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Comment by cmapes | Hacker News Reader

No one has a rom? Seems less messy.

Of course people have ROMs. There are even hacked versions fixing most of the bugs and adding additional features (I'm thinking here of a very long writeup explaining exactly how they did it, and claiming it isn't such a bad game when they're fixed, which was submitted to either Reddit or HN). But the physical thing is not a ROM.

It's also not that hard of a game to find, even with the destruction: AtariAge [1] rates it a 1 out of 10 ("Common") in rarity, and I know I own at least two copies.

Also, it's interesting to note that HSW (Howard Scott Washaw, who coded the whole game in 5.5 weeks) has said at least once that he doesn't believe the landfill incident actually occurred[2].

Quoth HSW: "I had many friends all over Atari, if the company was burying all these carts someone would have told me. And the moment they did, I would have immediately grabbed a photographer and hopped the next flight out and gotten some great protraits of me standing on the pile. How could I possibly not get that picture as a momento?"

I can't believe that post is over ten years old already!

[1] http://atariage.com/software_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=157

[2] http://atariage.com/forums/topic/7337-5-million-copies-of-et...

I bought it when the Ames department store was having their final liquidation sale, the only friggin thing left in the entire store the day before closing was a pile of the E.T. game on an otherwise empty shelf marked down to a dollar or so.

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