Tech History: Atari Once Buried Games in the Desert

In 1983, Atari was struggling. The video game market had boomed, but poor quality control and rushed releases led to what’s now called the Video Game Crash of 1983.

The biggest offender? Atari’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600.

• It was developed in just 5 weeks to make the holiday season.

• The result? A confusing, nearly unplayable game that frustrated kids everywhere.

• Despite massive hype, millions of unsold cartridges piled up.

Faced with warehouses full of unsellable games (E.T. plus other flops like Pac-Man for the 2600), Atari quietly dumped them in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. To stop scavengers, they crushed the cartridges with concrete.

For years, people thought it was just an urban legend—“the Atari landfill.” Then in 2014, a documentary crew got permission to dig up the site. Sure enough, they unearthed thousands of E.T. cartridges, proving the myth true.

The fiasco became a symbol of the 1983 video game crash, when the industry lost billions and nearly collapsed—until Nintendo revived it with the NES a few years later.