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Post by VectorX on Apr 26, 2014 23:42:50 GMT -5
Hard to believe, decades later, that the what some thought to be an urban myth of the buried Atari stuff is actually true: today several dozen witnesses watched as Atari stuff was unearthed (namely the infamous 2600 E. T.) from a massive landfill. Nice to see E. T. programmer Howard Scott Warshaw there (no, he wasn't buried there after all!). Not so nice was hearing a local weatherman on the news tonight proclaiming to not be into video games, as he wasn't sure what Atari was after the report aired Hard to believe the day finally came!
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Post by viaton on Apr 27, 2014 2:50:15 GMT -5
Yes it really feels strange, it's been a legend that turned out to be true! Great!
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Post by TrekMD on Apr 27, 2014 9:13:25 GMT -5
Yes, they finally did this. What they are finding is what Atari had stated, though, lots of game related stuff and not just ET game cartridges. I remember the urban legend being that millions of ET carts had been buried there.
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Post by Mayhem on Apr 27, 2014 9:35:44 GMT -5
They weren't even digging through the stuff buried by concrete (the majority of the dumped items) according to this guy who was there...
(taken from a post on AtariAge)
I live about an hour away from the dig site, so I decided to visit the dig today. I'll shed some light on what I saw/heard from today.
I arrived at the site at 9:30am this morning. There were approximately 150-200 people standing in line waiting to get in. We were required to sign releases prior to entering.
Lightbox handed out t-shirts as the digging began. Black t-shirts with a green 8-bit depiction of E.T. on it, along with the coordinates of the dig site. Very nice. They also provided free food and drinks all day long.
I overheard Howard Scott Warshaw giving an initial interview. He stated that he didn't believe anything was here as he couldn't see the logic of Atari spending all that money to haul and dump the games when they were already deep in the red already. Coincidentally, I didn't know he was also the programmer for Yar's Revenge (a game he's very proud of btw).
First announcement came at about 30 minutes after the digging began. We were told that they found a newspaper clipping from 1983, so they believed they were in the right spot. Second announcement came when one of the spectators found the top to an Atari joystick on this way to the outhouse.
It was incredibly windy today (really a normal spring day in NM though...), and probably 2/3 of the spectators left prior to the first game being found. The found E.T. in an original box. Crowd cheered. Zak Penn was pretty relieved that they actually found something. They stated that they had found quite a few more games, and would be digging them up soon. Quite a few centipede boxes still in shrink-wrapping were found. I also noted combat, Yar's Revenge, Circus Atari, Breakout, Berserk, and Missile Command.
They dug up about 8 more crane loads and then stopped to allow the "archaeologists" to catalogue and note everything they've found so far (they did categorize the dig as an archaeological excavation the entire time). You could see various games (with and without boxes) in each pile. It definitely wasn't just E.T. buried here, but a multitude of games.
I hung around until about 3pm MDT to see if by chance, they would give away souvenirs, but no such luck. It appears that the city is keeping much if not all of what was found.
A couple of interesting points in my few minutes of talking with Zak Penn:
- They had been searching for approximately 2 days prior to Saturday's dig. They wanted to make sure they were in the right spot for today. - He confirmed that the first shipment of games were dumped in the landfill without any type of extra security measures other than a security guard keeping watch. After reported looting of the games, the remaining shipments had concrete poured over them. - They found the concrete first, but since they knew those were not the first shipment of games, they decided to search nearby to see if they could find the first dump. Ultimately, they did. This means that there are games dug up in tact, AND games buried under concrete. - The landfill has a very low water table. Because of the lack of moisture in the desert, as well as the lack of oxygen so far down underground, the games came out looking almost like when they were originally buried. - They are on the hunt for the prototypes. Apparently around 5000 were made and possibly dumped there?
Again, they stopped after digging up 8-10 crane loads from the hole. There were a ton of games found in each pile. I don't know about the "millions" of games claimed to have been dumped, but I could definitely conclude the thousands to be likely.
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Post by TrekMD on Apr 27, 2014 9:58:04 GMT -5
Wow Mayhem, that's amazing! Nothing like a first-hand account. You know, I wonder if those dug up, still sealed, carts work!
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Post by Mayhem on Apr 27, 2014 10:57:40 GMT -5
Yes, they do, there are photos of 2600s set up and kids playing on some of the carts dug up. The conditions under the ground, along with a low water table, means they've been preserved really well.
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Post by TrekMD on Apr 27, 2014 11:17:21 GMT -5
Yes, they do, there are photos of 2600s set up and kids playing on some of the carts dug up. The conditions under the ground, along with a low water table, means they've been preserved really well. Amazing, after all these years!
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Post by Luitoine on Apr 27, 2014 12:44:26 GMT -5
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Post by VectorX on Apr 27, 2014 13:11:57 GMT -5
Thanks for sharing that post They also provided free food and drinks all day long. That's cool that they did that, along with giving plenty of PR for them! - They had been searching for approximately 2 days prior to Saturday's dig. They wanted to make sure they were in the right spot for today. As was also noted in a brief video, they couldn't go around disturbing old trash sites, leaving plenty of Swiss cheese-like holes around the place as well. Even with the decent amount of preservation that was mentioned beforehand due to the low water table and all, that's not a good idea, along with possibly being against some kind of city ordinance(s?) and/or local laws.
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Post by wyldephang on Apr 28, 2014 3:26:10 GMT -5
I thought the Atari landfill story was only a myth! But, hey, if you're going to junk truckloads of your merchandise, then you ought to do it in style. Oddly enough, the pictures have this vibe of an archaeological dig site. But with how much kids these days know about retro gaming, the Atari landfill might as well be ancient history.
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Post by Mayhem on Apr 28, 2014 4:50:30 GMT -5
The thing is, this dumping site isn't even likely the largest one that Atari used. There's rumoured to be an even larger dump ground near Sunnyvale in California.
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Post by centaura on Apr 29, 2014 11:27:06 GMT -5
The thing is, this dumping site isn't even likely the largest one that Atari used. There's rumoured to be an even larger dump ground near Sunnyvale in California. wow, the leyend was true. The wikipedia information was updated too with this new. And I really would like if others hidden treasures could be found.. they are bits of history. I was very young in the crack years, when lots of items were stored or lost in Europe, but nothing compared to this burial... amazing.
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Post by sj on Apr 30, 2014 11:26:30 GMT -5
What a great story. (Mayhem. For some crazy reason I always assumed you were British. Not sure how that thought developed.)
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Post by Mayhem on Apr 30, 2014 12:56:11 GMT -5
I am hah hah... my post about the dig, for sanity and reference sake, was by someone else taken from AtariAge
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Post by sj on Apr 30, 2014 14:29:20 GMT -5
Doh! (Note to self. Pay more attention.)
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