For years, whispers swirled in the gaming world that Atari had stashed its most embarrassing secrets in the desolate stretch of New Mexico after the video game crash of the early ’80s. Then, a documentary came along and dug up the dirt—literally.
After years of digging into the story, Fuel Entertainment—supported by Microsoft—zeroed in on the legendary location of Atari’s buried secrets for their upcoming documentary on the 1983 video game crash. Their search led them to an unexpected spot: a town nearly 50 miles from Las Cruces.
So, what did they actually find in the unmarked grave in the middle of the desert?
Uncovering Atari’s Worst Game Ever: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
In 2014, a team of archaeologists, video game buffs, journalists, and filmmakers descended on Alamogordo, eager to unearth pieces of a forgotten past. As the dust settled and the digging continued, one lucky digger struck gold—a box copy of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, the very game that many believed had contributed to the video game crash of 1983.
I know what you’re probably thinking: Why in the world would they bury E.T. in the desert?
The game, based on E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, was developed for the Atari 2600 by Scott Warshaw, a game designer who would later earn legendary status for creating Yars’ Revenge, widely considered Atari’s finest offering.
But for E.T., Warshaw had a tight five-week deadline to turn Spielberg’s summer blockbuster into a playable experience. Somehow, he managed to pull it off just in time for Christmas.
The game sold over 2.6 million copies by the end of 1982. Unfortunately, the game would soon be returned after the holidays ended. As NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel puts it, “…the game was a confusing mess that left players frustrated and disoriented.” By 1983, nearly 669,000 copies had been returned.
According to a January 1983 edition of Billboard Magazine, both suppliers and retailers in the gaming industry collaborated on revising their returns policy in response to the tidal wave of returns of the game following the holiday season. “Over and over, retailers cite the example of E.T. as focusing new attention on returns,” Billboard reports.
Check out this play-through of the game to see for yourself if it really was as bad as history remembers it.
The game was a certified flop. The combination of oversaturated consoles, a flood of subpar games, and the rise of personal computers spelled disaster for the industry. Within months, the entire video game market would crash, sending the once-thriving industry into a tailspin.
While the industry wouldn’t recover for another two years with the launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Atari wasted no time in burying its embarrassment—millions of unsold E.T. cartridges, hidden deep in the desert, far from the public eye.
Jim Heller, who managed a warehouse in El Paso, Texas, was responsible for overseeing Atari’s inventory when the market crumbled. After his first attempt to dispose of the stock in his hometown was thwarted by scavengers, he took the unsold cartridges 100 miles north to Alamogordo, New Mexico, a town with stricter regulations to deter anyone from digging up the goods. And what better state to lay E.T. to rest than New Mexico?
Atari’s plan to seal off the buried games by pouring concrete over them seemed foolproof, but it didn’t quite work as intended. Reports indicated that when excavators unearthed the site, they found no trace of the concrete Atari had allegedly poured over the games—just a dusty pile of discarded cartridges, preserved in the desert for decades.
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Something Good Came from Discovering the Video Game
Uncovering the infamous E.T. burial ground not only lets nostalgic gamers relive a pivotal moment in pop culture, but it also gives archaeologists and environmentalists a rare opportunity to study how modern trash decomposes over time in harsh desert conditions.
The materials unearthed from the dig will provide researchers with valuable insights into how video games decompose over time, shedding light on how the hardware and composition of the games—and their surrounding waste—impact the environment.
On the cultural front, museums are now showcasing the discarded cartridges, using them to highlight the evolution of consumer and video game culture, while serving as a reminder of a pivotal moment in history that offers lessons we should all heed.
A long-standing video game urban legend turned out to be true, but the lore of Atari’s secret graveyard continues to evolve with each new revelation. Who knows—another hidden truth might just surface in the near future.
The documentary about the excavation, Atari: Game Over, is streamable on Tubi and Amazon Prime Video.
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