16 Little-Known Gaming Stats That’ll Blow Your Mind
11. Around 700,000 Atari E.T Cartridges Were Buried In New Mexico
A story every gamer should know, Atari's ET has often faced claims of being the game that marked the start of mediocre and down-right terrible movie tie-in products. Released amongst the furore of the 1983 gaming industry collapse, and also to a poor critical and commercial reception, Atari decided to take the obvious and sensible decision: bury all the unsold cartridges deep in the New-Mexico desert. Often thought to be an urban legend of the gaming community, a recent dig into the supposed site revealed that the developer had in fact ditched their unsold ET copies underneath the sand - all 700,000 of them. Anyone who wants to find out more should definitely check out the Zak Penn documentary released last year, as it documents Atari's tragic fall from grace and the events that led to the mass grave of cartridges being exhumed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb9jW96MLxg
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
