Evidently, Atari did bury its biggest mistake in the New Mexico desert.
Excavators have found copies of the 1982 Atari 2600 cartridge E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial — a notorious flop blamed for console gaming’s collapse a year later — in a dig at an Alamagordo, N.M. landfill on Saturday.
The highly publicized dig, which will be the subject of an upcoming documentary, appears to confirm the story that Atari dumped thousands of unsold E.T. cartridges at the site more than 30 years ago.
The image above is of materials recovered from the dig. Polygon’s Matt Leone, on the scene, says at least one E.T. package has been found “complete with inserts. They say there are lots more games down there.”
Atari, then the dominant maker of home consoles and video games, paid millions for the rights to make an adaptation of the 1982 blockbuster E.T. The resulting game is considered one of the worst of all time and, along with a similarly disappointing port ofPac-Man for the Atari 2600, is blamed for home consoles’ ice age from 1983 until the North American launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System. [Polygon]