This weekend, searchers hope to unearth a legendary dump of millions of unwanted "ET the Extra-Terrestrial" video game cartridges, rumoured to have been buried in a New Mexico landfill in
The product spin-off from the classic 1982 movie "ET the Extra-Terrestrial" was a mammoth flop, contributing to a sudden collapse of the video game industry in its early years.
The pending excavation, on the weekend of 26 April, will be filmed for a documentary. Filmmakers (and the rest of Geek World!) want to know if the story of the video game cartridge burial is true.
The game hit shelves in late 1982 as part of a $25m deal with director Steven Spielberg to license his movie idea with Warner Bros, then-owner of game manufacturer Atari. To get the product out by Christmas, the game was developed in a fraction of the time typically needed for design, manufacturing and packaging, and it failed as a result. Atari ended up sitting on the bulk of the 5 million ET game cartridges produced, that either didn't sell or were returned.
According to NYTimes reports at the time, Atari buried the games in the New Mexico desert in the middle of the night. A game enthusiast later tracked down the suspected burial site and spread the word about the location.
The story of the "worst game ever made and what happened to it" became a legend among gamers, one that may soon have its final chapter written...
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