Fabled Atari ET landfill to be unearthed

It has become the thing of legend but now the myth behind famous Atari 2600 calamity ET: The Extra Terrestrial is to be explored.

1982 release ET has become the thing of legend. The game enjoyed a famously ramshackle development process that resulted in creator Howard Scott Warshaw being given just five weeks to program it.

The result was what many have called the worst game ever made. Atari had paid a rumoured $25m for the ET licence and was so confident in its performance that it manufactured 5m cartridges. 3.5m of these were never sold.

So disastrous was the commercial backlash that Atari soon collapsed – as, in fact, did the entire video games industry shortly after.

It has long been rumoured that the unsold cartridges were buried in an El Paso landfill. Now it looks out we might find out for sure.

Krqe.com reports that a deal has been struck with Canadian film producers Fuel Industries to excavate the site and discover the truth about what exactly Atari hid in the desert.

The company now has access to the site for the next six months.