The site in Alamogordo, New Mexico, where Atari is rumored to have buried some 3.5 million copies of the video game cartridge E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is set to be dug up this Saturday.
Never wanting to miss an excavation, we've packed our bags, cashed in our frequent flyer miles, and booked our budget motel room to be on the scene when whatever is down there is dredged up—be it hunks of plastic housing and cartridge chips or distilled evil sent to us by a superior alien race and hidden by the ghost warriors employed by Atari, which was really a front for a supernatural crime-fighting ring all along.
Fuel Entertainment Studios secured the rights to dig up the landfill with the help of local garbage contractor Joe Lewandowski, who told a TV news station that he witnessed the Atari dump in question back in 1983. Fuel then asked Microsoft's Xbox Entertainment Studios to help it make a documentary on Atari, which will be directed by Simon Chinn and produced by Jonathan Chinn.
The city of Alamogordo just recently gave the OK for the dig to proceed.
So what's the likelihood that we'll find something down there once the cement poured over the landfill has been removed and the pit is dug up? Several prominent Atari employees have denied that millions of E.T. games were buried at Alamogordo, but it seems certain that anywhere from nine to 20 trucks dumped parts from an Atari factory in nearby El Paso, Texas, into the New Mexico landfill in 1983. Still, whether those parts are intact cartridges or just cruft from a factory in transition is a mystery until we see them.
This weekend, former Atari employee and E.T. programmer Howard Scott Warshaw will be on the scene, along with a number of Hollywood-types who will be filming the dig and a team of archaeologists who will sift through whatever the dig contractors find down there. Fans are invited to come down as well, so if you live in the area, drop by and say hi!
In any case, we'll be there to bring you pictures and stories of the unfolding mystery.
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