The excavation of Atari’s game graveyard — which unearthed many copies of the infamous failed E.T. game — definitely happened. There are pictures. There are trustworthy witness reports. But somehow, some folks are still sceptical about it. Not everyone actually believes the entire thing happened, amusingly enough.
In an excellent write-up of the dig, Wired’s Chris Kohler reports on what actually happened at the landfill — and while the entire thing is worth a read, it ends on a note about the general reaction to Microsoft’s involvement with the dig, as well as “Atari Truthers:”
There was a third group, one I did not expect: Atari truthers. Microsoft, they believed, faked the dig. There’s no way the games could have survived so long, some argued. Others said there had to be more games than that in the hole. A few actually claimed the hard hat atop Major Nelson’s head had been Photoshopped.
The picture in question, in case you’re curious:
You can look at people arguing about whether or not the hardhat belonging to Microsoft’s Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb is photoshopped here. It’s kind of hilarious.
And naturally, people are commenting about the veracity of the dig, too — click on ‘expand’ to read the text on these comments:
“50/50 thinking this might be BS,” one commenter writes.
“This smells like utter reality TV bullshit,” another opines.
Kohler attributes this reaction to a “Law of Conservation of Myths” — now that one myth has been proven true, another myth replaced it. Makes sense to me!
You can read the entire report here, though it’s worth noting that most people do trust that the excavation happened.
Comments
12 responses to “Some People Think The Atari Landfill Dig Is Fake”
Curse of the Internet. So much bullfwop floating around its hard to believe anything.
Personally I feel television, radio and newspapers are just as bad as the interwebs.
Just as bad? I think you mean a hell of a lot worse.
I think they missed by a long shot.
Microsoft REALLY sent Larry back in time to 1982, where he then worked his way into a job at Atari and was assigned to work on E.T. He secretly replaced the final build of the game with his own version just before the cartridges were manufactured, successfully accomplishing his mission to destroy one of the best movie adapted games ever to be created that went on to earn Atari shitballs money and solidify their place as THE powerhouse of the video game industry in the alternate future he had travelled from, allowing Microsoft to rise into power in the timeline we live in today.
Then, just to be a major dick, loaded them into a truck and buried them in the middle of the desert, only to act surprised when they the fruits of his labour were found. Evil fucking genius.
I’d watch that if microsoft made it an xbox live series
Ah, I guess it is possible that someone could have faked it, grabbed a bunch of carts etc and buried them a year ago, only to dig them up now.
But why bother?
It was aliens. http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/158/329/9189283.jpg
They thought the hard-hat was photoshopped in? At first glance, it looks like his entire head was photoshopped in…
That’s just his face.
Conspiracy nutters need their fix.
Wake up sheeple! The world is only 20 years old, the devil buried those cartridges in the ground to make you think it’s much older.
People still believe the Moon landing was faked so this doesn’t suprise me at all.
I work at a Landfill and when I heard they were going to try to dig these up I figured they wouldn’t have a chance in hell of finding them.
Maybe the Landfills work a bit differently out there in New Mexico, by the looks of the pictures I have seen they either buried the carts right at the top of an almost finished landfill, or they just have shallower landfills taking up a larger area.
Theres no way something like that could be found at my place without doing a completely ridiculous amount of waste excavation.