10 Craziest Video Game Myths (That Turned Out To Be True)
1. Atari Buried Unsold Copies Of E.T. In The Desert
While Steven Spielbergs E.T. is considered one his finest movies, the Atari videogame adaptation is considered one of the worst games ever made. It was slapped together in six weeks to meet an insane deadline, and though it sold well initially Atari had made too many copies; so when people who bought it returned the game, they ended up knee deep in copies of a game nobody wanted.
The fallout of this left a negative impact on the videogame industry for years, and in an effort to rid themselves of surplus copies it was rumoured they dumped them all in a landfill. People had trouble believing Atari would resort to such a drastic measure, so the story was widely dismissed as an urban legend; a funny one, but nothing more. Only it wasn't; in 1983 Atari did dump truckloads of unused stock in a landfill in New Mexico. In 2014, a documentary crew dug up the site and found many copies of E.T., alongside other unsold games and consoles.
In something of a happy ending excavated copies of the game were put on display in The Smithsonian, something that seemed very unlikely thirty years ago for the most reviled game of all time.