One of the biggest mysteries in video games used to be what exactly was buried in the desert where it was believed that thousands of Atari 2600 ‘E.T.’ games were buried. Seen (unfairly) as the catalyst for the industry implosion of the 80’s, legend dictated that Atari decided to cut their losses and dump thousands upon thousands of copies of the game in an Alamogordo desert.
When an excavation was led to find out if the rumours were true in 2014, it was confirmed that copies of the game had indeed been buried there, but also that many other unbought releases had also found a home, namely games like Missile Command, Defender, and Swordquest.
After the city of Alamogordo were given the rights to sell the assets, a local news report has revealed that 881 of the buried games have been sold for a total of $107,930.15 on eBay so far. Over 100 games have also been committed to museums.
As for the E.T. Games themselves, the highest winning bid came in at $1,537 for just one copy. Since launching the auction system in November 2014, the city had earned $37000 from the first 100 cartridges alone.
The earnings have so far been distributed for three different purposes: $65,037.78 for the city of Alamogordo, $16,259.44 for the Tularosa Basin Historical Society and $27,000 for expenses.
The dig was the subject of a fascinating film released in 2014 called Atari: Game Over. It followed the process of a project on such a large scale, as well as the impact it had on its creator, Howard Scott Warshaw, who had relatively little time whatsoever to finish the game before the Christmas period. Upon seeing his game being brought out from the ground, Warshaw’s reaction is one that isn’t easily forgotten.
Speaking ahead of the film’s release, its director Zak Penn said: “I really wanted to examine why people cared about Atari so much, and why E.T. was the whipping boy for everything that went wrong… I thought it would be 60 hipsters just sneering at this all ironically, but we got hundreds of people excited for the discovery.”
Source: The Alamogordo News
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