Atari really buried E.T., just not 3.5 million of them

Atari did bury a large load of unsold games, consoles and computers in a landfill south of Alamogordo, New Mexico, in September 1983. A film crew dug part of it up on April 26, 2014, and found E.T. cartridges among about 1,300 games. The legend was right about the burial and wrong about the numbers: the pile was mixed stock, and nobody can prove the "3.5 million E.T. copies" figure.

Atari trucked 10 to 20 loads into Alamogordo in September 1983

The material came from an Atari plant in El Paso, Texas, that was closing. The Alamogordo Daily News reported 10 to 20 semi-trailer loads: landfill officials said 10, company spokesmen in Houston closer to 20, city officials 14. Wire reports listed E.T., Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man cartridges, plus consoles and computers.

Local kids raided the dump on September 28, Knight-Ridder reported. From September 29 a layer of concrete went over the load. An unnamed workman gave the Alamogordo Daily News the reason: "There are dead animals down there. We wouldn't want any children to get hurt digging in the dump." The city protested, the local manager stopped the dumping, and Mayor Henry Pacelli said, "We do not want to see something like this happen again."

A truck driver said Atari was moving from 2600 to 5200 games. A worker contradicted that, and Atari's Bruce Enten called the load "by-and-large inoperable stuff."

1982 left Atari with millions of cartridges nobody wanted

According to Wikipedia, citing Snopes and Next Generation, Atari made 12 million Pac-Man cartridges for a base of roughly 10 million consoles, and the port sold 7 million. It also licensed E.T. for a reported $20 to $25 million. Howard Scott Warshaw got the job on July 27, 1982, with a September 1 deadline for the holiday season, which left just over five weeks). Warshaw told the BBC in 2016 that Steven Spielberg, shown the design, asked: "Couldn't you do something more like Pac-Man?"

E.T.'s own sales figures conflict, even inside Wikipedia. Its burial article puts them at 5 million cartridges made and about 1.5 million sold. Its article on the game) says E.T. sold over 2.6 million by the end of 1982, that at least 669,000 came back in 1983, and that Atari chief Ray Kassar estimated 3.5 million of the 4 million produced were returned (Connie Bruck's 1995 book Master of the Game).

Distributors had placed all their 1982 orders up front, so when sales slowed they sent back huge amounts of stock. Atari lost $536 million in 1983, and Warner sold the company the next year.

Nobody can prove the 3.5 million figure

The famous number, 3.5 million E.T. cartridges in the ground, is speculation that Wikipedia traces to local press. James Heller, the former Atari manager who ran the original burial, was invited to the 2014 dig. He told the AP the company had asked him to dispose of 728,000 cartridges stored in El Paso, and that he poured the concrete. New Mexico Magazine put the load at nearly 800,000 cartridges in 2025. Both counts cover every title, not E.T. alone. Warshaw himself told The A.V. Club in 2005 that he doubted millions of copies were destroyed.

The same AP report had crews searching for "up to a million" copies, so the range in 2014 coverage was already wide. I use "hundreds of thousands" for that reason. It holds under every count with a name behind it.

The 2014 dig reached under 0.2 percent of the pile

On May 28, 2013, Alamogordo's city commission gave Fuel Industries six months of access to dig and film. A state environmental complaint held things up until early April 2014. The site had been lost for thirty years, *Archaeology* magazine wrote. Joe Lewandowski found it again from old photos and maps. He had been on site when Atari dumped the games in 1983 and later bought the garbage company that buried them (CNN).

About 200 people came, and strong wind sent most of them home before the first find, according to the AP. A few dozen stayed. Warshaw was there: "It may be a horrible game, but 32 years after, you are here, talking to me about it." So was Armando Ortega, a city official who had raided the dump as a teenager. "It was pitch dark here that night, but we came with our flashlights and found dozens of games," he told the AP.

A team of archaeologists assembled by Andrew Reinhard bagged thousands of artifacts, among them a boxed E.T. with its manual, catalog and a Raiders of the Lost Ark insert. They compared the layers to "a pottery dump, coin hoard, or shell midden."

The count depends on the document. Wikipedia, citing Polygon, gives about 1,300 cartridges from 59 titles, six of them for the 5200. CNN reported 1,178 Atari 2600 cartridges across about 50 titles in 2015. Mayor Susie Galea said the material lay deeper than expected. Against Heller's 728,000, the crew recovered under 0.2 percent, and the site was refilled. Lewandowski's verdict: "We won't dig up anymore. This is a one-time shot."

Most of the cartridges were sold on eBay

The city agreed to give the filmmakers up to 250 cartridges and planned to sell the rest; Wikipedia says about 100 artifacts went to the producers in the end. The rest were split up:

• The New Mexico Museum of Space History received part of the finds, according to Wikipedia, citing Polygon.
• The Centre for Computing History in Cambridge, England, lists an E.T. cartridge from the dig on display/) (checked October 21, 2026).
• The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History added one E.T. cartridge, carrying its city-assigned serial number, plus hard hats and a vest from the dig. Museum specialist Drew Robarge said the collection had nothing from "the darkest days" of the early 1980s crash.

The first eBay batch of 100 games closed on November 13, 2014, and brought in $37,000. The top lot was an E.T. still in its box, sold to a bidder in Canada for $1,537. By September 2015 the city had sold 881 games for $107,930. About $26,000 went on shipping and costs, $65,037 to the city for the police, the zoo and a veterans' memorial, and $16,529 to the Tularosa Basin Historical Society. Another 297 cartridges were held back as too historically valuable, about 40 of them E.T.

Where to see the dig and play E.T. today

The dig is the centerpiece of Atari: Game Over, a 66-minute documentary directed by Zak Penn and executive produced by Simon and Jonathan Chinn. It premiered November 20, 2014, free for Xbox Live subscribers on Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Xbox Video. Penn told Xbox Wire: "It's so far from the worst video game that it's absurd." When I checked JustWatch on October 21, 2026, the US listings had it free with ads on Tubi, Pluto TV, The Roku Channel and Plex, and included with Prime Video.

In Alamogordo, the Tularosa Basin Museum of History at 1004 N. White Sands Boulevard has a display on the excavation.

I found no official re-release of the 2600 game. The version I would point people to is a fan fix: in 2013 David Richardson, who posts as Recompile, patched the ROM so E.T. only falls into a pit when his feet go over the edge, walking no longer drains energy, and E.T. is closer to his movie colors. PCWorld points to the Stella emulator to run it, and quotes Warshaw on Richardson: "He brought a lot of integrity to the project." The original cartridge needs a 2600.

Questions people ask

How much is an E.T. cartridge from the landfill worth?

The boxed E.T. that topped the first auction sold for $1,537 in November 2014. Across all 881 games the city sold by September 2015, the average was about $122 each ($107,930 divided by 881, from CNN's figures).

Where is the Atari landfill, and can you dig there?

It is the old city landfill south of Alamogordo, New Mexico. You cannot dig there. The excavation ran under a 2013 agreement between the city and Fuel Industries, the site was refilled, and Lewandowski said in 2015, "We won't dig up anymore."

When did E.T. come out on the Atari 2600?

December 1982 in North America, after a five-week development, and May 1983 in Japan (Wikipedia)).

Was E.T. the reason for the video game crash?

Not by itself. Travis Fahs argued at IGN in 2008 that Atari's trouble came from overestimating how long the 2600 would keep selling, not from individual bad games. E.T. became the symbol, though.

Is Atari: Game Over on Netflix?

Not in the US. On October 21, 2026, JustWatch listed it on Tubi, Pluto TV, The Roku Channel and Plex for free with ads, and on Prime Video. Availability changes by country.