ET found in New Mexico, GTA 5 takes to the skies, Minecraft blows our blocky minds

Week in Gaming
It's just a little sandy. It's still good, it's still good

The great ET burial has long been one of gaming's biggest urban legends. The story went that Atari buried thousands (possibly millions) of unsold copies of the critically-slaughtered game in Alamogordo, New Mexico over three decades ago, after the title proved to be a commercial flop.

The rumours were never confirmed, but now, 31 years years since the New York Times reported the mass entombment, the myth has become fact.

Microsoft buddied up with a documentary team to dig up the site where Atari allegedly dumped the cartridges. At 12:45pm local time on Saturday April 25, director Zak Penn told onlookers, "We found something."

Sure enough, the team had finally struck gold - a whole heap of ET games were exhumed from the landfill. The question is: where the hell do we put them all now?

  • Will we ever have a Game Boy 2? TechRadar discusses the outlook for handheld gaming in the final ever Gaming Spotlight (but don't worry, something even better is just around the corner).

Snoop Dogs

TechRadar recently got to spend some time with Ubisoft's high-anticipated open world hackfest, Watch Dogs, and this week we were finally allowed to talk about it.

All you PS4 and Xbox One owners can head over here to find out just how 'next-gen' Watch Dogs is, and then go take a look at just how terrifyingly real the game's hacking elements actually are.

Ubi told us that it consulted Kaspersky and a bunch of real-world Adam Pearces in the early stages of the game, and ended up creating something far more real than it intended.

Ubisoft

Well yeah, that's one way of doing it

When the zetas fill the skies

You may have spotted one of GTA 5's UFOs taunting you from afar. But now a bunch of modders have created a saucer you can actually fly. Should keep you happy until you get your hands on that jetpack we've all been waiting for.

This week, modder Chr0m3 x MoDz discovered certain code-based clues that Rockstar is planning to add jetpacks and skis to the existing myriad of transport options.

The code was added with the 1.12 patch, leading us to believe that Rockstar may be planning to include these new features in future DLC. They certainly sound perfectly fit for the incoming High Life update.

Builder's block

Minecraft is a game that expects a little patience, but we can't image how much endurance this 1:1 recreation of Denmark demanded.

Creators Simon Kokkendorf and Thorbjørn Nielsen Geodatastyrelsen built their masterpiece using public data of roads and buildings, and the result is one of the most ambitious Minecraft projects yet.

Four trillion bricks. One terabyte of data. And a whole new meaning to "You have too much time on your big, blocky hands".

To finish off the week, here are some more goodies from around the network...

Total Film

Batman vs Superman - Movie Stars Talk Favourites

50 Most Distracting Movie Gifs

OXM

Things to do in Watch Dogs

Creating the Gears of War trilogy - what would Rod Fergusson have done differently?

CVG

Who needs spare time? Read our Hearthstone review to find out why it might be the most compulsive game of 2014.

Can't wait for Naughty Dog's next game? Neither can we! We've put together a Uncharted 4 wish list to discuss what we want most in the next game.

Hugh Langley

Hugh Langley is the ex-News Editor of TechRadar. He had written for many magazines and websites including Business Insider, The Telegraph, IGN, Gizmodo, Entrepreneur Magazine, WIRED (UK), TrustedReviews, Business Insider Australia, Business Insider India, Business Insider Singapore, Wareable, The Ambient and more.


Hugh is now a correspondent at Business Insider covering Google and Alphabet, and has the unfortunate distinction of accidentally linking the TechRadar homepage to a rival publication.