News E.T. excavation opens up to spectators

It was my understanding this wasn't actually true. The story sorta says that but I guess we will find out when they go digging in the trash.

 

Fires up Stella....plays ET and wonders however did this entertain me as a child...can only think it was the fact you could extend ET's neck by pressing the button.

 

Hmm very interesting. Beats digging up rusty old metal on Time Team !

 

I dunno, all those broken clay pots and buried fence posts always had me at the edge of my seat...

 

Wouldn't the 1st of April have been a better date for this dig

 

I thought the entire point of this dig was to see if the legend was true, with one of the potential expectations from the outset being that is was a myth all along?

 

I find it hard to believe that the best way of discovering what happened 30 years ago is to start digging.

 

Hmm.
A landfill... in the New Mexico desert... in April.
Sounds like a blast. Five minutes of that and I wouldn't care if Atari launched their trash into space.

 

Should be easy, they might also find some members of the local drug cartels from the last few decades

 

Yet this is what we do to find out what happened 30 million years ago!

 

Well, I can't think of any better way to work out what happened 30 millions years ago. My point is that even 300+ years back, we can usually use documentation to work out more than we can by digging, so to suppose that it's the best option for something that happened 30 years ago is nuts.

 

It's an interesting story, both in the legend of the burial and in the complete and utter rubbish that the game came to be. My first gaming system was an NES, though I think I might have played E.T. on a friend's Atari way back then. I don't put much stock in the story of them burying the cartridges out there, but some things are simply about the mystique and the experience of an event like that. If it were closer, I might even consider going for the heck of it. Who knows, they might finally find Hoffa instead.

 

So they were crushed and covered in concrete. Really, what is the point of trying?

 

Its an interesting bit of folklore from the 80's, after the video game crash apparently Atari crushed said E.T Cartridges, dumped them in the landfill and covered them with concrete. Another variation on the same theme was faulty non working carts and other faulty Atari Hardware was crushed etc.

Its going to be interesting to actually see if they do unearth anything from the site, apparently Atari did crush and dispose of something there, just what though remains to be seen!

Thinking on this, wondering when the AVGN Movie is going to come out as he is doing the whole E.T Mexican Landfill theme.

The wikipedia article on the crash has a fair bit of info if anyone is interested, well worth reading if you have never heard of it or don't know much about it. It didn't effect UK and Europe as such as we were all using home computers like Spectrum, C64 & Amstrad

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983

After the crash the whole E.T Cartridge thing came to light and in 83 it apparently happened

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial

 

Yeah, it was very cut throat here with the home computers, not as many people used consoles in the UK and Europe as they did in America at the time. The crash came about due to over saturation of machines and games. Certain manufacturers even created addons that would allow you to play the Atari 2600 games on their machines. To much choice and stock that wasn't shifting off the shelves.

As for Commodore / Atari & Jack Tramiel. Know that one well, when he was essentially pushed out of Commodore and went over to Atari and the Amiga was well on its way to completion so Atari needed to come up with something quick, so the ST came to fruition, unfortunately the machine was a bit rushed and had poorer sound capabilities (even though popular with musicians etc at the time thanks to the midi port), it still wasn't a patch on the Amiga. They did catch up with the STe machines as it had better sound chip and visuals but a lot of the software companies didn't utilise the new features of the STe so there are only a handful of games. Handful, maybe 100 titles that used the extra features when thousands of games were available.

I remember the BBC Model B's well, we had a room full of them for our Computer Studies, nice machines but not as many people owned them in the home except the rich kids!!

Sir Alan Sugar created the CPC line to be a good all in one computer for home and business, thing is though people tended to go for either the C64 or Spectrum in the home. The CPC range done really well on the continent during the 80's and is actually still popular today with a good active scene still releasing demos etc. When they bought out Sinclair they seemed to keep the Spectrum line of machines cheap, no tape counter on the +2 machines is just a pain, especially the multiload stuff where it says reset counter!

Going back to the crash though and Nintendo were the ones to actually save the day and restore retailers faith. They named the machine NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) as if it had Games or Console in the title it would not have been stocked or sold. They included things like Rob etc with the machine so it was looked at as a toy and not forgetting they did the Nintendo Seal of approval on their games. This restored faith and the unit started off strong and went on for years to come.

 

I did find the picture on the internet so there is a slight possibility it might not be correct

 

Someone should quietly bury a mock ET skeleton on the site before they get started.