ET copies (Atari 2600) Unearthed in landfill

The burial of numerous copies of ET for the Atari 2600 is no longer myth.

According to urban legend, a massive stockpile of Atari gear — including truckloads of the notoriously awful game E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial — has laid buried in a New Mexico landfill for over thirty years. Today, that story is no longer a myth. Construction crews have uncovered copies of the Atari 2600 game at a landfill deep in the New Mexico desert, near the city of Alamogordo.

lol this is kinda awesome :)

That game was without a doubt one of the worst ever made on any platform.

If they really did find more than just a couple copies I've seen in pics, I hope they can save quite a bit of games and the reported hardware and come up with some kind of charity auction(s) or some museum to store in.

Thats cool. A grand piece of gaming history right there. Those copies must have some big value now

Zen riddle of the day: how can a tree be fat? (Alamogordo)

I still don't get why people think this, the game itself wasn't that bad, certainly no worse than most other atari games.

Exciting news though, I wonder what else they dumped down there. I saw a picture of someone playing the game at the site, wonder if it still works

Have you played/seen it?

Were you even around when the game came out, because honestly its not just because its fanboyisme or systemwars chat, The game was seriously the worst, and EVERYone who has seen it/played it i know off in the industry and media has the exact same opinion.

Gameplay for those who haven't seen it.

@Vatusus: The games themselves don't have much value, at least that is what I saw when looking through the prices of the cartridges on Amazon not to long ago. Since the discovery of the dig, I would imagine these prices are to go up soon do to the fact that a lot of news stations around the world will be running this story on their website and broadcast. I can't imagine how much the dig up ones probably cost. Most likely a fortunate.

Good to see an urban legend finally proven to be true. This is part of gaming history.

I wonder if they still work.

I have played it and I really don't see what's wrong with it, it's sort of fun. It's not broken in any way at least. There's little doubt that it wasn't financially successful and contributed heavily to the video game crash but that doesn't mean it was a bad game in its own right.

However I don't know how it would have compared to other atari games at the time. I can play other atari 2600 games now and compare them to ET and find that none of them seem that good, but back in ET's day, people may have thought differently.

Good observation. There were plenty of equally crappy titles available for the Atari during the time of E.T. but it gets the most recognition probably for the name alone.

I wonder if there is a hoard of Superman 64 carts in a landfill somewhere.

If you are not trolling here and seriously think there is nothing wrong with the game i am speechless

The game was absolutely horrible and again its not just unreasonable hate against the game that has made it named among the worst ever made, And you are also wrong, the game actually sold extremely well for its time, and hit the top 15 list back in the day.

So the only thing that failed that game was its design and gameplay.

And now to find Polybius.

I know the game sold well, I also know people returned it to atari and caused them problems. Presumably they too thought it sucked. I still don't get why. What exactly is so horrible about it? Not saying it's a great game because I can see how it's not to everybody's taste but I don't see anything wrong with it either.

That being said I can understand how someone playing it when they have absolutely no clue what to do can think it sucks. Good thing there was an instruction manual that explained everything, did anyone bother reading that? I've no idea how detailed it was but supposedly it explained enough. For my part I'm familiar with all of the game's mechanics and it is perfectly playable and I can't find anything wrong with it. It's not that exciting but just being a bit boring isn't a particularly big crime.

Bottom line is the game worked without issue, was playable to the end and offered some challenge, yet people still rank it alongside games like superman 64 that unlike ET are full of glitches and are borderline unplayable even if you do know what you're doing.

I think the expectations of the name played a big role in the reaction to it. In reality, it was no worse than a lot of other Atari games released at the time. Man, I wish I still had my 2600.

I don't know if I'd go that far, but it's certainly not the worst game ever made. The hype machine surrounding a video game version of the hottest family film franchise at the time, combined with Atari massively overestimating how many copies they were actually going to sell, the massive subsequent loss Atari suffered as a result, and it's contribution to Atari's eventual bankrupcy and dismantling all add to the "lore" of ET being the worst game ever.

Regarding it being broken, the biggest problem was that when you levetated out of a pit it was waaaay too easy to accidentally fall right back in if you move in the wrong direction the second you reach the top of the screen. This wasn't obvious so it looked like a bug where you'd be stuck in a pit forever. That, plus the game was crazy obtuse. Raiders was the same way (save dev) but at least the ridiculous facsimile of actions with icons that you took in Raiders were fun actions (using your whip on snakes and bad guys, planting bombs, charming snakes, parachuting off of cliffs, etc).

-Byshop