Landfill excavation unearths years of crushed Atari treasure [Updated]

ALAMOGORDO, NM—The legend was true. Atari really did dump a bunch of E.T. and other Atari 2600 cartridges and paraphernalia into a landfill 30 years ago. Today, a team of video game archaeologists recovered the proof.

With the wind at full blast out in the New Mexico desert, CAT tractors pulled heap after heap of waste from a 30-year-old landfill. It smelled faintly of sewage, and dust was everywhere. Occasionally the tractor dumped a heap off to the side in a cleared space, prompting a gaggle of men in hard hats and safety vests to gather around.

This team was hired by Fuel Entertainment and Xbox Entertainment Studios to analyze the contents of the landfill, which legend has always said contained truckloads of Atari games, consoles, or factory waste. The two production companies intend to make a documentary on the history of Atari, set to debut sometime this year.

A handful of dedicated gamers, press, and locals with kids were in attendance. But as the dust got heavier and the wind picks up, and the archaeologists found nothing, the crowd gradually thinned.

Twice, Zak Penn, the director of the forthcoming documentary, got on a PA system to make an announcement.

The first time, it was because the archaeologists found a newspaper clipping from shortly after the time of the supposed Atari dumping in fall of 1983. This was not great news; it meant that they might have more luck digging another hole nearby.

The second time, Penn said that a fan found an Atari 2600 controller cap just lying on the ground on his way to the bathroom. They passed the cap on to the archaeologists to see “if it blew out of the dump” or if it was contemporary.

Next, a long time passed and nothing happened, as far as the viewing public was concerned. One Fuel employee said that he was a bit nervous, but it’d be OK because “if nothing is discovered then the legend lives on.” But really, no one wanted that.

Then, it happened. At about 12:30pm Mountain Time, the archaeologists gathered over a new heap of trash and spent some time conferring. “We found an E.T. case, and the chip is still in it,” one of the men in the dump said. “And there are a whole hell of a lot more in there.”

That meant more than just E.T. as well; the diggers also uncovered Atari catalogs, Raiders of the Lost Ark game promotional materials, and even a crushed copy of Centipede that looked like it was buried in its original shrink wrap. The detritus was obviously quite a bit worse for wear after its three-decade dirt nap, but some of the cartridges appeared surprisingly well preserved given the circumstances.

How did we get here?

Atari was riding pretty high in 1982. The company had run with its 1976 acquisition by entertainment giant Warner Communications, and the 1977 launch of the Atari 2600 (aka. the Video Computer system) to an analyst valuation of $2 billion. That number represented Atari's near-total control of the nascent market for home video game consoles that infiltrated 17 percent of US households. (Gamasutra's “History of Atari” series is highly recommended if you want to dive deeper into the company’s ride to glory.)

By the end of 1982, a number of factors came together to bring it all crashing down incredibly quickly, leading to the North American Video Game Crash of 1983. Analysts disagree on the precise cause, but most agree that a glut of high-profile, low-quality game releases (and the failure of the Atari 5200, which wasn't backward-compatible until an adapter was later released) caused both consumers and retailers to lose confidence in a market that had until that point been the hottest thing in consumer electronics.

Chief among these high-profile flops was the licensed game based on 1982's hottest film, E.T. The game was rushed to market in time for the holiday season and massively panned by critics and players alike. The game's sole programmer, Howard Scott Warshaw, said in later interviews that he had had five weeks to build the game from scratch, and no one at Atari was willing to take the project but him. Despite this, Atari pre-printed millions of cartridges, sure they had another holiday hit on their hands.

The game was punishing and complex. Playing as E.T., you would constantly find yourself stuck in pits that were nearly impossible to get out of. Warshaw maintains that the game wasn’t all that hard if you read the instructions, but what eight-year-old wanted to do that? (It should be noted that decades later, an enthusiast created a simple patch that eliminated a lot of the bugs and made the game more playable—and even enjoyable according to some of our commenters.)

Still, E.T., as well as an extremely shoddy (and also over-printed) port of arcade hit Pac-Man, became inextricably tied to the failures of Atari as a whole. By Q2 1983, Warner posted a loss of over $300 million and reported that it had $10 million of unsold Atari inventory sitting in warehouses around the country. In March 1983, Atari fired 1,700 members of its staff, and in April the company moved its manufacturing plants overseas. This meant that Atari's El Paso, TX plant was closed down.

And so, the legend goes, the company chose to cut its losses and dump tons and tons of unsold, unsalable inventory into a pit in Alamogordo, New Mexico, a mere 90 miles from the Texas plant, in the summer of 1983. While it seems pretty clear that the dumping actually happened (despite some doubts from E.T. programmer Warshaw himself), there has been decades of mystery and disagreement over the details of what exactly was dumped. A contemporaneous New York Times story says 14 truckloads of unsold material went into the pit, but a 1984 InfoWorld article puts the number of trucks at 20.

Reports also couldn't seem to agree on what specific games were buried (though 3.5 million discarded E.T. cartridges are frequently cited), and whether those games were working and intact or defective and pre-shredded/crushed when they were dumped. (If the former, why weren't the shells and chips reused? Some say it's because the Atari ROMs for the 2600 weren't actually rewritable.)  Reporters also couldn't agree if the haul included unsold hardware as well as software (including, potentially, prototypes for the unreleased Mindlink controller).

The legend of the landfill grew over the decades, becoming one of video game history's most enduring urban legends. That is until today, when a Microsoft film crew finally managed to jump through all the red tape necessary to excavate the site and settle the questions surrounding the burial once and for all.

The fate of E.T.

After the first Atari items were dug up, the dig crew and archeologists showed off the pieces for a bit and then returned to digging. Over the next three hours or so, the crew scooped up claw-fulls of Atari collectors items, mixed with dirt and trash, and laid it out on the ground, just out of reach of the general public.

Then, the archeologists came by and picked through and photographed the trash, collecting the most valuable and interesting pieces and putting them in buckets. By late afternoon, some seven or eight buckets were full.

Archeologist Andrew Reinhard, who was on the scene, told Ars that many of the cartridges were in good enough condition that they could potentially be played, although at the time of this writing, playability was not confirmed. But three men, including 43-year-old Armando Ortega, showed up to the scene with no doubts that the cartridges could be played. Back in 1983, the three were local kids in Alamogordo when Atari dumped all the parts, and they said they rode their bikes out at night and took cartridges—including titles like Baseball for Atari and Pac-Man, as well as E.T.—before the landfill was filled in.

Many members of the dig crew told Ars that the area Atari dumped in is huge, and the small pit the crew dug today only scratches the surface (pardon the pun) of what's down there. Reinhard told Ars that he intends to stay all night, or until the city orders him off the property, and try to document and rescue as much paraphernalia as he can. Still, even if he stays all night, Reinhard told Ars "there's no way" to estimate how many games will remain buried for the small salvage operation they pulled today.

The City of Alamogordo asked that the pit be refilled on Sunday.

Now that the landfill has been dug up and the myth has been confirmed, the cartridges that are rescued will belong to the City of Alamogordo, which agreed to give Fuel and Xbox "250 cartridges or 10 percent of the cartridges found, whichever is greater," according to the AP. So, it looks like no one will be getting Atari cartridges just yet, at least until Alamogordo or the documentary makers are ready to part with them.

Kyle Orland contributed to this report.