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Infamous ET Atari cartridges landfill dug up


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A documentary film crew has successfully located and excavated the spot where the cartridges were buried.

The Atari 2600 video game adaption of the popular Stephen Spielberg movie is widely considered to be the worst game of all time, a creation so abysmal that it not only left Atari with a huge quantity of unsold cartridges but it also helped bring about the video game crash of the early 1980s.

Read More: http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/265683/infamous-et-atari-cartridges-landfill-dug-up

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What else have and are these big companies burying?

Unfortunately Atari has changed hands and names so many times its impossible to fine someone now. Hope Frederic Chesnais is being watched today.

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I used to think it was bad enough that time and money were spent making the Atari 2600 ET game. Spending time and money to dig up a landfill to find them?

I got that game for Christmas back in the day, the garbage is the only place for it.

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i always thought that story was a joke.

The game was a joke, i figured the story was too.

Learning something new everyday i am.

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Maybe they needed room in that dump for DVD box sets of: Here Comes Honey Boo Boo

That would make it worth every penny.

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The only Atari game I had was Stunt Cycle and it was a blast.

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They should have let that monstrosity of a game rot in the earth. This is one "urban legend" that no one should have ever chased.

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Even though the game was awful and it's fate relegated to urban legend status it was still a piece of video game history. A previously buried copy of ET would probably go for a tidy sum on Ebay. To be honest I wouldn't mind owning a copy that had been buried in the desert.

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Even though the game was awful and it's fate relegated to urban legend status it was still a piece of video game history. A previously buried copy of ET would probably go for a tidy sum on Ebay. To be honest I wouldn't mind owning a copy that had been buried in the desert.

Considering that hundreds of thousands were buried, I doubt they'll be worth much after being dug up.

The version of the urban legend I'd always read was that Atari deliberately crushed the cartridges to destroy them so that they were unsalvagable.

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What else have and are these big companies burying?

Unfortunately Atari has changed hands and names so many times its impossible to fine someone now. Hope Frederic Chesnais is being watched today.

Didn't the article say that they were buried in a landfill in the desert. Probably no laws were broken. Deserts are a good place for a landfill.

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Didn't the article say that they were buried in a landfill in the desert. Probably no laws were broken. Deserts are a good place for a landfill.

It is unless you're someone that is worried about the beauty of th desert being ruined.
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We often criticize far-fetched research as a waste of time and money, but this is truly epitomizes waste ... pun intended.

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It is unless you're someone that is worried about the beauty of th desert being ruined.

I understand that, but a landfill must be somewhere. I would think that since a desert is typically vast and has less life than other climates, it seems like a better of 2 evils. I do agree that desert areas a beautiful.

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We often criticize far-fetched research as a waste of time and money, but this is truly epitomizes waste ... pun intended.

I agree, but much less waste than other movies make. When you see the making of big movies and how many resources are used and wasted, it is amazing.

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And the sad part is these were University professors from the Archeology dept that actually went to a landfill to dig this crap up.

Not hard to find something when they tell you where its buried.

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If the cartridges were crushed and are unplayable, the original source code must still exist somewhere. Coders dont like to trash their work, so I am sure back-up copies exist somewhere, maybe in a vault, on floppy disk, tape, or whatever.

Hopefuly hardware could be found to load, read, and run the code. Probably the games back then were made in Assembly, or C. But, why even bother if MAME exists?

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Why hasn't Uwe Boll been buried yet?

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If the cartridges were crushed and are unplayable, the original source code must still exist somewhere. Coders dont like to trash their work, so I am sure back-up copies exist somewhere, maybe in a vault, on floppy disk, tape, or whatever.

Hopefuly hardware could be found to load, read, and run the code. Probably the games back then were made in Assembly, or C. But, why even bother if MAME exists?

The ROM is widely available for downloading on the Interwebz. I have got it working in the Stella Atari 2600 emulator on this computer.

But it's a horrible horrible game. I remember a friend had it on his Atari and it was just a bewildering confusing terrible game.

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Didn't the article say that they were buried in a landfill in the desert. Probably no laws were broken. Deserts are a good place for a landfill.

Point taken, but the article does not say they were given permission, and my point was that these big companies just dump their s*** anywhere they like, this time it was plastics. Just because humans do not want to live there or build another Las Vegas, does not mean they have a right to dump where ever and when ever they like.

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Point taken, but the article does not say they were given permission, and my point was that these big companies just dump their s*** anywhere they like, this time it was plastics. Just because humans do not want to live there or build another Las Vegas, does not mean they have a right to dump where ever and when ever they like.

I assume that since it was a landfill, that they did have permission. A landfill would be the proper place to dispose of this product.

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I assume that since it was a landfill, that they did have permission. A landfill would be the proper place to dispose of this product.

From the atricle it seems no permission, or there would have been a record:

The story goes that in 1983 Atari loaded their unsold stock of cartridges on to a lorry and drove them out to the New Mexico desert where they were unceremoniously buried in a landfill. The tale since became something of an urban legend with nobody really certain as to whether this event actually took place or not.

My point is, with no permission, they should not be allowed to get away with dumping. There are rules when dumping rubbish, even at a landfill.

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I read about this last year. It's astonishing how much time and effort this guy put out just to convince the city to give him a permit to dig these up. Asking why just makes my brain hurt.

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