A few months back, I wrote a post about the US game industry crash of 1983, and mentioned one of
the events regularly attributed to this event happening being the doomed release Atari's ill fated game based on the movie, E.T. From the failure of this game arose a bit of an urban myth that recalled Atari dumping an unknown number of E.T. cartridges in a landfill somewhere in the Southwest United States. Because no one would substantiate the story, it remained an urban legend for decades, a piece of gaming lore that would take about 30 years to prove true.
On April 26, 2014, that exact thing happened when a documentary film crew descended on the town of Alamogordo in Southeastern New Mexico and dug up the infamous game cartridges. The dig will be a pat of a documentary about Atari, so it made sense that they would seek out the "Atari Grave" was found. I have to wonder if it was worth it to seek out a monument to the worst moment in American video game history. While this landfill did yield better results that Geraldo Rivera's opening of Al Capone's "vault", it leaves me with feeling of lacking.
Will seeing this remind geme publishers and developers of the constantly fragile state of modern gaming? Will gamers too young to remember a time where video game consoles were a hard sell and a niche product see where their favorite pastime could end up? To say I'm nervous about the current state of gaming is an understatement. I worry because while there is such a vast amount of fresh ideas and quality gaming content out there, most attention and money goes to the same old thing. We as gamers can talk until we're blue in the face about what we want and how awesome new original games will be, but if we aren't supporting them we venture ever closer to another "Atari Grave" situation. I for one, love gaming and I really don't want that to happen.
*This video is credited to it's owner. No copyright infringement intended.
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