5 Million Copies of ET

[Callipygous]

Found the real story at an Urban Legends site. (good site -BTW)

 

Five Million E.T. Pieces

 

(might make a good link for Atari Age's ET page)

 

To sum up, Atari did not produce more ET than consoles. They did produce more Pac-Man than consoles!

[StanJr]

Wow.

 

For the record, I've never seen a thread go over 75 posts.

In light of the new info, I guess this one will die on the vine as well?

[atarigamer]

You can also find the E.T. (2600) Christmas Commercial at:

 

http://www.nintendogeeks.com/atari2600etmov.mov

 

You can click the link above to view it, or right click, and Save Target As to download it.

[Callipygous]

Albert, found title okay, just meant that the "Year of Release" is not filled in. Okay, I found number for total 2600s made. Atari sold about 25 million total Sony apparently made big deal about it when Playstation surpassed it. Don't know what the total was in 1982, but, obviously, the bulk of 2600 sales were pre-crash. If the 80/20 rule applies, it would be 20 million pre-crash and 5 after. A guess of 10 million sold by 1982 is conservative and less than 5 million is clearly wrong. No way they sold 20 mill after 1982.

[Malix]

Thanks for that page liveinabin. I love urban legends and that page rocks!

[liveinabin]

can't claim credit for that mate, I just post stupid stuff - that was Mario's......

[Callipygous]

The amazing part of "legends" is that it is impossible to kill them. Even though the ET legend is wrong by 5,000,000 carts(!), it will be repeated for years to come.

 

(actually,it was my link),

 

[ 11-09-2001: Message edited by: Mario's Other Brother ]

[atarigamer]

Gosh, This Atari-2600 E.T. Christmas commercial is so cool.

 

Anyone else like it?

[moycon]

The crappy thing about that Snopes page is thats where I read about the more carts than systems to begin with about 3 years ago. Unfortunately they have to bring up the pac-man cart in the same story as E.T. and since I only half-ass read stuff anyways all this time I was under the impression that it was ET they made more of.... Crappy Snopes!!What I wanna know tho is... In the book "The history of Video Games" they interviewed Ray Kassar (page 238) He states that they were ordered by by Steve Ross to produce 5 million E.T. carts, The snopes page says that Atari had 5 million E.T. carts that they couldnt sell, which fits sort of I guess because Atari said most of the carts had been returned. They supposedly buried millions in the dessert.If they made 5 million carts and most got returned and millions got buried in the dessert...Why are there so many frickin ET's out there??? I have like 8 loose and one boxed...Am I the only one with the actual cart?? I'd suppose not since every carts lot on Ebay has an ET thrown in it. It seems almost as common Pac-Man and they sold 7 million of them. Pretty good for a cart that supposedly should have only a quarter of the circulation.

 

BTW:J/K I love that Snopes site!!!Even have it in my favorites folder.

[Callipygous]

Probably no one knows the exact number of how many were made, sold, returned and buried. Suppose a half million survived. 500,000 carts is far greater than the number of current players/collectors. Easily puts the cart as a rarity 1. Also, the 7 million Pac-Mans were actually sold pre-crash. A lot of those were thrown out by original owners A greater percentage of the leftover ETs probably survive because they were bought later by retro gamers. (like us )

[atarigamer]

Hmmmm.... I bet SOMEONE would know how many were made. Cause SOMEONE had to buy all the stuff to make the carts.

[jonathan-newman]

Ok I'll join in and help dig, I'll even subsidize the project, No joke! So who else wants to dig?

[liquid_sky]

Isnt it ironic, that the 2 currently hottest of the hot topics are over a videogame that was regarded as garbage when it was made

[Nukey Shay]

Heeey...that pile of garbage has the second-best kept secret of the entire Atari game library

Anything that can cause controversy after twenty years can't be all bad!

...err, except Michael Jackson, maybe.

[moycon]

Im wondering how the hell someone would find a pile of smashed carts buried for over over 15 years in a landfill. Is there a sign at the site that says "dig here"? I mean the land fills we have here are are huge. If someone said there's a million carts buried in that land fill here's a shovel... You could dig for 5 years and come up with nada if you didnt know exactly where to dig. Does someone have a map??? Its a great idea...But it sounds pretty far fetched....Landfills generally around here are just slightly smaller than about 20 football fields put together.

[+Zeptari]

I like it! Mostly because it reminds me of the fun time's around the holidays! The excitment of opening a new videogame system and playing the heck out of it during that week off you had from school. It's funny but I remember the year I got my Colecovison for Christmas better then the year I got my 2600.

I must be getting old! I remember play DK

on the CV for hours!! I also remember saving up for the 2600 adapter for the CV. Only to have my whole collection of 2600 games stolen! about 15 games

[Genki]

Why try and find them the hard way? Surely there is someone working at the landfill who remembers a parade of cement truck going in oh about mid 80's. I mean it's not everytday you see a number of cement mixing truck dumping cement in the landfill.

[atarigamer]

Hmmm.....anyone know someone who worked at that landfill in those days?

[moycon]

quote:

---

Hmmm.....anyone know someone who worked at that landfill in those days?

---

 

Heres what I'm thinkin... I know if I DID have a job in a frikin land-fill (ie. Garbage Dump) I wouldnt wanna keep it for 15 years!! I dunno if people that do have jobs in land-fills are the type of people who keep a job very long or remember what happened to them last week much less 15 years prior. But what do I know about the people that are employed there. Am I way off in assuming this??? Don't get me wrong...Im not trying to be overly pessimistic or bring anyones dreams down.. But if you sit down and think it thru realistically you might see what I mean. Go visit a landfill to start. I think it would be awesome to find something like that just to be able to say... "Ya here about those carts buried in the dessert?? Well heres one".. *pulls out a chunk of dirty cement with an ET cart stickin out* Still...I'd have to say you'd have your work cut out for you if you tried.

[atarigamer]

Finally we get back to the subject! This is what I wanted to talk about.

 

It'd be funny if their was some old guy that worked there. Maybe like 85, (and he was 70 when the E.T. carts where burried).

 

lol.

 

Anyways.

 

Also, does anyone have any extra E.T. carts they'd like to give away?

[atarigamer]

Did anyone ever beat the game? I never could.

[King Atari]

One thing I'll say about the game, I like it. It's pretty good for 80's nostalgia, as was the movie (look close and you can see an Atari in the living room, and the brother is later heard talking about "Space Invaders". Maybe that was a deal Atari and Spielberg struck). I just bought a sealed new one off of ebay. Maybe $8.99 is too much, but I don't care. Best of luck to you guys digging, I'd join but I have enough "E.T."'s here at the thrift stores !

[King Atari]

One more thing, did O'Shea's ever sell this? I've never heard whether they had or not. Probably not since so many were destroyed, but I don't know.

 

P.S.- I'm not sure whether the brother in the movie talks about "Space Invaders" or "Asteroids", and I don't feel like digging up my VHS copy.

[Lemmi]

heh well i have never seen the ET movie

[StanJr]

Lemmi, you should watch it, it's good.

 

atarigamer, there is no end to that game. I suppose you can roll the score at some point, but no matter how many times I put that phone together and send ET up the heavens, don't you know that little comes right back down for more! Be....goooooood, my !!!!

 

Stan phone home