Remember when Microsoft invited everyone out to the Alamogordo Landfill to search for the buried cartridges of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600? Remember how everyone sort of expected it just to remain a legend and that nothing would be found?

Well, they found it. And by "it" I mean they found the buried cartridges. Lots of them.


A documentary film production company has found buried in a New Mexico landfill hundreds of the Atari "E.T." game cartridges that some call the worst video game ever made.

Film director Zak Penn showed one "E.T." cartridge retrieved from the site and said that hundreds more were found in the mounds of trash and dirt scooped by a backhoe.

About 200 residents and game enthusiasts gathered early Saturday in southeastern New Mexico to watch backhoes and bulldozers dig through the concrete-covered landfill in search of up to a million discarded copies of "E.T. The Extraterrestrial" that the game's maker wanted to hide forever.

Honestly, I'm surprised they found anything. I'm even more surprised that they were the first ones to actually discover these buried cartridges after 30 years that somehow evaded everyone else in all that time.

(via the AP, Major Nelson, and many of the above images are from Chris Kohler)