Construction Crew Unearths Fabled Atari Games

Myth busted. Microsoft helps fund expedition that uncovers extraterrestrials in New Mexican desert.

Atari‘s fabled burial site of the “worst video game of all time” has been found.

Over 30 years ago, in the face of rushing a game to market that had little to no relation to the movie it was based off of, Atari decided that instead of attempting to sell this horrific rendition of a game that it would bury the evidence. ET: The Extraterrestrial still stands as one of the worst games ever made. For years, news of the burial was a gaming myth or urban legend and the company itself has stated it has no “corporate knowledge” about the burial in the Alamogordo landfill.

Xbox decided that it would commission an exclusive documentary that would either prove or disprove the existence of these cartridges in a New Mexico landfill. The film’s director, Zak Penn, who has written scripts for movies such as Avengers and X-Men, was the one to present the first found cartridge to the public yesterday. Hundreds more cartridges of the failed game have been found amongst the trash and debris and are surprisingly in good shape for something that has been buried for 30 years.

[blockquote]“I feel pretty relieved and psyched that they actually got to see something,” said Penn as his team pulled boxes of games from the landfill, including other Atari products as well.[/blockquote]

The game itself was a large factor in the demise of Atari as a force in the gaming world, which will be featured in the upcoming documentary on Xbox Live about the biggest video game company of the early ‘80s, and will be released later this year by Xbox Entertainment Studios.

Much like an archaeological dig, the documentary crew used old photographs and dug exploratory wells into the landfill to find the actual burial site of the games. Joe Lewandowski, who became the manager of the site just months after the dump of the games, was used by the crew as a consultant as well. The dig will now continue after yielding results, as there are purported “millions” of copies that were buried and 14 dump trucks that brought the games to the landfill back in 1983.

Look for the documentary later this year on Xbox.