Gaming Historian tackles the Atari landfill myth. Recently, the Atari landfill was uncovered in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Back in 1983, Atari cleared out their El Paso, TX plant and dumped a bunch of their product into a landfill. The actual dumping of product is not legend, Atari even admitted they did it back in 1983. The real legend was that they dumped nothing but ET cartridges. This excavation proved it was exactly what Atari said it was over 30 years ago.