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Speaker 1: When people reminisce about Atari, they talk about the incredible

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Speaker 1: box art or the addictive gameplay. But one thing we

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Speaker 1: haven't covered is the smell. The terrible, terrible smell.

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Speaker 2: I had one guy in Rhode Island and bought one

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Speaker 2: who was worried about was it. When he got into

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Speaker 2: his house, opened up the zick blank bag and the

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Speaker 2: smell came out. He immediately wrote me it says, is

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Speaker 2: this hazardous? Is my whole family gonna die? And he

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Speaker 2: was somewhat serious.

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Speaker 1: That's Joe Lewandowski. Joe is a sanitation specialist in the

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Speaker 1: city of Alamagordo, New Mexico, and what he's describing is

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Speaker 1: the old factory sensation one gets when they're confronted with

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Speaker 1: an Atari game cartridge that has a very special provenance.

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Speaker 1: These were games that were dug up from a landfill

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Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen after idling there for more than thirty years.

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Speaker 1: They had been dumped by Atari during the video game

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Speaker 1: crash Unwanted, Unloved Games. Throughout the years, this disposal has

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Speaker 1: developed into an urban legend, with some people doubting whether

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Speaker 1: it had ever actually happened, and others insisting it had.

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Speaker 1: Like a lot of these stories. It grew bigger over

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Speaker 1: time that Atari hadn't just dumped a few titles, but

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Speaker 1: I had been on a clandestine mission to bury millions of

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Speaker 1: their very maligned et game. But Joe knew the truth.

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Speaker 1: He was there when the games were buried back in

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, and he was the one who was

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Speaker 1: able to locate the dump site decades later where hundreds

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Speaker 1: of thousands of games had been laid to rest. Once excavated,

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Speaker 1: they were prized by collectors for being a key part

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Speaker 1: of Atari history, even if they carried with them the

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Speaker 1: literal stench of failure.

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Speaker 2: In fact, the games I said to the Vigamous Museum

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Speaker 2: in Rome, Italy. They set up a whole room with them,

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Speaker 2: and they'd set up a beautiful display. You can see

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Speaker 2: it online. It's one of the best presentations of the story.

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Speaker 2: They were joking about it. Every one of them had

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Speaker 2: two odor eaters underneath the game, trying to absorb the smell.

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Speaker 1: But in order to get those legendary buried games, Joe

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Speaker 1: would have to grapple with city bureaucracy. He'd have to

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Speaker 1: find out their exact burial spot, and he'd have to

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Speaker 1: contend with the people of Alama Gordo who believe digging

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Speaker 1: them up might mean releasing toxic waste into the air.

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Speaker 1: But Joe, like a lot of gamers, loves a challenge

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Speaker 1: for iHeartRadio. This is the legend of sword Quest. I'm

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Speaker 1: your host, Jamie Loftus, and this is a bonus episode.

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Speaker 1: The landfill like bad produce at a grocery store. That's

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Speaker 1: how Atari executive Bruce Enton explained Atari sending truckloads of games,

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Speaker 1: systems and other waste from their facility in El Paso,

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Speaker 1: Texas to Alamagordo, New Mexico. It was a journey of

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Speaker 1: about ninety miles that lasted over the course of a

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Speaker 1: few days in September nineteen eighty three. Most of the products,

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Speaker 1: he said, were defective and had nothing to do with

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Speaker 1: reports of an ailing video game industry, even though somewhere

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Speaker 1: between nine and twenty truckloads of Atari merchandise were hauled over.

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Speaker 1: Of course, this was what people in politics call spin.

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Speaker 1: The literal tons of games being routed to Alamagordo were

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Speaker 1: unsold and unwanted, the result of a manufacturing glut. Atari

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Speaker 1: was in real trouble, but they couldn't say that, so

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Speaker 1: the dump. Trucks full of games were waved away as

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Speaker 1: the electronic equivalent of misfit toys. Alamagordo is a city

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Speaker 1: known mostly for its proximity to White Sand's missile range,

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Speaker 1: where J. Robert Oppenheimer looked on as the US military

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Speaker 1: tested the first atomic bomb, and for having what's believed

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Speaker 1: to be the world's biggest pistachio sculpture. It wasn't exactly

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Speaker 1: thought of as a place to dump excess video game inventory.

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Speaker 1: So why there. For one thing, Atari paid the landfill

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Speaker 1: to take their trash about three hundred to five hundred

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Speaker 1: dollars per truck. For another, there was a landfill rule

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Speaker 1: that benefited Atari. Here's Joe Lewandowski.

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Speaker 2: The reason they brought them to al mcgardo is New

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Speaker 2: Mexico had a no scavenging law that they wouldn't allow

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Speaker 2: you to scavenge at landfills. Texas did not have that.

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Speaker 2: So Texas landfills, when you drove in the empty trucks,

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Speaker 2: there'd be people standing around waiting for you to push

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Speaker 2: those loads out of your truck, and you know, just

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Speaker 2: like flies, they just right on the pile, ripped it

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Speaker 2: all to pieces and reused to recycle. Not half of

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Speaker 2: what you just dubbed that wasn't allowed in New Mexico. Plus,

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Speaker 2: Atari was trying to keep it secret because you can

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Speaker 2: imagine if the stockholders of Atari found out that their

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Speaker 2: company was throwing things away, brand new product, why would

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Speaker 2: that do to the stock I mean, there'd be a

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Speaker 2: bigger crash than it was already happening. So that's the

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Speaker 2: reason they were trying to keep it.

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Speaker 1: So, of course, just because there was a no plundering

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Speaker 1: rule doesn't mean anyone respected it. To some landfill games

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Speaker 1: meant free games. Local teens began raiding the site, digging

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Speaker 1: up cartridges they were hoping to resell with a nice

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Speaker 1: one hundred percent profit margin. That's because they didn't have

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Speaker 1: to dig too deep.

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Speaker 2: So basically each night there was no more than six

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Speaker 2: inches of dirt or even less sometimes on top of

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Speaker 2: whatever you put in that day, so they were right there.

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Speaker 2: They just move a little bit of dirt and they

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Speaker 2: were solid. They put them all in the same spot.

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Speaker 2: In fact, they diverted the trucks to another part of

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Speaker 2: the cell and this trench the regular garbage while they

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Speaker 2: were putting in the Atari.

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Speaker 1: The Atari trench was about one hundred feet long thirty

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Speaker 1: to forty feet wide. It eventually got pretty deep, but

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Speaker 1: initially scavengers only needed to dig down a few inches,

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Speaker 1: or maybe not dig at all. One news report said

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Speaker 1: that some kids chased down a trash compactor, grabbing games

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Speaker 1: that were falling off the back and trying to sell them.

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Speaker 1: There was even a rumor someone had hijacked one of

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Speaker 1: the trucks, though that one probably isn't true.

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Speaker 2: Then there was a seventy year olds and the twelve

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Speaker 2: year olds that snuck in the middle of the night

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Speaker 2: and distracted the security guard and jumped in and got

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Speaker 2: them history teacher here. Now, Megordo was a teenager back

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Speaker 2: then rode in on motocross bikes from the backside. Police

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Speaker 2: pulled over a pickup truck with three teenagers so full

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Speaker 2: the games were just falling off the sides of the

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Speaker 2: truck as they were going down the street. So yeah,

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Speaker 2: the games everybody kind of knew. I knew one of

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Speaker 2: the supervisors from the other company that was actually running

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Speaker 2: the landfill at the time. He had a shed just

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Speaker 2: stacked all the way from back to front, loaded all

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Speaker 2: right to the door the thing. So yeah, the games

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Speaker 2: went everywhere.

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Speaker 1: One newspaper even joked the landfill was turning into a

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Speaker 1: shopping mall. Pretty soon. Atari had security at the dump.

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Speaker 1: One guard carried a broom handle, walking the perimeter and

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Speaker 1: ready to swat any potential resellers. City officials or that

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Speaker 1: concrete be poured over it to discourage looting.

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Speaker 2: That's why you can call it also the Atari tomb,

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Speaker 2: because they did put concrete, but that was not part

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Speaker 2: of the original plan. When scavengers were getting them, they

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Speaker 2: tried to put concrete over them to keep the scavengers

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Speaker 2: from getting through, and that didn't slow anybody down either.

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Speaker 1: All of this was pretty common knowledge at the time,

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Speaker 1: but as the years went on it seemed to take

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Speaker 1: on a kind of legend, one that some people discounted entirely,

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Speaker 1: mostly because no one at Aitari ever clarified the story

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Speaker 1: or even wanted to comment much on it. It grew

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Speaker 1: to the point that it was not only Atari games,

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Speaker 1: but specifically ET, the infamously bad game based on the

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Speaker 1: movie that had to be trucked to the landfill. It

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Speaker 1: fits so well with the mythology because supposedly ET was

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Speaker 1: solely responsible for the video game crash. The truth is

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Speaker 1: a lot of bad games and too many games were

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Speaker 1: to blame for the crash of games wound up at

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Speaker 1: the landfill, but some people doubted even that, and over

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Speaker 1: time Joe listened with some amusement as people debated whether

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Speaker 1: it ever even happened.

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Speaker 2: Because you know, most of the stuff on the internet

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Speaker 2: was a big war between gamers that it never happened.

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Speaker 2: It's all a myth, it's an urban legend, never happened.

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Speaker 2: Even Atari denied it happened. And then there's the other

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Speaker 2: ones that totally believed it was there, and somebody needs

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Speaker 2: to dig them up, and you know, somebody needs to

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Speaker 2: find them and all this other stuff.

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Speaker 1: So Joe knew without a doubt the games were there.

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Speaker 1: While he wasn't working for the exact waste management company

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Speaker 1: that dumped it. He was in the business at the time.

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Speaker 1: Joe is an Alamgordo lifer. Raised there.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, back then, actually I owned one of the garbage companies,

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Speaker 2: and I had beat the other garbage company and they

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Speaker 2: had sold out to us in August of eighty three.

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Speaker 2: This dump happened in September of eighty three. They were

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Speaker 2: still running the landfill. We were merging the two companies together.

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Speaker 2: So how I found out about is one of my

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Speaker 2: drivers came in and said, used to see what's going

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Speaker 2: on at the dump. So I drove out, saw the

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Speaker 2: semi truck there unloading brand new games. It wasn't just games,

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Speaker 2: there was also the twenty six hundred console and the

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Speaker 2: whole controllers, everything that was all brand new stuff, and

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Speaker 2: grabbed a few, went back to work and forgot about it.

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Speaker 2: Since nineteen eighty three, emeyb Once in a while somebody would

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Speaker 2: ask me and they said, hey, yeah, yeah, it happened.

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Speaker 1: Eventually, around twenty ten, Joe decided there might be merit

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Speaker 1: in busting the myth once and for all. Why not

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Speaker 1: mount a kind of archaeological expedition becoming the Indiana Jones

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Speaker 1: of Atari trash. Joe's not much of a gamer, but

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Speaker 1: the challenge of it appealed to him, and it was

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Speaker 1: a challenge. For one thing, it's a big landfill, three

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Speaker 1: hundred acres, and back then no one was keeping track

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Speaker 1: of what trash was dumped where.

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Speaker 2: There were no survey points, there was no GPS markers

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Speaker 2: or anything else. That was really the challenge. It's three

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Speaker 2: hundred acres looking again for something that's one hundred feet long,

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Speaker 2: thirty feet wide, four feet thick underground thirty feet somewhere

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Speaker 2: in the middle of the desert, and that whole area

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Speaker 2: had changed as that time. A bypass went in, other

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Speaker 2: buildings went in, hot air balloon park went in, so

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Speaker 2: it wasn't what it was in nineteen eighty three. So

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Speaker 2: that was really the challenge. Could it be found in

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Speaker 2: all this?

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Speaker 1: The other problem was getting approval. One doesn't just go

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Speaker 1: rummaging around in a landfill. Joe needed permission from the city,

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Speaker 1: the governor, and the environmental Protection agency. He also had

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Speaker 1: to address some serious potential consequences of digging around in there.

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Speaker 1: Back in nineteen sixty nine, pigs that had inadvertently been

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Speaker 1: fed mercury laced seed were tossed into the landfill, and

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Speaker 1: there was concern that they could still pose a health hazard.

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Speaker 1: That site wasn't in the general area where Joe thought

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Speaker 1: the games were, but it still had to be investigated

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Speaker 1: with air samples taken by an environmental firm. The city

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Speaker 1: also had to be reassured that some buried melia in

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Speaker 1: a pesticide wasn't present in the barrels nearby, or that

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Speaker 1: munitions from White Sand's missile base wouldn't be dug up

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Speaker 1: and explode. This took Joe, believe it or not, a

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Speaker 1: few years to navigate.

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Speaker 2: I got other things to be doing, and then when

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Speaker 2: the environmental start hit me on it, it was like

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Speaker 2: it was almost like again another challenge, like you say

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Speaker 2: I can't do it, Well, I'm going to do it.

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Speaker 2: So that's what happened was is I think they actually

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Speaker 2: helped give me the motivation to continue where I might

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Speaker 2: have got bored with the story.

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Speaker 1: By that time, he had connected with the documentary project

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Speaker 1: founded by Fuel Entertainment and production company Light Box. They

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Speaker 1: wanted to make a movie about the excavation, hoping to

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Speaker 1: either debunk the urban legend or prove it to be true.

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Speaker 1: Fuel Entertainment received permission from the city Council in twenty

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Speaker 1: thirteen to dig. That project, which was eventually funded in

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Speaker 1: part by Microsoft to use his content for their Xbox service,

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Speaker 1: would be able to help subsidy the effort. The dig

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00:12:01,679 --> 00:12:06,680
Speaker 1: wound up costing about fifty thousand dollars. Before the actual dig,

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00:12:07,040 --> 00:12:10,720
Speaker 1: Joe and the crew used ground penetrating radar, which revealed

220
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Speaker 1: between sixty and seventy different trenches, but the city wouldn't

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Speaker 1: just let him drill test holes in everyone.

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Speaker 2: That's kind of a dangerous situation. So they told me

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00:12:21,960 --> 00:12:23,880
Speaker 2: I had to get it down to two, and I

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00:12:23,960 --> 00:12:26,600
Speaker 2: was stuck until my wife said something silly and said

225
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Speaker 2: what about the scrap book? And I was like, what

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Speaker 2: about the scrap book? And I've been self employed since

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Speaker 2: nineteen eighty one. She made scrapbooks of all the companies

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00:12:34,480 --> 00:12:36,880
Speaker 2: we had different things I went on. So I went

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Speaker 2: up in the attic and got this scrap book from

230
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Speaker 2: Alamo Wasaye the company that we're talking about, And in

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Speaker 2: there was actually some old polaroids showing they weren't about Atari.

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Speaker 2: There were polaroids about doing improvements and construction at the

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Speaker 2: landfill out there. And it didn't show me where Atari was,

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Speaker 2: but it gave me some angles of some buildings in

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Speaker 2: the background. I had the l Paso Times, the only

236
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Speaker 2: photograph of the event I had that I took that

237
00:13:03,120 --> 00:13:05,760
Speaker 2: put them all on a Google image with clear overlays,

238
00:13:05,960 --> 00:13:09,439
Speaker 2: threw straight lines till all these lines started to intersect.

239
00:13:10,320 --> 00:13:12,200
Speaker 2: That gave me an idea. I got it down to two.

240
00:13:12,280 --> 00:13:14,960
Speaker 2: Then the Environment department at that point said okay, you

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Speaker 2: can do the test holes.

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Speaker 1: Now, the test holes revealed garbage that could date the

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Speaker 1: trench to September nineteen eighty three, some newspapers that kind

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00:13:24,240 --> 00:13:27,920
Speaker 1: of thing. Then came socks and care bears and bumper

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00:13:27,960 --> 00:13:31,520
Speaker 1: stickers and all sorts of other trash, so Joe knew

246
00:13:31,559 --> 00:13:34,679
Speaker 1: they were likely in the right place. To be clear,

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00:13:35,160 --> 00:13:38,720
Speaker 1: this wasn't a one person operation. There was the documentary

248
00:13:38,760 --> 00:13:42,720
Speaker 1: team as well as cultural archaeologists and equipment operators, but

249
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Speaker 1: it's also true that without Joe's expertise, none of them

250
00:13:46,240 --> 00:13:50,800
Speaker 1: were probably going to accomplish much. So in April twenty fourteen,

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00:13:51,200 --> 00:13:56,160
Speaker 1: Joe and the crew started digging and digging. A small

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Speaker 1: crowd of curious gamers was roped off, though no one

253
00:13:59,000 --> 00:14:03,079
Speaker 1: threatened them with a broom handle this time. Howard Scott Warshaw,

254
00:14:03,200 --> 00:14:07,040
Speaker 1: who programmed ET, was invited to witness it, presumably as

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00:14:07,120 --> 00:14:12,560
Speaker 1: some kind of therapeutic closure. And then there was the concrete.

256
00:14:12,720 --> 00:14:15,640
Speaker 1: Though there wasn't much of it to smash through. It

257
00:14:15,640 --> 00:14:18,600
Speaker 1: didn't seem like much was poured, just enough to somewhat

258
00:14:18,640 --> 00:14:22,880
Speaker 1: discourage teenaged looters in nineteen eighty three, and then games

259
00:14:22,920 --> 00:14:26,720
Speaker 1: began getting pulled up. There was ET, of course, but

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00:14:26,960 --> 00:14:31,800
Speaker 1: plenty of other games, good games too, Centipede, Raiders of

261
00:14:31,840 --> 00:14:34,840
Speaker 1: the Lost Arc Adventure, and a lot of them in

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00:14:34,880 --> 00:14:38,360
Speaker 1: good condition. Some of them were even still in multi packs,

263
00:14:38,760 --> 00:14:42,320
Speaker 1: meaning they were either headed to or coming back from retailers.

264
00:14:43,080 --> 00:14:45,680
Speaker 1: That was in sharp contrast to a tory's claim that

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00:14:45,760 --> 00:14:49,960
Speaker 1: the games were the equivalent of rotten vegetables. In all,

266
00:14:50,440 --> 00:14:54,600
Speaker 1: Joe retrieved one thousand, three hundred and eighty eight games,

267
00:14:54,840 --> 00:14:59,000
Speaker 1: along with consoles and controllers. The story was absolutely true.

268
00:14:59,600 --> 00:15:03,080
Speaker 1: A tar had buried the sins of their gluttony in Alamgordo.

269
00:15:04,000 --> 00:15:06,880
Speaker 1: But when the cameras were off and the documentary team left,

270
00:15:07,360 --> 00:15:10,760
Speaker 1: there was an outstanding question, what do you do with

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00:15:10,960 --> 00:15:14,640
Speaker 1: one three hundred and eighty eight foul smelling games you've

272
00:15:14,680 --> 00:15:23,840
Speaker 1: liberated from a landfill. About one hundred of the games

273
00:15:23,840 --> 00:15:26,520
Speaker 1: were given to crew members of the movie, but the

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00:15:26,640 --> 00:15:31,120
Speaker 1: vast majority belonged to the city of Alamagordo. These games

275
00:15:31,120 --> 00:15:35,240
Speaker 1: weren't worthless, not even close. Any Atari game will fetch

276
00:15:35,280 --> 00:15:39,000
Speaker 1: at least a couple of dollars, but certain titles, especially

277
00:15:39,120 --> 00:15:43,360
Speaker 1: rare or packaged ones, can be collector's items. This stash

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00:15:43,400 --> 00:15:46,800
Speaker 1: in particular, was unique. It was a part of Atari's

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00:15:46,920 --> 00:15:52,160
Speaker 1: history really part of its grand finale. So despite their stench,

280
00:15:52,680 --> 00:15:56,200
Speaker 1: Joe knew they'd be appealing to vintage game collectors. But

281
00:15:56,280 --> 00:15:59,240
Speaker 1: it turned out that some were already up on eBay

282
00:15:59,840 --> 00:16:01,920
Speaker 1: just hours after he had dug them up.

283
00:16:03,440 --> 00:16:05,400
Speaker 2: When I looked on eBay, there was fakes on there.

284
00:16:05,600 --> 00:16:07,360
Speaker 2: You could tell there were fakes. You know, they didn't

285
00:16:07,400 --> 00:16:10,640
Speaker 2: weren't even good fakes. Somebody had taken some Atari games

286
00:16:10,640 --> 00:16:12,880
Speaker 2: and boxes and just ran over with a pickup truck.

287
00:16:12,920 --> 00:16:16,560
Speaker 2: You can see the tire prints on the game box,

288
00:16:17,080 --> 00:16:19,160
Speaker 2: and they were trying to sell them as from the

289
00:16:19,200 --> 00:16:19,960
Speaker 2: Atari gig.

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00:16:20,680 --> 00:16:24,160
Speaker 1: Naturally, some of the games were crushed, the real ones,

291
00:16:24,280 --> 00:16:28,160
Speaker 1: not just the fake ones, but others were incredibly well

292
00:16:28,200 --> 00:16:32,040
Speaker 1: preserved thanks to the new Mexico climate, and so Joe

293
00:16:32,120 --> 00:16:34,160
Speaker 1: began putting the real games up on eBay.

294
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Speaker 2: So I sold eight hundred games, and at that point

295
00:16:39,000 --> 00:16:42,920
Speaker 2: they went to eighteen different countries and forty seven of

296
00:16:42,960 --> 00:16:45,640
Speaker 2: the United States States because I, like I said, I

297
00:16:45,680 --> 00:16:48,480
Speaker 2: tracked everywhere every one of them went. So they went

298
00:16:48,520 --> 00:16:54,240
Speaker 2: to Brazil and Morocco and Indonesia and France and Germany, Italy,

299
00:16:54,720 --> 00:16:57,640
Speaker 2: all over the world. It was just amazing how people

300
00:16:57,640 --> 00:16:59,760
Speaker 2: wanted these and the story.

301
00:17:00,600 --> 00:17:03,680
Speaker 1: Some sold for a little money, some for a lot.

302
00:17:04,400 --> 00:17:08,560
Speaker 2: So I mean cartridge themselves. They were selling them about

303
00:17:08,560 --> 00:17:11,639
Speaker 2: about one thousand dollars apiece. At the lowest was eight

304
00:17:11,720 --> 00:17:16,080
Speaker 2: hundred dollars et in the box. The first round they

305
00:17:16,119 --> 00:17:19,600
Speaker 2: averaged a little about twelve hundred, and the highest paid

306
00:17:19,640 --> 00:17:21,960
Speaker 2: at that time was one three hundred and twenty five

307
00:17:22,000 --> 00:17:26,000
Speaker 2: dollars for an et in the boxes individual out of Portland,

308
00:17:26,080 --> 00:17:29,560
Speaker 2: Oregon that paid the highest for one. So ET's were

309
00:17:29,560 --> 00:17:31,720
Speaker 2: in the thousand dollars range all the way across the board,

310
00:17:31,800 --> 00:17:35,639
Speaker 2: nothing less, and the others raised anywhere from some fifty

311
00:17:35,640 --> 00:17:37,760
Speaker 2: dollars ones up. In fact, I had a lot of

312
00:17:37,800 --> 00:17:40,760
Speaker 2: components that I didn't even know what they were, internal components,

313
00:17:40,800 --> 00:17:43,280
Speaker 2: and some were just the cartrige case with no components

314
00:17:43,359 --> 00:17:46,600
Speaker 2: busted up. I even bagged those up, said twenty five dollars.

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00:17:47,200 --> 00:17:51,040
Speaker 1: Not all of the games were sold, considering their cultural value,

316
00:17:51,160 --> 00:17:53,359
Speaker 1: some were given away to museums around the world.

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00:17:54,080 --> 00:17:57,040
Speaker 2: You know, Frankfurt, Germany. Rome, they're ten blocks from the

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00:17:57,080 --> 00:17:59,960
Speaker 2: Vatican in Rome. At the Bigamous they're in the space

319
00:18:00,040 --> 00:18:04,840
Speaker 2: Sonia and Henry Ford, the Strong Ontario and so anything

320
00:18:04,840 --> 00:18:08,080
Speaker 2: that was museum related. I'd send them packages of you know,

321
00:18:08,520 --> 00:18:11,200
Speaker 2: six or seven games documentation.

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00:18:12,359 --> 00:18:15,240
Speaker 1: That first sale brought in around one hundred and eight

323
00:18:15,320 --> 00:18:19,760
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. In twenty twenty two, Joe dipped into his

324
00:18:19,840 --> 00:18:22,840
Speaker 1: second batch of two hundred and eighty games, and again

325
00:18:23,160 --> 00:18:26,560
Speaker 1: collectors were happy to oblige him, so.

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Speaker 2: They sold two to three times what they were going

327
00:18:28,680 --> 00:18:31,199
Speaker 2: for the first time, ET went up to twenty four

328
00:18:31,320 --> 00:18:34,760
Speaker 2: hundred dollars. The ET did jump from the high up

329
00:18:34,840 --> 00:18:37,439
Speaker 2: one time at thirteen jumped to twenty four hundred dollars.

330
00:18:38,080 --> 00:18:39,720
Speaker 2: And I doubt if you can touch one now for

331
00:18:39,840 --> 00:18:41,840
Speaker 2: less than four or five thousand dollars, if you can

332
00:18:41,880 --> 00:18:45,360
Speaker 2: find one, because the other thing is very few were

333
00:18:45,400 --> 00:18:48,760
Speaker 2: being resold. You know, these people that bought them wanted

334
00:18:48,800 --> 00:18:51,000
Speaker 2: them for a lot of reasons. And that was another

335
00:18:51,080 --> 00:18:52,160
Speaker 2: interesting part of the story.

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00:18:52,200 --> 00:18:57,959
Speaker 1: Too good point, after all, why buy literal trash games that,

337
00:18:58,200 --> 00:19:00,919
Speaker 1: if they were actually in better shape, might cost a

338
00:19:00,960 --> 00:19:01,520
Speaker 1: lot less?

339
00:19:02,480 --> 00:19:05,640
Speaker 2: Why did people buy them? Individual and Rhode Island, who

340
00:19:06,000 --> 00:19:08,960
Speaker 2: had several palsy was in the shriner's hospital, told me

341
00:19:09,040 --> 00:19:11,200
Speaker 2: he played Atari while he was in there. The nurses

342
00:19:11,240 --> 00:19:13,639
Speaker 2: made him play Atari, which he loved doing anyway, and

343
00:19:13,680 --> 00:19:15,200
Speaker 2: I said, oh, yeah, just keep you busy. So he

344
00:19:15,240 --> 00:19:17,600
Speaker 2: didn't drive the nurses crazy. He says, no, it's a

345
00:19:17,640 --> 00:19:21,040
Speaker 2: medical tool hand eye coordination. They actually use it as

346
00:19:21,080 --> 00:19:23,000
Speaker 2: a medical tool to get kids to use it to

347
00:19:23,040 --> 00:19:24,840
Speaker 2: get their hands and their eyes to work together.

348
00:19:25,720 --> 00:19:29,440
Speaker 1: All told, roughly two hundred thousand dollars was raised from

349
00:19:29,440 --> 00:19:32,600
Speaker 1: the sale of the game cartridges, but the money didn't

350
00:19:32,640 --> 00:19:35,399
Speaker 1: go into his pocket. The games were a part of

351
00:19:35,440 --> 00:19:39,160
Speaker 1: Alamagordo's lure as much as they were Atari's. The funds

352
00:19:39,160 --> 00:19:41,480
Speaker 1: were put back into the city to address some long

353
00:19:41,520 --> 00:19:44,800
Speaker 1: standing projects they had never gotten the necessary money to tackle.

354
00:19:45,359 --> 00:19:48,520
Speaker 1: Joe and his wife, Deborah, are both volunteer members of

355
00:19:48,560 --> 00:19:53,000
Speaker 1: the Tularosa Basin Historical Society, which is dedicated to preserving

356
00:19:53,080 --> 00:19:56,520
Speaker 1: local history. The reason Joe pursued the dig was not

357
00:19:56,560 --> 00:19:59,119
Speaker 1: only for the challenge, but because of a deal he

358
00:19:59,200 --> 00:20:01,240
Speaker 1: struck with the city.

359
00:20:01,400 --> 00:20:02,840
Speaker 2: I just went and said, here's what I'm willing to

360
00:20:02,840 --> 00:20:05,359
Speaker 2: do to tell this story. It's kind of an interesting story,

361
00:20:05,520 --> 00:20:08,439
Speaker 2: publicity wise and everything. And then as I went through it,

362
00:20:08,480 --> 00:20:10,800
Speaker 2: I dropped that and said, listen, I'll find them as

363
00:20:10,840 --> 00:20:13,439
Speaker 2: long as I can decide where the money goes. I

364
00:20:13,480 --> 00:20:16,240
Speaker 2: don't really want the money. What I want is the

365
00:20:16,280 --> 00:20:19,520
Speaker 2: money to go into the things in albal Gordo, not

366
00:20:19,880 --> 00:20:23,600
Speaker 2: potholes or you know, fixing roads or anything like that.

367
00:20:23,720 --> 00:20:26,720
Speaker 2: I wanted something when we're done that there's still something

368
00:20:26,760 --> 00:20:29,280
Speaker 2: there that you can know that Theatari paid for it.

369
00:20:29,600 --> 00:20:32,480
Speaker 2: This whole adventure paid the deal. So that's the deal

370
00:20:32,520 --> 00:20:35,120
Speaker 2: I negotiated with the city. I'll do all this. When

371
00:20:35,160 --> 00:20:37,679
Speaker 2: the money comes in, I'll tell you where the money's

372
00:20:37,720 --> 00:20:40,240
Speaker 2: going to go, and then that money would go there.

373
00:20:40,520 --> 00:20:41,920
Speaker 2: And that's what we did with this.

374
00:20:41,920 --> 00:20:45,400
Speaker 1: On that, this and that turned out to be a lot.

375
00:20:46,080 --> 00:20:48,879
Speaker 1: Some of the money went to Ala Mcgordo, including money

376
00:20:48,880 --> 00:20:51,560
Speaker 1: meant to recoup the cost of the dig, but the

377
00:20:51,600 --> 00:20:53,560
Speaker 1: rest went to local projects.

378
00:20:53,840 --> 00:20:56,800
Speaker 2: What I did on the first round of eight hundred games.

379
00:20:57,280 --> 00:21:01,320
Speaker 2: Money went to the Alba Gorda Library for some improvements there,

380
00:21:01,640 --> 00:21:04,520
Speaker 2: to the police department for training equipment and other things

381
00:21:04,680 --> 00:21:07,679
Speaker 2: that they needed, things that they normally in their budget

382
00:21:07,720 --> 00:21:09,800
Speaker 2: and they have to really scrounge to get enough money

383
00:21:09,840 --> 00:21:12,040
Speaker 2: to buy and so this gave them that flush fund

384
00:21:12,040 --> 00:21:15,480
Speaker 2: to buy stuff that they needed but could never afford.

385
00:21:15,840 --> 00:21:18,199
Speaker 2: The Zoom took an old building renovated it into a

386
00:21:18,200 --> 00:21:21,920
Speaker 2: new monkey barn in which we have new Brazilian monkeys

387
00:21:21,960 --> 00:21:24,040
Speaker 2: and some other things there in there, and then money

388
00:21:24,080 --> 00:21:27,040
Speaker 2: to the Historical Society, the local Historic Society, to the

389
00:21:27,080 --> 00:21:30,320
Speaker 2: local museum, so it's distributed that time around to those

390
00:21:30,400 --> 00:21:31,520
Speaker 2: four entities.

391
00:21:32,600 --> 00:21:35,439
Speaker 1: The games also helped with the ongoing restoration of the

392
00:21:35,520 --> 00:21:39,359
Speaker 1: Dady School, which was originally established to teach English to

393
00:21:39,400 --> 00:21:42,520
Speaker 1: Spanish speaking students before they moved on to public schools,

394
00:21:42,960 --> 00:21:47,320
Speaker 1: effectively segregating them for a period of time. Full desegregation

395
00:21:47,440 --> 00:21:50,960
Speaker 1: for all students didn't happen until nineteen forty nine, but

396
00:21:51,080 --> 00:21:54,080
Speaker 1: Joe hopes the property can have a new different life,

397
00:21:54,480 --> 00:21:57,280
Speaker 1: both as a community hub and a place to learn

398
00:21:57,320 --> 00:21:58,880
Speaker 1: about its challenging history.

399
00:22:00,119 --> 00:22:02,440
Speaker 2: Was on the condemnation list, was about to be torn down.

400
00:22:02,480 --> 00:22:05,360
Speaker 2: It's an old adobe from that time period. We able

401
00:22:05,440 --> 00:22:07,480
Speaker 2: to get it off that, and then I was able

402
00:22:07,480 --> 00:22:09,480
Speaker 2: to make I raise all the funding I needed to

403
00:22:09,480 --> 00:22:11,960
Speaker 2: get the thing, not just the Atari money, the National

404
00:22:12,080 --> 00:22:17,320
Speaker 2: Endowment money, city money, donation money that we're actually restoring

405
00:22:17,320 --> 00:22:19,439
Speaker 2: the whole thing into a community center in Park, so

406
00:22:19,480 --> 00:22:22,320
Speaker 2: it'll be the Dudley School Community Center and Park now,

407
00:22:22,600 --> 00:22:24,879
Speaker 2: and there will also be a museum telling that story,

408
00:22:25,080 --> 00:22:28,600
Speaker 2: tell her why this building, why about that time.

409
00:22:30,080 --> 00:22:33,320
Speaker 1: Today Joe is down to just a handful of cartridges,

410
00:22:34,000 --> 00:22:36,720
Speaker 1: about one hundred and twenty of them. Joe things still

411
00:22:36,720 --> 00:22:40,719
Speaker 1: remain in storage. He personally kept about a dozen. But

412
00:22:40,760 --> 00:22:43,040
Speaker 1: he's not much of a gamer, so he chose games

413
00:22:43,080 --> 00:22:47,840
Speaker 1: he remembers from what was popular in arcades, Space Invaders, Centipede,

414
00:22:48,320 --> 00:22:51,240
Speaker 1: and of course he had to grab Etea And no,

415
00:22:51,560 --> 00:22:55,360
Speaker 1: there's no chance that Landfall contains the missing sword Quest prizes.

416
00:22:56,080 --> 00:22:58,159
Speaker 2: Now, we didn't find anything like that. Now, we found

417
00:22:58,200 --> 00:23:00,960
Speaker 2: the various sword Quest because we all say sword Quest,

418
00:23:01,000 --> 00:23:03,160
Speaker 2: but you gotta look a little clos there's earth, there's water,

419
00:23:03,480 --> 00:23:07,040
Speaker 2: and there's different versions of it. And we had three

420
00:23:07,080 --> 00:23:10,280
Speaker 2: of the four versions that came out because we did

421
00:23:10,280 --> 00:23:13,199
Speaker 2: have I had people, but you just brought up the

422
00:23:13,240 --> 00:23:16,760
Speaker 2: same thing that were hardcore sword Quest individuals that had

423
00:23:16,800 --> 00:23:19,240
Speaker 2: to have that game. That was another top selling one

424
00:23:19,760 --> 00:23:23,359
Speaker 2: because of that, you know that situation, because none of

425
00:23:23,359 --> 00:23:25,760
Speaker 2: the other games had variations, you know what I mean.

426
00:23:25,800 --> 00:23:28,840
Speaker 2: The sword Quest was four different types of games, but

427
00:23:28,880 --> 00:23:31,000
Speaker 2: it was still sword Quest. No, none of the other

428
00:23:31,040 --> 00:23:34,439
Speaker 2: games did that. And so now I'd heard about it

429
00:23:34,800 --> 00:23:37,040
Speaker 2: you know, there's no way that something like that would

430
00:23:37,080 --> 00:23:39,080
Speaker 2: have ended up in the warehouses in El Paso.

431
00:23:39,680 --> 00:23:42,399
Speaker 1: According to Joe, there may be as many as eight

432
00:23:42,480 --> 00:23:46,040
Speaker 1: hundred thousand games left in the landfill, but the city

433
00:23:46,119 --> 00:23:49,440
Speaker 1: is never going to authorize another Atari dig. That's why

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Speaker 1: collectors paid a premium. The supply for an Alamgordo original

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Speaker 1: is limited.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, I know exactly how many came out. There's

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Speaker 2: still seven hundred and ninety two thousand more down there,

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Speaker 2: but the dig will never happen again. The environ department

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Speaker 2: in the city both said no one will ever be

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Speaker 2: allowed to go, and I wouldn't assist anybody if they

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Speaker 2: wanted to anyway, because that would ruin the value of

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Speaker 2: the ones that the people that bought.

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Speaker 1: In a way, Atari collapsed, so Alamgordo could rise a little.

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Speaker 1: At least. The games might all be gone, but their

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Speaker 1: legacy lives on in Alamgordo's historical buildings and community attractions.

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Speaker 1: And yes, in the unique smell of an original Alamagordo

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Speaker 1: Atari game.

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Speaker 2: You'll know it came out of the dump because it

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00:24:35,480 --> 00:24:42,040
Speaker 2: still has that that smell, basically musky garbage. Again, the

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00:24:42,040 --> 00:24:43,879
Speaker 2: garbage didn't make it in it, but it was buried

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Speaker 2: under twenty six feet of garbage over the top of it.

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Speaker 2: And we have them in the local museum and I

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Speaker 2: go down there right now pull one out. Or actually,

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Speaker 2: when we open up the glass doors there's a little

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Speaker 2: bit of a whiff that still comes out. And that's

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Speaker 2: many years, you know, nine years later. So no, it's

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Speaker 2: something it doesn't really go completely away, but it's controllable.

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Speaker 1: So if you're ever in the market for an official

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Speaker 1: Alamgordo atari game, do a quality check and make sure

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Speaker 1: it smells terrible.

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Speaker 3: The Legend of sword Quest is a production of iHeart

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Speaker 3: Podcasts and School of Humans. This episode was written by

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Speaker 3: Jake Rosson and hosted by Jamie LOFTUS producers are Miranda

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00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:32,840
Speaker 3: Hawkins and Josh Fisher. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elc Crowley,

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Speaker 3: Brandon Barr, and Jason English. Our show editor is Mary Doo.

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Speaker 3: Audio engineering by Graham Gibson, Research and fact checking by

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Speaker 3: Austin Thompson and Jake Rosson. Original score by Jesse Niswanger.

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Speaker 3: This episode was sound designed by Jonathan Washington, with additional

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Speaker 3: editing by Josh Fisher. Mixing and mastering by Miranda Hawkins.

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Speaker 3: Show logo by Lucy Quintonia