New Mexico Landfill to be Excavated in Hunt for Legendary Atari Merchandise

A landfill site in Alamogordo, New Mexico is set to become the scene of an unlikely treasure hunt for several truckloads of early 80s Atari merchandise, including the video game of Steven Spielberg’s 1982 smash hit movie E.T. - been dubbed the worst video game ever made. While the gaming community is divided on the exact contents of the nine trucks known to have deposited Atari products in the landfill in 1983, the prospect that it may be about to be exhumed has caused quite a stir. According to a report by news channel KRQE, Alamogordo's City Commission recently approved a deal with Canadian film production and entertainment company, Fuel Industries to excavate the site and create a documentary surrounding the Alamogordo landfill ‘legend’. The legend surrounding the contents of the nine trucks has been fuelled by a spate of flawed products the company had either on-sale, or in development. Once such product was the video game version of E.T., for which the company had paid a handsome license fee only to be left with a reported 3.5 million unsold cartridges. The games itself has been widely ridiculed by gamers and labelled as ‘the worst game ever made’, but has never-the-less developed something of a cult following. Other products the company is widely reported to have been struggling to off-load at the time include a port of the popular arcade game, Pac-Man. Reports suggest that the company may have been stuck with as many as five million cartridges of that title. According to KRQE, Joe Lewandowski, who ran a garbage company at the time, claimed to know where the buried stash of Atari goodies is located on the 100 acre landfill and that he saw what went into the ground. "It was the game systems, actually the game systems themselves it was actual cartridges and games, ET and so on," Lewandowski is reported to have said. No one knows for sure what treasures lay buried in the ground at Alamogordo, but if the documentary makers get really lucky they might just stumble across one of Atari’s doomed Mindlink Systems. Read More 30m Gallon Facility to Produce Aviation Biofuels from Waste for United Airlines AltAir Fuels has received a definitive purchase agreement from United Airlines for biofuels produced from agricultural wastes at a retooled refinery in California. Crime and Government Meddling with Markets Hampering Metal Recyclers The “natural” flow of metals around the world is being hindered by government “meddling” in the form of bans and other restrictions on non-ferrous scrap exports, according to Robert Stein. New SITA Recycling Plant in Birmingham Producing SRF & RDF SITA has opened a new £7 million solid recovered fuel facility in Birmingham to process commercial waste from across the city into Climafuel for a CEMEX cement works in Rugby.