Our journey to excavate the cache of discarded E.T. Atari cartridges began on a rainy, Wednesday afternoon in Fargo…
It was an afternoon ripped from the pages of a dimestore noire thriller by Hammett or Chandler. We caught the 5:45 to Chi-town and then the 9:20 to El Paso.
It was after midnight (makes it sound more dramatic, right?) when Bret Weber and I landed in El Paso and spent the night in a seedy airport hotel (it was actually quite nice). We’re not sure why where here in El Paso (actually, it’s the closest airport to our final destination in Alamogordo), but we know where to look (because we read Raiford Guins’s fine book on the afterlife of video games.)
There are three addresses associated with Atari here and on our way West, we’ll stop at them and see what there is to see and take some photographs. Then we’ll head west into the desert, to see what it has for us.
Depending on our schedule, any limits that the producers place on our media output, and what we do, I’ll have updates here.
For updates in the social medias follow #DiggingET.
Here’s some coverage in my local daily.
Archaeology of the Mediterranean World 