The infamous E.T. game for the Atari 2600 video game console is widely believed to be one of the worst video games in history. After being rushed into production, the game was released into the public, selling well at first, then tanking, according to an article on snopes.com.
“The sheer awfulness of the product was unprecedented,” the article said. “Atari rushed E.T. through development in a manner of weeks to get it onto the market in time for Christmas, and the result was something many consumers found to be a virtually unplayable game with a dull plot and crummy graphics…”
The resulting disaster for Atari and the developers of the game was staggering. Shaun Sorensen, assistant professor in UW’s Theatre and Dance department, reflected on the Atari’s failure.
“I remember that it was such a big deal because it literally drove Atari out of business,” Sorensen said.
“That was crazy! I remember not being able to buy other games on the Atari 2600 simply because of the E.T. disaster. It’s just the weirdest story.”
After the hubbub surrounding Atari’s financial disaster, a rumor surfaced that the company took truckloads of the game cartridges and buried them in the desert.
The rumor became even more real when the New York Times reported that 14 trucks filled with various game cartridges and computer equipment from Atari were taken to a landfill in New Mexico.
This weekend, those rumors ceased to be rumors anymore and became undeniable fact.
According to tweets, photos, and videos from Zak Penn, a Hollywood writer and producer, several hundred of the lost cartridges were excavated from a landfill in Almagordo, New Mexico.
“For those of you who doubted, there’s a whole hell of a lot more games down there,” said Penn. “We just saw them – they’re coming out. E.T. is definitely here.”
Zak Penn is currently directing a documentary on the process of finding the cartridges.
The documentary is a production of Microsoft Corperation’s Xbox Entertainment Studios, and will premiere as part of a series of other documentaries, according to a post on the official Xbox website.
The documentary will be available exclusively on Xbox consoles, with the series to begin airing sometime this year.
“I don’t know how much people would pay for a broken E.T. game, but as a piece of history, it has a much different value,” said Penn.
