Two Atari published titles , both from 1982 , '' E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial '' and '' Pac-Man '' , are frequently blamed for contributing to the video game crash of 1983 . To clear inventory and save money in wake of the crash , Atari shipped about 700,000 Atari 2600 games , including unsold lots of '' Pac-Man '' and '' E.T. '' , to a landfill in Alamogordo , New Mexico in 1983 . Until 2014 , there was skepticism of how much Atari had buried there , in some cases estimates of millions of cartridges , creating an urban legend of an Atari video game burial . The legend was verified in 2014 when interested parties were able to dig up a portion of the landfill and confirmed the presence of unsold Atari games
Atari video game burial
Atari video game burial
Atari 2600