Atari's Landfill Adventures, I now have the proof it's true.

[supercat]

Perhaps what you need to do is figure out how to rephrase the myth so the producers could blow something up while testing it.

Hey, I have an idea ... just tell them there's an underground cement slab in New Mexico that needs to be unearthed and blown up so we can see if there are E.T. cartridges hidden underneath! That way they have an excuse to get giant backhoes AND dynamite into a single episode!

 

I was thinking along similar lines, but thought they might be more interested if Atari decided to be a tester for an aggregate company's new formulation of dynamite-proof concrete, since they really wanted to make sure nobody could take their E.T. cartridges. Then the producers not only have to blow up the concrete there, but they also have to do some tests with regular concrete.

[misspent_youth]

Why not tell them that there's a myth that 2600 carts are indestructible. They even survive being steamrolled and buried in concrete. Then they could blow up the slab, and do other stuff to the carts to see if they still work.

 

OK I know that was lame. I just got all band-wagony.

[Lonely Mountain Hermit]

If done correctly, this could be the classic gaming event of the century!!They could have a guy in a E.T. suit to greet you at the gate and you could even have your picture taken with him standing in front of the landfill! How cool would that be? There could be tents set up right on the site and inside would be a classic videogame convention like the one in Philly. And the grand event of course would be the actual excavation of the landfill!! Of course you would have to put up with the horrible stench of rotting garbage but hey, its a small price to pay to be a part of classic gaming history!

[2600lover]

That would be great but I dont know if it would be practicle. You know, getting the city to open up this landfill and let us host a gaming convention on this land. And then the excavation? I think this would be ausome and a great reason for me to fly out to New Mexico, but I dont know if it would work out.

[starwardude]

Hmmm Well I know my opinion on this is not shared. (Ah but what the heck it's just opinion)

 

Dang I wish since we now know reporters were onsite and had camera's that the pictoral evidence was more convincing. Honestly I cant make out anything in those pics other than the bulldozers....bulldozing stuff. I dont even see a poster of a girt much less carts.

 

I know Atari carts are real, and landfills are real. And I'm pretty sure UFO's are fake, but I've seen clearer pictures of "UFO's" than this. I know I'm being a pain, but can someone point out to me the carts? All I see are trash.

 

Thanks for the update Spud and thanks once again Stingray for presenting the evidence, I couldnt get those movies to open earlier at work.

 

Interestingly enough, I did enhance the picture some and came to another somewhat startling conclusion. I didnt see any carts, but I did notice something else some of you naysayers might find interesting.

 

Well, if you had the permission and equipment (and a core drill- find out what's down there before you dig: black plastic bits, cardboard, and cicuit board bits= dig here !) you could find out where exactly it happened in the dump. look at the picture- the dump angles a little bit away from where bigfoot is. looks deep, but that just adds to the challenge.

i'm probably wrong, but if they poured concrete on the supposed pile of games, the concrete would move downhill while wet. not to mention that you'd be able to dig diagonally, considering the age of the occurence you'd go through through a lot of garbage, but not an insane amount. if it were more recent, the amount of junk to dig through would be much less, possibly to the point of being able to dig horizontally. As i said, i may be completely wrong here...

that bigfoot thing, though... moycon might be on to something...

[Ross PK]

If Mythbusters do it I hope to God they don't blow it up, there could be loads of unknown prototypes in there!

 

Anyway, I think this is the sort of thing Mythbusters could do, they did something similar about a buried body under a football pitch. They were doing all these tests and using metal detector type things before digging the ground up (that's if they dug it up, can't quite remember now. I think it was discovered that no one was buried there)

[gremlin]

i have a good idear. hear me out now.

 

1. buy a few thousand et carts. but not on ebay since they are collectible there.

2. find some place private in the desert, doesn't matter where, it all looks the same.

3. encase those carts in some big chunk of cement. maybe add some period correct trash like coca-cola classic cans and old rotary dial phones to make it more realistic. bury it a few fet under the sand.

4. get a few friends, some cheap beer, and a video camera.

5. go for a drive and tape yourself discovering the et landfill when you get out of the car to take a leak.

6. sell the video to a major news network.

7. use the cash to buy the 'bmx airmaster eat my ass' cart!

 

who could prove you wrong? i'll go if you buy the beer, and bring my camcorder too. i like pabst or old style.

 

this is why i rarely post...

 

barrett

[else]

Already been done. See the Wintergreen video:

 

[Rik]

Damn,this is just as bad a debate as"DOES GOD EXIST OR NOT"this is a pretty interesting topic indeed,i think people are fascinated by it,almost like they WANT to believe its true,just like some people want the existance of space aliens to be true,and get offended when someone says"it isnt true"I personally dont believe there are buried carts,to me its just another "urban myth",but to others who believe it,thats fine and acceptable too!

Edited November 20, 2006 by Rik

[epiphanyred]

Hey chaps!

 

I just signed up for your fourms, I came over from Digg! because of a story about the Atari Landfill. Seems some nice fellow did a large research project to prove it. He used some videos that came from this forum. I followed his citiation here to check it out. Love the forums. Thought you'd guys would like to know that he got eyewitness interviews and proved the myth.

 

You can check the Digg article out here.

 

And the fellow's article here.

 

Cheers!

EpiphanyRed

[rbudrick]

I commend him for using the Google 3D feature, but since there's a van on that mountain, he's found something far more important: The biggest van ever. Or, that's just a dirt mound with a similar resemblance to the mountain range.

 

-Rob

[BigFairy321]

lol yes.. that google 3d image to the newspaper article comparison is extremely laughable.

[moycon]

lol yes.. that google 3d image to the newspaper article comparison is extremely laughable.

 

There's a bunch of laughable "facts" in this thread. I especially got a chuckle out of Franzmans determination the the # of cement trucks reported was a match for burying millions of Atari carts. LOL Talk about pulling one outta your ass.

 

I thought a lot of that other site was laughable also. The best "eye-witness" I saw was the mayor.... He stated he hadn't a clue what Atari buried there right at the beginning. Great...So once again, another person who was right there at the time but doesn't know any more than we do. He knows about it, but didn't actually see anything. Of course he didn't, they buried a bunch of worthless crap and wrote off millions for it, no-one saw the sea of millions of perfectly good E.T's because they weren't there. After 29 pages and all we got is a bunch of bogus news articles, with crap stock pictures just like we've had for years and years and years. The rest of the evidence is nonsense and interviews are inconclusive.

 

I recently (a few months ago) posted a request for info to an Alamorgordo forum that got hit up everyday (Wasn’t the most happening forum but seemed to get daily traffic) No one responded to my inquiries. No one in that area has any more info then we do guys. No kids that went to school in that area had ET carts from the landfill or saw any ET carts in the landfill, no-one that work for Atari has knowledge that it happened, no one from the landfill was there the day it happened. Still, and I’ve said it before, someone will uncover the evidence that has to exist if the event really happened and there were as many kids, reporters, security guards and workers milling around as the papers say. A valid eye witness account and pictures….not crap, out of focus Bigfoot pictures, but pictures of a sea of Atari carts. I for one am looking forward to the day that’s for sure.

 

Well…maybe not because once the event is verified then this thread will be buried.

 

Then what will we do?

[Foxsolo2000]

It is and always will be one of the greatest gaming urban legends of all time and I truly doubt it will ever be confirmed in anyones life time

[mos6507]

There's a bunch of laughable "facts" in this thread...

 

There are two possibilities. Either the evidence presented shows that there was a dumping, or the evidence is some grand conspiracy and there was no dumping at all. If you want to quibble over how much was dumped or what was dumped, fine. But if you really think there was no dumping, then you need your head examined.

[moycon]

There's a bunch of laughable "facts" in this thread...

 

There are two possibilities. Either the evidence presented shows that there was a dumping, or the evidence is some grand conspiracy and there was no dumping at all. If you want to quibble over how much was dumped or what was dumped, fine. But if you really think there was no dumping, then you need your head examined.

 

I do know you should have your head examined if you've read through this thread and my many contributions to it and think I think that. LOL

 

Let's not fill this thread with any more bogus information ok mos6507? I don't think that, nor have I ever said that. Feel free to actually read the thread ok? Thanks ahead of time.

Edited December 3, 2006 by moycon

[Inky]

..I think the best we can ascertain from that site is that SOMETHING Atari-related hapened at the landfill, but exactly WHAT remains to be determined.

Edited December 3, 2006 by Inky

[homerwannabee]

Although, I have to say I am a true believer, this is in no way a smoking gun. The Mayor did not say he saw the trucks, only that it happened on Sept. 29.

The only way to get a true smoking gun is to actually go to the town and dig up the land fill buried carts. Still there is to much minor pieces of evidence to ignore this as an urban legend.

[A.J. Franzman]

Anyone check the police records yet? If cartridges were confiscated as suspected stolen property, then later returned to those from whom they were confiscated, there absolutely must have been at least one police report made (you can't return confiscated property without knowing from whom it was taken and how to find him), and in all likelihood it still exists. We've got a fairly narrow time frame to work in from the start of the dumping up to perhaps a few weeks after the concrete was poured. But if I understand correctly, and the concrete was poured because of the reported scavenging, that narrows it down much further. What are we looking at in that case, about a week? How big can one week's worth of police reports from Alamogordo in the mid '80s be?

[A.J. Franzman]

There's a bunch of laughable "facts" in this thread. I especially got a chuckle out of Franzmans determination the the # of cement trucks reported was a match for burying millions of Atari carts. LOL Talk about pulling one outta your ass.

I never said that was fact. As someone who works in the construction industry and knows a little about the concrete trade (probably a lot more than you or most other AA members know), what I wrote is my opinion about what was meant by the vague terminology used in the article. A "9 yard" (9 cubic yards concrete capacity) truck is the most common size of concrete transit mixer in use today, as it probably was even back then. That's "concrete", not "cement" -- look them up. Concrete workers almost never say "cubic" because it's just a given that everyone in the trade knows what they mean. So it's no surprise to me that one talking to a reporter (or to someone else who repeated it to the reporter) would forget to say "cubic" yards and the reporter would put it down just like that out of pure ignorance. 45 cubic yards divided by 9 per truck works out to exactly 5 truckloads; how about that! 45 cubic yards of concrete will cover 70 feet by 70 feet to a thickness of 3 inches. I don't see any problem with the concept of piling the contents of 14, 35-foot long by 10-foot wide by 10-foot high trailers 10 feet deep (or less) in a 70 by 70 foot area and covering them with that amount of concrete, especially if the contents were mostly pulverized after unloading. If the area the stuff was piled in was smaller, that would just mean the concrete ended up being thicker. Or maybe there were more truckloads of merchandise, but after crushing they could still fit in that same area. Use your brain and do the math, as I did -- not my ass.

Edited December 4, 2006 by A.J. Franzman

[+batari]

If you want to quibble over how much was dumped or what was dumped, fine.

Unless I'm mistaken, I think that's what the quibbling is about now. I think we're down to two possibilities: Either Atari dumped a million ET carts there, or Atari dumped something else there and said they dumped a million ET carts.

[R.Cade]

Anyone check the police records yet? If cartridges were confiscated as suspected stolen property, then later returned to those from whom they were confiscated, there absolutely must have been at least one police report made (you can't return confiscated property without knowing from whom it was taken and how to find him), and in all likelihood it still exists. We've got a fairly narrow time frame to work in from the start of the dumping up to perhaps a few weeks after the concrete was poured. But if I understand correctly, and the concrete was poured because of the reported scavenging, that narrows it down much further. What are we looking at in that case, about a week? How big can one week's worth of police reports from Alamogordo in the mid '80s be?

 

But they would have been minors, probably, so the records won't be available.

[Red 5]

Anyone check the police records yet? If cartridges were confiscated as suspected stolen property, then later returned to those from whom they were confiscated, there absolutely must have been at least one police report made (you can't return confiscated property without knowing from whom it was taken and how to find him), and in all likelihood it still exists. We've got a fairly narrow time frame to work in from the start of the dumping up to perhaps a few weeks after the concrete was poured. But if I understand correctly, and the concrete was poured because of the reported scavenging, that narrows it down much further. What are we looking at in that case, about a week? How big can one week's worth of police reports from Alamogordo in the mid '80s be?

 

I did.

 

They looked for a while for me, but all I had was a few dates from the articles.

No names or anything to look for.

 

Also, if no arrests were made, there would probably not be any report.

According to the article, it seems the police just looked into it, found nothing wrong and let it go.

 

The woman at the station has looked for me a few times and has contacted me to tell me she has not found anything yet.

[grimbasement]

This is a great thread. I have been on the city council of another municipality and one thing I've never seen anyone ask about is the city council minutes from around that time. Each and every city council meeting has minutes recorded that outline exactly what was discussed and any official business or agreements entered into by the city.

 

The city council had to approve the dumping what ever it was from Atari. And the agreement would have been signed by the mayor or city manager depending on the form of government they have in Alamagordo. I briefly checked the Alamagordo website and they have minutes on line for their recent meetings (definitely nothing from the early 80's is on line) but count on it there is a paper trail for the Atari agreement. I just referenced the link to show what information is recorded in the minutes. City Council Minutes are public record. Two things could stand in the way of finding minutes relating to the Atari dump.

 

1. It could have been addressed during closed executive session (minutes are kept, but sealed from the public only to be opened because of litigation.

 

2. Atari could have set up a sham company to handle the disposal.

 

But if the city agreed to the Atari dump it will be in the minutes and it's public information.

 

 

 

 

Below is a URL for a recent city council meeting minutes which to show what they look like and how the minutes are written. Pretty benign and boring stuff.

 

http://ci.alamogordo.nm.us/CityClerk/2006u...6%20Minutes.pdf

[mos6507]

You know, I just read the Ray Kassar entry on Wikipedia. Believe it or not, the guy is still alive!!! Someone should try interviewing him to see what he remembers. I bet he'd like to give his side of the story by now.

Edited December 5, 2006 by mos6507