Earlier this year, excavators in New Mexico successfully reignited interest in what some had considered an urban legend - the infamous Atari video game burial.

In 1983, gaming company Atari were in financial trouble. They undertook to dump truckloads of unsold video games in the city of Alamogordo. Among them were many copies of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial - widely considered one of the worst games of all time, and a huge commercial failure.

There had been consistent interest in the 'gaming landfill'. Despite the fact that it was covered in the media at the time, it had taken on the status of urban legend over the years.

The site was dug up earlier this year, as part of recently released documentary Atari: Game Over. More than 1,000 game cartridges were recovered, some of which have already been sold on eBay by the city of Alamogordo. 

Now a copy of E.T. recovered during the dig has ended up in one of the most unlikely places - the world famous Smithsonian. The museum has added the game to its video game history collection.

In a Smithsonian blog, Drew Robarge writes that "the cartridge can tell many stories: the ongoing challenge of making a good film to a video game adaptation, the decline of Atari, the end of an era for video game manufacturing, and the video game cartridge life cycle.

"The cartridge also serves as closure for many things: the urban legend of the burial, the golden years of Atari, an era where American companies dominated the console scene. All of these possible interpretations make for a rich and complicated object. As they say, one man's trash is another man's treasure," he concludes.

Not bad for an awful video game.