The legend of the greatest video game flop in history has persisted for three decades: In late 1982, Atari released E.T. for the Atari 2600 system. The game was so poorly received that the company allegedly consigned “millions” (that number varies) of unsold copies to a landfill in New Mexico. In an interview way back in 2005, the game’s designer told The A.V. Club that he didn’t think the landfill rumors were true, but other sources apparently did, including the team behind a documentary about Atari, which re-broke ground yesterday—and hit paydirt, if you define paydirt as a whole bunch of old, largely crushed video game cartridges for a long-obsolete system. The doc, directed by Incredible Hulk screenwriter Zak Penn, is said to be the first for XBox Entertainment Studios, which will also produce a Halo series. No one has put a number on how many cartridges have been unearthed yet, or speculated on whether they will returned to that same landfill or moved to whichever one all those Speed VHS tapes will end up in. (The above photo is from the Twitter account of @zakpenn.)
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