The Great E.T. Dig

By Ashley Taylor

Worst Videogame ever made! Unearthed after 30 years!

After 30 years of talk & rumour one of the most famous myths in the videogame industry has finally been unearthed. Game cartridges of Atari’s E.T. ‘The Extra Terrestrial’ have been excavated from a landfill site in Alamogordo (New Mexico) proving that the stories of the game being buried were true.

E.T. the game was an absolute mess! It had no connection with the film and you spent most of your time trying to get out pits that you kept falling into for no apparent reason. One of the main reasons that the game was so bad is that Atari paid a small fortune for the rights to develop the game and wanted it to be released in time for Christmas of 1982! A huge gamble considering that Christmas was only a few weeks away and so a game that should have taken 9 months to develop was rushed in 5-6 weeks.

Sales of the game did not go well and Atari were left with millions of unsold copies.

So, what to do?

Atari decided to load 14 trucks of the game (plus other items) and dump them in the landfill in the early hours of the morning thinking no-one would know. But as with every good conspiracy theory there were witnesses to the event who claim to have seen many trucks heading towards the supposed site. Finally after 30 years of rumour the City Council gave permission to Fuel Entertainment in partnership with Microsoft Entertainment Studios and LightBox Entertainment to begin digging the area to see if the rumours were true.

With hundreds of spectators and journalists present, the diggers unearthed lots of pieces of Atari hardware (Joysticks, Paddles) and then copies of E.T. started to appear amongst the rubble, some were intact and in fairly good condition.

The game’s designer, Howard Scott Warshaw, who was there to witness the unearthing of what may be hundreds of thousands of copies of his misbegotten baby, said:

“Everybody went nuts.”

“I’ve been carrying this thing, the theoretically worst video game of all time, for 30 years now. It was a game that was done in five weeks. It was a very brief development. I did the best that I could.”

“Something that I did 32 years ago is still creating joy and excitement for people, and that’s a tremendously satisfying thing for me now.”

So the urban myth has finally been proven as true as numerous videos and stories are being published. Microsoft are making a film about the whole story which is to be shown on their Xbox Live Channel later this year.

Comments: CNN Wire

Sources: Yannick LeJacq