|
That number sounds VERY low indeed compared to the reports from workers at Atari who initially leaked the information back when it happened. It was unclear from initial reports however, whether there were, or not, MULTIPLE land fills where the dumping took place. Not only were fully boxed, ready to ship, games reportedly dumped, but also games in various stages of construction, such as cartridges without boxes, no labels applied yet, complete circuit boards that had not yet been placed in cartridges etc. Various proto-type games and sub assemblies were also reportedly dumped at the same time(s).
It is likely, if all the various reported items had been dumped, that they would be in multiple land-fills, in various locations based on where the items were being used, and being produced, and/or warehoused at the time.
There were also some of these items that had been destined for land-fill, that ended up being sold as scrap instead, one way or another, and then in turn, at least some of them got sold through various re-sale specialty markets. So again it is likely that the initial total numbers released initially by the various Atari workers at the time, included these items also in the reported land-fill dump counts.
I personally know of about 500 completed circuit boards for game cartridges for the Atari 5200, that are fully functional, but minus the plastic casing that still exist due to the scrap -> re-sale path. (Including Missile Command, Ms. Pac-Man, Super Breakout). I also am aware of about 200 circuit boards in the same condition for the Atari 2600. I am sure there were MANY more than the about 700 I am counting... that if all counted together with what was found in the one landfill, probably would start to get much more close to the numbers originally talked about, (not bloated numbers that came later.)
I would really need to hunt down more information, to remember what the original numbers were stated as, but from what I remember, I think the original numbers were supposed to be in the 20,000 to 50,000 ballpark. I doubt I have any of my old green-bar BBS logs any longer however to actually verify that... (For those who do not know, even at the really fast 1200 baud at the time, compared to 300 baud. It took forever to go through many messages on a BBS, so many people would just print new messages as they logged into a BBS, then read through them later instead of just sitting at the computer for all that time.)
|
