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Landfill copy of Atari's Centipede donated to university
University of North Dakota's Special Collections department now houses a cartridge of the Atari 2600 game Centipede, dug up from a landfill in New Mexico last year. Assistant professor of history Bill Caraher participated in the dig and threw down $60 to buy the cartridge on eBay. "While I usually would not condone purchasing archaeological artifacts of any kind, these artifacts are somewhat different because they represent our very recent past," Caraher told the AP. "When I saw that the Smithsonian had received a game and several other major cultural institutions as well, I had to acquire one for UND to commemorate the university's participation in this unusual excavation." The Centipede cartridge marks an important moment in video game history – the crash of the industry in 1983. That year, Atari reportedly dumped truckloads of unsold copies of ET, Asteroids, Missile Command, Centipede and other games in the New Mexico landfill, and in 2014 a documentary team set about excavating the old, dirty games. Microsoft helped finance the excavation and the documentary Atari: Game Over, which explores the 1983 crash and subsequent landfill dig. Atari: Game Over premiered on Xbox in November. Once on eBay, the games sold individually for $50 to $1,500. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, picked up a copy of ET last year for its video game history collection. The University of North Dakota plans to invite people who participated in the excavation to a showing of Atari: Game Over in the spring, for a discussion of archaeology, media and video games as artifacts.
Watch the Atari: Game Over documentary for free on Xbox
Yes, there are a lot of big new games out this week, but if you need a break from the rush you don't have to move from your Xbox. Instead, you can dig into the past by watching Xbox Live's Atari: Game Over documentary for free. The hour-long feature explores the video game crash of 1983, a seismic event that resulted in reports of Atari dumping thousands of unsold copies of the E.T. video game, infamously regarded by many to be the absolute worst ever, to grace our screens. An excavation team headed out to New Mexico to unearth the truth about the reports, and sure enough they dug up shrink-wrapped copies of the game along with other Atari bits and bobs. And now all that garbage is starting to make crazy money on eBay. Weird world, huh? [Image: Microsoft]
Excavated E.T. Atari carts fetch more than $1,500 at auction
One man's trash is another man's pricey, crushed game cartridge. Last week's eBay auctions for Atari cartridges unearthed during the production of the Atari: Game Over documentary have concluded, with the top-grossing auction pulling in $1,537 for a mangled, sort-of boxed copy of ET for the Atari 2600. A total of nine ET cartridges sold for more than $1,000 apiece, with copies of Asteroids, Centipede, Missile Command and others pulling in hundreds of dollars each in additional auctions. Each game will ship with a certificate of authenticity, an I.D. tag from the City of Alamogordo, and a photo-supplemented narrative detailing the lot's history. Regardless of whether you bought a momento, you can learn more about the context surrounding the excavation when Atari: Game Over premieres on November 20 on Xbox Live. [Image: Atari]
ET and other exhumed Atari games hit eBay
Want to buy some literal garbage? An eBay seller is auctioning off a collection of Atari 2600 cartridges recovered from a recent excavation of a New Mexico landfill, including several crushed copies of the infamous dud ET. An excavation team headed out to Alamogordo, New Mexico, earlier this year in the hopes of discovering the truth behind a reported landfill stuffed with video games and consoles in the months leading up to the video game industry crash of 1983. The venture yielded many shrinkwrapped copies of ET, among other decades-old merchandise abandoned by Atari. A documentary film covering the dig, Atari: Game Over, will launch exclusively for Xbox consoles later this month. Bidding starts at $50 for the unearthed games, which vary in condition but are otherwise remarkably well-preserved, considering they've been sitting in a landfill for more than three decades. Many ET cartridges are already going for hundreds of dollars, but if you're looking to snag a stinky piece of history for yourself, you might be able to pick up a cheap copy of Asteroids, Centipede, Defender or Swordquest EarthWorld. [Image: tbhs575]
Xbox's Atari, E.T. documentary phones home on November 20
Atari: Game Over, the documentary following an excavation for Atari cartridges once rumored to be buried in a landfill decades ago, will premiere November 20 on Xbox Live, director Zak Penn has announced. Game Over was part of a six-film series called Signal to Noise, a collaboration between the now-defunct Xbox Entertainment Studios and Lightbox Entertainment, a multi-platform media company founded by Academy Award-winning producer Simon Chinn (Searching for Sugar Man, Man on Wire) and Emmy-winning producer Jonathan Chinn (30 Days, American High). We got our first peak at the documentary in July, when a teaser trailer gave us the too long; didn't read on how E.T. 2600 damaged Atari's rockstar status in the gaming industry. As for the unearthed cartridges themselves, they've been split between auctions, museums and the City of Alamogordo. [Image: Xbox]
Trailer for Xbox's Atari E.T. documentary phones home
Remember when a bunch of people hung out in a landfill for a weekend and it didn't end in total disappointment? In April, the devoted among us choked on dust in Alamogordo, New Mexico while Xbox Entertainment Studios and Lightbox Entertainment dug for an answer to the E.T. Atari cartridge legend. The rest of us slackers didn't get to witness the pivotal moment of the lot's unearthing, so we'll just have to find a way to live with Atari: Game Over, the incoming documentary you can preview with the above trailer. Game Over is part of the Signal to Noise documentary series, one of the few projects to survive Xbox Entertainment Studios' recent closure, joined by the Ridley Scott-produced Halo: Nightfall. Xbox Entertainment Studios was announced to the public in 2013 and focused on creating television programming, which could have included shows related to the Gears of War or Fable series. Its closure was announced just over a week ago beside 18,000 layoffs, which involved Xbox's European division as well as Microsoft's Nokia Devices and Services division. [Image: Xbox]
