Atari's E.T. Graveyard to be excavated for documentary!


Asmo

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http://www.alamogordonews.com/news/ci_23342105/alamogordo-green-lights-search-buried-atari-game?IADID=Search-www.alamogordonews.com-www.alamogordonews.com

It's been called the worse (sic) game of all time.

The "Atari Graveyard" is a popular urban legend among video game afficianados.

Now a film company will excavate the old landfill, located near the Charlie T. Lee Memorial Relief Route in Alamogordo.

The city commission approved on Tuesday night a contract that will allow the film company -- Fuel Industries -- six months to dig up the landfill and search for the coveted bad games.
Heh. If they didn't crush them first, I wonder what sort of condition they'd be in now...

Hey, maybe they'll find all those Apple Lisas too. At least the cases would be a fun modding toy.
 
I see this being another "Al Capone's Vault".

There is no way they are going to find these carts, unless the land fill closed right after these carts where thrown in. It's been 30 years and that means 30 years worth of trash added on top of this stuff. I just don't see it, but it makes for a good story I guess.

Chris
 
Isn't this how a lot of those "documentaries" work? ;)
 
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I will have to pick up that Atari Business Is Fun book I think, I don't read as much as I should but that has promise.

The guy with the cave stash is classic, imagine stumbling across that stash if you were just exploring the caves :) I'd have felt like Mikey in The Goonies when he found One Eyed Willy and his gold
 
When the site was still active there were lots of photos of all the stock in the caves (not as dingy as it sounds!). Mountains of stuff.

I bought a few boxes of multiples of everything, VCS carts, 7800 carts, Jaguar carts - and T-Shirts! They had boxes of official Atari T-Shirts from the games crash period! Going through the boxes full of sealed brand new Atari stuff when it arrived was surreal.
 
 We already cleared that up in our book "Atari Inc. - Business Is Fun" released last fall, going by direct interviews and actual internal documents.

There were never thousands of ET games buried in Alamorgodo, that's a myth that sprung up later and was also never once mentioned by the actual press articles of the time. The dump there was simply a clearing out of Atari's Texas manufacturing plant as it transitioned to automated production methods and a focus on personal computer manufacturing. It had previously been one of the main plants for manufacturing of game cartridges and other hardware, and game manufacturing was being moved overseas to China.

As part of the transition the unused cartridge stock of a group of titles (not just E.T.), console parts and computer parts were all dumped there in New Mexico. It was covered in detail by the Alamogordo press at the time, and is just such a non-mystery that I'm surprised by all this.

Marty
 
There were never thousands of ET games buried in Alamorgodo, that's a myth that sprung up later and was also never once mentioned by the actual press articles of the time. The dump there was simply a clearing out of Atari's Texas manufacturing plant as it transitioned to automated production methods.

As part of the transition the unused cartridge stock of a group of titles (not just E.T.), console parts and computer parts were all dumped there in New Mexico. It was covered in detail by the Alamogordo press at the time, and is just such a non-mystery that I'm surprised by all this.
The legend has been around as long as I can remember. Maybe it was born out of the Apple Lisa tale, all failed tech winding up in a big desert hole!
(BIB) that it was a bunch of mystery titles and actual hardware actually makes the excavation much more interesting! They should put random sacks of the landfill on eBay. You could get lucky ;)
 
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 We already cleared that up in our book "Atari Inc. - Business Is Fun" released last fall, going by direct interviews and actual internal documents.There were never thousands of ET games buried in Alamorgodo, that's a myth that sprung up later and was also never once mentioned by the actual press articles of the time. The dump there was simply a clearing out of Atari's Texas manufacturing plant as it transitioned to automated production methods and a focus on personal computer manufacturing. It had previously been one of the main plants for manufacturing of game cartridges and other hardware, and game manufacturing was being moved overseas to China.As part of the transition the unused cartridge stock of a group of titles (not just E.T.), console parts and computer parts were all dumped there in New Mexico. It was covered in detail by the Alamogordo press at the time, and is just such a non-mystery that I'm surprised by all this.


Marty
Nice to hear from one of the guys involved in the book.
Im looking forward to reading it.
 
There were never thousands of ET games buried in Alamorgodo, that's a myth that sprung up later and was also never once mentioned by the actual press articles of the time. The dump there was simply a clearing out of Atari's Texas manufacturing plant as it transitioned to automated production methods.

As part of the transition the unused cartridge stock of a group of titles (not just E.T.), console parts and computer parts were all dumped there in New Mexico. It was covered in detail by the Alamogordo press at the time, and is just such a non-mystery that I'm surprised by all this.
The legend has been around as long as I can remember. Maybe it was born out of the Apple Lisa tale, all failed tech winding up in a big desert hole!

(BIB) that it was a bunch of mystery titles and actual hardware actually makes the excavation much more interesting! They should put random sacks of the landfill on eBay. You could get lucky ;)
I wouldn't say mystery titles, it was just whatever was in manufacturing at the time of the changeover of the plant. Some of the titles were mentioned in the press as well -

people watching the operation and kids raiding the dump reported Raiders of The Lost Ark, Pac-Man, Mrs. Pac-Man, E.T., Defender and Bezerk as well as game consoles and computers.
 
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Supposedly they had prototypes, some maybe working, . Ones in a museum, ones with a collector. Where's the rest?.  I'm betting the dump site along with all the other prototype stuff they were working on.  

Screw ET carts, I'm going for the gold  :D
 
Supposedly they had prototypes, some maybe working, . Ones in a museum, ones with a collector. Where's the rest?.  I'm betting the dump site along with all the other prototype stuff they were working on.  

Screw ET carts, I'm going for the gold  :D
Go for it victor. they should let you have a part in the documentary.

re name it Screw et carts, im going for gold...
 
Supposedly they had prototypes, some maybe working, . Ones in a museum, ones with a collector. Where's the rest?.  I'm betting the dump site along with all the other prototype stuff they were working on.  

Screw ET carts, I'm going for the gold  :D
There were never any prototypes of any sort dumped there and I don't know where that rumor started. The El Passo, Texas plant was just a manufacturing plant, manufacturing actual games and hardware in production. Game programming, hardware design, etc. were done out of Sunnyvale, California were Atari was located.

Likewise, the only Cosmos prototypes left are already known. The rest had been taken by one of the designers, stored in his garage for years, and accidentally disposed of by his wife. Just about every prototype that's out there right now came from Sunnyvale during early July '84 when employees spent most of the early Summer rescuing them from destruction when the company was split in half. They had been stored in one of the many buildings that had made up Atari at the time (specifically where they stored most of the convention materials, since proto hardware was routinely shown off at CES and other shows), and soon to be ex-employees were literally pulling up vans and hauling off as much as they could. We're covering the entire scene in our second book.
 
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Supposedly they had prototypes, some maybe working, . Ones in a museum, ones with a collector. Where's the rest?.  I'm betting the dump site along with all the other prototype stuff they were working on.  

Screw ET carts, I'm going for the gold  :D
There were never any prototypes of any sort dumped there and I don't know where that rumor started. The El Passo, Texas plant was just a manufacturing plant, manufacturing actual games and hardware in production. Game programming, hardware design, etc. were done out of Sunnyvale, California were Atari was located.

Likewise, the only Cosmos prototypes left are already known. The rest had been taken by one of the designers, stored in his garage for years, and accidentally disposed of by his wife. Just about every prototype that's out there right now came from Sunnyvale during early July '84 when employees spent most of the early Summer rescuing them from destruction when the company was split in half. They had been stored in one of the many buildings that had made up Atari at the time (specifically where they stored most of the convention materials, since proto hardware was routinely shown off at CES and other shows), and soon to be ex-employees were literally pulling up vans and hauling off as much as they could. We're covering the entire scene in our second book.

Hmmm, well there goes my prospecting dream, oh well.

In regards to covering it for your book, do you plan to talk to Rik from the Handheldmuseum site . He seems to know a bit about the history of it. http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Atari/Cosmos.htm
 
Hmmm, well there goes my prospecting dream, oh well.


In regards to covering it for your book, do you plan to talk to Rik from the Handheldmuseum site . He seems to know a bit about the history of it. http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Atari/Cosmos.htm
Appreciate that, and yes, I'm familiar with Rik. However, the Cosmos he's showing is my book partner Curt Vendel's. As for info on it, we went directly to it's creator, Al Alcorn and members of his group. We have the full story behind it's creation and eventual cancelation in the book as well. Interestingly, it did have a small legacy - the holographic tech used for the backgrounds was used for the holographic logo stickers put on all Atari game boxes starting in '82.
 
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