Come 26 April 2014, one of gaming’s greatest mysteries will finally be solved. Or maybe it will just be get even more convoluted and confusing. In either case, that is the official date Microsoft just announced for when someone is finally going to break ground on the infamous New Mexico landfill that’s allegedly overflowing with discarded copies of the Atari 2600 games E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Pac-Man.
As legend has it, Atari piled the unused cartridges into the landfill more than three decades ago following the colossal commercial failure of both titles.The company had paid through the nose to secure the rights to make a video game adaptation of E.T. The game that eventually came out of this licensing deal wasn’t just terrible, however. It also had very little to do with Steven Spielberg’s classic movie of the same name. As for Pac-Man? Well, the console version of the game sold around seven million copies but still left Atari with an extra five million gathering dust in its warehouse in El Paso, Texas.
The mystery lies in what happened next. On 26 April 1989, Atari did bury a bunch of stuff in a landfill in Alamogordo, a city in south-central New Mexico. It has never confirmed if the thousands of unused cartridges were part (or all) of said stuff, however.
Late last year, the media company Fuel Entertainment got exclusive rights from the Alamogordo city council to go digging for the landfill. Now partnered with Microsoft’s Xbox Entertainment Studios and LightBox Entertainment, Fuel is finally going to put all the conspiracy theories to the test.
What do you think the three are going to find down there? All the remaining E.T. copies that are still unspoken for? A time capsule that Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell left to warn us all of the unspeakable atrocities that would unfold in the console wars to come? Walter White’s leftover drug money? We only have a few more days to come up with the crackpot theory to end all crackpot theories, so let’s get to work!
Comments
13 responses to “The Infamous Atari Landfill Dig Is Finally Happening”
They’d totally shit themselves if they found two dead DEA agents…
And DB Cooper.
… or 6 barrels of money
Aww, I thought this was about the AVGN movie >:
From what I understand the extra Cartridges where smashed up so your your looking for little bits of cartridge which may not even have a label on.
The machines that shred tech are incredible beasts, there won’t be much left.
Gez, Microsoft must be REALLY desperate for new titles for the xbone.
Hahahahaha. Love it.
Even back then there was proof that adapting movies to make games was a terrible idea.
It works… Sometimes
True, I will grant you that, from time to time, some games based on video games aren’t terrible. Tomb raider was quite watchable, Wreck it Ralph was fantastic (even though not really an adaptation), Prince of persia could have been a lot worse and Mortal Kombat (the first one) basically gave fans what they wanted from an adaptation. Final fantasy advent children too was pretty reasonable if you were familiar with the game. But they all only come in as “good for a game movie” not “good for a movie”
What is the motivation for this?
Finally! A 3D HD reboot of The Dig!
I hope it is as good as the recent Lara Croft game.