When is an urban legend not an urban legend. Crew for a documentary film production company retrieved Atari games cartridges of ‘E.T” from the New Mexican desert. They were buried in a heap of garbages. The search was part of a documentary about the demise of Atari. Legend of the ‘Atari grave’ had grown for three decades amongst gaming enthusiasts. They were joined at the dig by 200 of such gamers. Some of whom came prepared to play any games found at the site.

Atari is thought to have spent 21 million buying the license for the game but then rushed it out, to capitalise on it’s popularity and christmas sales. Poor sales and returns meant they were left with a huge amount of unsold stock. It is then thought that the video gaming company had dumped truckloads of ‘The Worst Video Game Ever’ in a pit filled with concrete in southeastern New Mexico.

They spotted the Atari merchandise including booklets, boxes and cartridges as the back-hoe dug up thirty year old sand and rubbish. Putting to rest the “Atari Grave” mystery but unleashing the next debate of whether it actually was the worst game ever made. Deputy editor at Kotaku, Tina Amini blames the games inadequacies for it’s failings. “It was practically broken”, players had to contend with inescapable traps unpredictably laid out in E.T. path. This game is felt to be largely responsible for the demise of Atari and it’s multi-million enterprise.