Atari Video Game Burial
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The Atari video game burial was a mass burial of unsold video game cartridges, consoles, and computers in a
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landfill A landfill is a site for the disposal of waste materials. It is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of waste with daily, intermediate and final covers only began in the 1940s. In the past, waste was ...
site undertaken by the American video game and
home computer Home computers were a class of microcomputers that entered the market in 1977 and became common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a s ...
company Atari, Inc. in 1983. Before 2014, the goods buried were rumored to be unsold copies of ''
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial ''E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'' (or simply ''E.T.'') is a 1982 American science fiction film, science fiction film produced and directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Melissa Mathison. It tells the story of Elliott Taylor, Elliott, a boy w ...
'' (1982), one of the largest commercial video game failures and often cited as one of the worst video games ever released, and the 1982
Atari 2600 The Atari 2600 is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS), it popularized microprocessor-based hardware and games stored on swappable ROM cartridg ...
port of ''
Pac-Man ''Pac-Man,'' originally called in Japan, is a 1980 maze video game developed and published by Namco for arcades. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. The pla ...
'', which was commercially successful but critically maligned. Since the burial was first reported, there had been doubts as to its veracity and scope, and it was frequently dismissed as an
urban legend Urban legend (sometimes modern legend, urban myth, or simply legend) is a genre of folklore concerning stories about an unusual (usually scary) or humorous event that many people believe to be true but largely are not. These legends can be e ...
. The event became a cultural icon and a reminder of the
video game crash of 1983 The video game crash of 1983 (known in Japan as the Atari shock) was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985 in the United States. The crash was attributed to several factors, including market saturatio ...
; it was the end result of a disastrous fiscal year which saw Atari, Inc. sold off by its parent company
Warner Communications Warner Media, LLC (doing business as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate owned by AT&T. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City. It was established as Time Warner ...
. Though it was believed that millions of copies of ''E.T.'' were buried, Atari officials later verified the numbers to be around 700,000 cartridges of various games, including ''E.T.'' In 2014, Fuel Industries,
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
, and others worked with the New Mexico government to excavate the site as part of a documentary, '' Atari: Game Over''. On April 26, 2014, the excavation revealed discarded games and hardware. Only a small fraction, about 1,300 cartridges, were recovered, with a portion given for curation and the rest auctioned to raise money for a museum to commemorate the burial.


Circumstances


Financial difficulty

Atari, Inc. had been purchased by Warner Communications in 1976 for , and had seen its net worth grow to by 1982. By this time, the company accounted for 80% of the video gaming market and was responsible for over half of its parent company's revenues, earning some 65–70% of their operating profits. By the last quarter of 1982, its growth in the following year was expected to be in the region of 50%. However, on December 7, 1982, the company reported that its earnings had only increased by 10–15%, rather than the predicted figure. The next day saw Warner Communications' share prices fall by a third, and the quarter ended with Warner's profits falling by 56%. In addition, Atari's CEO, Ray Kassar, was later investigated for possible
insider trading Insider trading is the trading of a public company's stock or other securities (such as bonds or stock options) based on material, nonpublic information about the company. In various countries, some kinds of trading based on insider informati ...
charges as a result of selling some five thousand shares in Warner less than half an hour before reporting Atari's lower-than-expected earnings. Kassar was later cleared of any wrongdoing, although he was forced to resign his position the following July. Atari, Inc. would go on to lose in 1983, and was sold off by Warner Communications the following year.


Failed games

Atari's tendency to
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s for its home console had led to some of its most commercially successful games, including the port of its own coin-op ''
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'', as well as the licensed versions of
Taito is a Japanese company that specializes in video games, Toy, toys, arcade cabinets, and game centers, based in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The company was founded by Michael Kogan in 1953 as the importing vodka, Vending machine, vending machines, and Juk ...
's ''
Space Invaders is a 1978 shoot 'em up video game developed and published by Taito for Arcade video game, arcades. It was released in Japan in April 1978, with the game being released by Midway Manufacturing overseas. ''Space Invaders'' was the first fixed s ...
'' and
Namco was a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company founded in 1955. It operated video arcades and amusement parks globally, and produced video games, films, toys, and arcade cabinets. Namco was one of the most influential c ...
's ''
Pac-Man ''Pac-Man,'' originally called in Japan, is a 1980 maze video game developed and published by Namco for arcades. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. The pla ...
''. When the latter game received its official port to the
Atari 2600 The Atari 2600 is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS), it popularized microprocessor-based hardware and games stored on swappable ROM cartridg ...
, Atari was confident that sales figures would be high, and manufactured cartridges—despite having sold only around Atari 2600 consoles. It was believed that the game would be successful enough not only to earn an estimated , but also to boost sales of the console itself by several million as gamers sought to play the home conversion. However, the finished product, released in March 1982, was critically panned for its poor gameplay, and although it became the console's best-selling game after shipping units, it left Atari with over unsold cartridges—a problem compounded by the high rate of customers returning the game for refunds. Further to the problems caused by ''Pac-Man''s underwhelming sales, Atari also faced great difficulty as a result of its video game adaptation of the film ''
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial ''E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'' (or simply ''E.T.'') is a 1982 American science fiction film, science fiction film produced and directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Melissa Mathison. It tells the story of Elliott Taylor, Elliott, a boy w ...
''. The game was a result of a deal between Warner Communications and the film's director
Steven Spielberg Steven Allan Spielberg ( ; born December 18, 1946) is an American filmmaker. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, Spielberg is widely regarded as one of the greatest film directors of all time and is ...
, and was an attempt to follow the success of Atari's ''
Raiders of the Lost Ark ''Raiders of the Lost Ark'' is a 1981 American action-adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Lawrence Kasdan, based on a story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman. Set in 1936, the film stars Harrison Ford as Indiana ...
'', another film-based game. It was later reported that Warner had paid for the rights, which was at the time a high figure for video game licensing. The task of developing the game fell on Howard Scott Warshaw, the programmer for ''Raiders'', but due to lengthy delays in the licensing rights, Warshaw had only five weeks to make a full game to make sure Atari could sell it during the upcoming holiday period. The rushed development resulted in lackluster gameplay; the game was critically panned, and is now seen as one of the worst ever made. Atari manufactured cartridges for the game; however, upon its release in December 1982, only copies were sold, leaving Atari with half of the cartridges. ''
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'' writer Earl Paige reported that the large number of unsold ''E.T'' games, along with an increase in competition, prompted retailers to demand official return programs from video game manufacturers. The failures of these games were further compounded by Atari's business dealings from 1981. Confident in strong sales, the company had told its distributors to place their 1982 orders all at once. However, video game sales in 1982 had slowed, and distributors who had ordered en masse in expectation of high turnover were left to simply return large quantities of unsold stock to Atari. As a result, the company soon found itself in possession of several million essentially useless video game cartridges, which it would be entirely unable to sell.


Burial

In September 1983, the '' Alamogordo Daily News'' of
Alamogordo Alamogordo () is a city in and the county seat of Otero County, New Mexico, Otero County, New Mexico, United States. A city in the Tularosa Basin of the Chihuahuan Desert, it is bordered on the east by the Sacramento Mountains (New Mexico), Sac ...
,
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reported in a series of articles that between 10 and 20
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truckloads of Atari boxes, cartridges, and systems from an Atari storehouse in
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, were crushed and buried at the landfill to the south of city. It was Atari's first dealings with the landfill, which was chosen because no scavenging was allowed and its garbage was crushed and buried nightly. Atari's stated reason for the burial was that it was changing from
Atari 2600 The Atari 2600 is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS), it popularized microprocessor-based hardware and games stored on swappable ROM cartridg ...
to
Atari 5200 The Atari 5200 SuperSystem or simply Atari 5200 is a home video game console introduced in 1982 by Atari, Inc. as a higher-end complement for the popular Atari Video Computer System. The VCS was renamed to Atari 2600 at the time of the 5200' ...
games, but this was later contradicted by a worker who claimed that this was not the case. Atari official Bruce Enten stated that Atari was mostly sending broken and returned material to the Alamogordo dump and that it was "by-and-large inoperable stuff." On September 27, 1983, the news service
UPI United Press International (UPI) is an American international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th ce ...
reported that "people watching the operation said it included cassettes of the popular video games ''E.T.'', ''Pac-Man'', '' Ms. Pac-Man'', the consoles used to convey the games to television screens, and high-priced personal computers." The news service
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further reported on the looting of the dump on September 28 by local kids, stating "kids in this town of 25,000 began robbing the Atari grave, coming up with cartridges of such games as ''E.T.'', ''Raiders of the Lost Ark'', ''Defender'', and '' Berzerk''." On September 28, 1983, ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' reported on the story of Atari's dumping in New Mexico. An Atari representative confirmed the story for the newspaper, stating that the discarded inventory came from Atari's plant in El Paso, which was being closed and converted to a recycling facility. The reports noted that the site was guarded to prevent reporters and the public from affirming the contents. The ''Times'' article did not specify the games being destroyed, but subsequent reports generally linked the story of the dumping to the well-known failure of ''E.T.'' Additionally, the headline "City to Atari: 'E.T.' trash go home" in one edition of the ''Alamogordo News'' seems to imply some of the cartridges were ''E.T.,'' but then follows with a humorous interpretation of E.T. meaning "Extra-territorial" and never specifically mentions the game. Starting on September 29, 1983, a layer of concrete was poured on top of the crushed materials, a rare occurrence in waste disposal. An anonymous workman's stated reason for the concrete was: "There are dead animals down there. We wouldn't want any children to get hurt digging in the dump." Eventually, the city began to protest the large amount of dumping Atari was doing, with one commissioner stating that the area did not want to become "an industrial waste dump for El Paso." The local manager ordered an end to the dumping shortly afterwards. Due to Atari's unpopular dumping, Alamogordo later passed an Emergency Management Act and created the Emergency Management Task Force to limit the future flexibility of the garbage contractor to secure outside business for the landfill for monetary purposes. Alamogordo's then-
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, Henry Pacelli, commented that, "We do not want to see something like this happen again."


Cultural symbolism and speculation

All of these factors led to wide speculation that most of the 3.5 million unsold copies of ''E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'' ultimately wound up in this landfill, crushed and encased in concrete. It had also been reported that prototypes for the proposed Atari Mindlink controller system were disposed of at the site, which only further fueled speculation, since Atari Museum owner Curt Vendel actually currently owns the Mindlink prototypes. Writing for the ''
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'', John Wills speculated that location's place in the public psyche—its proximity to the sites of both the Trinity nuclear test and
Roswell UFO incident The Roswell Incident started in 1947 with the recovery of debris near Roswell, New Mexico. It later became the basis for conspiracy theories alleging that the United States military recovered a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft. The debri ...
—aided the popularity of the story. The conflicting information surrounding the burial led to the claim of it being an "E.T. Dump" being referred to as an
urban legend Urban legend (sometimes modern legend, urban myth, or simply legend) is a genre of folklore concerning stories about an unusual (usually scary) or humorous event that many people believe to be true but largely are not. These legends can be e ...
, which in turn led to a degree of skepticism and doubt over the veracity of the dumping story itself, and the relevance of conflating the event with the later industry downturn. In October 2004, Howard Scott Warshaw, the programmer responsible for the ''E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial'' game, expressed doubts at the time that the destruction of millions of copies of the game ever took place. Warshaw also believes that Atari's downfall was more a result of their business practices—including alleged
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of poorly selling games with successful ones when dealing with distributors—than any specific failed games. This latter view has been echoed by Travis Fahs of
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, who believes that Atari's problems, including their huge surplus of unsold stock, arose from the company's overestimation of the sustainability of Atari 2600 sales, rather than being due to the individual quality of games being released. The incident has also become something of a cultural symbol representative of the
video game crash of 1983 The video game crash of 1983 (known in Japan as the Atari shock) was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985 in the United States. The crash was attributed to several factors, including market saturatio ...
, often cited as a cautionary tale about the
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of poor business practices, despite suggestions that the burial allowed the company to write off the disposed-of material for tax relief purposes.


In popular culture

The legacy of the burial has led it to be referenced in popular culture. The music video for the song "When I Wake Up" by
Wintergreen Wintergreen is a group of aromatic plants. The term ''wintergreen'' once commonly referred to plants that remain green (continue photosynthesis) throughout the winter. The term ''evergreen'' is now more commonly used for this characteristic. ...
depicts the band traveling to the landfill site and proceeding to dig up the abandoned cartridges; the video's director Keith Schofield had worked with video game-based music videos before. The novel '' Lucky Wander Boy'' by D.B. Weiss features a scene which takes place outside of Alamogordo, in which two of the characters discuss a parking lot which has been built over the site of the burial. The 2014 film '' Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie'' features a plot centered on the burial. The episode "The Games Underfoot" of the procedural drama '' Elementary'' featured a fictional version of the Atari (renamed "Emeryvision") video game burial.


Excavation

On May 28, 2013, the
Alamogordo Alamogordo () is a city in and the county seat of Otero County, New Mexico, Otero County, New Mexico, United States. A city in the Tularosa Basin of the Chihuahuan Desert, it is bordered on the east by the Sacramento Mountains (New Mexico), Sac ...
City Commission granted Fuel Industries, a Canadian entertainment company, six months of access to the landfill to film a documentary, '' Atari: Game Over,'' about the burial and to excavate the dump site. Xbox Entertainment Studios planned to air this documentary series as an exclusive to the
Xbox One The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third console in the Xbox#Consoles, Xbox series. It was first released in North America, parts of Europe, Austra ...
and
Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the Xbox (console), original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox#Consoles, Xbox series. It was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, with detail ...
in 2014 as part of a multi-part documentary series being produced by Lightbox, a US/UK production company. Though the excavation was momentarily stalled due to a complaint by the New Mexico Environmental Protection Division Solid Waste Bureau citing potential hazards, the issues were resolved in early April 2014 to allow the excavation to proceed. Excavation started on April 26, 2014 as an open event to the public. ''E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial'' designer Howard Scott Warshaw, '' Ready Player One'' author Ernest Cline, and film director Zak Penn attended the event as part of a documentary about the burial, as did local residents such as Armando Ortega, a city official who was reportedly one of the original children to raid the dump in 1983. Ortega stated that although he and his friends found dozens of quality games, they gave the ''E.T.'' cartridges away because the "game sucked ... you couldn't finish it". James Heller, the former Atari manager in charge of the original burial, was also on hand at the excavation. Heller revealed that he had originally ordered the site to be covered in concrete. Contrary to the urban legend that claims millions of cartridges were buried there, Heller stated that only 728,000 cartridges were buried. Remnants of ''E.T.'' and other Atari games were discovered in the early hours of the excavation, as reported by Microsoft's Larry Hryb. A team of archaeologists was present to examine and document the Atari material unearthed by excavation machinery: Andrew Reinhard (
American School of Classical Studies at Athens The American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA; ) is one of 19 foreign archaeological institutes in Athens, Greece. It is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC). CAORC is a private not-for-profit federat ...
), Richard Rothaus (Trefoil Cultural and Environmental), Bill Caraher (
University of North Dakota The University of North Dakota (UND) is a Public university, public research university in Grand Forks, North Dakota, United States. It was established by the Dakota Territory, Dakota Territorial Assembly in 1883, six years before the establishm ...
), with support from video game historian Raiford Guins (
Stony Brook University Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public university, public research university in Stony Brook, New York, United States, on Long Island. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is on ...
) and historian Bret Weber (University of North Dakota). Only about 1300 cartridges of the estimated 700,000 were removed from the burial, as the remaining materials were deeper than expected, which made them more difficult to access, according to Alamogordo mayor Susie Galea. The cartridges found were from 59 different games, the majority of which were for the Atari 2600; six were Atari 5200 titles. Atari hardware was also excavated. The burial was refilled following this event. Joseph Lewandowski, who had worked to arrange the unearthing with the city, said that this was a one-time shot to recover materials from the site, as they do not expect the city to agree to a similar event again. The documentary '' Atari: Game Over'', which features the burial site and its excavation, was released on November 20, 2014.


Curation and auction

Of the recovered materials, a fraction has been given to the New Mexico Museum of Space History for display, and another 100 to the documentary producers Lightbox and Fuel Entertainment.
The Centre for Computing History The Centre for Computing History is a computer museum in Cambridge, England, established to create a permanent public exhibition telling the story of the Information Age. Overview The museum acts as a repository for vintage computers and rela ...
in Cambridge, England also received some artifacts from the desert, which are on permanent display in the museum gallery. Galea believes the remaining cartridges can be sold by the city of Alamogordo through the Museum of Space History. She hopes that the sale of these games can help fund recognition of the burial site as a tourist attraction in the future. The City of Alamogordo approved the auction of the games in September 2014, to be sold through
eBay eBay Inc. ( , often stylized as ebay) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. ...
and the Alamogordo Council website. , over $107,000 has been raised through the sales of about 880 unearthed cartridges, with one ''E.T.'' copy selling for more than $1,500. About 300 cartridges remain to be sold at a later date given the historical value of the cartridges. One of the ''E.T.'' cartridges that had been dug up was taken by the
Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, Education center, education and Research institute, research centers, created by the Federal government of the United States, U.S. government "for the increase a ...
for its records, calling the cartridge both representative of the burial site but also in terms of video games, how the cartridge represents "the ongoing challenge of making a good film to a video game adaptation, the decline of Atari, the end of an era for video game manufacturing, and the video game cartridge life cycle".


See also

* List of commercial failures in video games *
Second generation of video game consoles In the history of video games, the second-generation era refers to computer and video games, video game consoles, and handheld game console, handheld video game consoles available from 1976 to 1992. Notable Video game#Platform, platforms of the ...


References


External links

* {{E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial 1983 in New Mexico Atari Burial monuments and structures in New Mexico E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial video games Electronic waste in the United States Video gaming in the United States Video game culture Waste disposal incidents in the United States 1983 in video gaming 2014 in video gaming 2014 in New Mexico