The Guardian reports that numerous fans observed a film documentary crew recover hundreds of cartridges of the 1980s Atari game based on the movie E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial from a New Mexico landfill.
Ah, remember the good old days when people flocked to the desert hoping to see actual aliens, instead of disposed video games about aliens? Those days are over due to this reportedly unpopular video game.
Why was it unpopular? Here’s a quote from the article:
“A recurring flaw… was that the character of the game, the beloved extraterrestrial, would fall into traps that were almost impossible to escape and would appear constantly and unpredictably.”
3 Questions That Arise From This Story
1. So basically, the only way to solve the recurring flaw was to have the game cartridges fall into landfills that were seemingly impossible to escape? If so, it seems like the people who ran Atari back then were one trick ponies!
2. You call that recurring flaw difficult? Have you never played Colecovision’s B.C. II: Grog’s Revenge? The game’s instruction manual promised that if you finished the game of driving the main character around pre-historic caves on a wheel, you would find out the meaning of life! Just one problem: if the main character Grog looks at your character, or shows up on the same screen, it’s game over. This wasn’t a recurring flaw, but more like the real meaning of life: seemingly impossible to obtain.
3. Who would have bet in the 1980s that E.T. star Drew Barrymore’s career would last longer than Atari’s video game dominance? We look forward to the next Drew Barrymore-Adam Sandler movie where they must visit a landfill in the middle of the desert to find an old video game that will summons aliens.
