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Sale of buried Atari cartridges nets over $107,000
The never-ending saga of the Atari 2600 E.T. cartridges that were famously buried (and later unearthed) in Alamogordo, New Mexico continues to benefit the small town. Last November, a selection of games (including E.T., Asteroids and Missile Command) that were recovered in the excavation were put up for sale on eBay, and now we know just how much cash they generated. According to the Alamogordo News, the game sales totaled $107,930.15, with more than $65,000 going directly to the town. In addition, the Tularosa Basin Historical Society received over $16,000 while more than $26,000 was spent on shipping and other expenses. A total of 881 cartridges covering 60 different titles were sold overall; a copy of E.T. was the highest single sale at $1,535.
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]
Excavated ET cartridges will be sold, distributed to museums
Remember when Xbox Entertainment Studios and Lightbox Entertainment spent a weekend digging up a bunch of Atari cartridges from a landfill? Both studios may have gotten the documentary footage they were looking for, but what do you do with the cartridges after the joy of proving an urban tale fades? In the case of Alamogordo, the town that has jurisdiction over said landfill, you sell more than half of them. Reuters reports that the Alamogordo City Council voted 7-0 on Tuesday to sell around 800 of the 1,300 excavated games, with listings to be hosted on eBay and the council's website. The haul includes hundreds of copies of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the keystone of Atari's video game burial story. Joe Lewandowski, who served as dig site supervisor when Microsoft, Lightbox and a small crowd watched excavators dig up trash in the desert, told Retuers that sales should begin in two weeks and wrap by Christmas. As for the 500 other cartridges, the City of Alamogordo intends to keep some as mementos, with the rest being donated to museums worldwide. You know what they say: One city's trash is another museum's piece of video game history. [Image: Microsoft]
You can buy those excavated 'E.T.' cartridges at auction soon
It would seem that the saga of Atari's video-game mass grave in New Mexico is coming to a close. The Alamogordo City council has voted unanimously to auction off half of the recovered cartridges (around 800 of 'em, according to Reuters). Interested in owning a piece of history? Eurogamer says that we should see the items -- a likely majority of which will be E.T. -- pop up on eBay and the council's website within the next few weeks. Of the remaining carts, the city plans to keep 500 of them and the rest will be donated to museums. If you still can't get enough of the tale, there's always the upcoming Microsoft-backed documentary and our own interview with E.T.'s sole developer, Howard Scott Warshaw. The move to sell these to the highest bidder instead of at a fixed price is a pretty clear indication that city is being a bit opportunistic and taking advantage of nostalgia, if you ask us -- something that probably rubbed off from Atari itself.
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]
E.T. and other Atari games rescued from New Mexico landfill to be sold
At this point some 1,377 game cartridges for the Atari 2600 have been rescued from the New Mexico landfill where they were unceremoniously dumped over 30 years ago. Of those, 700 will be appraised, certified and eventually sold, some of which will pass through the New Mexico Museum of Space History. While many carts will go to the film's producers and museums like the Smithsonian, some will be sold to the public along with a certificate of authenticity. The details are still being worked out by city officials, but you could soon own a piece of gaming garbage history. The carts that will be commanding the most money will clearly be the 171 copies of E.T. that were unearthed, but titles like Centipede, Missile Command and Asteroids have also been dug up. There are still over 700,000 games buried the in landfill outside of Alamogordo, NM, but they'll stay there... for now. The hole has been refilled, and the cartridges going on sale will be priced to reflect their rarity. Of course, if the city decides it needs more cash, that could always change.
Watch this: Microsoft digs up long-buried E.T. games
This weekend, Microsoft's project to find E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial videogames buried in the desert succeeded. The video game crash of the early '80s spawned the legend of a movie-licensed game for the Atari 2600 -- developed in just five and a half weeks -- that was so bad its publisher decided to trash thousands of copies rather than try to sell them, and now things have come full circle. We'll have to wait for the AtarI: Game Over documentary on Xbox to get the full story, but there's a new five-minute video ready to take you through the crucial moments of the dig and the people behind it, including the game's designer, Howard Scott Warshaw.
E.T. unearthed: The dig for legendary Atari cartridges in pictures
Yesterday marked the climax of a decades-long story that surrounded one of the most poorly received video games in history. A Microsoft-backed documentary crew took to a landfill in the desert town of Alamogordo, New Mexico, in an attempt to prove that Atari had in fact buried thousands of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial cartridges there. It appears they succeeded.
