Comments on: Atari Archaeology Allowed

Atari Archaeology Allowed

pashdown — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:02:07 -0800

Some claim it is the worst video game ever. What is certain is that five million of them were dumped by Atari in a New Mexico landfill. Now, Fuel Industries, a Canadian film production company, has received permission from the city of Alamagordo, to unearth E.T.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:10:33 -0800

Hasn't HP Lovecraft taught us anything about disinterring æons-old chthonian horrors? Like, to not to?

By: eugenen

eugenen — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:11:11 -0800

Wow, I thought the dumping-the-cartridges-in-the-desert thing was widely considered apocryphal.

By: eugenen

eugenen — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:11:57 -0800

Ah, there's a Snopes link. Helpful.

By: item

item — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:14:06 -0800

Why the fuck? The games will almost certainly be unplayable in a way far different then how they were unplayable in 1982, and won't the labels be disintegrated?

By: MCMikeNamara

MCMikeNamara — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:14:20 -0800

The problem with this plan is that once you fall down the hole, it's impossible to get out without E.T's magic powers.

By: allen.spaulding

allen.spaulding — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:17:03 -0800

I still have this on the ColecoVision. Frustation about getting out of that pit caused me to give up on games for an incredibly long period of time. Let them rot, nothing good will come from this.

By: MCMikeNamara

MCMikeNamara — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:17:38 -0800

item: "Why the fuck? The games will almost certainly be unplayable in a way far different then how they were unplayable in 1982, and won't the labels be disintegrated?" There was nothing in Al Capone's vault // But it wasn't Geraldo's fault

By: Ad hominem

Ad hominem — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:18:19 -0800

Please dont dig them up. The ET game, along with the Raiders of the Lost Ark game, were two of the most traumatic experiences of my childhood. I had terrifying nightmares of falling into a pit and being unable to escape for months. In these nightmares I sat there, craning and retracting my slender extensible neck, but I was unable to escape, unable to phone home or even turn on my heartlight. Please don't make me relive the trauma New Mexico, I beg you.

By: bondcliff

bondcliff — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:18:37 -0800

I paid a nickle for one on eBay a couple of years ago. I haven't actually played it though. I remember my friend had it when I was a kid and we played it. I don't recall us hating it but back then I think any new game was "the best game ever" because it was new.

By: Big_B

Big_B — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:19:55 -0800

I recently hooked my old 2600 to the flat screen after finding it in a box. Of the dozen or so cartridges I still have, they are kinda all about the same level of bad as ET. And yes I do have an actual ET cartridge.

By: JoeZydeco

JoeZydeco — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:20:32 -0800

Thankfully someone went out on his own and fixed all the problems in E.T. Maybe it's okay to dig them back up now.

By: COBRA!

COBRA! — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:21:16 -0800

Worst video game ever, my ass.

By: Kid Charlemagne

Kid Charlemagne — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:21:53 -0800

I'm not sure much is going to happen to electronics in an anaerobic environment like a landfill.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:22:19 -0800

What about Leisure Suit Larry? That looked really awful. Never played it...

By: hyperizer

hyperizer — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:22:54 -0800

I've been to Alamogordo and I can't imagine spending six months there.

By: hellojed

hellojed — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:25:28 -0800

Ian Bogost defended ET in his book "How to do things in videogames" as an example of games as empathy. In this case, you were playing something vulnerable in an alien (to you) landscape, with rules you didn't understand. When you think about it, the game was pretty out-there at the time. Instead of being this all-powerful megahero you were this little alien just trying to scrape by.

By: aught

aught — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:25:34 -0800

The photo of the opening screen in the last link makes me all sentimental in an Island of Misfit Toys mode. I pity the Atari 2600 E.T. for existing within such a piece of crap game and being so poorly rendered. Sniff; poor little dude.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:28:00 -0800

You were never all-powerful in an Atari 2600 game unless you were playing your little sister in Combat or something. The entire environment was actively hostile, in most cases, and you were just a couple of pixels holding another pixel that would occasionally spit out a pixel that may or may not damage attacking pixels. You could tell by the pixels.

By: Ad hominem

Ad hominem — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:29:03 -0800

Thankfully someone went out on his own and fixed all the problems in E.T. Maybe it's okay to dig them back up now. That is genius. I never considered I could I could go back and just patch the ROM to get him out of that fucking pit. Ok, dig those fuckers up and patch them so all the kids disappointed by the game can finish it after all these years.

By: fleacircus

fleacircus — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:31:59 -0800

You were never all-powerful in an Atari 2600 game unless you were playing your little sister in Combat or something. Specifically, you were three all powerful fighters destroying your sibling's/parent's bomber over and over and over again.

By: The Card Cheat

The Card Cheat — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:33:03 -0800

Combat was awesome.

By: hoople

hoople — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:33:42 -0800

We must all pray that this brief interment will prove adequate to allow for a *complete* transmutation into S.T. the Sub-terran.

By: The White Hat

The White Hat — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:33:59 -0800

See also when Wintergreen did this in a music video.

By: bondcliff

bondcliff — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:35:36 -0800

You were never all-powerful in an Atari 2600 game unless you were playing your little sister in Combat or something. It's pretty much the only thing I can still beat my son at. Fear my fighter jets with guided missiles, you little spoiled FPS playing shit.

By: Kid Charlemagne

Kid Charlemagne — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:39:59 -0800

The difference between Leisure Suit Larry and anything Atari was doing is one of expectations. Leisure Suit Larry is pretty easy to forgive in that it was pretty up front about not taking itself seriously. It was a watered down "The Miller's Tale" game of pixel hunter that sat there on the shelf next to science fiction games of pixel hunter, fantasy games of pixel hunter, cop games of pixel hunter and so on. It knew it wasn't high brow entertainment or even the zenith of current video game experiences, but it knew, was OK, and pretty up front with all of that. Atari/Warner, on the other hand, took their selves VERY SERIOUSLY. The hype for every Atari Cartridge from about 81 on always featured a couple kids who looked like someone had just applied a couple hundred volts to the pleasure centers of their brains. And all the while they kicked more and more crap out the door.

By: ZeusHumms

ZeusHumms — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:40:19 -0800

In addition to the gameplay, I imagine dumping 5 million Atari cartridges would also count as toxic waste, given the materials they're constructed from. I also remember it came out on clearance; not a good sign.

By: ulotrichous

ulotrichous — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:41:29 -0800

This is awesome. I had a great fondness for that game, although it was plenty frustrating. I guess I didn't feel it was any more frustrating than any other janky-ass VCS title of the era. I remember being much more angry at Pitfall 2 than I ever was at ET. I hope they sell them off as momentos. I would certainly pay much more for an exhumed ET cartridge than its original sticker price.

By: Pogo_Fuzzybutt

Pogo_Fuzzybutt — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:45:40 -0800

This is awesome. I had a great fondness for that game, although it was plenty frustrating. I guess I didn't feel it was any more frustrating than any other janky-ass VCS title of the era. I remember being much more angry at Pitfall 2 than I ever was at ET. I have fond memories of ET. I didn't think it was that terrible, but we were poor so I played a lot of the bargain bin games. And.. well, back then I was 10. But, yeah, Pitfall 2 was way harder. I remember the day I beat Pitfall2. That as a good day.

By: The Card Cheat

The Card Cheat — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:46:31 -0800

I was really jealous of the neighbourhood kid who had a copy of the Raiders of the Lost Ark game...until I went over to his house and played it. Eeesh, what a mess.

By: theichibun

theichibun — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:48:12 -0800

Yeah, we've seen this before..OH SHIT THIS IS DIFFERENT I'M SORRY FOR DOUBTING YOU!!!! COBRA!: "Worst video game ever, my ass." You're link is wrong, it needs to be going to M.U.S.C.L.E. You should get that checked.

By: dirtdirt

dirtdirt — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:48:34 -0800

I never considered I could I could go back and just patch the ROM to get him out of that fucking pit. Kobayashi Maru!

By: jbickers

jbickers — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:51:28 -0800

The Raiders game ... is central to one of my fondest childhood memories. Somehow I won a copy of the thing, and it was going to be shipped to me via UPS. To an 11-year-old kid, getting your own UPS delivery is a big deal - even bigger when it's a video game! I'll never forget waiting and waiting and waiting for it to arrive ... and then one night, the family packs up in the car to go to Long John Silver's or some other fine dining establishment ... and the UPS truck is coming down the street while we're leaving! And fortunately, the driver recognizes my dad and slows us down and hands the package to me in the backseat of the car. I remember just staring at that box and that instruction manual all through dinner, taking painstaking care not to get any fryer grease on the cardboard or the book. The game itself is frustrating in a way that the E.T. game later perfected, but I didn't care. It was my favorite game ever for the next few weeks.

By: dirigibleman

dirigibleman — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:57:39 -0800

I played the shit out of Raiders back in the day. I also played (and beat! sort of) E.T. In fairness, I probably would have played a game involving a talking puddle of cat piss back then.

By: double block and bleed

double block and bleed — Fri, 31 May 2013 12:58:04 -0800

Fuck the developers of E.T. with a pointy stick. I delivered a lot of newspapers in the snow for that POS game. The whole experience taught 10 year old me that working hard and saving your money for the things you really want is a sucker's game.

By: item

item — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:07:35 -0800

Worst video game ever, my ass.

By: R. Mutt

R. Mutt — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:07:53 -0800

The ET game, along with the Raiders of the Lost Ark game, were two of the most traumatic experiences of my childhood. OHHH.. I still have a functioning Atari 2600, AND a copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark! I don't have E.T. though.

By: gottabefunky

gottabefunky — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:11:01 -0800

Worst video game ever: my ass.

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:11:24 -0800

The Dwarves dug too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Alamagordo... shadow and flame.

By: painquale

painquale — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:14:05 -0800

I also enjoyed ET as a kid. It's unfairly maligned. It was much more complicated than most games of the time -- there are actually a lot of different strategic elements to the game and a lot of different activities you can do. But when you're first starting out, you fall into a lot of pits, and getting out is needlessly exasperating.

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:15:40 -0800

It really wasn't that bad a game. If you know how to play it, it's fantastic, really. People just weren't ready for it – and it didn't help that it's virtually indistinguishable from a bug-ridden mess if you don't know what's going on.

By: NoraReed

NoraReed — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:20:32 -0800

E.T. E.T. PHONE HOME Pitfall Harry. Aw fucking hell. E.T. FUN GAME!!! Pitfall Harry. What? E.T. FUN GAME!!! Pitfall Harry. Yeah, I heard you. I've just heard really bad things about this game. E.T. I CAN HELP. STRETCH NECK, FLY AROUND, FIND TELEPHONE PARTS, NOT GET CAPTURED Pitfall Harry. You know, that sounds like a lot of fun, but I think I'm gonna go find a tree branch to stab myself with. E.T. BE GOOD

from I Went Left Instead Of Right In Pitfall And Kept On Tickin' And Now I Believe In Miracles

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:24:11 -0800

double block and bleed: “Fuck the developers of E.T. with a pointy stick. I delivered a lot of newspapers in the snow for that POS game. The whole experience taught 10 year old me that working hard and saving your money for the things you really want is a sucker's game.” Well, I think people can be forgiven for not knowing this at the time, since it was way before such things were usually necessary for video games, but it really, really helped if you read the manual.

By: GallonOfAlan

GallonOfAlan — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:27:04 -0800

Fascinating ... Wow ... Read some more ... AAaAAaAaaAaagh! They said "reached out"! What the fuck is wrong with 'contacted'? Do we have to have corporate wankspeak infect everything?

By: drezdn

drezdn — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:28:10 -0800

If more people had played "The Mutant Virus" more people would know that it was the worst video game ever made.

By: rough ashlar

rough ashlar — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:40:02 -0800

What about Leisure Suit Larry? Just play the original Applesoft Softporn Adventure. toxic cartridges The Gold in them should pay for the backhoe. Free labor by the grad students in Garbage studies from all over the world taking notes as its dug up. Think of the stories on the way TO E.T.

By: anonymisc

anonymisc — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:42:21 -0800

I'm not sure much is going to happen to electronics in an anaerobic environment like a landfill. They could even be in pristine just-steamrolled-to-destruction condition, like the day they were smashed and dumped. I'd still buy one. :-) (Purchase seven ET-cartridge corpses from the grave-robbers and you might get enough body parts to Frankenstein together a complete one and bring it back from the dead. It lives! IT LIIIIVES!)

By: curious nu

curious nu — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:42:53 -0800

Worst video game ever: my ass. The buttons don't even DO anything.

By: rough ashlar

rough ashlar — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:43:43 -0800

the worst video game ever made. Firebird on the Apple ][. Most awesome for being text? FireBug. Never confuse the 2.

By: Debaser626

Debaser626 — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:44:21 -0800

I'm not quire sure what they expect to get from doing this. According to snopes: "In order to keep the site from being looted, steamrollers crushed and flattened the games, and a concrete slab was poured over the remains." Sounds to me like they'll end up with hundreds of pounds of sharp plastic pieces and broken circuitry... and that's only if they jackhammer the concrete and grab whatever pieces are not destroyed in the destruction of the slab. They either didn't read the snopes article, or perhaps they're planning on making kitsch jewelry out of the smashed pieces and selling those. Meh, I might pay $4.99 for something decent looking which was crafted from one of the famed E.T. landfill games.

By: It's Raining Florence Henderson

It's Raining Florence Henderson — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:45:53 -0800

Some claim it is the worst video game ever Almost as bad as the movie.

By: mintcake!

mintcake! — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:49:47 -0800

Worst video game ever: my ass. Nah dude, we had the trackball fixed while you were asleep and it's as good as new.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:50:40 -0800

I've been to Alamogordo and I can't imagine spending six months there. Well, it might be the only city in the US to have both JESUS IS LORD and WILLKOMMEN LUFTWAFFE billboards welcoming you to the city. So there's that.

By: mcstayinskool

mcstayinskool — Fri, 31 May 2013 13:54:10 -0800

Worst video game ever; my ass.

By: yath

yath — Fri, 31 May 2013 14:49:14 -0800

If you can buy it on eBay for $5, what is the point of digging up the landfill?

By: ulotrichous

ulotrichous — Fri, 31 May 2013 15:14:16 -0800

Fuck the developers of E.T. with a pointy stick You mean developer. Back in the day, multimillion dollar video games were development projects given entirely over to to single individuals, who did it all. Howard Scott Warshaw was given five weeks to make E.T. to make the Xmas manufacturing deadlines. I think he did ok. His first hit was Yar's Revenge, and he was given the E.T. project because his first movie game, Raiders of the Lost Ark, was such a commercial success.

By: Reverend John

Reverend John — Fri, 31 May 2013 15:14:59 -0800

It's pretty much the only thing I can still beat my son at. Fear my fighter jets with guided missiles, you little spoiled FPS playing shit. Bah, I'll kick your's or most anyone's* butt in Bomber vs Tri-planes, playing the bomber. * anti-social nerds between the age of, say, 38 and 54 possibly excepted And for the record, I liked ET. There I said it. And I had the BASIC cartridge.

By: Eideteker

Eideteker — Fri, 31 May 2013 19:09:46 -0800

"What about Leisure Suit Larry? That looked really awful. Never played it..." If you're really curious, Generikb has done a recent playthrough of the first two Leisure Suit Larry games.

By: RockyChrysler

RockyChrysler — Fri, 31 May 2013 19:43:16 -0800

SPOILER ALERT: digging up an Alamagordo landfill so Walt and Jesse can sell black market ET 2600 games will be the next unexpected turn of the plot on Breaking Bad.

By: Brocktoon

Brocktoon — Fri, 31 May 2013 23:30:13 -0800

The worst games ever are the ones listed line by line in the back of the BASIC how-to manual that shipped with Tandy 1000s. Fucking things never worked.

By: mcrandello

mcrandello — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 00:15:00 -0800

I know for a fact those programs never worked if you put them in your trash80 CoCo. Now I wish I'd picked up some genuine sand from NM when I was driving through there last month. I could have ground it into my copy after roughing it up and finally gotten my money back from it on eBay.

By: ShutterBun

ShutterBun — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 02:37:30 -0800

Potential bad news for all involved: Isn't it a fact that 1983's " landfill in New Mexico" is 2013's " mall parking lot in New Mexico?" From what I understand, the original burial site was eventually paved over and is now a shopping center, so it sounds like the current mayor is simply giving a film crew permission to go sifting through a nearby (unrelated) garbage dump for publicity. Is there any evidence to the contrary?

By: ShutterBun

ShutterBun — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 02:39:20 -0800

The worst games ever are the ones listed line by line in the back of the BASIC how-to manual that shipped with Tandy 1000s. Fucking things never worked. User error. Disregard the semicolon at your own peril!

By: ShutterBun

ShutterBun — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 02:46:33 -0800

Atari/Warner, on the other hand, took their selves VERY SERIOUSLY. They sold (or strong-armed their way into) more units of E.T. cartridges than there were consoles to put them in! That tells you all you need to know about their hubris at the time. But hey, Atari's shitty management gave rise to Activision! They're still cool, right? Right?

By: radwolf76

radwolf76 — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 09:00:27 -0800

Worst video game ever: my ass.

By: saladin

saladin — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 06:57:44 -0800

I'm told by people in the know that this whole plan actually isn't going to go through, and that New Mexico's Environment Department is going to shut it down before it even begins, for the following reasons: - The site where the games are buried is also badly contaminated with absolutely enormous amounts of mercury, as well as significant amounts of malathion. - The site is due west of town, so prevailing winds would carry anything bad that's unearthed directly in to the population centers. - No one knows if the dump site actually has a liner, and if so what condition it's in, and thus whether or not it could withstand excavation and/or whether simply shifting the contents of the site might cause huge amounts of mercury to leach out in to the ground. - No one seems to know if the Canadian documentary crew that's planning the dig will have any technical ability to address any of the aforementioned problems. Apparently the townsfolk are pretty pissed that the city council let this vote pass with so little thought for details and consequences. But for all of you worried about the ancient evil that might be unleashed when the cartridges are unearthed, fear not, it sounds like that day might not come after all.

By: AJaffe

AJaffe — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 11:56:58 -0800

Does one need to take a Desert Bus to get to the Alamagordo site?

By: ShutterBun

ShutterBun — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 02:39:44 -0800

If only there was a game to simulate that hypethitical bus ride... ...oh god...

By: IAmBroom

IAmBroom — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 06:46:19 -0800

Mister_A: What about Leisure Suit Larry? That looked really awful. Never played it...

Can anyone spot the slight flaw in Mister_A's deduction of the worst video game ever?

By: Brocktoon

Brocktoon — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 15:17:28 -0800

Is it because he doesn't know where the most likely place to find virgins is?