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Video Game, "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," Recovered from Landfill, Alamogordo, New Mexico, April 26, 2014, Site of the Atari Video Game Burial of 1983

Atari, Inc. and Warshaw, Howard Scott1982

The Henry Ford

The Henry Ford
Dearborn, MI, United States

In 1983, rumors circulated: Atari was bankrupt, and was dumping truckloads of games into a New Mexico landfill. Victim to the "Video Game Crash," the company buried 700,000 cartridges in the desert. The story became an obscure pop culture legend?until "The Atari Tomb" was unearthed in 2014. This recovered cartridge is evidence of the world?s first video game excavation.

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  • Title: Video Game, "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," Recovered from Landfill, Alamogordo, New Mexico, April 26, 2014, Site of the Atari Video Game Burial of 1983
  • Creator: Atari, Inc., Warshaw, Howard Scott
  • Date Created: 1982
  • Location: United States, New Mexico, Alamogordo
  • Subject Keywords: Video games, Covers (Overlying objects), Manuals (Instructional materials), Dumps (Refuse areas), Excavation (Process), Landfills, Refuse and refuse disposal, Urban folklore
  • Type: Objects
  • Contributor: The Henry Ford
  • Original Source: http://collections.thehenryford.org/Collection.aspx?objectKey=403754
  • Object Name: Video game
  • Object ID: 2015.13.1
  • Image ID: THF159970
  • Credit: From the Collections of The Henry Ford. Gift of the City of Alamogordo, New Mexico.
The Henry Ford

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