Idaho man: I buried the Atari 2600 games in desert

An Idaho man says he was the one who buried the recently discovered Atari video games in the New Mexico desert.

Just over a week ago, copies of the infamously bad E.T. video game from 1982 were found during an excavation in Alamogordo, New Mexico for an upcoming documentary exclusively for Xbox One.

The excavation was due to an urban legend dating back 30 years ago that Atari allegedly dumped 14 truck loads of unsold copies of Atari games including the E.T. game, based on the Steven Spielberg movie, which is widely considered to be one of the worst video games ever produced and is also considered to be one of the contributing factors to the video game crash of 1983.

At the time Atari employees denied the dumping ever occurred. But the excavation uncovered copies of the game and others still in its original packaging.

Now, James Heller, of Nampa, Idaho, says he was responsible for the dumping telling KBOI that it is not a conspiracy or mystery.

He said: “I had been charged with getting rid of it as quickly and inexpensively as possible and so I did. That was my job …. No mystery whatsoever. People made it a mystery.”

Heller also said that the dumping site was covered with cement following several raids by kids

The documentary, produced by Xbox Entertainment Studios and directed by Zak Penn, writer of X Men: The Last Stand and The Avengers, is scheduled for release in 2014.