Was E.T. Buried in a Landfill in New Mexico?
Anyone who’s been playing games since the Atari era has probably heard the legend about the E.T. movie game and the rumors surrounding it. If you haven’t, let me quickly catch you up: The E.T. game was crapped out very quickly to accompany the movie?so quickly, in fact, that the game had little to do with th movie’s plot, as it forced players to drop E.T. in one of countless pits to find the pieces of his “phone home” phone; pits that were staggeringly impossible to get out of, as ell, making the game more or less unplayable. Part of the legend is that the publisher actually made more E.T. games than there were Atari consoles at the time, so when word got around the the game sucked, they had several million copies on their hands.
As the legend goes, these games were shipped out to New Mexico to be buried secretly in a landfill. I love the legend, mostly because it’s a great story, but because I’m the only guy ever who loves the E.T. game (it’s terrible, but I can get out of the pits). DSo I was delighted to learn from Kotaku that some Auburn college kids are going to make a documentary about it, and see if they can find the landfill. Make sure to check out the official documentary site here.