Dumping Ground For Millions Of Copies Of E.T. Game To Be Excavated
Many of you have probably heard about how bad E.T. the Extra Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 was, but there’s quite a few people out there who haven’t been able to fathom just how terrible of a game E.T. was. It wasn’t just bad in the sense that the game was practically unplayable. No, this game was so bad that it nearly sunk the video game industry as a whole, as millions of unsold cartridges, along with millions of copies of the Pac-Man port and Atari 2600 systems were sent to Alamogordo. NM to be crushed and buried under concrete at the landfill there.
Now an excavation is being planned at the fabled site by Canadian filmmakers Fuel Industries. They’ve been able to get permission from the City Commission of Alamogordo to the dump site for the next 6 months in order to shoot a documentary about the burial. This would be the first serious attempt to dig up the site.
Joe Lewandowski ran a garbage company at the time and says he knows exactly where the final resting place of the Atari hardware is located. After all, he claims to have spotted the game systems and games in the trucks, presumably as they were being dumped into the hole in the ground. With that being said, 30 years is a long time, especially for a landfill. I’ve got a feeling they’re going to need that whole 6 months to finally find and dig up the site.
