MosDN Posted November 9, 2004 Share Posted November 9, 2004 Found this while browsing some old mags: "An Alamorgordo, N.M. city landfill was recently graced with some of the most expensive refuse in history: fourteen truckloads of brand-new Atari game cartridges and hardware. The games came from Atari's El Paso plant, which has ceased the manufacture of videogames. Guards kept spectators out of viewing range as trucks buried the equipment in cement. (........) Atari say that, contrary to press accounts, the cartridges were defective, unsaleble, unusable. We'd prefer to believe that. Any other explanation gets us down in the dump." X marks the treasure, start digging!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted November 9, 2004 Share Posted November 9, 2004 What do you mean "another"? That's the ET story...and the jury is still out regarding whether or not it really happened that way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MosDN Posted November 9, 2004 Author Share Posted November 9, 2004 I know! Just want to share this because this story was written in December 1983. People believed everything in those days... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted November 9, 2004 Share Posted November 9, 2004 There is the real possibility that the story is 100% factual. If Atari was looking to write off carts and equipment that people were not buying, it would be cheaper for them to destroy them than let them take up valuable warehouse space - costing them money the longer they remain unsold. That's writing it off the inventory books and taking a loss for it...and it MUST be rendered unusable, unsellable, unsalvageable for the auditors to allow it (I saw this happen many times working in warehouses). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brad2600 Posted November 9, 2004 Share Posted November 9, 2004 How many times do people have to keep dragging up this story? It's been beaten to death over and over. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MosDN Posted November 9, 2004 Author Share Posted November 9, 2004 Indeed, and I like to add that the article stated the fact that Atari had a lot of problems selling cartidges. Warehouses overflowing with E.T.'s and PacMans (defective, unsaleable, unuseable.....) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted November 9, 2004 Share Posted November 9, 2004 The worse problem was the value of their stock...which was plummeting due to public disinterest in consoles (across the board...everyone in the biz was being affected whether or not they had ties to Atari). Trashing out product that isn't selling is the quickest way to write it off the bottom line and perk up the stock value. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cootster Posted November 9, 2004 Share Posted November 9, 2004 Spectators? For something that allegedly happened in the middle of the night? Do people hang around landfills to watch people dump shit that nobody wants (and nobody did in 1983, because they produced to extreme excess and you could still find ET if you wanted it) at any time of day, anyway? And can someone just make a perma-sticky about this great debate and the various theories? It is an R-1 question, after all . . . Personally, I believe HSW's right and it didn't happen quite like this. . . But if it was a public facility, one could easily just call the city of Alamogordo and ask them. . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sku_u Posted November 9, 2004 Share Posted November 9, 2004 Spectators? For something that allegedly happened in the middle of the night? Do people hang around landfills to watch people dump shit that nobody wants (and nobody did in 1983, because they produced to extreme excess and you could still find ET if you wanted it) at any time of day, anyway? I do it all the time. I love the smell of landfills and the site of unending rows of dirty diapers picked at by sea gulls. Doesn't everyone Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cootster Posted November 9, 2004 Share Posted November 9, 2004 Spectators? For something that allegedly happened in the middle of the night? Do people hang around landfills to watch people dump shit that nobody wants (and nobody did in 1983, because they produced to extreme excess and you could still find ET if you wanted it) at any time of day, anyway? I do it all the time. I love the smell of landfills and the site of unending rows of dirty diapers picked at by sea gulls. Doesn't everyone Only on first dates. Nothing like shooting rats at the dump to test whether someone is really into you or not. . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Artlover Posted November 9, 2004 Share Posted November 9, 2004 Atari 2600 Casio Keyboard Canon BJC-610 Printer Coffee Table Corner Table 2 Bookcases 4 Chairs 3 "How-To" home repair books 2 Lamps 2 TV's 2 Stereo's Thats just some of the "working" stuff I've found dumpster diving over the years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr. Van Thorp Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 The are similar stories from the toy industry. One toy company licensed Flubber from Disney, back in the 50's, and made a product to compete with Silly Putty. The product had a major flaw: it was oily and left stains on carpets and walls. So they buried it in a hole under the toy company's new parking lot. And, so the story goes, the rubber material expanded as it broke down over the years, and a bump formed in the parking lot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IBP Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 Whether or not the story has a grain of truth, it is utterly destroyed by the embellishement of "buried under tonnes of concrete". There is absolutely no way that Atari, if it were cutting its losses by dumping a batch of carts, would pay to have the lot covered in concrete. There is no way that the owner of a land-fill would allow concrete to be poured over a fresh fill, as the whole point of a land-fill is that you can scoop things around, compact them down and rearrange as things start to break down. This story fills many of the criteria from snopes.com for an urban myth - unnecessary embellishment, specific timing, many different versions of the same story... If atari wanted to destroy stock, they'd have crushed it, not buried it in concrete. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidcrowe Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 I guess like Jimmy Hoffa, we'll never really know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 Whether or not the story has a grain of truth, it is utterly destroyed by the embellishement of "buried under tonnes of concrete". There is absolutely no way that Atari, if it were cutting its losses by dumping a batch of carts, would pay to have the lot covered in concrete. There is no way that the owner of a land-fill would allow concrete to be poured over a fresh fill, as the whole point of a land-fill is that you can scoop things around, compact them down and rearrange as things start to break down. This story fills many of the criteria from snopes.com for an urban myth - unnecessary embellishment, specific timing, many different versions of the same story... If atari wanted to destroy stock, they'd have crushed it, not buried it in concrete. A valid point...but the decision would have rested with the auditors whether or not to take Atari at their word that the product written off would be kept out of the public's hands (and Atari's management wasn't exactly very popular among investors at the time). IIRC according to the old EG column, the landfill was due to be covered over anyway (wasn't it supposed to become a skate park? Whatever happened to that part of the story?). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cootster Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 I guess like Jimmy Hoffa, we'll never really know. I'll grab the shovels and meet you at Giants Stadium . . . We could solve that one, at least. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari Charles Posted November 10, 2004 Share Posted November 10, 2004 If you want a true account of what happened read this: http://worldzone.net/computers/atari2600duds/ET.shtml An exerpt: Atari decided the E.T. cartridges had to be hidden away forever. Atari also had no great love for the programmer Howard Scott Warshaw & animator Jerome Domurat and even a greater dislike for the alien only known as E.T.. Atari hired a contracter with possible mafioso ties to make certain cartridges and individuals dissappear. "These cartridges were secretly buried in a landfill at Alamogordo New Mexico (along with a few million unsold Pac-Man carts), which were then crushed with a steam roller, covered in cement, and consequently forgotten about" (AtariProtos.com). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MattG/Snyper2099 Posted November 11, 2004 Share Posted November 11, 2004 Yeah, who the hell cares about this story still??? Actually, I never cared. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IBP Posted November 11, 2004 Share Posted November 11, 2004 http://www.snopes.com/business/market/atari.asp I take back what I said about the story being a consummate fake. If it's on snopes it must be true. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dvdguy Posted November 11, 2004 Share Posted November 11, 2004 Why do people get so miffed when this rumor/story is brought up? It's a fun piece of Atari lore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IBP Posted November 11, 2004 Share Posted November 11, 2004 We just take ourselves too seriously. Somebody has to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laner Posted November 11, 2004 Share Posted November 11, 2004 http://www.snopes.com/business/market/atari.asp I take back what I said about the story being a consummate fake. If it's on snopes it must be true. I hope you're being sarcastic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inky Posted November 13, 2004 Share Posted November 13, 2004 Let's put it this way. The only place the ET story was reported was, as far as I can tell from doing numerous internet searches, was in the NY Times. In another thread I even attached an image of the story. Until we can find coroborrating (damn. used that word twice today!) evidence from another source, I would chalk the story up to the category "Most Likely Fiction" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidcrowe Posted November 13, 2004 Share Posted November 13, 2004 It's not as if it's a story Atari would issue a press release about. "FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Atari would like to admit to its shareholders, employees and loyal customers that we fucked up royally with that awful E.T. game. How could we not, given that we sometimes make bad games in ten times the development time. Nobody wants the damn things, so we're going to bury them instead of flooding the market with them, which would reduce the prices of our existing retail stock by say, oh...at least 70%. Thank you." What else would they do with them? Just having them around would make people be afraid that they'd be released at a crazy bargain price. Can you burn them? Sell them to Mexico? I think it's true Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MosDN Posted November 13, 2004 Author Share Posted November 13, 2004 Until we can find coroborrating (damn. used that word twice today!) evidence from another source, I would chalk the story up to the category "Most Likely Fiction" How about Videogaming & Computergaming Illustrated Dec. 1983 page 9-10. Not exactly NY Times but still ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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