Atari Burial

For decades, it was the gaming world's most famous urban legend: Did Atari really bury millions of unsold cartridges of "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" in a New Mexico landfill? The answer, unearthed in 2014, was yes. But the story behind the burial is far more fascinating than the plastic in the ground.



"The Atari Burial" chronicles the meteoric rise and catastrophic fall of Atari in the early 1980s. It details the hubris of a company that spent millions to license the E.T. brand but gave the developer only five weeks to code the game for the Christmas rush. The resulting product was practically unplayable, triggering a collapse in consumer confidence that nearly destroyed the entire video game industry in 1983.



This book is a business case study on quality control and a nostalgic trip to the era of the console wars. It explains how a market flooded with low-quality "shovelware" led to a crash that paved the way for Nintendo to save the day. It is the story of the most expensive mistake in pixel history.