News

Legend Of Buried Atari E.T. Cartridges Confirmed!

photo__2_.0_cinema_960.0photo__2_.0_cinema_960.0

There are many legends in the video game industry,but none of them are as grand as Atari E.T. legend. The game was terrible, but ATARI was so confident of themselves that they over paid for the licence to create it and produced vast quantities of the cartridges. So bad was the fallout from this game when it launched, that it was blamed for the console gaming markets collapse which follow less than a year after the games release. Which makes me wonder why the music industry isn’t in ruin after Justin Beiber released his first album… strange.

ATARI was losing vast amounts of money when the game failed to sell and the rumour, turned legend, turned myth, was that ATARI secretly buried tens of thousands of copies of the game in a Mexican landfill. A year or so ago, a team went to Kickstarter and had hopes of setting out on an epic expedition to uncover the truth of ATARI’s hidden shame, and today they turned up quite a surprise. The contents of the dig site have been lost to history for over 30 years, but as you can see from the picture above, the team have uncovered evidence of the buried content, which appears to contain Centipede, not just E.T.

Atari paid millions to get the rights to the movie for their game, and ended up creating one of the (if not THE) worst video game ever to grace our screens! So bad that some have suggested the games should be left buried. However, what was once a myth is now confirmed as a true piece of video game history and you’ll be able to find out even more in the coming months as the team releases their official documentary of the trip.

Thank you Polygon for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of Polygon.

Peter Donnell

As a child in my 40's, I spend my day combining my love of music and movies with a life-long passion for gaming, from arcade classics and retro consoles to the latest high-end PC and console games. So it's no wonder I write about tech and test the latest hardware while I enjoy my hobbies!

Disqus Comments Loading...

Recent Posts

Electronic Arts Titles Played for Over 11 Billion Hours in 2024

Electronic Arts (EA) announced today that its games were played for over 11 billion hours…

2 weeks ago

Just 15% of Steam Gaming Time in 2024 Was Spent on New Releases

Steam's annual end-of-year recap, Steam Replay, provides fascinating insights into gamer habits by comparing individual…

2 weeks ago

STALKER 2 Gets Massive 110GB Patch With 1800+ Fixes

GSC GameWorld released a major title update for STALKER 2 this seeking, bringing the game…

2 weeks ago

Intel Unveils Core 200H Processors Based on the Previous Raptor Lake Refresh

Without any formal announcement, Intel appears to have revealed its new Core 200H series processors…

2 weeks ago

Ubisoft Reportedly Developing a New Quadruple A Game

Ubisoft is not having the best of times, but despite recent flops, the company still…

2 weeks ago

STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl Update 1.1 Fixes 1,800 Issues and Revamps A-Life 2.0

If you haven’t started playing STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl yet, now might be the…

2 weeks ago