Atari video game burial
Encyclopedia
The Atari video game burial was a mass burial of unsold video game cartridges, consoles, and computers in a New Mexico
landfill
site, undertaken by American video game and home computer
company Atari, Inc. in 1983. The goods disposed of through the burial are generally believed to have been several million copies of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, a game which had become one of the biggest commercial failures in video gaming; and the Atari 2600
port
of Pac-Man
, which had been commercially successful but critically maligned.
Since the burial was first reported in the press, there have been doubts as to its veracity and scope, leading to a minority considering it an urban legend
. However, the event has become a cultural icon and a reminder of the North American video game crash of 1983; and was the end result of a disastrous fiscal year which saw Atari, Inc. sold off by its parent company.
in 1976 for $28 million, and had seen its net worth grow to $2 billion by 1982. By this time, the company accounted for 80% of the video gaming market; and was responsible for over half of its parent company's revenues, earning some 65–70% of their operating profits. By the last quarter of 1982, its growth in the following year was expected to be in the region of 50%. However, on December 7, 1982, the company reported that its earnings had only increased by 10–15%, rather than the predicted figure. The next day saw Warner Communications' share prices fall by a third, and the quarter ended with Warner's profits falling by 56%. In addition, Atari's CEO, Ray Kassar
, was later investigated for possible insider trading
charges as a result of selling some five thousand shares in Warner less than half an hour before reporting Atari's lower-than-expected earnings. Kassar was later cleared of any wrongdoing, although he was forced to resign his position the following July. Atari, Inc. would go on to lose $536 million in 1983, and was sold off by Warner Communications the following year.
arcade game
s for its home console had led to some of its most commercially successful games, including the port of its own coin-op Asteroids, and the licensed versions of Taito
's Space Invaders
and Namco
's Pac-Man
. When the latter game received its official port
to the Atari 2600
, Atari was confident that sales figures would be high, and manufactured 12 million cartridges—despite having sold only around 10 million Atari 2600 consoles. It was believed that the game would be successful enough not only to earn an estimated $ 500 million, but also to boost sales of the console itself by several million as gamers sought to play the home conversion. However, the finished product, released in March 1982, was critically panned for its poor gameplay, and although it became the console's best-selling title after shifting 7 million units, it still left Atari with over 5 million unsold cartridges—a problem compounded by the high rate of customers returning the game for refunds.
However, despite the problems caused by Pac-Mans underwhelming sales, Atari would also face great difficulty as a result of its video game adaptation of the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
. The game, also titled E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, was a result of a deal between Warner Communications and the film's director Steven Spielberg
. The concept of a video game based on a film, instead of porting an arcade coin-op or building on an established franchise, was unheard of at the time. It was later reported that Warner had paid $20–25 million for the rights, which was at the time quite a high figure for video game licensing. Atari manufactured 5 million cartridges for the game; however, upon its release in December 1982, only 1.5 million copies were sold, leaving Atari still holding onto over half of the game cartridges. The game was critically panned, and is now seen as one of the worst ever made. Billboard
magazine's Earl Paige reported that the large number of unsold E.T the Extra-Terrestrial games, along with an increase in competition, prompted retailers to demand official return programs from video game manufacturers.
The failures of these titles were further compounded by Atari's business dealings from 1981. Confident in strong sales, the company had told its distributors to place their 1982 orders all at once. However, video game sales in 1982 had slowed, and distributors who had ordered en masse in expectation of high turnover were left to simply return large quantities of unsold stock to Atari. As a result, the company soon found itself in possession of several million essentially useless video game cartridges, which it would be entirely unable to sell.
of Alamogordo
, New Mexico
reported in a series of articles, that between 10 and 20 semi-trailer
truckloads of Atari boxes, cartridges, and systems from an Atari storehouse in El Paso, Texas
were crushed and buried at the landfill within the city. It was Atari's first dealings with the landfill, which was chosen because no scavenging was allowed and its garbage was crushed and buried nightly. Atari's stated reason for the burial was that it was changing from Atari 2600
to Atari 5200
games, but this was later contradicted by a worker who claimed that this was not the case. Atari official Bruce Enten stated that Atari was mostly sending broken and returned material to the Alamogordo dump and that it was "by-and-large inoperable stuff."
On September 28, 1983, The New York Times
reported on the story of Atari's dumping in New Mexico. An Atari representative confirmed the story for the newspaper, stating that the discarded inventory came from Atari's plant in El Paso, which was being closed and converted to a recycling facility. The Times article never suggested any of the specific game titles being destroyed, but subsequent reports have generally linked the story of the dumping to the well-known failure of E.T. Additionally, the headline "City to Atari: 'E.T.' trash go home" in one edition of the Alamogordo News implies that the cartridges were E.T. As a result, it is widely speculated that most of the 3.5 million unsold copies of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial ultimately wound up in this landfill, crushed and encased in concrete. It has also been reported that prototypes for the proposed Atari Mindlink
controller system were disposed of at the site.
Starting on September 29, 1983, a layer of concrete
was poured on top of the crushed materials, a rare occurrence in waste disposal. An anonymous workman's stated reason for the concrete was: "There are dead animals down there. We wouldn't want any children to get hurt digging in the dump." Eventually, the city began to protest the large amount of dumping Atari was doing, with one commissioner stating that the area did not want to become "an industrial waste dump for El Paso." The local manager ordered the dumping to be ended shortly afterwards. Due to Atari's unpopular dumping, Alamogordo later passed an Emergency Management Act and created the Emergency Management Task Force to limit the future flexibility of the garbage contractor to secure outside business for the landfill for monetary purposes. Alamogordo's then mayor
, Henry Pacelli, commented that, "We do not want to see something like this happen again."
, which in turn has led to a degree of scepticism and doubt over the veracity of the story, and the relevance of conflating the event with the later industry downturn. As recently as October 2004, Howard Scott Warshaw
, the programmer responsible for the E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial game expressed doubts that the destruction of millions of copies of the game ever took place. Warshaw also believes that Atari's downfall was more a result of their business practices—including alleged block booking
of poorly-selling games with successful ones when dealing with distributors—than any specific failed games. This latter view has been echoed by Travis Fahs of IGN
, who believes that Atari's problems, including their huge surplus of unsold stock, arose from the company's overestimation of the sustainability of Atari 2600 sales, rather than being due to the individual quality of games being released.
The incident has also become something of a cultural symbol representative of the North American video game crash of 1983, often cited as a cautionary tale about the hubris of poor business practices, despite suggestions that the burial allowed the company to write off the disposed-of material for tax relief purposes.
The legacy of the burial has led it to be referenced in popular culture. The music video for the song "When I Wake Up" by Wintergreen
depicts the band traveling to the landfill site and proceeding to dig up the abandoned cartridges; the video's director Keith Schofield had worked with video game-based music videos before. The novel Lucky Wander Boy
by D.B. Weiss features a scene which takes place outside of Alamogordo, in which two of the characters discuss a parking lot which has been built over the site of the burial.
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
landfill
Landfill
A landfill site , is a site for the disposal of waste materials by burial and is the oldest form of waste treatment...
site, undertaken by American video game and home computer
Home computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
company Atari, Inc. in 1983. The goods disposed of through the burial are generally believed to have been several million copies of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, a game which had become one of the biggest commercial failures in video gaming; and the Atari 2600
Atari 2600
The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in...
port
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
of Pac-Man
Pac-Man (Atari 2600)
In 1982, Atari Inc. released a port of Namco's hit arcade game Pac-Man for its Atari 2600 video game console. Like the original arcade version, the player controls the titular character with a joystick...
, which had been commercially successful but critically maligned.
Since the burial was first reported in the press, there have been doubts as to its veracity and scope, leading to a minority considering it an urban legend
Urban legend
An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true...
. However, the event has become a cultural icon and a reminder of the North American video game crash of 1983; and was the end result of a disastrous fiscal year which saw Atari, Inc. sold off by its parent company.
Financial difficulty
Atari, Inc. had been purchased by Warner CommunicationsWarner Communications
Warner Communications or Warner Communications, Inc. was established in 1971 when Kinney National Company spun off its non-entertainment assets, due to a financial scandal over its parking operations and changed its name....
in 1976 for $28 million, and had seen its net worth grow to $2 billion by 1982. By this time, the company accounted for 80% of the video gaming market; and was responsible for over half of its parent company's revenues, earning some 65–70% of their operating profits. By the last quarter of 1982, its growth in the following year was expected to be in the region of 50%. However, on December 7, 1982, the company reported that its earnings had only increased by 10–15%, rather than the predicted figure. The next day saw Warner Communications' share prices fall by a third, and the quarter ended with Warner's profits falling by 56%. In addition, Atari's CEO, Ray Kassar
Ray Kassar
Raymond E. Kassar was president, and later CEO, of Atari Inc. from 1978 to 1983. He had previously been vice-president of Burlington Industries, a textile company....
, was later investigated for possible insider trading
Insider trading
Insider trading is the trading of a corporation's stock or other securities by individuals with potential access to non-public information about the company...
charges as a result of selling some five thousand shares in Warner less than half an hour before reporting Atari's lower-than-expected earnings. Kassar was later cleared of any wrongdoing, although he was forced to resign his position the following July. Atari, Inc. would go on to lose $536 million in 1983, and was sold off by Warner Communications the following year.
Problem titles
Atari's tendency to portPorting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
arcade game
Arcade game
An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine, usually installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars, and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, and merchandisers...
s for its home console had led to some of its most commercially successful games, including the port of its own coin-op Asteroids, and the licensed versions of Taito
Taito
Taito may mean:*Taito Corporation, a Japanese developer of video game software and arcade hardware*Taito, Tokyo, a special ward located in Tokyo, Japan*Taito, also known as matai, paramount chiefs according to Fa'a Samoa...
's Space Invaders
Space Invaders
is an arcade video game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, and released in 1978. It was originally manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and was later licensed for production in the United States by the Midway division of Bally. Space Invaders is one of the earliest shooting games and the aim is to...
and Namco
Namco
is a Japanese corporation best known as a former video game developer and publisher. Following a merger with Bandai in September 2005, the two companies' game production assets were spun off into Namco Bandai Games on March 31, 2006. Namco Ltd. was re-established to continue domestic operation of...
's Pac-Man
Pac-Man
is an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution in the United States by Midway, first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. Immensely popular from its original release to the present day, Pac-Man is considered one of the classics of the medium, virtually synonymous with video games,...
. When the latter game received its official port
Pac-Man (Atari 2600)
In 1982, Atari Inc. released a port of Namco's hit arcade game Pac-Man for its Atari 2600 video game console. Like the original arcade version, the player controls the titular character with a joystick...
to the Atari 2600
Atari 2600
The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in...
, Atari was confident that sales figures would be high, and manufactured 12 million cartridges—despite having sold only around 10 million Atari 2600 consoles. It was believed that the game would be successful enough not only to earn an estimated $ 500 million, but also to boost sales of the console itself by several million as gamers sought to play the home conversion. However, the finished product, released in March 1982, was critically panned for its poor gameplay, and although it became the console's best-selling title after shifting 7 million units, it still left Atari with over 5 million unsold cartridges—a problem compounded by the high rate of customers returning the game for refunds.
However, despite the problems caused by Pac-Mans underwhelming sales, Atari would also face great difficulty as a result of its video game adaptation of the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 American science fiction film co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Melissa Mathison and starring Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore, and Peter Coyote...
. The game, also titled E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, was a result of a deal between Warner Communications and the film's director Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
. The concept of a video game based on a film, instead of porting an arcade coin-op or building on an established franchise, was unheard of at the time. It was later reported that Warner had paid $20–25 million for the rights, which was at the time quite a high figure for video game licensing. Atari manufactured 5 million cartridges for the game; however, upon its release in December 1982, only 1.5 million copies were sold, leaving Atari still holding onto over half of the game cartridges. The game was critically panned, and is now seen as one of the worst ever made. Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
magazine's Earl Paige reported that the large number of unsold E.T the Extra-Terrestrial games, along with an increase in competition, prompted retailers to demand official return programs from video game manufacturers.
The failures of these titles were further compounded by Atari's business dealings from 1981. Confident in strong sales, the company had told its distributors to place their 1982 orders all at once. However, video game sales in 1982 had slowed, and distributors who had ordered en masse in expectation of high turnover were left to simply return large quantities of unsold stock to Atari. As a result, the company soon found itself in possession of several million essentially useless video game cartridges, which it would be entirely unable to sell.
Burial
In September 1983, the Alamogordo Daily NewsAlamogordo Daily News
Alamogordo Daily News, founded in 1898, is a daily newspaper published in Alamogordo, New Mexico. It carries local news as well as syndicated content from Associated Press and others.- History :...
of Alamogordo
Alamogordo, New Mexico
Alamogordo is the county seat of Otero County and a city in south-central New Mexico, United States. A desert community lying in the Tularosa Basin, it is bordered on the east by the Sacramento Mountains. It is the nearest city to Holloman Air Force Base. The population was 35,582 as of the 2000...
, New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
reported in a series of articles, that between 10 and 20 semi-trailer
Semi-trailer
A semi-trailer is a trailer without a front axle. A large proportion of its weight is supported by a road tractor, a detachable front axle assembly known as a dolly, or the tail of another trailer...
truckloads of Atari boxes, cartridges, and systems from an Atari storehouse in El Paso, Texas
El Paso, Texas
El Paso, is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States, and lies in far West Texas. In the 2010 census, the city had a population of 649,121. It is the sixth largest city in Texas and the 19th largest city in the United States...
were crushed and buried at the landfill within the city. It was Atari's first dealings with the landfill, which was chosen because no scavenging was allowed and its garbage was crushed and buried nightly. Atari's stated reason for the burial was that it was changing from Atari 2600
Atari 2600
The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in...
to Atari 5200
Atari 5200
The Atari 5200 SuperSystem, commonly known as the Atari 5200, is a video game console that was introduced in 1982 by Atari Inc. as a higher end complementary console for the popular Atari 2600...
games, but this was later contradicted by a worker who claimed that this was not the case. Atari official Bruce Enten stated that Atari was mostly sending broken and returned material to the Alamogordo dump and that it was "by-and-large inoperable stuff."
On September 28, 1983, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
reported on the story of Atari's dumping in New Mexico. An Atari representative confirmed the story for the newspaper, stating that the discarded inventory came from Atari's plant in El Paso, which was being closed and converted to a recycling facility. The Times article never suggested any of the specific game titles being destroyed, but subsequent reports have generally linked the story of the dumping to the well-known failure of E.T. Additionally, the headline "City to Atari: 'E.T.' trash go home" in one edition of the Alamogordo News implies that the cartridges were E.T. As a result, it is widely speculated that most of the 3.5 million unsold copies of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial ultimately wound up in this landfill, crushed and encased in concrete. It has also been reported that prototypes for the proposed Atari Mindlink
Atari Mindlink
The Atari Mindlink was an unreleased video game controller for the Atari 2600.Intended for release in 1984, the Mindlink was unique in that one had to move the muscles in one's head to control the game. These movements would be read by infrared sensors and transferred as movement in the game.Games...
controller system were disposed of at the site.
Starting on September 29, 1983, a layer of concrete
Concrete
Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of cement and other cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate , water and chemical admixtures.The word concrete comes from the Latin word...
was poured on top of the crushed materials, a rare occurrence in waste disposal. An anonymous workman's stated reason for the concrete was: "There are dead animals down there. We wouldn't want any children to get hurt digging in the dump." Eventually, the city began to protest the large amount of dumping Atari was doing, with one commissioner stating that the area did not want to become "an industrial waste dump for El Paso." The local manager ordered the dumping to be ended shortly afterwards. Due to Atari's unpopular dumping, Alamogordo later passed an Emergency Management Act and created the Emergency Management Task Force to limit the future flexibility of the garbage contractor to secure outside business for the landfill for monetary purposes. Alamogordo's then mayor
Mayor
In many countries, a Mayor is the highest ranking officer in the municipal government of a town or a large urban city....
, Henry Pacelli, commented that, "We do not want to see something like this happen again."
Legacy
The conflicting information surrounding the burial has led to it being referred to as an urban legendUrban legend
An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true...
, which in turn has led to a degree of scepticism and doubt over the veracity of the story, and the relevance of conflating the event with the later industry downturn. As recently as October 2004, Howard Scott Warshaw
Howard Scott Warshaw
Howard Scott Warshaw is an American former game designer who worked for Atari in the early 1980s, where he designed and programmed the games Yars' Revenge, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and infamously, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial...
, the programmer responsible for the E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial game expressed doubts that the destruction of millions of copies of the game ever took place. Warshaw also believes that Atari's downfall was more a result of their business practices—including alleged block booking
Block booking
Block booking is a system of selling multiple films to a theater as a unit. Block booking was the prevailing practice among Hollywood's major studios from the turn of the 1930s until it was outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc....
of poorly-selling games with successful ones when dealing with distributors—than any specific failed games. This latter view has been echoed by Travis Fahs of IGN
IGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
, who believes that Atari's problems, including their huge surplus of unsold stock, arose from the company's overestimation of the sustainability of Atari 2600 sales, rather than being due to the individual quality of games being released.
The incident has also become something of a cultural symbol representative of the North American video game crash of 1983, often cited as a cautionary tale about the hubris of poor business practices, despite suggestions that the burial allowed the company to write off the disposed-of material for tax relief purposes.
The legacy of the burial has led it to be referenced in popular culture. The music video for the song "When I Wake Up" by Wintergreen
Wintergreen (band)
Wintergreen is an alternative rock band from Los Angeles. While the band was relatively unknown at first, their break out song “When I Wake Up” became popular on the internet in early 2006 when a music video was released...
depicts the band traveling to the landfill site and proceeding to dig up the abandoned cartridges; the video's director Keith Schofield had worked with video game-based music videos before. The novel Lucky Wander Boy
Lucky Wander Boy
Lucky Wander Boy is the 2003 debut novel by D. B. Weiss. The book's official website describes the work in the following terms:- Plot introduction :...
by D.B. Weiss features a scene which takes place outside of Alamogordo, in which two of the characters discuss a parking lot which has been built over the site of the burial.
See also
- List of commercial failures in video gaming
- History of video game consoles (second generation)History of video game consoles (second generation)In the history of computer and video games, the second generation began in 1976 with the release of the Fairchild Channel F and Radofin 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System....
- North American video game crash of 1983