Atari ET Burial Site

Buried beneath a landfill in Alamogordo is one of the strangest landmarks in video game history. In 1983, Atari disposed of hundreds of thousands of unsold games, consoles, and other materials here after the company’s sales collapsed. The burial eventually became an urban legend known as the Atari Tomb.

The Infamous Game

Released for the Atari 2600 in 1982, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial placed players in control of E.T. as he searched for pieces of a telephone needed to call his spaceship. Players also had to avoid government agents and escape a series of pits. The artificial difficulty, ugly graphics, and poor controls earned the game a reputation as one of the worst ever made.

Did E.T. Crash the Video Game Industry?

Atari rushed E.T. through development in only about five weeks so it could reach stores before Christmas 1982. Expecting the movie’s popularity to guarantee a hit, the company produced millions of cartridges, but many went unsold or were returned by frustrated players. The failure became one of the most visible disasters of the 1983 video game industry crash, nearly bankrupting Atari and turning the E.T. game into a lasting symbol of corporate greed and mismanagement.

Why Were the Games Buried in New Mexico?

The unwanted inventory had been stored at Atari’s warehouse in El Paso, Texas, so it was transported to the landfill in nearby Alamogordo. The cartridges were crushed and buried to clear the warehouse and discourage people from scavenging the discarded products. The buried load included many Atari titles—not only E.T..

Unearthing the Atari Tomb

In 2014, filmmakers, archaeologists, and local historians excavated the landfill while producing the documentary Atari: Game Over. The team recovered 1,382 cartridges, including copies of E.T., Pac-Man, and Centipede, finally proving that the legendary burial had really happened. The excavation was later resealed, but a display about the discovery can be seen at the Tularosa Basin Museum of History in Alamogordo.