700 Excavated Atari Games To Be Sold

Of the 1,300+ excavated Atari games from the infamous New Mexico landfill dig, 700 will be appraised and certified by the New Mexico Museum of Space History, Polygon reports. Additionally, the games will be sold at a later date, with the specifics of that sale still unclear at this time.

A further 100 will be given to staffers of Lightbox and Fuel Entertainment, production companies responsible for the E.T. Atari documentary mini-series currently in development for Xbox Original Programming. The rest will be handed to local museums. Alamogordo mayor Susie Galea hopes to turn the landfill into a tourist attraction, with the sale profits going towards creating an attraction sign, but that has not been properly discussed as of yet.

With the E.T. Atari dig being one of the oddest true urban legends within the gaming industry, I can imagine great interest in the sale of these games. With so much debate, confirmation, denial and uncertainty surrounding the bankruptcy of Atari in the 1980’s, it seemed absolutely crazy that they would fill up a lot in New Mexico with buried video game cartridges rather than keep them somewhere in an archival state. I would love to pick up a copy myself, but being a local sale it’s not really worth making the 1,800+ mile trip. Plus, with only 171 of the 1,300+ games excavated being E.T. cartridges, the rarity is bound to increase the price.

UPDATE: The original story misrepresented the amount of E.T. Atari games that were excavated from the New Mexico dig. E.T. was one of 60+ titles to be dumped into the landfill at the original burial.

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