Studio to comb New Mexico landfill for bad Atari games

A website known as AV club is just one place where the reputation of Atari's "E.T. The Extraterestrial" game has suffered at the hands of gaming aficionados.

ALAMOGORDO, N.M. — A New Mexico city commission agreed to allow a Canadian studio to search a landfill where old, terrible Atari games are rumored to be buried.

Alamogordo commissioners decided last week that they will allow Fuel Industries to search the landfill for games, according to The Alamogordo Daily News (http://bit.ly/1aPRzKe). The company has offices in Ontario and Culver City, Calif.

One sought-after cartridge, the E.T. video game, is thought by some to be among the worst video games of all time. Atari paid Steven Spielberg tens of millions of dollars to license the wildly popular 1982 movie’s name, and the dud of a game caused the troubled company’s worth to sink even further at the time.

The game has since developed a cult following.

The rumored Atari graveyard has long been a fascination of some who consider the commercial flop a part of video game history. It is believed that nine semi-trucks dumped the E.T. game and other Atari toys in the southern New Mexico landfill in 1983.

Alamogordo Commissioner Jason Baldwin says he played the Extra-Terrestrial game and it was horrible. There are listings for the game on eBay that run from under a dollar to more than $30.

Fuel Industries, a multimedia company, has been given six months to search the landfill. The company hopes to document the search.