E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial Dump Faces Excavation

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frizzlebyte

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Oct 20, 2008
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kajinking said:
Wow can we get the Mythbusters in on this?

Jamie: "So Adam how are we going to find this supposed dumping ground of bad games?"

Adam: "Truth be told I have no idea, BUT I do know that when we find it we're going blow it up and film it on highspeed"
I would totally watch that, and I haven't watched Mythbusters since they ran out of real myths to test/detonate, and became "movie stunt plausibility testers."
 

Tim Chuma

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Jul 9, 2010
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I thought it wasn't a "dump" as much as they smashed all the cartidges up with a steamroller before they dumped them and the pieces went to separate landfill sites.

There is a rebuttal on the original article that claims the issue was already resolved in a book published last year - http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0985597402
 

Mid Boss

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Aug 20, 2012
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kajinking said:
Wow can we get the Mythbusters in on this?

Jamie: "So Adam how are we going to find this supposed dumping ground of bad games?"

Adam: "Truth be told I have no idea, BUT I do know that when we find it we're going blow it up and film it on highspeed"
I would pay to see that! :D
 

Lancer873

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Evil Smurf said:
Was the game that bad?
Eh, never played it and don't know how bad the game itself was, but I do know that what made it so infamous is the fact that it was a gigantic financial flop. Atari didn't just assume it would be good, they assumed it would be great. They thought the game was going to be selling consoles. They made more cartridges for the game than there were consoles sold at the time, and when sales time came... well... the rest is history.
 

frizzlebyte

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Lancer873 said:
Evil Smurf said:
Was the game that bad?
Eh, never played it and don't know how bad the game itself was, but I do know that what made it so infamous is the fact that it was a gigantic financial flop. Atari didn't just assume it would be good, they assumed it would be great. They thought the game was going to be selling consoles. They made more cartridges for the game than there were consoles sold at the time, and when sales time came... well... the rest is history.
From what I understand, the game also has/had a game-killing bug where no matter what you do, you can't continue because you fall through a single-pixel-wide slit in the ground, with no way around it.

That's reason enough to put the quietus on sales.
 

Lancer873

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frizzlebyte said:
-snip-


From what I understand, the game also has/had a game-killing bug where no matter what you do, you can't continue because you fall through a single-pixel-wide slit in the ground, with no way around it.

That's reason enough to put the quietus on sales.
Ouch, yeah, that'd do it. I still think that the reason it's so infamous is more because of the financial flop. It would have just died the typical lonely video game death of obscurity were it not for the sheer financial backing that was put towards it. We know of its horrible gameplay so well because it was one of the two games credited with causing the video game crash, not necessarily just because of its terribadness.
 

Imperioratorex Caprae

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May 15, 2010
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I always felt Daikatana's source code should have been interred along with every retail copy in similar fashion. John Romero's live interment optional.
 

karloss01

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Jul 5, 2009
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One should not open Pandora's box so willingly. seems convenient that they are digging this up now when people are talking about how the game industry is going to crash at any moment. maybe E.T is something similar to the four horsemen of the game crash followed by Superman 64 and some two other god-why-did-this-exist-awful games.
 

Strazdas

Robots will replace your job
May 28, 2011
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Are they crazy? do they want to open the pandoras box next?

RJ 17 said:
oooooooo! This story reminds me that the Angry Videogame Nerd's movie will be coming out soon!
what i was thiking as well. hopefully that will come before this or it will beovershadowed as hell.
 

EHKOS

Madness to my Methods
Feb 28, 2010
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This sounds like a bad idea. Plus, I do enjoy the legend. Maybe people will gather them up and sell them. It'd be pretty cool to have a crushed shell of a game that was so horrible it was buried in the desert for thirty years. In fact, yeah I'd buy that for $5.

However this also brings to mind something like this:
 

EHKOS

Madness to my Methods
Feb 28, 2010
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Nurb said:
I did get a cryptic e-mail from someone telling me he knew what was after me, that I could hold back the darkness, the guardian of the cartridge, the universe itself would stop at nothing to kill me and reclaim the game.

He said he could help, but at a price....

Anyway, I'm now headed to meet some Prussian baron in his castle somewhere in the woods... seems legit.
Dude, just go visit this old guy out in the desert, he'll tell you all about slaying the Dahaka! It's much easier.

Seriously, all you need is water.
 

Andrew_C

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Mar 1, 2011
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It only killed the American videogame industry, the European and Japanese industries hardly noticed it. Unfortunately it was only temporary, considering the crap you've been foisting on the rest of the World since you regained dominance.
 

TheRightToArmBears

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Dec 13, 2008
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I'm predicting a Pirates of the Caribbean style curse on the team the excavates them, doomed to be undead until all the copies are returned, and the blood repaid.
 

Gray Firion

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Mar 5, 2012
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Ah, dandy! Yes, please unbind/dig up/uncover/reveal/excavate/insert-your-verb-of-choice-here the Forgotten and Buried Harbinger of Doom from Ages Past. Everyone can confirm that nothing bad will ever come of it. By all means continue.

/grabs popcorn
 

Riff Moonraker

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Mar 18, 2010
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Evil Smurf said:
Was the game that bad?
My parents actually bought me this game for my Atari back in the day. Even as a huge ET fan, and a gamer kid, it quickly fell into the untouched pile, and remained there. Yes... its terrible.
 

Micalas

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Mar 5, 2011
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"Stinker of biblical proportions" had me rolling.


GonzoGamer said:
That's just stupid.
Didn't they ever see Poltergeist?
Nothing good can come of this.
The ET game is the gaming culture equivalent of Native Americans. The burial place is a sacred place where few may treck and none may dig up. They are making a potentially costly mistake by unleashing this blight upon the country. We know not what they will find, but it can bring nothing but pain.
 

Doom972

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Dec 25, 2008
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If those some of those cartridges are still in working condition, I vote we have all the "Mass Effect 3 is the worst game ever" guys be forced to play this game for 72 hours.

I really hope that they find it so that I can settle that argument with my friends about it being real.
 

VortexCortex

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I played the game when I was a kid, but I thought it was just me -- and my friends -- who sucked at the game. Only later did I find out the true story of the game that could not be played...

I think excavating the games is a good thing. We should have the bits re-assembled. Some should be in the Smithsonian's video game museum as performance art. IMO, the game should be sitting on the desk of every game industry executive as a reminder: There are levels of crap we are not willing to accept.

I'd love to have included a few bits of crushed E.T. cartridges in the box along with my RRODed 360 when I sent it back to Microsoft. I'd pay to have a throne constructed out of the failed game parts. On it I would sit cardboard cutouts of the folks who most need the reminding. I would sit there myself whenever I make a decision against quality and in favor of fast money.

"This has all happened before, and will happen again," indeed.
 

unstabLized

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Mar 9, 2012
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Dig up all the copies, convert them into Xbox One exclusives, showcase at E3 for Xbone, featuring high tech Kinect hardware.

Man, what a nightmare.