'Worst videogame of all time' to be exhumed from its New Mexico grave

Documentary crew will attempt to recover ET: The Extra-Terrestrial from the desert

Box art for the 1982 game, credit: Atari

A documentary film crew is set to spend six months digging up a landfill site in America as they search for signs of E.T.

But anyone hoping they will find little green men will be disappointed since the team is actually looking for millions of unsold copies of the flop videogame E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial that were said to have been buried in September 1983.

Canadian film production company Fuel Industries has been given the go-ahead by landfill bosses in Alamorgordo, New Mexico, to locate the vast quanty of cartridges.

They will have to scour 100 acres to find the haul which some critics doubt even exists, claiming the numbers to be far too big.

Around five million copies of the game were made for the Atari 2600 console but only 1.5 million were sold as word spread about the poor gameplay.

The game, which has been named many times as one of the worst ever made, lost Atari a fortune and it was blamed for playing a part in the 1982 videogame crash.

As well as burying the games, the tip's workers are believed to have run a steamroller over them and poured concrete over the top, making the search even more difficult.

Susie Galea, Alamogordo's mayor, said: “I hope more people find out about Alamogordo through this opportunity that we have to unearth the Atari games in the landfill.”

The hunt for the cartridges will coincide with the 30th anniversary of the burial.

If you’re curious to see what video-game deserves such a fate, then have a look at the gameplay below: