Legend is true: ET cartridges found in landfill

[Wallyworld1]

I'm not totally convinced this is authentic.  I'm not saying it's a Hoax but it could be. They only found the games after the hundreds of spectators left and only a dozen or so employees were present.

It wouldn't be the first time a reality show tried to pull the wool over peoples eyes.  For the record I hope it's genuine but I'd like to see more proof.

[Segatarious1]

[QUOTE=Wallyworld]I'm not totally convinced this is authentic.  I'm not saying it's a Hoax but it could be. They only found the games after the hundreds of spectators left and only a dozen or so employees were present.

It wouldn't be the first time a reality show tried to pull the wool over peoples eyes.  For the record I hope it's genuine but I'd like to see more proof.[/QUOTE]

I agree.  That garbage could have been planted there months ago, to be 'DISCOVERED!' today.

[HardcoreSadism1]

Again, look at the original Floppy Disks, then the Atari Cartridges, people are surprised these landfills exist?

[scotland171]

[QUOTE=Segatarious][QUOTE=Wallyworld]I'm not totally convinced this is authentic. They only found the games after the hundreds of spectators left and only a dozen or so employees were present.[/QUOTE]

I agree.  That garbage could have been planted there months ago, to be 'DISCOVERED!' today.[/QUOTE]

Did you know that the original technology for the transistor was reverse engineered from a crashed unidentified craft near Greeley, Colorado in 1943, but due to war time censorship was never publicly admitted.  The USAF's Project: Blue Book was an intentional disinformation campaign to get the US public to lampoon sightings of unidentified flying objects.  Didn't you ever wonder about the swift rise of missile technology after WWII?  If you are ever in the area, you can still see remains of the crash site in north central Colorado.  The Greeley library even has some microfiche copies of a local paper,the Greeley Tribune, that report a 'training accident' of a plane flying out from Boulder.   (Iway ustjay ademay isthay upway)


Why would you suspect this excavation is a hoax?  They found exactly the physical objects buried under concrete in exactly the spot that reports of the day said they would be found.  Okay, they only found hundreds, but their goal was not to recreate 14 dump trucks of Atari refuse, just confirm something neat for a film.  Its fun stuff, and the dumping grew to be a legend and a story about hubris and the roots of our hobby. 

There is no compelling reason to suspect this recovery is untrue.

[Segatarious1]

Full Definition of HOAX

:  to trick into believing or accepting as genuine something false and often preposterous

Its not as if I do not believe carts were buried, however the 'recovery' is perhaps not genuine and the storyline behind this whole E.T. landfill thing has been false and preposterous from the get go. This is just a lame publicity stunt, and even if they are in the correct site I would not put it past the people exploiting this dig to plant evidence or prime the pump so to speak.

The game sold 1.5 million for pete's sake.

[Segatarious1]

You could hold a 100 Atari game sin your lap in a cardboard box in the backseat of a car.

14 semi truckloads is millions of games. And if they really dumped concrete above immediately after the dump to prevent looting, all of those games would be in a nice neat compact pile. Because how much money do you want to spend on dumping concrete over games that were worthless in the game market? So really, where are all these games? It really makes no sense to me.

[HardcoreSadism1]

Your backpedaling suggests otherwise, at the end of the day your sales number hobby means nothing to the discussion at hand.

[Gentlegamer]

1. Urban Legend or Reality - the burial of the Atari 2600 E.T. cartridges in September 1983. As of 2014, there is strong evidence that at least some cartridges were indeed dumped at the Alamogordo, NM landfill.

This was never an urban legend. It was documented in newspapers at the time, as well as the landfill records.

[scotland]

@ Gentlegamer - I moved your post over to this ET landfill specific one to not get the other sidetracked.

I am a little aback at someone saying there was never a controversy or mystery here. Yes, there were stories at the time, and there were rebuttals from people at Atari at the time as well. What happened was indeed a topic of conversation, as this very thread and others like it attest to. Here is an Atariage thread.
http://atariage.com/forums/topic/66637-ataris-landfill-adventures-i-now-have-the-proof-its-true/

Here is a Scopes page is testament that it was worth investigating as Urban Legend or Reality.
http://www.snopes.com/business/market/atari.asp

Here is a quote from Scopes that says what happened there is still unclear:

Exactly what Atari buried in that New Mexico landfill remains a subject of dispute, and in recent years various sources have challenged the notion that what Atari dumped there was millions of unsold E.T. game cartridges (or other unsold game titles). According Goldberg and Vendel, the New Mexico site was actually used for disposal of a relatively small amount of unused and faulty stock and parts for cartridges, consoles, and computers from the company's El Paso plant, which was being retooled and automated to focus on the of manufacture of game consoles and home computers rather than the production of game cartridges (the latter operation being shifted to Asia). While Atari did bury some millions of units of unsold game cartridge overstock, that (unpublicized) action took place near the company's headquarters in California, not in New Mexico: Read more at http://www.snopes.com/business/market/a ... H2ePzcA.99

I respect your opinion that you yourself were and are of the opinion that millions of ET cartridges were dumped there, and there was not a mystery, but its clear that opinion was not universal. Enough people held (or hold) a contrary opinion to say, yes, there is a controversy. Maybe 'urban legend' was a bad choice of words, as we are not talking about the lady putting her poddle in a microwave to dry it or something, so maybe "Fact or Fiction" is a better turn of phrase.

Mysteries are some of the best conversations in any field or hobby. If you like aviation history, its Amelia Earhart. If you like politics, it was Deep Throat. If you like true crime, who was Jack the Ripper. People offer theories, and write articles, or even mount expeditions. Solving it is fun, but that ends the fun. No one cares who was Deep Throat anymore, we know who it was and why they did it. That's a good end to the story, but it ends the story.

If everyone was so sure millions of ET cartridges were buried there, then the excavation in 2014 and its subplot for the AVGN movie would not have been as interesting.

If you want to convince me that the story was true, that's fine. Convince away, as I respect you and I will try to listen and learn. However, if you want to convince me that there was never a question at all, then that's a big revisionist. There certainly was a question as to what happened, and the question is an important part of video game literacy.

[Gentlegamer]

If the legend was "millions of ET carts trashed" sure, that could be a legend.

But it was always a documented fact that Atari dumped a bunch of stuff from a big warehouse at that land fill. There was contemporary newspaper coverage, and documentation at the land fill itself, that's why they knew where to dig. Every dump has to be documented with contents and location.