So the myth was true after all! Buried ET cartridges found. Illegal dumping of trash?

Cyan

Cyan

orange
Legend
Supporter
The legend was true, the cartridges were buried in a landfill. Major Nelson has published a few photos and videos in his twitter account.

https://twitter.com/majornelson

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Historical.
 
not sure if true or not
show me 100s of thousands of cartridges (*) & then maybe I will believe

(*)easy to do if they think this proves the 'story'
 
The amount of cartridges may have been overexaggerated (I've no idea if this is the case, really), but it's now proven that cartridges WERE dumped, so the core of the previously only mythical legend turned out to be true after all.
 
I remember rumours of ineptitude so great that Atari produced more ET cartridges than there were Atari 2600 systems to run them. So it'll be cool to see what was buried there. I've seen pictures of ET and Centipede cartridges so far.

I wasn't sure what I expect, but I half expected a huge shipping, containing of gear in fairly good condition, to have been buried but it looks like stuff was just boxed (or crammed into buckets) and tipped into a hole :oops:
 
They probably bulldozed the carts before dumping them; I read someone saying nothing uncovered so far has been in working condition. All of the packaging being severely schrunched up seems to point in that direction as well...
 
Yeah, I have seen a few pics of games boxes in shrink wrap all scrunched up or flattened.

Damn you, Atari!!! I still have a few pristine 2600 cartridges (no boxes): Asteroids, Combat, Haunted House, Outlaw, Adventure, Indy 500 and Raiders of the Lost Ark. I had more carts but have given those away out the years. My 2600 still works although the the switches on the device barely work. I wonder if my PlayStation 3 will work in 30 years?
 
So the famous urban myth is true. We didn't feel the console game crash of 1983 in europe (at least not in Finland) but I remember reading about this in some local magazine years ago. I guess this was one of those things that happend in era when very few bothered to recycle anything, modern high temp or plasma waste disposal systems were not available and fact became myth at some point.
 
DSoup said:
Yeah, I have seen a few pics of games boxes in shrink wrap all scrunched up or flattened.

Damn you, Atari!!! I still have a few pristine 2600 cartridges (no boxes): Asteroids, Combat, Haunted House, Outlaw, Adventure, Indy 500 and Raiders of the Lost Ark. I had more carts but have given those away out the years. My 2600 still works although the the switches on the device barely work. I wonder if my PlayStation 3 will work in 30 years?
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That's a nice question! Will my X360 work 30 years from now, too? And my Xbox One?

Back on the findings...


ArcticCircle said:
So the famous urban myth is true. We didn't feel the console game crash of 1983 in europe (at least not in Finland) but I remember reading about this in some local magazine years ago. I guess this was one of those things that happend in era when very few bothered to recycle anything, modern high temp or plasma waste disposal systems were not available and fact became myth at some point.
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That myth could very well become a game, programmed by joker454, :) with centipedes as enemies, scorpions, rattle snakes, excavators, and the Angry Video Game Nerd trying to hit you with his van.

And the plasma waste creating a dangerous environment, while you try to retrieve E.T.

You'd have to rescue the author of the cartridge from being run over with a excavator, and you'd have to rescue the IGN beautiful girl from the final boss. :)

The final boss would be a mutant with 1,000.000 E.T. cartridges worth of AI data in his brain.
 
Cyan said:
That myth could very well become a game, programmed by joker454, :) with centipedes as enemies, scorpions, rattle snakes, excavators, and the Angry Video Game Nerd trying to hit you with his van.
Click to expand...

Hah, I haven't written a serious line of code in over 5 years, I think I'm way out of the game programming loop by now. I think its awesome in the video you linked that Howard Scott Warshaw was there. Truth be told I thought ET wasn't a bad game really, I enjoyed playing it as a kid. Yeah getting out of a well only to fall right back in was kinda irritating, but aside from that it was reasonably fun. I can think of dozens of other games that are far worse than ET was.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
I think that would come to 4 GB.
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:smile2: Ultimately the idea is that the final boss is just a pile of thrash who got his AI from ET cartridges memory, but the AI itself would be very limited and would include an AVI video in HD which you can see when you defeat him, transferring then the data to your laptop.

The ending would be 1 h 40 minutes of HD video which was inside the final enemy's AI, an he would only have less than a KB for true AI. So his AI would only consist of the parameters: kidnap, smash, hit.

joker454 said:
Hah, I haven't written a serious line of code in over 5 years, I think I'm way out of the game programming loop by now. I think its awesome in the video you linked that Howard Scott Warshaw was there. Truth be told I thought ET wasn't a bad game really, I enjoyed playing it as a kid. Yeah getting out of a well only to fall right back in was kinda irritating, but aside from that it was reasonably fun. I can think of dozens of other games that are far worse than ET was.
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Well, your programming skill of the current era would be more than enough to create a classic game like R-Type with much better code! I think.

I could imagine you making a R-Type game with simple graphics but amazing gameplay and depth, like... R-Type. (recently watched a video of a guy completing R-Type 1 and R-Type 2, with a single credit)

The trick in the game is memorising some patterns and knowing some tricks, also keeping ALL the power-ups you need the entire playthrough. If is a game where if you die once, you won't be able to complete the game.

But intelligence and memory (where to place your ship) come to play if you want to complete it, it's not like modern shoot em' ups where the whole screen is filled with meaningless bullets.

By the way, if ET wasn't that bad for you... which game would you bury in the desert?
 
So did they come up with some serious proff, (remember millions of cartridges were meant to be buried, and it would be in the one spot) coming up with a couple of bags seems to be more like a plant for the media

Yes Im naturally sceptical, and do believe they got rid of lots of unwanted stock (why make up the rumour anyways, but I just think they might of exaggerated it)
 
zed said:
So did they come up with some serious proff, (remember millions of cartridges were meant to be buried, and it would be in the one spot) coming up with a couple of bags seems to be more like a plant for the media
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They were only allowed a single day to dig and part of that day was spent finding the Atari stuff amongst all the other landfill 'treasure'. But yeah, I was fairly disappointed as well although it was cool that did find some stuff.

Unfortunately, without unearthing everything Atari buried, the extent of the myths (was it really millions of ET carts?) still remains a mystery.
 
DSoup said:
They were only allowed a single day to dig and part of that day was spent finding the Atari stuff amongst all the other landfill 'treasure'. But yeah, I was fairly disappointed as well although it was cool that did find some stuff.

Unfortunately, without unearthing everything Atari buried, the extent of the myths (was it really millions of ET carts?) still remains a mystery.
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Well, they have enough proof now... Maybe there is a curse if the mystery is solved :) and vengeance could be hurtling our way, from extraterrestrial space no less.

http://descrier.co.uk/science/astronomers-spot-star-cluster-speeding-towards-earth/

Seriously though, I think that the whole legend around the whole story is still cool to keep as a mystery.
 
They were only allowed a single day to dig and part of that day was spent finding the Atari stuff amongst all the other landfill 'treasure'. But yeah, I was fairly disappointed as well although it was cool that did find some stuff.
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So weeks of planning,preparation etc. They dig down, & break through the concrete to unearth the 'vault' containing the millions of cartridges (yes that was the story millions of ET cartridges buried under concrete) a guy goes down grabs a couple of sacks of cartridges.
Guy on the sidelines "hey Can I go and grab another 50 sacks it should take me 10 minutes to really prove it & imagine the photo op with thousands of cartridges spilled out'
boss "no we have spents weeks on this but we cant afford that extra 10 minutes"

My BS alert is ringing loudly
What I think prolly happened. They buried some cartridges perhaps 10,000. yet over the years with each retelling of the story after a few beers that figure has grown to its now total numbering in the millions.
eg Ive seen it written they made more ET cartridges than there were 2600 consoles :)
 
remember there is a tv show made out of this , so i'm sure they have footage for the show itself that they don't want others seeing otherwise whats the point ?
 
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