An achaeological dig of a distinctly modern sort took place today in Alamogordo, New Mexico, at the site where Atari buried a large amount of unsold inventory, including both hardware and software, on September 22nd 1983. For some reason, the story has come to be regarded as a bit of an urban myth over time, even though multiple newspapers covered the events as they happened, at the time (at the time of writing, this story is on
AtariAge's front page, and they have links to a few of those old reports;
Snopes.com also has a long-standing article on the subject).
Remarkably, cartridges, boxes, and other bits and pieces (apparently including the top of a joystick) have already been uncovered, with some, such as in the picture below (borrowed from
IGN.com's Instagram account) looking to be in remarkable condition considering the fact that they were crushed with a steamroller and covered in concrete thirty years ago!
The irony is that these were all worthless due to Atari's troubles at the time they were buried, but are probably worth considerably more now due to the fame of the landfill story.
Myself, I'm kind of hoping that they sell off some of the finds from the site - I'd love to buy an authentic Alamogordo landfill E.T. cartridge, and get it nicely framed as a display piece!
