E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Burying E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: Undoing Game Archaeology

Paolo Ruffino's conference paper uses the April 2014 excavation of Atari's buried E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial cartridges in Alamogordo, New Mexico, as a case study in how video game history is written.

• The 2014 excavation in Alamogordo, New Mexico, was an attempt by Microsoft and Fuel Industries to verify a long-circulating urban legend that Atari buried unsold copies of the 1982 E.T. game in the desert.
• The author argues the excavation functioned less as genuine historical inquiry and more as confirmation of a narrative already accepted, with the existing Atari story serving as the endpoint of the search.
• Drawing on Foucault's archaeology and genealogy, the paper critiques media archaeologists Raiford Guins, Erkki Huhtamo, and Jussi Parikka for treating game history as the history of an industry's successful and failed products, reinforcing present-day categories.