Van Ziepe 
The Day the Pixels Died: A Story of Atari, E.T., and a Grave in the Desert
Once upon a time, in the golden age of video games, the name Atari was whispered like magic. Its black, wood-paneled 2600 console sat in millions of living rooms, promising worlds of endless fun—intergalactic dogfights in Asteroids, pixelated heroism in Adventure, and the constant beep-beep thrill of Pac-Man. It was the dawn of a new era, and Atari was the undisputed king.
But every kingdom has its reckoning.
It was 1982, and the world had fallen in love with a wrinkly, glowing-fingered alien named E.T. Steven Spielberg’s film broke box office records and hearts alike. Over at Atari HQ, the executives smelled opportunity—and dollar signs. They wanted an E.T. game ready in time for Christmas. The only problem? The deadline.
Howard Scott Warshaw, a young hotshot developer already hailed for his work on Yars’ Revenge, was handed the Herculean task: build a game worthy of Spielberg’s masterpiece—in five weeks.
That’s not game development. That’s sorcery.
Howard, brilliant and passionate, worked night and day, fueled by caffeine, code, and sheer will. He finished it. Barely. It was shipped. Millions of copies. Hopes were sky-high.
And then… players actually played it.
Confused kids found themselves steering E.T. into pits they couldn’t escape, collecting inscrutable objects, aimlessly wandering a pixelated wasteland. The game felt rushed—because it was. And disappointment spread like wildfire.
Returns piled up. Word of mouth became a death knell.
But E.T. wasn’t the sole culprit. Atari had already been bleeding from self-inflicted wounds: a disastrous port of Pac-Man, oversaturation of shovelware titles, and a growing army of third-party developers flooding the market with low-quality games. E.T. was simply the final straw, the pixel that broke the joystick’s back.
Then came 1983.
Retailers, once eager to stock shelves with cartridges, now panicked. Unsold games filled warehouses. Prices plummeted. Consumers lost confidence. The industry imploded in what would later be called the Video Game Crash of 1983. Atari, once valued at billions, shattered. The magic was gone.
And so, in a desperate attempt to erase the embarrassment, Atari did the unthinkable.
In the dead of night, truckloads of unsold cartridges—millions of them, including E.T., Pac-Man, and other failed titles—were driven into the New Mexico desert, to a landfill outside Alamogordo. They were dumped like toxic waste, crushed by bulldozers, and buried under concrete and dust.
Whispers of this act became urban legend. A myth passed between gamers like a ghost story.
“Did you hear? They buried the games. In the desert. Like a crime.”
For decades, no one knew if it was true.
Until 2014, when a documentary crew excavated the site—and unearthed the truth. Cracked cartridges of E.T. saw the light of day once more, dusty relics of an era when ambition ran faster than wisdom.
Epilogue
Today, E.T. for the Atari 2600 is a symbol—of overreach, of rushed decisions, and of a crash that nearly killed an industry. But it’s also a reminder of the passion, the pressure, and the growing pains of a medium still finding its footing.
Video games didn’t die in 1983. They just went underground for a while. Quite literally.
And from those ashes, or rather that landfill, a stronger, wiser industry would rise again.
So next time you play a beautifully crafted indie game or a cinematic AAA blockbuster, remember: somewhere in New Mexico, a little alien lies buried, still waiting to phone home.