In the seventies before it became fashionable my father built a giant metal shredder that ate cars and spit out chunks of metal suitable for smelting. It was an interesting place but the highlight of the year was the tractor trailer full of research prototypes from Polaroid Camera. It came complete with armed guards that watched to make sure every last camera was destroyed.
I always stood and watched in case a camera fell off but it turns out I should have gone to Alamogordo New-Mexico. The Canadian studio Fuel has paid the city of Alamogordo for the rights to excavate their landfill. They’re in search of the up to twenty tractor trailer loads Atari dumped after deciding the Video Game market had crashed. It’s a story like the lost elephant’s graveyard only with a fortune of electronics instead of ivory.

Nintendo saved console gaming with hot games like Super Mario Brothers in 1985
It’s hard to believe now but in 1983 the market had been saturated with so much low quality product that console gaming almost died. Game giant Atari produced famously bugged games like E.T. the Extraterrestrial that are considered a challenge by gamers now but back then Atari couldn’t give them away. Returned as unsellable they filled a warehouse in El-Paso before being sent for disposal in Alamogordo.
Unlike the meticulous Polaroid Corporation Atari relied on rules against dump scavenging and the Alamogordo practice of burying the garbage every night. There may be thousands of functional cartridges, consoles, and other highly prized game history nestled safe and dry under the concrete cap of that landfill. In a landfill study conducted by the University of Arizona researchers uncovered 25 year old hot dogs and 50-year old newspapers that were still readable. Those game cartridges might be in pristine condition.
Since items like the ultra rare Columbia Home Arcade Atari 2600 go for about $1,500 on the collectors market just might be in there I wouldn’t mind getting a shovel and doing some excavating myself.
Update April 26, 2014
It’s not quite Indiana Jones but the excavation sponsored by the Fuel Industries documentary on the lost Atari Graveyard has finally begun. Heavy Machinery broke into the cap of the Alamogordo, NM landfill and crews have recovered almost pristine copies of the Atari game ET.
“We found something,” film director Zak Penn told an excited crowd at the dig site this afternoon. “We found an intact ET video game. The actual cartridge is still in there.”
“Archaeogaming” is the future. Check out the video on the IGN website There’s a lot more down there!
If you’re not Cornmeal who is a grand master gamer you might not have ever seen the E.T. Game. We’ve come a long way gaming since then!
I don’t know I didn’t like them back then, I cant see changing my mind now.
Hmm let me translate. When Bobby Kotick finally finishes off Blizzard Entertainment and orders the warehouse emptied and they dump the codes to the Deathwing Mount in Alamogordo we can rent a jackhammer and ride share down.
I purposely dragged my feet on this for like, two months expecting that they would have found something by now!
They have a six month window starting in June. Cornmeal has been working on a directional shaft from outside the wire but is being tight lipped about whether he’s found anything in case other uber gamers try to jump his claim.
There’s nothing there! *Looks around shiftily*
lol
“directional shaft”
I’m trying to think of some joke with Fracking in it to go with the Oil Field terminology theme but I figure just saying Fracking enough times will do it for you. Fracking!
Frack that.
They found lots of stuff over the past weekend.
http://kotaku.com/e-t-found-in-new-mexico-landfill-1568100161
http://kotaku.com/awesome-photos-from-the-atari-landfill-1568711945
When I saw that photo of the pristine game cartridge on IGN I went: Yeah called that!
I’m curious as to whether or not any they pulled out are still playable. If they are, I kind of want one. Just from a historical point of view. I don’t think I could bring myself to actually sit down and play it for any discernible amount of time, though I do have the means to.
Like I said in the article those dumps in dry areas are perfect storage facilities. If they’re not crushed, and from the photos it looks like the packaging protected the cartridges, then it’s just like they’ve been sitting on a shelf for thirty years. I put a clip of the gameplay with the update. I couldn’t even sit through the video so I was thinking Asteroids or Centipede for a collectable. I’m pretty sure I saw boxes for those.