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  • Atari Games Buried in a Landfill? Old Legend Prompts New Search

    Legend has it that there’s a massive grave of Atari games, most notably millions of copies of the epic commercial failure E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, buried in a New Mexico landfill. If you’re an Atari nerd or video game historian, you probably know the story.

    Back in 1983, reports emerged that between 10 and 20 semi truckloads full of Atari games and systems were dumped into a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Atari claimed that the dump was due to the changeover of Atari 2600 to Atari 5200 games. As additional reports emerged, the story became even murkier. Eventually, it came to be believed that Atari had dumped around 3.5 million copies of the E.T game, a huge failure, in the landfill and buried it in concrete.

    The story has taken on the status of urban legend. Are there really millions of copies of terrible Atari games buried in the New Mexico desert? There even a Wikipedia entry on the “Atari Video Game Burial” that chronicles both the fact and myth. Among gamers, it’s a highly-contested question. Is it total BS?

    We may soon have an answer – or at least more information to go on.

    A New Mexico City Commission has approved a search of the landfill grounds by Canadian marketing agency Fuel Industries. They’ll be looking for any discarded Atari wares buried under mounds of dirt and concrete – and they have been given six months to look.

    In 1983, as Atari was sinking into hard times, they paid to license the name of one of the previous year’s most popular films – and they fell even deeper in the hole. Out of that failure rose this legend. This odd story, one of the strangest and most mythical for video game lovers, may finally get a new chapter.

  • FBI UFO Memo is the Agency’s Most-Requested

    The FBI revealed this week in a blog post that an agency memo referring to “flying saucers” is the most-requested file in the FBI vault.

    The memo is dated March 22, 1950 and was written by the FBI’s Washington, D.C. field office head at the time, Guy Hottel.

    The document is freely available via the FBI records vault. It reads:

    An investigator for the Air Forces stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only three feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed fliers and test pilots.

    According to Mr. [REDACTED] informant, the saucers were found in New Mexico due to the fact that the Government has a very high-powered radar set-up in the area and it is believed the radar interferes with the controlling mechanics of the saucers.

    No further evaluation was attempted by SA [REDACTED] concerning the above.

    According to the FBI, the Hottel memo was first released to the public in the 1970s. Though it is often assumed to be connected to the legendary Roswell UFO crash, the memo is dated almost three years after the Roswell incident.

    The agency also stressed that the Hottel memo is not proof of extraterrestrials, in that it refers to a second- or third-hand account that was never investigated further.

  • Gun Found In Frozen Meat Packed A Year Ago

    You read about people finding odd things in their food all the time; spiders, fingers, nose rings. But a fully-functioning gun and rounds of ammo is just too weird for words…yet that’s exactly what one supermarket in New Mexico found while unpacking some frozen meat.

    The box had been shipped from Colorado to an Albertson’s in Roswell, and when an employee opened the box he found the dangerous little surprise nestled inside.

    “The big cases of meat come in a box,” Sabrina Morales, a rep for the Roswell Police Department, said. “When he opened it, he saw the firearm. It wasn’t packaged inside with the meat, but it was in the same box.”

    The gun was entered into a database designed to track serial numbers on weapons used in crimes, but nothing came up. Police say they are investigating its origin, but considering the “packed” date on the box is from last summer, it might prove to be like finding a needle in a haystack. Also, investigators aren’t overlooking the glaring disturbing fact uncovered by the story.

    “The other part that’s disturbing is the date on the package was 6.8.2011. I don’t know how long meat stays well-frozen, but that was the date of the package he was opening,” Morales said.