Atari's "ET" Unearthed Landfill Cartridges Available on eBay

(Photo : eBay) After a Microsoft sponsored landfill dig found some of Atari's cartridges that went to landfill, the diggers have now put these games to auction.

Atari's 'E.T.' is considered by many to be one of the worst video games in history, both on a gameplay standpoint and a financial standpoint. The video game was one of the defining factors that pushed Atari out of the video game market, alongside a crash in the gaming market in 1982.

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In order to get rid of the entire inventory for the E.T. game, Atari sent thousands of cartridges to a landfill site at Alamogordo, New Mexico, along with some other game failures. After 30 years in the ground, a documentary team went into the landfill to dig them up.

The Microsoft-backed documentary explored the landfill and the problems with 'E.T.' and will air exclusively on Xbox on November 20. Ironically, this is one of the last projects Xbox Entertainment Studios will work on, after Satya Nadella announced the studio would face the same fate as Atari and become defunct.

To make some more money, the documentary team has put 99 cartridges onto eBay, with a starting price of $50. The 99 cartridges include 'Asteroids,' 'Missile Command,' 'Warlords,' 'Defender,' 'Star Raiders,' 'Swordquest,' 'Phoenix,' 'Centipede' and the infamous 'E.T.'

Even though most of the cartridges have bids between $55 and $80, 'E.T.' is already passing $300, with eight days to go. The cartridges will most likely not work, since they have been in landfill for 30 years, but buyers are hoping that their version will be the one-in-a-million.

'E.T.' is one of those games that is hunted by collectors, even though it is one of the worst games Atari ever published - or maybe because it's one of the worst games of all time. Similar to consoles and machines with huge budgets, which failed to deliver, 'E.T.' lives on in people's mind as the game that killed Atari.

The landfill digger team revealed they have 750 more cartridges to put up at a later date. The eBay auctions look to end on November 11 - November 12, and it is expected that prices for the E.T. game will skyrocket beyond $1,000.