E.T. Is Buried in Alamogordo

There is no definitive account of that day in September 1983 when the trucks brought the Atari haul here, just versions that seem to feed on one another, changing slightly as they travel from one online forum to the next, as in a virtual game of telephone.

One story put the number of trucks at 20. Others say there were 10 or 14. Mr. Lewandowski recalled last week that 29 trucks had left Atari’s plant in El Paso, Tex., just over the border from New Mexico, and that 9 had made it to the landfill.

“The other 20,” he said, “no one knows what happened.”

There is a lingering rumor that one of the trucks was hijacked along the way and taken to Mexico, never to be seen again.

Presenting the best urban legend you’ve probably never heard: the story goes that in 1983, the video game company Atari dumped an unknown supply — some say millions — of its unsold E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial game cartridges (largely considered “one of the worst video games ever made” and also blamed in part for the ’83 video game industry crash) into a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. A Los Angeles entertainment company recently acquired a permit to excavate the area. “Everybody’s always fantasized about digging up those games,” says a video game historian quoted in this New York Times story. Well, now I am.