One of video gaming's most pervasive urban legends has proven to be true, as a dig in a New Mexico landfill has uncovered a trove of game cartridges and equipment believed to have been dumped there by Atari following the fall of the games industry in the early '80s.

Having lost more than $300 million in a single quarter, the legend goes, Atari repurposed their manufacturing plant in Texas and drove its contents – including millions of unsold copies of the expensive and critically panned E.T. video game – out to bury under concrete in the desert.

While many – including E.T.'s designer – have cast doubt on the story which was first reported by The New York Times and others in 1983, on Sunday a dig led by Microsoft has yielded a mountain of gaming refuse, including entire intact shipping boxes filled with E.T. cartridges.

The dig is part of a documentary spearheaded by Microsoft's Xbox Entertainment Studios, and Xbox's Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb was on hand to live tweet the uncovering of the first bits of discarded electronics that confirmed the long-rumoured dump.