Hundreds of copies of the ET game have been discovered in a landfill[AP]I feel pretty relieved and psyched that they actually got to see something
The E.T. game is seen as one of the key factors which caused the decline of Atari and the collapse in the USA of a multi-million dollar video game industry that did not bounce back for several years.
Film director Zak Penn said that hundreds of copies of the game were found in the mounds of trash and dirt scooped by a backhoe, to the joy of onlooking gamers.
"I feel pretty relieved and psyched that they actually got to see something," said Mr Penn as members of the production team sifted through the mounds of trash, pulling out boxes, games and other Atari products.
It is unclear why Atari buried up to a million copies of the game in the landfill site, and spokeswoman for the company said "nobody here has any idea what that's about" and the company has no "corporate knowledge" about the Alamogordo burial.
Atari has changed hands many times over the years, and the spokeswoman added: "We're just watching like everybody else."
The ET game has been called the worst ever made [AP]A recurring flaw, she said, 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.
The company produced millions of cartridges, and although sales were not initially bad, the frustrating gameplay prompted an immense amount of returns.
"They had produced so many cartridges that were unsold that even if the game was insanely successful I doubt they'd be able to keep up," Ms Amini says.
Most of the crowd left the landfill before the discovery, turned away by strong winds that kicked up massive clouds of dust mingled with garbage.
By the time the games were found, only a few dozen people remained.
Some were playing the infamous game in a make-shift gaming den with a TV and an 1980's game console in the back of a van, while others took selfies beside a life-size E.T. doll inside a DeLorean car like the one that was turned into a time machine in the "Back To The Future" films.
Among the watchers was Armando Ortega, a city official who back in 1983 got a tip from a landfill employee about the massive dump of games.
"It was pitch dark here that night, but we came with our flashlights and found dozens of games," he said. They braved the darkness, coyotes and snakes of the desert landfill and had to sneak past the security guard. But it paid off.
He says they found dozens of crushed cartridges that they took home and were still playable in their game consoles.
An Atari console [AP]A New York Times article from Sept. 28, 1983, says 14 truckloads of discarded game cartridges and computer equipment were dumped on the site. An Atari spokesman quoted in the story said the games came from its plant in El Paso, Texas, some 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Alamogordo.
Local news reports from the time said landfill employees were throwing cartridges there and running a bulldozer over them before covering them with dirt and trash.
The city of Alamogordo agreed to give the documentarians 250 cartridges or 10 percent of the cartridges found, whichever is greater.
Alamogordo Mayor Susie Galea said finding something in the landfill might bring more tourists to this city in southeastern New Mexico that is home to an Air Force base and White Sands National Monument.
"Lots of people just pass through, unfortunately," she said.
Joe Lewandowski, who became manager of the 300-acre landfill a few months after the cartridge dump and has been a consultant for the documentarians, said they used old photographs and dug exploratory wells to find the actual burial site.
The incidents following the burial remained a part of Alamogordo's local folklore, he said.
For him, the only memories of E.T. the game were of an awful game he once bought for his child.
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