Atari E.T. Cartridges Headed to Smithsonian

Back in 1982 there was a company by the name of Atari and they made a lot of really good video games. That same year there was a blockbuster movie called E.T. The Extra Terrestrial and Atari got the rights to make a game based on the movie. However, in order to get the game to retail store shelves in time for the upcoming 1982 Christmas season, they had to have it created in only 6 weeks. Normally games like this required between 6 months and a year to develop, so 6 weeks was an awfully short time. But they got it done anyway. And, guess what? The game was really really bad. Reviewers called it one of the worst video games ever released, and it wound up being one of the biggest commercial failures in video gaming history. The game's commercial failure and resulting effects on Atari are frequently cited as a contributing factor to the video game industry crash of 1983.

Atari manufactured somewhere around 4 million of the games. However, once word got out about how bad the game was, returns started coming back and its believed about 3.5 million were shipped back to the company. So, what did Atari do with them? They decided to have a mass burial. Somewhere between ten and twenty semi-trailer truckloads of Atari boxes, cartridges, consoles, and computers were crushed and buried in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. 

And all was forgotten. But the story of the buried cartridges remained. Some said it was an urban legend. But a Canadian documentary film company believed otherwise, and last April they asked the Alamogordo City Commission to let them dig through the landfill to see if they could find any remains of E.T. or the other games that were supposed to be there. And, on May 28, 2013, they struck paydirt. 

The news caught almost everybody by surprise. And all of a sudden a treasure trove of 30 year old Atari games is in high demand by lots of people including collectors. So, after a long pit stop in the New Mexico desert, E.T. is finally heading home, but strangely it seems that home just might be the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, among other places. A total of 1,377 games were found, and surprisingly, E.T. was not the most popular title unearthed. Only 171 copies of the game were found, compared to 190 copies of Centipede. Other popular games dug up included 116 Defenders, 59 Missile Commands, 99 Warlords, and 53 Asteroids. In total, 60 different game titles came out of the landfill, but there's likely still much more underground. A consultant involved in the dig reported to city leaders that there could be nearly 800,000 more cartridges still buried in the landfill.

About 500 of the excavated games are being set aside for museums, including the Smithsonian, and 100 will be given to the companies producing the film, leaving about 700 for the city to sell, possibly via a public auction. The commission plans to meet June 10 to decide how to go about selling the cartridges. They might even set a few aside for New Mexico residents at a discounted rate.