Thirty years ago, the E.T. game was released on the Atari 2600 and, well, it was bad. Really bad. So bad, in fact, that urban legend has it that “millions of copies” were packed onto nine trucks, burying all of these old game cartridges in some landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. No game, regardless of how bad it may be, deserves that kind of fate.

And so, on the 30th anniversary of this classic Atari game based on a beloved Hollywood movie, film company Fuel is going to dig up the landfill to look for the buried games, filming the whole process for a documentary. The Atari port of Pac-Man is said to be buried too and Fuel might find it. Who would have ever thought that dumpster diving could be fodder for a movie? I guess our little friend is finally phoning home?

[Source]

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While Sony and Nintendo continue to make advances, striving to take handheld gaming consoles further, some are just looking for a step back. Sites like nintendo8.com, the iCade arcade dock for iPad, cell-phone Pacman; they all take us back to the good days of 8-bit.

And now the Atari “Stella” handheld Flashback 2 console joins the ranks.

Built by “Mario,” the orange device has all the right features: A D-pad for the joystick, a paddle-control dial, the red button – even a 9-pin port for a second controller, all on a 3.5″ LCD screen. It even has a slot at the top big enough for the old game cartridges.

The orange console has a Gameboy SP battery built-in, and the guts of an Atari Flashback 2, getting 2 hours of battery life.

Check out the video for a full demo:

[Technabob via Ben Heck Forums]

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