Dig planned in New Mexico to unearth millions of 1980s video game cartridges

By Laila Kearney and Malathi Nayak SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Searchers, accompanied by documentary filmmakers, plan to scour a New Mexico landfill in an attempt to unearth a legendary dump of millions of unwanted "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" video game cartridges rumored to have been buried at the site in the early 1980s, organizers said on Friday. The suspected entombment in the small city of Alamogordo has become a point of intrigue for gamers over the past three decades, as the product tie-in to the classic 1982 movie "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" was a mammoth flop, remembered as having contributed to a sudden collapse of the video game industry in its early years. The excavation, slated for the weekend of April 26, will be chronicled in a documentary led by Microsoft's Xbox Entertainment Studios, Microsoft said in a statement. The video game "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" hit store shelves in winter 1982 as part of a $25 million deal with director Steven Spielberg to license his movie idea with Warner Bros, the then-owner of game manufacturer Atari Corp. In an effort to push the product out by the Christmas shopping season, the game was developed in a fraction of the time typically needed for design, manufacturing and packaging, and it likely failed as a result, said Sam Claiborn, an editor at video game news site IGN.



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