ET Cartridges Found in Desert Landfill After 31 Years

[alec006]

The "rumors" about the Atari landfill are now proven true, I'll be damned.

http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S3413459.shtml

[kainemaxwell]

https://twitter.com/majornelson/stat...29185277968385

Awesome.

[fergojisan]

It wasn't an urban legend or a mystery, it was a documented fact. Atari dumped the contents of a warehouse in Texas, which companies do from time to time. Now, this is just going to perpetuate the claim that Atari destroyed the video game industry. People forget that Atari CREATED the video game industry, and this is not going to help.

[PizzaKat]

How long before these carts are on Ebay?

[bb_hood]

wow they dug up a bunch of mega common dirty games. Nobody wanted them then and I doubt anybody would want them now.

[SparTonberry]

Actually some might given it's a historical artifact now.

[rik1138]

It wasn't an urban legend or a mystery, it was a documented fact. Atari dumped the contents of a warehouse in Texas, which companies do from time to time.

Actually, what I believe was 'urban legendy' about the dump was that it was nothing but 1000's (or millions) of copies of ET. But, what this dig has actually done is debunked the legend. As you stated, there was no doubt (or shouldn't have been) that Atari dumped a lot of games and stuff there, but now we know it was mostly non-ET games (at least based on what's been dug up so far), not that it was just a place to hide a warehouse of a single game title...

That's the part that became legend though, that it was all just ET because they made _SOOO_ many of them.

ET wasn't even the first cartridge found... The press is just using ET to make headlines since no one would give a sh*t if they said 'bunch of worthless common 2600 games found in landfill'.

[Bojay1997]

Actually, what I believe was 'urban legendy' about the dump was that it was nothing but 1000's (or millions) of copies of ET. But, what this dig has actually done is debunked the legend. As you stated, there was no doubt (or shouldn't have been) that Atari dumped a lot of games and stuff there, but now we know it was mostly non-ET games (at least based on what's been dug up so far), not that it was just a place to hide a warehouse of a single game title...

That's the part that became legend though, that it was all just ET because they made _SOOO_ many of them.

ET wasn't even the first cartridge found... The press is just using ET to make headlines since no one would give a sh*t if they said 'bunch of worthless common 2600 games found in landfill'.

Actually, I think there were and still are some people that don't believe this really happened despite all the earlier documentation. I think the dig was just a huge publicity stunt and not necessary, but even after the find yesterday, there are still people posting on various forums claiming that the items were planted. It kind of makes me sad that there are people that go for conspiracy theories despite overwhelming evidence contradicting their crazy beliefs.

[Bandicat]

I remember the first article I read about the dumping stated that in addition to the cartridges, failed Atari prototypes were also thrown into the landfill. All the articles I am reading seem to only be focusing on the ET game, but mention "other computer equipment." Has anyone discovered any of the "other computer equipment?"

[JSoup]

Actually, I think there were and still are some people that don't believe this really happened despite all the earlier documentation. I think the dig was just a huge publicity stunt and not necessary, but even after the find yesterday, there are still people posting on various forums claiming that the items were planted. It kind of makes me sad that there are people that go for conspiracy theories despite overwhelming evidence contradicting their crazy beliefs.

What's probably lending to the conspiracy theories is that they are finding complete, intact copies of the game. That really shouldn't be surprising, giving the whole sealed in concrete thing. But the story most people know is that the games were either crushed first, then buried or the other way around. Looking at the documentation shows that the only crushing that took place was pretty much what was standard protocol for a landfill, but that's not the story people have been reading for 30 years. So, skepticism.