What was once a rumor became truth last month, when copies of the infamous Atari 2600 games, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, were recovered from a landfill in New Mexico. According to Polygon (who also posted that awesome image above in another article), 100 copies were given to Lightbox and Fuel Entertainment (the production companies producing a documentary on the dig); 700 copies will be appraised, certified, and put up for sale; and the rest will be distributed to local museums. About 1,300 copies in total were removed from the site, and not all of them were E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.
Susie Galea, the mayor of Alamogordo, said that the New Mexico Museum of Space History is going to help prepare the games for sale, which will include registering them and giving them a certificate of authenticity. The method of sale has not yet been determined. Galea also said this has been a boon for the small town, and that she hopes the city commission will turn the site of the dig into a tourist attraction.
There are still over 700,000 cartridges in the landfill, but those will not be recovered as Galea said they were too difficult to get to. Original estimates put the cartridges at 18 feet down, but instead, the dig team had to go to 30 feet. “We’re going to leave the remaining games as-is,” Galea told Polygon. “The hole has already been filled back in.”
What would you pay for a piece of video game history – living proof of the bungles of the great video game crash?
