Buried E.T. Cartridges Found in Infamous Landfill

Hey, tropers. Long time no see, huh?

Getting down to the nitty gritty, it turns out that the infamous ET Atari 2600 cartridges really were buried in a landfill three decades ago! Take a look here for the dirt on this recent development. Also, here's a link to an article; for the link-cautious among this:

What are your thoughts on this? Personally, I always thought that this was just some overly exaggerated urban legend in regards to the game's legendarily toxic reception. What I find especially interesting about all this is that at least some of the buried cartridges are still fully intact after all this time!

edited 26th Apr '14 12:33:35 PM by Komodin

Whoa. I had a feeling that it was real after all, but now I'm seeing it with my own eyes.

Well it's not as though video game archaeology is a thing, so this being a historical find in our culture, I'd say They Belong in a Museum.

Is there a video game museum?

Is it just me or is this how stories about unleashing the ultimate evil start?

The Angry Video Game Nerd movie is about this. he just released plot details a few days ago, including an interview with the guy that made the ET games. I find the timing funny.

Holy crap it's real?! No way!

If the diggers start craving Reeses Pieces and falling down pitfalls thanks to unearthing the games... We'll refer them to you.

edited 26th Apr '14 3:05:36 PM by DiurnalBrocolli

>Is there a video game museum?

The International Center for the History of Electronic Games. It's a division of the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, NY. IIRC, they were at least partly responsible for one of the couple touring video game history exhibits a few years back.

The other museum-related video game exhibit of note was the Art of Video Games that the Smithsonian did a couple years ago.

I honestly don't get the point of all this. "Thing that was in a landfill turns out to have been in a landfill all along"? Like, what's the point? Copies of ET on the Atari are still not so rare as to be unfindable, and those haven't spent three decades buried in trash. And it's not like the game's been vindicated by history... So what's the point of the exercise?

So do we like put the games on trial for causing the Crash or?

Why excavate the cartridges for one of the worst games in human history, you ask?

Why not?

It was an urban legend connected to an event that changed video game history, The Crash of 83. And now it's apparently Myth Confirmed. (Grant Imahara tweeted that this one had been floating around in the Mythbusters binder of ideas for a while, though it probably didn't get as far as being seriously considered for a show topic.)

Also, the dig is apparently being run by a documentary film team and sponsored by Microsoft.

edited 26th Apr '14 5:29:07 PM by Elle

Isn't this how this whole summoning of Cthulhu starts? (and something worries me that Firefox knows that that is how to spell that word.)

Funny, I had made the complete opposite assumption: I thought thing's existence was already a verified fact.

Microsoft aren't just sponsoring the dig, they're the ones who funded the documentary in the first place.

edited 26th Apr '14 5:45:26 PM by thatother1dude

Yeah, but no-one had found it up until now.

And this is how these stories always start.

Abandon hope all ye who read about this E.T. game.

I'm curious, anyone actually ever play the game? Like, really play it in its authentic form? I was staying over a friend's house one time, and the room I was sleeping in had an Atari 2600 hooked up to the TV. Since there was little else to do, I started rifling through the games in the box next to it (which also included the infamously terrible Pac Man port, and a surprisingly superior Ms Pac Man port).

When I saw E.T. in there, I instantly put it in the slot and started playing.

Even after having seen so many videos and read so many articles about the game, I still had no damn clue what I was doing. I vaguely figured out some things, and I think I may have beaten it at some point, but I really could not tell whether or not I did or if I was even doing what I was supposed to be doing. Suffice to say, I went back to Ms Pac Man.

edited 26th Apr '14 11:36:45 PM by Odd1

So the reason it sucks is because it was unintuitive and Guide Dang It! as Hell? I never dug deeper into it, so I never knew the issues with the game.

I'm guessing the intact cartridges will be passed out to the tourists as souvenirs. That or sold.

Probably sold.

The game wasn't actually terrible. It was decent/slightly bad. There were far worse games on the Atari 2600 at the time, including regular Pac-Man. It's a bit misblamed as is.

They were just overproduced and the game wasn't good enough to sell that many copies(and even then, they did overproduce it). So they had to bury them. Of course, some didn't believe the bury part, but that's blatantly true. Keep in mind the game is entirely playable and was made in a really short time despite this. That says a lot for how long it took, a Month and a Half. And we're not talking about using a really good programming tool that we have now(I.E. RPG Maker), but far weaker engines and computers.

Are you kidding? They're museum pieces.

Actually, (assuming the cartridges still work), selling them would be pointless, since finding so many copies actually drives the price down.

It's not Mis-blamed. Its role is just often exaggerated. It's not the sole reason for the crash, but it played a very prominent role as the last big flop that broke the camel's back.

Basically, it was rushed, overproduced, and overhyped. This thing was promoted like crazy right before Christmas, and it was not very good. While the gameplay might be passable (if there was any way to tell what you're actually supposed to be doing, which there isn't), it has almost nothing to do with E.T., which was crazy popular at the time. After word-of-mouth spread, they couldn't even give it away, leading to all unsold copies having to be buried in the New Mexico desert.

It was an extremely costly flop, occurring at the end of a string of costly flops, which led to people abandoning the idea of making video games.

Until Nintendo thought to package them with a robot and sell them as a toy, that is.

edited 27th Apr '14 9:28:28 AM by BadWolf21

Those cartridges contain metals of some sort or other? If so, then just keep a few for the museums etc and then recycle the rest. Should cover the cost of the digs.

x3: Being playable despite being rushed to the market does not make a game not terrible. Being playable should be inherent to games in general. Even then, though, it's still barely, barely playable. It is hardly possible at all to figure out what to do without any foreknowledge, and even with foreknowledge, it's still pretty awful to try to navigate and figure things out.

The Atari Pac-Man worse? Hardly. At least you can figure out what to do in that, and it is feasibly possible to complete a its only level without spending more time than necessary staring at the screen figuring out what's what. It's a bad port, but its terribleness is far overstated. It's merely inferior (and potentially seizure-inducing).

edited 27th Apr '14 9:47:29 AM by Odd1

Yes, Pac-Man is arguably worse. It screws up after enough levels, making it completely unplayable. E.T. was never unplayable, it was just hard. I stand by what I said. Being barely playable is still better than ever being unplayable. Also, they released the unfinished alpha instead of the finished copy on the 2600. That's why it became a Porting Disaster, it wasn't even a realistically finished game regardless. Asteroids' quality is arguable, but being buried with them gives zero hope for it being "good", same with the Pac-Man port. I don't know how porting an unfinished alpha game makes it better than a completely playable, non-buggy game is "better", but eh.

Either way, that's blatantly subjective, and we'll just have to agree to disagree.

@Bad Wolf: I said it was misblamed a bit as is. If that wasn't clear(I'm guessing it wasn't), it means it gets more blame than it deserves and nothing more. I didn't say it was simply misblamed. Because that would not be correct. It has part of the blame and there's no way that isn't true. But Pac-Man and Asteroids had a lot of blame too. Pac-Man for being a port that screwed up and wasn't even a well-made port, or a port of the finished version either. Asteroids I cannot honestly tell why, it was "quickly ported". Our tropes page for it clearly needs some work done. It's practically about the size of two stub pages. The fact it's in there means something went wrong, regardless.

edited 27th Apr '14 10:06:26 AM by Irene