In 1983, a video game giant trucked its surplus games to a desert landfill and left them there. The 2014 dig in Alamogordo, New Mexico, was the first archaeological excavation of a collection of video games, according to Andrew Reinhard’s 2015 study in the Journal of Contemporary Archaeology . Decades later, that dump turned into an archaeological site. It also became a blend of archaeology, publicity, and social media attention.
The Smithsonian calls the game one of the reasons behind the video game crash that lasted from 1982 to 1985. By September 1983, Atari had a surplus of cartridges in its warehouse in El Paso, Texas, that it needed to get rid of. Because players often found it frustrating, however, some of them were sent back.
The film license was expensive as well. Atari had to sell four million copies just to make its money back. It ended up selling a little over one million copies. Smithsonian reports that the company decided to dump them in a landfill in Alamogordo so people couldn’t scavenge them. The burial was mentioned in the local newspaper, and the landfill employees even remembered it. However, there was little written documentation for that story. This lack of documentation, combined with the site’s location in New Mexico, near Roswell, may have helped turn it into an urban legend . Robarge writes that the cartridge has its share of good stories. It shows how hard it can be to turn a film into a good game. It also marks Atari’s decline and the end of an era for cartridge manufacturing. It also puts the urban legend to rest.
Concrete was also said to be poured on the site.
