You know that old gamers’ tale that somewhere in the desert there’s a bunch of E.T. Atari games buried in shame? Well, LightBox Interactive and Fuel Entertainment are planning on making a documentary about the whole E.T. game fiasco, and part of that will involve digging up a landfill in New Mexico that supposedly holds 9 semi trucks worth of crushed game cartridges. There’s only one problem with that.
The New Mexico Environment Department doesn’t like the excavation plans the production company has put forth, saying they’re “too generic.” The old Alamogordo landfill has been closed since the late ’80s, but a study conducted in 2004 found elevated levels of several chemicals “of concern.” Despite this, the city commission has approved the dig, so according to the movie’s producers, they’re going to keep looking:
via AP:
Jonathan Chinn, an executive producer at Los Angeles-based LightBox, said Thursday that the search hasn’t been halted.
Chinn says a local waste-management consultant who filed an excavation permit is addressing questions raised by the New Mexico Environmental Department.
According to people who supposedly witnessed it, there are more than just Atari games buried out there. Apparently consoles and other games like Ms. Pac-Man were smashed and dumped by Atari in an attempted tax write-off. How could they have known they could have held off for thirty years and had a lucrative career selling all that stuff to hipsters on eBay?
The documentary is to be released by Microsoft Corp. for the Xbox One console as part of Xbox Entertainment Studios’ documentary series. Now, who wants to come over to my house and play the E.T. game on a 65 inch TV?