What could be there?
Systems, prototypes, said Joe Lewandowski, who ran a waste-management company in Alamogordo in the 1980s and seems to know a lot more about what happened than he is willing to tell. (Atari, which filed for bankruptcy this year, has been mum over the years, and further questions to Mr. Lewandowski were met with a mix of silence and mischievous smiles.)
Readers of a certain age might remember Geraldo Riveras quest to uncover the secrets of Al Capones vaults in 1986, a live television event that spectacularly revealed nothing besides empty bottles and debris. Last month, Fuel Entertainment, a digital company in Los Angeles, acquired an exclusive permit to excavate the Alamogordo landfill over the coming six months. It is probably safe to say there is going to be more than dust to find.
Were 100 percent going to be digging, assured the companys chief executive, Mike Burns, though he cautioned that there might be nothing in the hole or there might be the holy grail of video games.
There is no definitive account of that day in September 1983 when the trucks brought the Atari haul here, just versions that seem to feed on one another, changing slightly as they travel from one online forum to the next, as in a virtual game of telephone.
One story put the number of trucks at 20. Others say there were 10 or 14. Mr. Lewandowski recalled last week that 29 trucks had left Ataris plant in El Paso, Tex., just over the border from New Mexico, and that 9 had made it to the landfill.
The other 20, he said, no one knows what happened.
There is a lingering rumor that one of the trucks was hijacked along the way and taken to Mexico, never to be seen again.
. Went back this year to see relatives, the city is in dire money problems 
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