Larry Hyrb (better known to gamers as Major Nelson) tweeted this pic of the E.T. cartridges being excavated.
https://twitter.com/majornelson/status/460129185277968385
It was first reported a year ago that plans were underway to dig up the burial site where thousands of copies of the Atari "classic" E.T. were buried.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/31/187606960/atari-dump-will-be-excavated-after-nearly-30-years
In the past months, Microsoft announced plans to make a documentary of the whole process. Today, the long-standing rumors have been confirmed.
The Angry Video Game Nerd movie deals with the legendary landfill. Interestingly enough, both the movie and the Microsoft documentary are slated for release this year. James also posted his reaction to the discovery on the Cinemassacre blog:
http://cinemassacre.com/2014/04/26/e-t-atari-landfill-unearthed/
https://twitter.com/majornelson/status/460129185277968385
It was first reported a year ago that plans were underway to dig up the burial site where thousands of copies of the Atari "classic" E.T. were buried.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/31/187606960/atari-dump-will-be-excavated-after-nearly-30-years
In the past months, Microsoft announced plans to make a documentary of the whole process. Today, the long-standing rumors have been confirmed.
The Angry Video Game Nerd movie deals with the legendary landfill. Interestingly enough, both the movie and the Microsoft documentary are slated for release this year. James also posted his reaction to the discovery on the Cinemassacre blog:
http://cinemassacre.com/2014/04/26/e-t-atari-landfill-unearthed/
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Interesting. Why were they buried, I wonder.
Basically, they had thousands of unsold copies and needed to clear them out. That game was atrocious and didn't sell nearly as well as they'd hoped.
I guess if I read some of those articles, I would have found that answer. LOL That sucks, though. I thought ET was really popular, in fact it's only one of a few Atari games I'm aware of (Rampage being another).
Cool to hear they hit paydirt. Since this is the basic premise of the AVGN movie, curious how the movie will seem now.
ET is popular for being so universally seen as bad. I had it (when I had an Atari) and I like it fine, but I was young and I didn't have lots of games to play. That said, my fav. Atari games were Spider Fighter, Missile Command, Pitfall and Pacman.
I remember playing ET at a friends house and thinking it was cool to find the phone pieces. 2600 games were pretty limited to begin with, and it's hard to go back and play most of them without thinking "Hey, Zeus, I'm glad that time is over." Reading up on ET now, I had no idea it was deemed partly responsible for an industry crash at the time.
It sucked. I had the 2600 when it came out (Dad had connections), and ET held my attention for about 1 hour. You'd randomly fall into pits, and the whole damn game made no sense. Plenty of other options. Amazing how Adventure kept my interest for hours, when your character was literally a square. Gameplay over graphics FTW.