Legendary buried E.T. cartridges to be excavated
"It belongs in a museum!"
Legend has it that Atari's 1982 E.T. game was so astoundingly bad that allegedly millions of copies of it were buried in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico during September, 1983. Only now, on the 30th anniversary of the burial, it's being dug back up.
According to New Mexico local news station KRQE, the Ontario-based film production company Fuel has signed a deal with Alamogordo's City Commission allowing the company to access the landfill for six months while it makes a documentary about the archaeological dig.
It's generally believed that E.T. - along with some other Atari products like the Atari 2600 port of Pac-Man - were crushed, then packed into nine semi trucks before being buried. Reports on the incident are shaky and conflicting, however, with some believing it never happened at all.
City officials are hoping this will bring more attention to the town. Alamogordo's mayor Susie Galea stated, "I hope more people find out about Alamogordo through this opportunity that we have to unearth the Atari games in the landfill."