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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.
Microsoft flashes its 'Halo 2' remake and Atari documentary at Comic-Con
What do Halo: The Master Chief Collection and the Atari landfill-dig have to do with comic books? Not much, really, but that doesn't mean that Microsoft isn't at this year's San Diego Comic Con (SDCC) trotting them out to those in attendance. Let's start with Master Chief. The big green galoot has a boxed set of the games he starred in coming out this November, Redmond has seen fit to drop a trailer for the collection's gorgeously overhauled Halo 2 cinematics and we've embedded it below. What's more, MCC's developer Certain Affinity announced that the map that introduced the world to Halo 2's multiplayer, "Zanzibar," is getting the remake treatment alongside "Lockout," "Ivory Tower," "Coagulation" and "Ascension." The final of the six remastered maps will be revealed at Gamescom in Germany next month. If that isn't enough Halo news, we've also embedded video from the Halo: Nightfall panel that recently took place at SDCC.
Microsoft's Atari doc remains on track despite studio closure
The news that Microsoft is shuttering Xbox Entertainment Studios won't have an effect on its Signal to Noise series, the first episode of which focuses on the rise and fall of former gaming giant Atari. Fuel Entertainment's (one of the production houses behind the episode) director of communications Nick Iannitti tells us that everything was still proceeding on schedule despite the closure, and that nothing has changed for his team. Its behind-the-scenes panel about Atari scheduled for the upcoming San Diego Comic-Con is still happening, and production for the show is still under way. What's more, he says that he learned of Xbox Entertainment Studios' shuttering at "about" the same time as everyone else. If you couldn't make it to New Mexico earlier this spring, it sounds like you'll still be able to check out the infamous video-game landfill at some point in the future, regardless of Microsoft's new plans.
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.
