Is E.T. somewhere to be found in the New Mexico desert? Not aliens, but game cartridges: millions of unsold copies of Atari 2600 title E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, whose landfill burial is one of the games industry’s enduring myths.

Last May, games firm Fuel Entertainment was granted permission to excavate within a 100-acre landfill in the Alamogordo, New Mexico desert, in an effort to prove once and for all whether the fabled burial actually happened.

The company is working with production company Lightbox Entertainment to turn the search into a documentary, to be released later in the year initially to owners of Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles courtesy of a deal with Microsoft’s Xbox Entertainment Studios.

Lightbox’s Jonathan Chinn and Fuel Entertainment’s Mike Burns took to the stage at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas today to talk about the project, which they described as the “El Dorado” of gaming culture.

Burns said the myth of the buried cartridges had a big impact on him, both as a youth and as he built a career in the games industry. “There were always rumours. There wasn’t ‘this is exactly where they are and this is exactly what happened’,” he said.

“We thought this has got a really neat story to it. Why don’t we do some digging? This almost killed Atari: it was a major pop culture shift, and it could have really impacted how gaming turned out long-term. It’s a critical turning point.”

Once Fuel got permission to dig in the landfill site, the company talked to Microsoft’s Xbox team, which connected them with Lightbox for the collaboration.

“We were a little bit sceptical about whether this story had legs as a documentary film, but after doing research and talking to Fuel, we were convinced that this is a really great stoty that transcends gaming,” said Chinn.

“It’s as much about corporate hubris and the shattered dreams of a company like Atari which, to all intents and purposes, should really be Apple today… the notion that a company like that failed, I think, is worth exploring.”

Burns talked about some of the elements of the myth: reports that they were encased in concrete, not to mention the conflicting rumours of whether the burial took place in New Mexico, California or Nevada.

Alamagordo itself is a major character in the story: a place that’s also famous for being the site of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon in 1945, not to mention the burial location of Ham, the “world’s first space-chimp”.

“It’s a sleepy town, doesn’t have a lot going on, and what it’s famous for is being the site of the explosion of the atomic bomb. They’re embracing the notion of this excavation because it’ll hopefully bring them some legacy that goes beyond the destruction of the entire planet!” joked Chinn.

Burns and Chinn on-stage at SXSW. Photograph: Stuart Dredge/The Guardian Photograph: Stuart Dredge/The Guardian

Burns said that the two companies tried hard to keep the project a secret, before a council meeting approving the dig was covered by a local newspaper reporter, and then spread around the world, generating lots of interest, and a fair few incoming calls.



“Everywhere there were people reaching out to us, either asking more about it, or asking to give us their cartridges they had at home: ‘you don’t need to go digging to get them!’,” he joked.

“It clearly touched a nerve. Atari means something to all of us. It was really interesting to see people in Germany, Japan, Australia, all over the world: message boards just lit up under the articles,” added Chinn, before talking about what he sees as the wider interest in the documentary.

“Trying to bury your mistakes is questionable. We all make mistakes. And the burial of this game, which at the end of the day was a bad product… the way that they dealt with it maybe is a clue to answering the question of why did Atari fail as a company,” he said.

Chinn also praised Microsoft’s move into commissioning television series for Xbox. Lightbox is working with the company on a series of 6-10 films about “pivotal moments in the digital revolution”, with the tale of the landfill dig being the first.

He compared it to ESPN’s 30 for 30 series about sports, and said Lightbox hopes its series will do a similar thing for technology. Other films in the series will explore citizen journalism, music piracy and “the gamut of how the digital age has changed our lives”.

The conversation turned to some of the stories around the E.T. game, such as the six-week development schedule, and the question of whether Atari realised the game – which received a bruising critical reception at the time, to say the least – wasn’t good.

“Did they know it was a piece of shit? I think the people who understood gaming did. The people who were really gamers within Atari knew. I think the suits thought, a little bit, that people would buy what you sell them,” said Chinn.

Lightbox has discussed a potential cinema release for the documentary with Microsoft, and while right now there are no plans – it’s a one-hour film, which might not be suitable – Chinn said the Xbox team are open to the idea “if it warrants it”.

The two companies aren’t yet announcing exactly when the excavation will take place. “I think it’s going to be fairly soon: probably within the next 4-6 weeks is the hope,” said Chinn, who suggested that gamers may be invited along to take part.

“Our hope is that it turns into a little bit of a happening,” he said, while showing a slide of the Woodstock music festival. “A Woodstock for the digital age!”