff they've pulled up. This is all just atari 2600 games."

Seriously, are you not even willing to read the very first post of this thread?

I definitely spot a tire in the background in that pic, so it's not ALL Atari 2600 games. Must be faked.

Spoiler

Damnit, beaten by post #1308 ;p

Is that guy a conehead?

Oh SHIT! /dead I didn't even notice his hardhat levitating too far above his head until you said that. I'm dying here.

 

[BananasWithGuns]

Just saw lifelower post this up on Twitter. Looks like a little preview of the documentary itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jHpOsJQaHM

 

[Harlock]

If the Polygon doc was about the team in the desert carrying shovels, searching for ET cartridges, the history would take a other way, with people loving the site.

 

[Sixfortyfive]

It's increasingly difficult to remember these days that ActiVision and Electronic Arts were small studios started for the explicit purpose of respecting and promoting the talent of individual game designers.

I've been filling the gaps in my Genesis collection lately and am pretty struck at the presentation effort EA put into their games, what with the developer profiles front and center of every manual.

I mean, fuck, the instruction manual for Mutant League Football is 87 pages long. For an xtreme sports game. From 1993.

 

[Synth]

I've been filling the gaps in my Genesis collection lately and am pretty struck at the presentation effort EA put into their games, what with the developer profiles front and center of every manual.

I mean, fuck, the instruction manual for Mutant League Football is 87 pages long. For an xtreme sports game. From 1993.

When I was a kid, I thought EA were the best publisher there was and wanted to work for them in the future... adapting my expectations during the 32bit generation was a slow and painful process.

They still did Future Cop LAPD tho...

 

[SkylineRKR]

I've been filling the gaps in my Genesis collection lately and am pretty struck at the presentation effort EA put into their games, what with the developer profiles front and center of every manual.

I mean, fuck, the instruction manual for Mutant League Football is 87 pages long. For an xtreme sports game. From 1993.

FIFA Soccer as well. It were big handbooks. In multi language too. And those ugly cartridges.

 

[shandy706]

They're actually planting fossils themselves.

Wake up sheeple.

Ermmm..

Archaeologists study human history....they aren't paleontologists.

I was pointing out how people can't even use the right word for what they're trying to say.

 

[Hanmik]

http://readwrite.com/2014/04/28/atari-et-dig-alamogordo-game-list#awesm=~oCJR2yo4SJVMsV

Here's a full list of the Atari games pulled out of the Alamogordo landfill that I've documented so far, culled from my own photos, conversation with the dig's archaeological lead, Andrew Reinhard, and a little time spent digging through a small sample of the findings with my own two hands:

•E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (roughly 70 copies present in the archaeology team's collection, a very rough working estimate of 700 copies total were found during the excavation, which in total remains a very small sample—possibly 2% of Atari's total "buried treasure" in the landfill)
•Raiders of the Lost Ark
•Yars' Revenge
•Pele's Soccer
•Superman
•Human Cannonball
•Circus Atari
•Night Driver
•Adventure
•Haunted House
•Combat-CX-2601
•Defender (Atari 2600)
•Defender (Atari 5200)
•Space Invaders
•Air-Sea Battle
•Missile Command
•Pac-Man
•Ms. Pac-Man
•Warlords
•Swordquest: Fireworld
•Vanguard
•Star Raiders
•Real Sports: Football
•Qix
•Phoenix
•Asteroids
•Berzerk
•Centipede
•Breakout
•Super Breakout

pictures and more at the link..

 

[Ishida]

Has anyone fallen in the landfill? Is there footage of someone flailing uselessly trying to escape their doom?

I'm not sure what kind of landfill you're thinking of; we just excavate old games here.

 

[Cthulhu_Steev]

I'm not sure what kind of landfill you're thinking of; we just excavate old games here.

I think he was doing an ET joke, people who played that spent a lot of time trying to get out of pits.

Edit: I expect I've seen one joke and missed the other though.

 

[MightyHedgehog]

It's increasingly difficult to remember these days that ActiVision and Electronic Arts were small studios started for the explicit purpose of respecting and promoting the talent of individual game designers.

A real shame that no one has followed in those footsteps since that time, but how can you compete with the money that fuels the big conglomerate-led industry since? I really liked the smaller days of the 80s when the creator was more or less the star of their own show, seeming to speak more directly to the player than the massive faceless content dumps we have gotten in the decades since. There may be no going back to when doing something different or new was more valuable to competition than simply bigger, more overwhelming in its production value. Funny how those two are practically the polar opposite of what they started off as.

 

[Baron_Calamity]

As someone who was a teen during that generation of gaming and was a huge Atari fan, I just don't care about this. Ok, they found Atari games buried. So??? It doesn't mean anything. It doesn't add anything about the crash we didn't know.

 

[Astro Monster]

So there were no Pitfall II carts?

Proof that it was the best 2600 game

 

[AlexMogil]

This is the most cryptic game on the 2600 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNsC_HIgkOs along with Sword Quest. ET still sits pretty high up there, though.

I loved that game. I got the ark myself. I flipped my shit when I got the secret message. I seriously have no idea where I read the method to find it because it was so unbelievably convoluted. I ended up personally thanking HSW for forming my gaming childhood.

 

[Blackdog]

This story reminded me that I was part of the problem back then too. Most every game I owned was made by Activision.

 

[Toparaman]

It's increasingly difficult to remember these days that ActiVision and Electronic Arts were small studios started for the explicit purpose of respecting and promoting the talent of individual game designers.

Yup. Hence the name "Electronic Arts". Crazy how things change once big money comes into play.

 

[jooey]

It also busts the myth that ET is the worst game ever made. It's not even close. It's not even the worst Atari 2600 game, not by a long shot.

A myth about a subjective viewpoint? Are you just incredibly defensive about E.T.?

 

[Beer Monkey]

So there were no Pitfall II carts?

Proof that it was the best 2600 game

Why would Atari bury Activision games?

 

[Tsundere]

Amazon Video Games Facebook just posted:

http://amzn.to/1tW7H9l

lol

 

[Blackdog]

Why would Atari bury Activision games?

Because Chopper Command sucked. Sucked!!!

 

[Why would you do that?]

As someone who was born in late '89, I've never really been interested too much in the 2600. However, it's a very interesting system for me from a "video game history" perspective.

For some reason, it makes me sad to look at the list of games, knowing they were just sitting there, buried and neglected as the industry died. Games like Qix, Berzerk, Centipede, Ms. Pac-Man, Asteroids, Super Breakout, Adventure, Missile Command, Defender, Space Invaders, Night Driver... Some great names there.

I have played some 2600 games. Despite their graphics, they can be really fun. Missile Command, one of my favorite arcade games, is actually more fun to me on the 2600. (It's less complex, just one missile tower, but I feel like the lack of complexity made the game more fast-paced.) Others I couldn't quite enjoy as much, but I can totally understand how and why people reacted at the time.

There was no doubt in my mind that the burial site existed, but it is funny how quickly fact turned to myth and myth to legend... The people involved with it are still alive and well today, lol. Speaking of which, I wonder what Nolan Bushnell thinks about all of this. Has he said anything?

 

[klaus]

The people involved with it are still alive and well today, lol. Speaking of which, I wonder what Nolan Bushnell thinks about all of this. Has he said anything?

Well, Bushnell was forced out of the company by Warner long before the crash happened, but it would still be interesting to hear his take on things..

Btw I stumbled upon a nice documentary of Video Game History, hosted by none other than Tony Hawk (weird, isn't it?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4dPSOncwVQ

Edit: For their take on the crash / E.T. burying, skip to 34:00 -

Spoiler

Spoiler: Nolan Bushnell laughed about how bad E.T. was

 

[Megatron]

Amazon Video Games Facebook just posted:

http://amzn.to/1tW7H9l

lol

Calling ET a 'classic' is some serious revisionist history. It's an old game, that's about all I'll give it.

 

[eyeball_kid]

For some reason, it makes me sad to look at the list of games, knowing they were just sitting there, buried and neglected as the industry died. Games like Qix, Berzerk, Centipede, Ms. Pac-Man, Asteroids, Super Breakout, Adventure, Missile Command, Defender, Space Invaders, Night Driver... Some great names there.

Well, most of those games weren't released during the death throes of the Atari scene; they were probably just excess stock that was cheaper to write off and dump in a landfill than sell at steep discount.

And I take back what I said about all 2600 arcade ports being abysmal. Berzerk 2600 was great, despite the lack of the robot voices. I actually prefer the chunky graphics of the 2600 version, and it had some custom modes that weren't available in the arcade.

I have played some 2600 games. Despite their graphics, they can be really fun. Missile Command, one of my favorite arcade games, is actually more fun to me on the 2600. (It's less complex, just one missile tower, but I feel like the lack of complexity made the game more fast-paced.)

Missile Command 2600 was indeed very hard, probably mostly because the arcade version had dynamic velocity of your targeting reticle due to the trackball (like a mouse with acceleration turned on), while the 2600 version had (if memory serves) linear velocity as you moved the reticle with the joystick. Thus as missile speed ramped up, it became increasingly hard to keep up on the 2600 version.

 

[A Black Falcon]

http://readwrite.com/2014/04/28/atari-et-dig-alamogordo-game-list#awesm=~oCJR2yo4SJVMsV



pictures and more at the link..

Interesting. Going by that then, then there could be hundreds of thousands of copies of ET there -- which doesn't match up to the millions of copies of the rumor, but it's certainly a large number.