Urban Legend Confirmed: Atari’s E.T. Stash Found in Landfill

By now every gamer knows the story of the infamous E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial game for Atari 2600: the game so terrible and so over-produced that it became one of the biggest contributors to the video game crash of 1983. Legend has it that Atari buried millions of unsold cartridges in a remote landfill in a small town in New Mexico following that crash, encasing the burial site in concrete. Even 20+ years later, no one has been able to confirm or deny the story, and it has remained one of the gaming industry’s most famous urban legends…

…until today, when excavators unearthed that very stash of Atari cartridges in the small town of Alamogordo, New Mexico, as part of a highly publicized dig that will be made into a documentary by Fuel Entertainment and sponsored by Microsoft. Copies of E.T. along with other games including Centipede and Missile Command have been found at the site, many complete with boxes and inserts and seemingly in playable condition. Microsoft’s Larry Hyrb tweeted a picture of the first game to be unearthed, and witnesses at the scene, including Wired‘s Chris Kohler, say that there are “tons” more cartridges in the landfill. The AP has reported that hundreds of cartridges have been unearthed so far.

So now it’s official: gaming’s most infamous urban legend is no longer myth, but reality. Did anyone ever play E.T. for the Atari 2600? Was it as terrible as history has made it out to be? Let us know in the comments!

Image Source: Major Nelson and Chris Kohler