Lost treasure of Atari REVEALED Yes, Atari really did bury lots of cartridges for a dud game titled E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in a New Mexico landfill, according to film-makers who broke out the heavy digging equipment late last week. A recap for the uninitiated: In 1983, as The New York Times reported, Atari secured the rights to turn E.T. the Extra- …
I could understand if you were to go digging for rare games or prototype consoles, but ET is a rotten games and is very very common.
As for the games being unharmed by 30 years in the ground, New Mexico is very dry. In the UK the boxes and labels wouldn't have survived very long at all.
In terms of video games, the story of the fabled Konix Multisystem and the mystery that surrounds it is far more interesting than the ET carts. Perhaps one for El Reg to cover in the future?
I think the fuss is all about the impact this had on the industry, as opposed to the quality of the game itself.
Lets face it, E.T had massive implications for the video game market and helped us get the quality standards we have today.
On a personal note, I would love to own one of the cartridges. I imagine a whole bunch will end up on Ebay at some point, probably with authentic "New Mexico Sand" in the packaging...
If my memory serves me rightly, ET was released before it was scrapped. I have a memory of an ET sprite with the head moving independently of the body (an overlapping second sprite). I didn't buy it but remember seeing it quite well. Surely someone somewhere has a copy.
If my memory serves me rightly, ET was released before it was scrapped
Yes. Many people had a copy - I did.
I thought the Reg ran an ET story not long back, after which there was much discussion of the game and just how awful it was (with the occasional contrarian advocating for the devil), but that may have been another site. I'm feeling too lazy at the moment to search for the article in question (which is why I'm not making a snarky remark about your relying on memory rather than looking it up).
I'd think that the ET dig is because it was the first time a game flopped so hard, the manufacturer had to do this dump. Then there's a certain curiosity to find the game that was so bad that it not only bombed, it brought down the whole video game industry into the Great Crash of 1983. To put it in more recent history, this would be as if Battlefield Earth had sent all Hollywood Studios into bankruptcy.
Then again, ET is probably 'buried evil' in this sense. Microsoft funded the expedition, maybe that's why their Xbox1 isn't selling?
The legend is not lots of cartridges, it's MILLIONS.
Lots of cartridges and equipment used to make them were thrown away around that time as the factories were being changed, that is not denied. It's the scale that is the issue. Finding a few isn't the same thing.
Would be happy to see them find millions though, will make for a good tv programme.
Most good licensed games have not been tied-in. The Batman Arkham games weren't part of the film, Goldeneye came out some time after the film, Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People was really just a continuation of sbemail.
What great licensed games have been simultaneous releases? Anyone?
Robocop, ZX Spectrum.
But you're right, nowadays production of a decent game is too much work to risk putting it under the timescales and whims of change of an ongoing movie production. Only the best stuff now is done independently of the movie, but to sell well it needs to be a movie or franchise with a popular or strong cult following to make an impact, since you can no longer ride on the movie's own release hype.
And I'd put forward Alien Trilogy and Die Hard Trilogy (along with Goldeneye) as some of the first such examples.
What great licensed games have been simultaneous releases?
Dunno about "great", but I played The Goonies a couple of times on the Atari ST and it was pretty good. Interesting co-op gameplay.
The real question, I think, are where are all the tie-in games we should have had. There's a famously abysmal Jurassic Park game, but where's the Grizzly Man game? ("You have been eaten by a bear.") Or the Law and Order game. (Investigate interchangeable homicides! Prosecute suspects in court, mostly through closed-door meetings with your boss! Repeat until the heat death of the universe!) Or the video game of Midnight's Children - it won the "Booker of Bookers", for cryin' out loud.
I thought they chose the New Mexico desert in the misguided hope that nuclear weapon testing would vaporise their stockpile of toxic waste. Unfortunately they were ill-informed about the chosen test sites subsequent to completion of the Manhattan project. So now the offending articles are being exhumed and shipped to North Korea with the promise of molecular-level annihilation some time soon.
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