The Atari Video Game Burial Excavation — Atari 2600 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial game box art showing E.T. and Elliott

The Atari Video Game Burial Excavation

2014viral eventclassic

Published October 1, 2026

The Atari Video Game Burial Excavation refers to the April 2014 dig at an Alamogordo, New Mexico landfill that unearthed thousands of unsold E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial cartridges Atari had secretly dumped in 1983. The excavation confirmed a decades-old gaming urban legend and triggered a wave of news coverage treating the site as pop-culture archaeology.

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Overview

The event works less as a traditional meme format and more as a confirmed-legend story that gaming fans cite whenever a company tries to bury a bad product1. Photos of workers hauling dust-caked Atari 2600 cartridges out of the New Mexico desert circulated across gaming blogs and news feeds the day of the dig, with the cracked E.T. box art acting as the shorthand image for the whole saga2.

Microsoft's Xbox Entertainment Studios tied the excavation to a feature documentary called Atari: Game Over, and bystanders at the site were handed recovered cartridges to try on the spot3. The 'E.T. landfill' reference is still used in retro gaming discussion as a byword for corporate shame buried in the dirt4.

Origin & Background

Platform
News coverage / YouTube (viral spread)
Date
2014

The story began with the Atari 2600 adaptation of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, a 1982 title Atari rushed to market after paying the film studio a reported $20 to $25 million for the license5. Developed in roughly five weeks for the holiday season, the game was panned on arrival and is still cited as one of the worst video games in existence5. Atari sold around 1.5 million copies but ended up stuck with an estimated 3.5 million unsold or returned cartridges4.

In 1983, Atari trucked that inventory to a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico, where crews crushed and buried the games alongside other overstocked hardware7. The dump was widely rumored for years but denied by the company, cementing its urban-legend status among gamers until a 2013 permit changed everything4.

How It Spread

On May 28, 2013, the city of Alamogordo granted Fuel Industries six months of landfill access to film a documentary and dig for the games1. The excavation finally began on April 26, 2014, with Fuel Industries, Microsoft and New Mexico officials opening the site to the public as a filmed event1.

Within hours of the first cartridges surfacing, the dig was reported by The Guardian1, Polygon2 and Mashable3. Former Atari manager James Heller told the Associated Press on-site that the original burial actually contained around 728,000 cartridges, far fewer than the millions long rumored8. IGN's on-the-ground report captured workers lifting crushed E.T. cartridges from the dirt, and news photos spread quickly across gaming forums the same afternoon6.

The recovered cartridges were later distributed to museums and auctioned on eBay by the city of Alamogordo, giving the story a long tail of collector interest that kept the burial site in gaming news well past the dig itself7.

Timeline

1982

Atari releases the E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial game for the Atari 2600, developed in roughly five weeks after a $20 to $25 million license deal.

1983

Atari trucks millions of unsold cartridges, including E.T. copies, to a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico and buries them.

2013-05-28

The city of Alamogordo grants Fuel Industries six months of landfill access to excavate the site for a documentary.

2014-04-26

Excavation begins and crews recover E.T. cartridges and Atari hardware, confirming the decades-old burial legend.

2014-04-26

Former Atari manager James Heller tells the Associated Press that only around 728,000 cartridges were buried, far fewer than widely rumored.

How to Use This Meme

The excavation is typically referenced as a visual metaphor rather than a repost format. Gaming writers and fans commonly pair the dusty cartridge photos with jokes about modern flops, treating the Alamogordo site as the ultimate burial ground any failed product 'deserves'. The phrase 'bury it in the New Mexico desert' is common shorthand in game-review threads when a release is considered unsalvageable.

Frequently Asked Questions