'Atari's tomb' proves a treasure trove in New Mexico

Washington

JASON Baldwin remembers playing E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial on his Atari console when he was growing up in Alamogordo, New Mexico: It was awful. Not an hour after he started playing, he gave up on it.

Years later, he heard rumours that the game was so bad that Atari trashed thousands and thousands of cartridges in his home town, a city of 31,000 in south-west New Mexico. Turns out, the rumours weren't far off. Hundreds of thousands of Atari games - not just E.T. - were buried in the city landfill in the company's waning years.