Tara Harms's List: Atari Myth

• In 1983, Atari Inc. transported 14 to 18 truckloads of unsold "E.T." and Pac Man cartridges and had them buried in the "old" Alamogordo landfill.

• Old Daily News articles fed the theory: Tons of Atari games buried; dump here utilized, (Sept. 25, 1983), and City cementing ban on dumping, landfill won't house any more Atari rejects, (Sept 28, 1983). These articles by former Daily News staff writer M.E. McQuiddy reflect that the Atari dumping did occur.

   

  According to landfill officials at the time, 14 to 18 truckloads of Atari cartridges were dumped, steamroller crushed, and buried.

• Fuel Industries founder and CEO Mike Burns is a longtime fan of Atari folklore, and in May 2013, the company received permission from the Alamogordo, New Mexico City Commission to explore the fabled dumping grounds. Polygon spoke with Fuel's Nick Iannitti to find out what, exactly, the "youth engagement company" aims to achieve during the six months in which it has permission to excavate the myth and how it plans to share its discoveries with the world.
• s legend has it, in Sept. 1983, less than a year after E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial's release, with literal piles of unsold, unwanted game cartridges on its hands and untenable storage costs, Atari crushed the cartridges, shipped them to a New Mexico landfill, dumped them in by the truckload and paved over the remains to prevent anyone — particularly children — from sifting through the remains.
• "14 truckloads of discarded game cartridges and other computer equipment in Alamogordo, N.M."

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• Atari racked up over half a billion dollars ($536 million) in losses in 1983, and by the end of 1984 Warner had sold the company. 
  
   What accounted for the sudden death of Warner's prized goose? A number of interrelated factors brought about its fatal illness:
• If     one game cartridge could be selected as the symbol of the sudden demise of Atari's golden goose, however, i

  t would have to be the ill-fated E.T.
• Atari rushed E.T. through development in a matter of weeks to get it onto the market in time for Christmas, and the result was something many consumers found to be a virtually unplayable game with a dull plot and crummy graphics in which frustrated players spent most of their time leading the E.T. character around in circles to prevent him from falling into pits. Atari produced 5 million E.T. cartridges, and according to Atari's then-president and CEO, "nearly all of them came back." 
  
• but when 1982 sales didn't meet expectations, those distributors were stuck with a lot of unsold Atari game cartridge inventory, which they returned to Atari in droves. When distributor returns were added to the 5 million unsold Pacman cartridges and another 5 million useless E.T. cartridges, Atari found itself with tons of unsellable merchandise to dispose of, which led to the rumor that Atari buried millions of E.T. cartridges in a landfill in the New Mexico desert.
• There is no question that Atari dumped and buried a whole lot of stuff Alamogordo, New Mexico, in September 1983, as the New York Times (and other sources) reported at the time:

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• There were never thousands of E.T. games buried in Alamogordo, that's a myth that sprung up later and was also never once mentioned by the actual press articles of the time. The dump there was simply a clearing out of Atari's Texas manufacturing plant as it transitioned to automated production methods and a focus on personal computer manufacturing. It had previously been one of the main plants for manufacturing of game cartridges and other hardware, and game manufacturing was being moved overseas to China," Goldberg said.
• As part of the transition, the unused cartridge stock of a group of titles (not just E.T.), console parts, and computer parts were all dumped there in New Mexico. It was covered in detail by the Alamogordo press at the time, and is just such a non-mystery that I'm surprised by all this."

• Legend has it that the town's 100-acre landfill was a site of a huge dump by gaming company Atari in 1983, local news station KRQE reports. Atari made a home game version of the movie "E.T." that was thought to be so bad that the company allegedly dumped 3.5 million copies of the game.