Atari E.T. game from excavated cache sold for $1,500 in auction

What some have called the worst video game ever made has fetched thousands of dollars for a city in the southwestern US state of New Mexico.

An old E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial game cartridge drew the highest bid among 100 Atari games auctioned on eBay by Alamogordo officials.

The games were part of a cache of some 800 Atari video games buried more than 30 years ago in a landfill and dug up in April.

Joe Lewandowski, a consultant for the film companies that documented the dig, says the online auction, which ended on Thursday, generated $37,000.

"It's really gratifying to see that happening because again, to everybody it was a bunch of garbage in the landfill. You're kind of nutty to go dig it up," Lewandowski said.

The E.T. game, still in its original box, sold for $1,537 to a buyer in Canada. The interest in the games has gone global. According to Lewandowski, online bidders from other countries, including Germany and Sweden, snapped up items. Earlier this month, a museum in Rome opened an exhibit on the dig that includes dirt from the landfill.

Poor reception

"I keep getting messages from people around the world asking me if there's any more left. It's crazy," Lewandowski said. "The people that lost the bids are demanding more but I keep telling them they have to keep checking."

Reports that truckloads of the game were buried in the landfill have been legend since the early 1980s. The E.T. game's poor reception when it came out in 1982 was seen as a factor in Atari's demise.

City documents show that Atari consoles and more than 1,300 games were found, including E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Some of the other discovered titles include Centipede, Warlords and Asteroids.

After months of planning with state and local regulators, crews discovered numerous game cartridges on April 26. The dig cost more than $50,000, Lewandowski said.

(China Daily 11/18/2014 page10)