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Released in 1982 for the Atari 2600, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial - E.T., for simplicity's sake - was a stinker of biblical proportions. Millions of copies went unsold and millions more were returned, back in the day when you could do such a thing, and Atari, so the story goes, dumped them all - as many as 20 truckloads - into a landfill near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The whole thing was then entombed in concrete, and all involved vowed to never speak of it again. (I'm guessing on that last part.)

The burial slowly faded into obscurity and eventually became something of an urban legend, and even the precise location of the dump site was lost, in part because Alamogordo was appalled by the sheer volume of crap being poured into it and put a halt to the practice. But as so often happens, the fading of memory was followed by the growth of curiosity, and earlier this week Alamogordo approved the excavation of the site by a Canadian-based film company, Fuel Industries, which wants to produce a documentary on the "Alamogordo landfill legend."

The challenge of locating the dump site has apparently been met by Joe Lewandowski, who ran a garbage company at the time of the E.T. dump and claims, Commander Adama-like, that he knows where it is. With Lewandowski pointing the way, Fuel Industries has six months to find and dig up the site, a span of time that will cover the 30th anniversary of the burial. And while Alamogordo was less than thrilled with the scale of the event when it happened, it now hopes that some good will come of it. "I hope more people find out about Alamogordo through this opportunity that we have to unearth the Atari games in the landfill," Alamogordo Mayor Susie Galea said.

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The Famicom Test Cart was used to, well, test Nintendo's Family Computer. It might be rare, but it's certainly not exciting.

But it is somewhat interesting! And probably more so for hardcore collectors. As Famicom World explains, there were test cartridges for the console itself as well as ones for the controllers.

On Yahoo! Auctions Japan, someone is trying to unload a Famicom Test Cart for controllers. The opening bid is 120,000 yen or US$1,200.

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Yesterday the people of 1985alternativo, responsible for Watman (GBA) and Oh Mummy Genesis (Mega Drive) have announced their next project.

The game will once again be a Mega Drive game, and in a genre that the hardware was made for: a shoot'em up.

It's called Antarex and will be your typical horizontally scrolling shmup. No price or release date are known at this time, but seeing 1985alternativo's previous releases we can expect it to be very cheap, probably no more than 30 Euros.

All there is to share about it as of yet is the first two screenshots:

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You saw the Unadulterated 8-Bit Glory Last December, and here is the more refined side of pixelation. Michael Scott took the traditional Hearts from the Original Deck and expanded them into the complete Traditional Deck. All of the cards have been redesigned for these new decks.

Here are a few of the happy comments from the last campaign. These can be found on the comment section on the main page.

"Just got my cards in, they are amazing! So are the chips and dice!"

"I'm really happy with everything, they look awesome!"

"Fantastic campaign! These cards are excellent quality and I know my buddies are going to have a blast at poker night!"

"Today was super exciting. It truly felt like Christmas."

"Got my cards and fantastic goodies! I feel thrilled to have been rewarded so greatly for my humble pledge. Big Thanks!"

Along with the traditional faces he wanted an equally traditional back with an 8-Bit flare of course. We present them to you as a pair, Red and Blue. These decks are ready to go. The boxes, backs and faces have already been been submitted to and approved by The United States Playing Card Company.

We have added the Traditional 2600 Deck as well as the Mini Gold Deck.

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A mere three bids have been made thus far, but already the price sits at $7600! That's a 759,900% increase on his initial investment, in case you were wondering, and that number is bound to shoot up even higher! Sure, he could have kept the device and been the envy of his peers for years to come, but that kind of scratch ain't nuthin' to scoff at either!

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