Every once in a while, the entertainment industry produces something so misguided that decades later people still ask the same question: what were they thinking?
The 1982 video game adaptation of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial might be the greatest example.
To understand how things went so wrong, you first have to remember how big E.T. was. Directed by Steven Spielberg, the film became a cultural phenomenon almost immediately. Kids loved it, parents loved it, critics loved it, and it quickly became one of the biggest box office hits of all time. Naturally, every company wanted to cash in.
Enter Atari, which at the time dominated the home gaming market with the Atari 2600. Atari paid millions of dollars for the rights to make the E.T. video game, expecting it to be the must-have product of the holiday season.
There was only one problem: they waited too long to start.
By the time the licensing deal was finalized, Atari executives insisted the game had to be ready for Christmas 1982. That left the developer with roughly five weeks to create an entire video game. For context, most games at the time took many months to design and test.
The result was predictable.
Players controlled E.T. wandering through a series of screens trying to collect phone parts to “phone home.” That sounds simple enough, except the game mechanics were frustrating and confusing. The character constantly fell into pits that were difficult to escape. The objectives weren’t clearly explained. Many players had no idea what they were supposed to do.
Kids who expected a magical experience like the movie instead found themselves stuck in digital holes.
The game quickly developed a reputation as one of the worst video games ever made. Atari had produced millions of cartridges expecting massive sales, but retailers couldn’t move the inventory. Unsold copies piled up across the country.
Eventually, Atari famously dumped truckloads of cartridges into a landfill in New Mexico. For years the story sounded like an urban legend until excavations decades later confirmed it actually happened.
The failure of the E.T. game became symbolic of the larger crash of the early 1980s video game industry. Oversaturation, rushed development, and poor quality control had flooded the market with bad games, and consumers lost confidence.
Looking back, the lesson seems obvious. When you have one of the most beloved movies ever made, maybe you shouldn’t rush a video game into production just to hit a holiday deadline.
But in the entertainment business, the temptation to cash in on a hit can overwhelm common sense.
And that’s how one of the most magical movies ever made produced one of the worst games ever created.
