An "ET" Atari game cartridge, found in garbage buried deep in a US desert, has been added to the Smithsonian's video game history collection.
The game was one of hundreds recovered at a New Mexico landfill last year as a team of documentary filmmakers investigated a decades-old urban legend that centred on Atari secretly dumping the cartridges.
The "ET" game had the reputation of being the worst game ever and contributed to the demise of the company.
Museum specialist Drew Robarge says the Smithsonian has some amazing artifacts that represent big moments in video game history, including Ralph Baer's "Brown Box" prototype for the first video game console and a Pong arcade cabinet.
However, missing was something that represented what he called "the darkest days" of the early 1980s when the US video game industry crashed.
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He describes the "ET" cartridge as a defining artifact, saying it tells a story about the challenges of adapting blockbuster movies to video games and the end of an era in video game manufacturing.
