Suppose the rumours are true and there is a place where Atari buried millions of E.T. video games or other titles and equipment. What of it? Why are these alleged contents of a landfill so interesting?
Even supposing any of it would still be in working order, they were unsellable in 1983, why would anyone want them now?
In small numbers they might be considered rare, one might be able to sell a few hundred to collectors. But if you have too many, the price will drop, and any demand will die completely long before the supply ever runs out. So what on earth is their cultural or monetary value?
This story made the headlines because they’re going to dig for this treasure. It’s apparently an urban legend, according to the news, snopes, and wikipedia. But if you ask me, it must be one of the most unexciting and boring stories ever, coming second only after the one about the guy who died of boredom.
W.A.G., but to remove toxic chemicals from the site? Older electronics were manufactured under looser rules regarding dangerous chemicals.
As far as game value, you only need to dig up one, reverse-engineer it, and sell something just different enough to avoid copyright infringement. Jazz Jackrabbit and all that.
(Oops; this may be another UL. When I first got J.J., I was told it was reverse engineered from Sonic the Hedgehog. Some Googling suggests this isn’t the case.)
Does it have to be more than just an interesting story?
I’m not at all a gamer but am aware of the tale.
I’d even pay a couple bucks for a cartridge as a curiosity.
Microsoft wants to make content for its xbox one video service. I think its supposed to be a documentary on the history of video gaming. The folks who were going to be doing the dig, had to go back to the drawing board and revise their plans, to comply more with the regulations about disposal.
God, the Atari E.T. game was awful. It belongs in a garbage dump. Same goes for their Raiders of the Lost Ark and Pac-Man. The only value is for collectors who are trying to complete their set, or people who wonder it’s just their imagination or the game was really that bad.
It’s entirely possible to play E.T. for the Atari 2600 right now. Not only were a lot of cartridges not destroyed, but the data on them has been dumped to ROM files and is now being shared online, which is illegal according to the law but not prosecuted according to the Nobody Gives A Shit doctrine. This is fairly common when it comes to video games more than a couple decades old.
I only mention this because some comments seem to imply that the game has been lost, and that digging up those cartridges is being done in order to play it again. No, the reason people want to dig it up is to unearth a piece of history, to place their hands on something that helps define (the end of*) an era.
*(E.T. is commonly blamed for the Video Game Crash of 1983, but it isn’t really guilty; at most, it’s the most florid symptom of the disease that caused the Crash: An overweening arrogance (they made more cartridges than existed consoles at the time!) and blatant disregard for quality coupled with the fact games were fairly expensive and there was no real try-before-you-buy or popular press interested in doing game reviews. Mainly, however, the market was flooded with games, most of them not very good, and E.T. was just the turd that shone brightest.)
While millions of the game went unsold, over a million were sold.
Just look at eBay. E.T. Atari games are going for $5 “buy it now” and no doubt less than that for regular auction items. There’s one right now where the current bid is $1. And that’s just the physical cartridges. The ROMs can be had for nothing from the usual skeevy sites.
These are not uncommon, rare or anything at all. There are a lot of other Atari games that are far less common and more valuable.
Furthermore, the people who actually worked there at the time don’t think that many of the games, if any, actually ended up in that particular landfill.
This is a mythological quest of some sort. The story is more important than the facts.
Huh. I had all three of those games and I remember them quite fondly. Granted, I was like 5 at the time and hadn’t seen the movies or played the arcade Pac-Man, so I really didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to be doing. Through pure trial and error and luck I managed to get to the end of E.T. Never got very far in Raiders, but I don’t know anyone who did.
I actually managed to complete the Raiders game, although my overall score wasn’t very high as I apparently missed out on some of the side goals. It was a strange game, unusually complicated and ambitious for an Atari 2600 game, and not really worth playing much over and over unless you really wanted to get 100% completion. IT was however nowhere near as frustrating as the E.T. game.
When I was a kid, I loved the Atari Raiders game. It was next to impossible to figure out, and I can’t remember if me and my friends at the time ever made it to the end, but it was one of the first adventure puzzlers I’d ever played.
E.T. on the other hand, I was too young to realize the game was absolute shit. I remember thinking I must be missing something about the gameplay. It wasn’t until much later I realized that it was the game that sucked.
Either the excavation will be another “Al Capone’s Vault” or millions of E.T.'s souls will fly out and decay the faces and bodies of all that look upon its secrets.
This is an important part of our heritage, and anyone who says otherwise needs to be brought back in time and stranded in former USSR with no identification.
For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure they are there. I worked for Atari at the time and it was acknowledged by the company that they were disposed of in that manner.
Thing is, it’s not just the carts - there’s other crap in there because we dumped returned product. And ‘returned product’ shipments from the major retailers generally have a significant portion of their weight consisting of dog food (Walmart was particularly bad about this), dirty diapers (I’m looking at YOU, Toys R US) and anything else that could be combined to weigh the right amount for the return request.
The revival of this discussion 30 years later is causing all manner of hilarity among former Atarians. Oh, and ET SUCKS.