Documentary filmmakers put to rest a 30-year-old myth on Saturday when they unearthed hundreds - maybe thousands - of Atari's "E.T. Extraterrestrial" cartridges buried deep under heaps of garbage in a landfill in the New Mexico desert.
Up until that moment, the celebrated but unconfirmed Atari grave was purely the stuff of urban legends. As per the believers, Atari sent about a dozen trucks carrying thousands of what many called the worst game ever to be buried in shame in a landfill in New Mexico. The game, claimed many, was so bad that it was single-handedly responsible for the crash of the billion-dollar video game industry in the 1980s.
Around 200 gaming enthusiasts and a team of backhoe workers went with the film crew to the landfill early Saturday morning in the hopes of putting their doubts and speculations to rest. However, only around a dozen fans remained after three hours when the dig crew discovered the first layer of "ET" games, as well as hordes of other Atari memorabilia, including Atari consoles, "Pac-Man," "Ms. Pac-Man," "Pele's Soccer," "Yar's Revenge," "Baseball," "Centipede" and "Warlords."
"I feel pretty relieved and psyched that they actually got to see something," film director Zak Penn said.
Former Atari manager James Heller, however, was not surprised. Heller, who was invited to the event, says that Atari gave him the task of disposing 728,000 cartridges in a warehouse in El Paso, Texas. After a few local kids caught wind of the video games, Heller said he went back to the landfill to pour concrete over them. A New York Times news story from 1983, which reports that Atari lost $310.5 million during the second quarter of that year, confirms Heller's claims.
The game became a major flop when it was rushed to coincide with Steven Spielberg's hit movie "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial." However, the question remains about whether or not "E.T" was actually the worst game ever.
While a few gaming fans at the event were eager to give the infamous game a try inside a makeshift gaming den equipped with a TV and a 1980s console, Kotaku deputy editor Tina Amini said "it was practically broken," with the E.T. falling into traps that were impossible to escape and appearing unexpectedly everywhere.
Game designer Howard Scott Warshaw, who was also invited to the event, does not believe his creation caused the video game crash of 1983.
"It would be pretty to think that 'E.T.' really was the downfall of the industry and that I, as a programmer, over the course of five weeks was able to topple a billion-dollar industry. But I also have a degree in economics," Warshaw said.
He also does not mind that people are calling his creation horrible.
"It may be a horrible game, but 32 years after, you are here talking to me about it. It's a tremendous honor that it still generates public discourse," he said.
"E.T." sold for $29.99 when it was released. It is now pegged at around $5 on eBay, but Penn believes the games hold a much different value as a "piece of history."
Microsoft's Xbox Entertainment Studios commissioned the filmmakers to create a documentary about the event to be released on Xbox game consoles.
The city of Alamogordo will give 250 cartridges to Microsoft and hopes to make a small fortune with the rest.
