Atari's Landfill Adventures, I now have the proof it's true.

[Albert]

I have no idea what codec it uses, but it's not an AVI file.  I was only able to play it with VLC.  If it was AVI, then at least I'd have had a chance of step-framing, but VLC's stop/start control has always been a bit laggy, so I had to double-click the play button.

 

I'll rename the file once I know what it is.

 

..Al

[kenfused]

video is mpg (maybe mpg2).

[Albert]

video is mpg (maybe mpg2).

 

It won't open in Quicktime, so I don't think it's a normal mpeg.

 

..Al

[Spud]

It was mpeg 2, I believe, I still learning all this stuff. I learned that I can put it in as a wmv (windows media) and it's alot smaller file. I'm uploading it right now, if you want to goto the same address and get it in about 30 mins it should be ready. I'll also put that other newspaper article on there afterwards. Sorry about the confusion. I just didn't have a clue what I was doing at first, now I have half a clue.

[video game addict]

And by the way, I'm pretty sure that Marion is a guy's name.  The female version would be Marian.

 

 

I use to know a Marion who was a guy. Never met a Marian personally.

[moycon]

And by the way, I'm pretty sure that Marion is a guy's name.  The female version would be Marian.

 

 

I use to know a Marion who was a guy. Never met a Marian personally.

 

Richies mom would be very disappointed in you guys.

 

No milk and cookies for you.

[video game addict]

Must be one of those names that goes both ways

 

Like Kelly

 

I've know a guy named Kelly & a few girls by same spelling.

 

Then also some girls I've known spell it Kelli I think thats it with the I at end instead of a Y

 

 

I only know in regards to the Marion that the one & only Marion I've ever known was a guy. Not that there are no girls with same spelling. I don't think it's a very popular name.

[MayDay]

Geoff's Gender Guesser says it's 8.527 times more likely for Marion to be a girl than a boy. There's a big formula they use, but basically it takes all instances of the name from google and compares it with the salutation used for the name. Far from perfect, but I've found it's pretty accurate when I get ready to call people at work.

 

So I'm 89.5% sure Marion would be female. It works on who wants to be a Millionaire!

 

-JD

[Spud]

The link to the newspaper article will be (atari_city_ban) in the adress below

 

http://members.aol.com/spudboy2/

 

from there you should be able to clink on the link.

 

It's still uploading should be ready in about 45 mins (9:45pm central)

[+Random Terrain]

Richies mom would be very disappointed in you guys.

 

No milk and cookies for you.

Wasn't her career buried with the E.T. cartridges?

 

Yeah, I know she was in other stuff since then:

 

http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0005385/[/size]

[Spud]

Well yet another set back in video posting. I tried the last link I put on here and streaming video doesn't seem to work, at least not for me. I downloaded the codecs pack and still just saw some jiberish text on the screen, so... I guess I'll go back to the old way that worked, mpeg1.

 

I cut and sliced the heck out of it so I won't be here for 3 hours to upload it again (no joking, 3 hours on my redneck dial up connection speed) you'll want to have your hand on the pause button. Once a screen pops up, pause and read, then play until the next section pops up, read....so on and so on... it all fits together.

 

http://members.aol.com/spudboy2/city_bans_atari

[Bruce Tomlin]

All three videos I downloaded played fine with VLC.

 

Seriously, give up on the "codec pack" wars and get a player with embedded codecs. I only use WiMP as a last chance in the cases when a dodgy encode causes problems with VLC.

[Clock]

Video works for me, looks like a genuine article and makes interesting reading.

Good work that man.

[Inky]

Heh, we need to have a national Atari-Con in Alamogordo, with a picnic at the landfill.

[MayDay]

atari-con in alamogordo... good idea.

picnic at landfill... bad idea.

 

when's the last time anyone brought a shovel to a classic video game expo, btw?

 

-JD

[+Random Terrain]

when's the last time anyone brought a shovel to a classic video game expo, btw?

When they are held near a desert, you'd be surprised how many people have ropes, guns, and shovels in the trunks of their cars. Very useful items to have around.

[Haydn Jones]

When they are held near a desert, you'd be surprised how many people have ropes, guns, and shovels in the trunks of their cars. Very useful items to have around.

 

I was thinking of going to CGE one year in vegas, but i may think twice about that now.

 

Haydn

[moycon]

Is this it?

 

Am I missing something?

 

 

None of the videos I saw showed anything more that footage of news paper. Except for that one who showed some dude I dont even know pointing to a map and saying, yep it's true.....That dude looked about my age...Was he one of the kids that supposedly stole cart from the land fill??

 

Well Im convinced....NOT

 

They had to hire security guards to keep the reporters at bay? But this is what we get? Security guards who according to one article didnt show up on time one day, couldn't keep kids from stealing carts, but that's it. Footage of a couple news articles....both by the same person??? Whoahh!!! Old Marion E. McQuiddy must be a tough reporter.

Either they hired security guards to keep that one person out... Or they were they only ones stealthy enough to make it through the tough front line. LOL

 

I know for a fact that when a reporter goes to a site for a story.... They dont leave until they've done it....Some times they camp out till the next day. (Yes I can name specific's, and back it up with news paper articles and video cuz I was in it....briefly) So security guards kept people out off the property? Big deal. They camp out where it's legal, wait for a truck, or some bulldozers, or whatever to drive by, and they start filming and do their story. Easy. Or they find a spot high ground where they got a birds eye view, zoom in and viola. STORY!

 

Where all this evidence?

 

Nope gonna need more to convince me. Personaly I'm insulted when someone compares the crap evidence of this to The Holocaust in WW2 or the moon landings. How much written, filmed, photographed, physical, testimonial evidence is there to support those events? A bazillion? 2 bazillion? To what? A couple articles with blurry pictures and a chubby dude that says "Yep it's real"

 

There's 100x more "evidence" to support UFO's and bigfoot than this, and folks will say, yeah but they're not real, this is. Hu? Where's the proof? I don't need a jackhammer and a shovel, I dont need a plane ticket to go to a dump. All I want are these mass of reporters ....reports. Not one dude. Films of the dump, films of them smashing these carts up. If it did really happen...Atari would have wanted the proof. The close up, no denying it happened proof. How about these kids who got in and took carts (none of which have come forward..they must not have been big Atari fans), surely they had to know what was going on to take a visit to the dump. No one snapped a pic? Not one person thought, wow! A million Atari games what a picture that would make. Obviously not, cuz not one hasn't surfaced. Oh well, like I said, I CAN be convinced. But not by this.

 

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, it certainly wouldn't bother me in the least if it WERE true. Why would it? I don't know any inside info. All I know is what I've heard (some of which was from folks who were at Atari) and what I've seen. I don't doubt Atari has dumped stuff from time to time. Like I said Ive worked for big companies who dump old outdated equipment... Right into the dumpster WOOHOO! There's no reporters... No kids trying to steal stuff...cuz it's crap. Nothing on this scale, that had so many people involved (The dump workers, the truck and bulldozer drivers, the cement company, the kids, the gaurds, the reporters) could have this little evidence to support it.

 

I like undeniable proof before I buy into something.

[+Random Terrain]

Moycon, why do you have to be so negative? Why can't you be more like me and always look on the bright side of life? (Insert whistling here.)

[moycon]

Not negativity friend. Just a skeptical person I guess. Weigh the solid facts and see what makes sense I say. Sorry if that comes off as negative. It it makes you feel better. I did believe you when you said you wanted to have sweaty man sex with me.

 

On a positive note. It's good that after all this time folks still have such a passion about good ol E.T. Only the most under-rated Atari game....EVA!

[Spud]

I'm glad it was able to be viewed. Sorry your not convinced Moycon.

One reason I feel it wasn't a bigger story like a UFO or Watergate or something is:

 

It's mostly a bunch of video games buried at a dump, no offense but even some others here can probably see it that way, to the average Joe citizen in a small desert town, who really cared much about it. Although it was on the front page 3 times, if it was 14 semi trucks of old typewriters it would have probably gotten the same attention.

 

It wasn't mentioned in print until 2 days after they started dumping.

 

It was one security guard that was supposed to be there, not like Fort Knox.

 

I had an idea, how about we chip in and run an ad in the local paper, or even better, someone write a press release or story, whatever that the paper would run asking for people who remember it, to come on the site and talk about it. May be worth a shot, maybe the Mayor then or Ed Moore from the dump will see it and write in. I'm sure the paper would do it.

 

Just a thought.

 

OK what would you guys like to see next? the pictures on video, the interview, the map, the dump (saw most of it in the the dump in the preview, didn't get a lot of footage there, just driving to it) Wish I had filmed better there.

[moycon]

Definately the pictures.

[MayDay]

Spud- personally, if people don't believe by now, they never will. I say thanks for what you've already done, and don't waste your time with anything else.

 

As for moycon, I can't tell where he is being facetious and what he actually now believes. His posts on whether he believes or not cover the entire spectrum of the issue. For (him?) and those who do not believe, what more proof is needed?

 

I say that because... it's in print. It's verified to have been in print. To dispute the claim that the event happened, I see three possible explanations.

 

1. The Alamogordo paper & the NY Times simultaneously made the stories up, and Spud is in actuality a Hollywood fim effects supervisor.

2. Atari went to great lengths to fake the dumping.

3. Aliens abducted Albert Einstein in the 1920s and gave him the information for both the theory of relativity and whether the atomic bomb was possible. In exchange, one of his criteria for him helping the US government was to have them fake this event 60 years later (they used their magical time travel wand so they already knew about Atari). The aliens then kidnapped the town's residents in 1983 and replaced them with androids so they couldn't dispute the events.

 

I say any one is as possible as the others. Nothing in science and math can technically be proven. People still believe gravity exists, and one plus one equals two because logic would lead one to believe it.

 

So what possible arguement can be made that the events in question never happened? It's not even April Fool's anymore, this is rather absurd. As a former reporter, I have left a few stories behind, sometimes with the intention of returning, a couple of times, not. The kids are there... and wouldn't be hard to find. I just don't happen to be in NM.

 

And, while I could be mistaken, I really doubt you're going to get what you are asking for. How many people had camcorders laying around in 1983? Few... including the newspapers. Remember, these are not tv stations we're talking about, newspapers have little reason to shoot video. I can't find you any exact statistics, but if memory serves correctly I believe only about 10% of homes had VCRs at that time. The majority of these were bought for the sole purpose of playing pornography. And no offense to the NM crowd, but I doubt even they would dispute that they aren't exactly on the technological cutting edge. Remember, this is a time when ATARI was the leading game console. Still pictures were the name of the game, and the only ones available to the general public are ones that were going to have been used in the newspapers in 1983. With some work, you may track down quality (if you consider 1983 cameras quality) photographs, but this is as good as you are going to get. Was a tv station really going to drive from Pheonix or somewhere to tape this?

 

Please stop wasting our time with unfounded and illogical arguements. I doubt even Atari would have had the proof, unless it was a representative on site to supervise/verify everything was done correctly. Even if they filmed it, what do you think the chances of ever recovering it are? They obviously were so forthcoming with reporters at the time. They might as well have dropped a "We can neither confirm nor deny the dumping is taking place" or a "we plead the fifth". There's some good PR for them, releasing a film of them crushing games.

 

You may be insulted at the mention of the horrors of WW2 or the moon landings being faked. I'm insulted by lack of logic. I believe posting to annoy someone or to simply be arguementative is called trolling. If you contact a warehouse worker/former Atari executive, or come up with some other proof that it isn't true, let us know. Otherwise you are just insulting the people who actually took the time to try and figure out the validity of the story.

 

-Jason

 

PS- I realize this is going to sound harsh to some. I tried to think of a way to lighten the mood when I was done typing it, because I'm not an angry person, nor is it my intention to bring anyone down. However, when I stopped to think about it, this is exactly what's being done now so I don't feel so bad about having done so. Enough evidence has been presented that I don't even think it would be a huge tragedy if this thread got locked, fun though it has been to this point. I really hope it doesn't have to come to that, I would really like for people in the NM area to be able to move forward with it and show the rest of us even more evidence.

 

moycon:

No one snapped a pic? Not one person thought, wow! A million Atari games what a picture that would make. Obviously not, cuz not one hasn't surfaced.

 

Are you saying the ones posted are fake then? Or is that some sort of tricky April Fools double (triple) negative? I keep telling myself not to read further into this thread...but the original story is just too good. Thanks again spud, for the work you have brought forth. I'm going to get some ice cream and watch a movie, and not think about Atari anymore tonight.

[Bruce Tomlin]

If you want to be skeptical, so be it. But it looks like what you should be skeptical of isn't that something was buried there, but what was buried there. It is clear that Atari sent more than a dozen 18 wheeler truckloads of something there, and had it covered with cement as it was being buried.

 

Many myths start out with a kernel of truth. In this case, the myth is that truckloads of E.T. cartridges are buried there. The truth seems to be that Atari dumped a whole bunch of random stuff there, including (from seeing them in one of the pictures) some games still new in the box. That's basically what one of the articles says. This method of disposal may not even have been directed by corporate on Borregas, but by someone at the El Paso warehouse who was just told what to destroy and not how. That and since it wasn't specifically a dump of any particular product like E.T. would explain why HSW never heard about it.

 

It's very likely that some kids did in fact scavenge the dump, and maybe they found a pile of E.T. cartridges on top. That could easily have grown into the legend that the entire contents of what was dumped was E.T. carts. As to the location of the dump, it was stated in the article which dump it was, and apparently the dump is still there, and not covered up with a K-Mart as some of the legends say. But dumps are pretty big, and I doubt anyone will remember the exact coordinates, even if they drove the bulldozer. Also, dumps change over time as stuff is buried, so there would be few accurate waypoints for locating the Atari site short of a bulldozer driver having a GPS receiver before GPS even existed.

 

Ironically, burying the stuff in concrete may be the way it eventually gets located and dug up. Someday. Ground sounding should easily be able to find the concrete layer and target it for digging, and the concrete may help preserve some of the stuff (or it may trap moisture and accellerate decay). But I don't expect anyone to do that in the near future.

[+batari]

There's 100x more "evidence" to support UFO's and bigfoot than this, and folks will say, yeah but they're not real, this is.

Hmmm...Am I the only one who sees the flaw in this logic? Let's take bigfoot for example. It doesn't compare with this because they don't have nearly the same level of plausibility. I have seen atari games, and I have seen a dump, so why is it so hard to believe in both at the same time? It's not like you have to postulate a subspecies of hominid that is seen only by drunk hunters in the middle of the night and has yet to leave a shred of biological evidence to believe this is true. I don't see why it's so hard to believe that a real company would put real games in a real dump, especially when supported by real newspaper articles in a real newspaper.

 

As was said before, the burden of proof has now shifted to the naysayers, who now need to generate proof to the contrary. All you've got, really, is a testimonial by HSW, which isn't really proof at all.