00:00In the vast, sun-scorched desert of Alamogordo, New Mexico, lies a secret, a burial ground not for people, but
00:08for dreams.
00:09For decades, it was a ghost story whispered among gamers, a modern myth about a fallen giant and its epic
00:17failure.
00:18They called it the Atari Tomb, the final resting place for millions of video games.
00:24A symbol of one of the greatest crashes in entertainment history.
00:28But was it real? Today, we dig for the truth behind the legend of the Atari ET burial.
00:36To understand how we got here, we need to rewind to the early 1980s.
00:41Atari wasn't just a company, it was a cultural phenomenon.
00:45The Atari 2600 console was a fixture in living rooms across the world, beeping and blooping its way into the
00:54hearts of a generation.
00:56Games like Pac-Man and Space Invaders were selling by the millions.
01:01Atari was on top of the world, a titan of the burgeoning video game industry, seemingly untouchable.
01:09Their revenue was soaring into the billions, and it felt like the good times would never end.
01:15But, in the world of technology, pride often comes before a fall, and Atari was about to take a gamble
01:22so big it would nearly wipe them off the map.
01:25In the summer of 1982, Steven Spielberg's ET, the extraterrestrial, was a blockbuster smash hit, captivating audiences everywhere.
01:36Atari, eager to capitalize on this massive success, secured the rights to make a video game adaptation.
01:44It seemed like a guaranteed win.
01:46There was just one problem.
01:48They needed the game ready for the Christmas season.
01:51This left the developer, Howard Scott Warshaw, with an impossible deadline.
01:56Design and program a complete game from scratch in just five and a half weeks.
02:01For context, most Atari games at the time took many months to develop.
02:08Warshaw, who had previously created the hit game, Yars Revenge, was a talented programmer, but this was a monumental task.
02:16He worked tirelessly, sleeping on a cot in his office, fueled by the pressure to deliver.
02:23The result was ET, the extraterrestrial, for the Atari 2600.
02:29Atari was so confident in its success that they manufactured around 5 million cartridges,
02:36believing that the movie's popularity alone would make it one of the best-selling games ever.
02:41When the ET game hit store shelves in Time for Christmas 1982, the initial sales were decent.
02:49But then the word got out.
02:51The game was not good.
02:54Players found it confusing, frustrating and repetitive.
02:58The main gameplay loop involved guiding ET through various pits to find pieces of a telephone,
03:05all while avoiding government agents.
03:08Falling into these pits was incredibly easy, and getting out was a maddening chore.
03:14The game was a critical disaster.
03:16Kids who had begged their parents for the game based on their love for the movie felt betrayed.
03:22The hype quickly turned to disappointment, and then to anger.
03:27Soon, the game wasn't just sitting on shelves.
03:30It was being returned in droves.
03:33Atari was left with a warehouse filled with millions of unsold ET cartridges,
03:38along with other unpopular titles like Pac-Man for the 2600,
03:44which also failed to meet sky-high expectations.
03:48This wasn't just a failed product.
03:51It became the poster child for a much bigger problem.
03:54The market was flooded with low-quality games.
03:58Consumer confidence plummeted, and in 1983, the North American video game industry crashed.
04:05And it crashed hard.
04:06With its warehouses overflowing with millions of worthless plastic cartridges,
04:11Atari needed to get rid of the evidence of its colossal failure.
04:15The company was hemorrhaging money, and the unsold inventory was a constant, humiliating reminder.
04:22So, under the cover of darkness, in September 1983, a secret operation began.
04:29Reports started trickling out from the small town of Alamogordo, New Mexico.
04:35Locals spoke of seeing a fleet of trucks, 14 of them, rolling into the city landfill late at night.
04:42They watched as workers dumped massive quantities of Atari boxes into a trench,
04:48then crushed them with a steamroller, and finally entombed them under a layer of concrete and dirt.
04:54The company initially tried to deny it, then claimed they were just disposing of broken and returned materials.
05:01But the story was too good, too symbolic.
05:05The rumor of the great Atari burial was born.
05:09For over 30 years, it persisted as a piece of folklore, a gamer's urban legend.
05:16Did a multi-billion dollar company really bury its biggest failure in a serious desert?
05:21No one knew for sure.
05:23It was a mystery waiting to be solved.
05:26Fast forward three decades to 2014.
05:30The legend of the Atari tomb had captivated a new generation.
05:35A film production company, Fuel Industries, decided to finally uncover the truth.
05:41They teamed up with city officials in Alamogordo and a team of archaeologists
05:46to launch a full-scale excavation of the landfill.
05:49The project, part of a documentary called Atari Game Over, drew international media attention.
05:58Crowds of gamers, collectors, and curious locals gathered at the edge of the dig site,
06:04watching with anticipation.
06:06The task was daunting.
06:08The landfill was a massive, chaotic jumble of 30 years of compacted trash.
06:14The archaeological team, led by Andrew Reinhard, used old city records and satellite imagery
06:21to pinpoint the likely burial location.
06:24Armed with heavy machinery like excavators and backhoes, they began to dig,
06:30peeling back layers of dirt and garbage, searching for a digital graveyard.
06:35For hours, they found nothing but old newspapers, tires, and household waste.
06:41The sun beat down, and doubt began to creep in.
06:45Was this all just a wild goose chase?
06:48Had the legend been nothing more than a myth after all?
06:52The crowd watched, and the world waited.
06:55Then, a shout.
06:57The excavator bucket pulled up something different.
07:00Something with color.
07:02The dig team rushed forward.
07:04Brushing away the dirt and grime, they saw it.
07:07A crushed, but unmistakably recognizable Atari game box, and then another, and another.
07:14There, caked in dirt, was a copy of E.T., the extraterrestrial.
07:20The crowd erupted in cheers.
07:22It was real.
07:24The legend was true.
07:26As they continued to dig, they unearthed hundreds of cartridges.
07:30Not just E.T., but also Centipede, Space Invaders, Asteroids, and other Atari classics.
07:38The games were mangled, crushed by the weight of time and trash.
07:43But they were there.
07:44Howard Scott, Warshaw, the original programmer of the E.T. game, was at the dig site.
07:50For him, it was a moment of bizarre vindication.
07:53For 30 years, he has been blamed for single-handedly killing the video game industry.
08:00Seeing the cartridges pulled from the ground was like seeing a piece of his own unearthed history.
08:06It wasn't a moment of shame, but one of closure.
08:10The physical evidence was finally here.
08:13The discovery at Alamogordo was more than just finding old video games in the trash.
08:19It was the confirmation of a defining moment in gaming history.
08:23The Atari tomb wasn't just a place where bad games went to die.
08:28It was a physical artifact of a massive industry collapse.
08:32A tangible reminder of corporate hubris and the painful lessons learned.
08:38The buried cartridges represented the end of the first golden age of video games
08:43and the end of Atari-S dominance.
08:46From the ashes of this crash, a new era would emerge.
08:50Led by a Japanese company called Nintendo, which had learned from Atari's mistakes by implementing strict quality control.
08:59The E.T. game, once a symbol of failure, was transformed.
09:04The excavated cartridges became sought after collector's items, with some being sent to museums like the Smithsonian.
09:12The story of the burial and excavation is a powerful tale about failure, myth, and redemption.
09:20It proves that even our biggest mistakes, when buried and forgotten, can one day be uncovered,
09:26not as a source of shame, but as a fascinating piece of our shared history.
09:31The Atari tomb is a testament to the wild, unpredictable, and incredible story of video games.
09:39Thanks so much for watching.
09:41What do you think is the biggest E.T. moment in modern gaming?
09:45Let me know in the comments below.
09:48And if you enjoyed this journey into gaming history,
09:52don't forget to like this video and subscribe for more stories from the digital frontier.
09:58We'll see you in the next one.
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