There will always be bad games suffering from poor gameplay, terrible programming, hideous graphics, or all of the above, destined to stay buried at the bottom of an electronic store bargain bin. One game was so bad however that it has remained buried for nearly twenty years. Not under a pile of other unsold games, but deep underground in a New Mexico landfill. It has become a legend among gamers and a haunting reminder for businesses. That game was “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial”. Released for the Atari 2600 in 1982, it has been a cautionary tale for the booming industry to come.
In the late 70′s, video games began hitting store shelves with the most popular console being the Atari 2600. Current generation games are made by studios comprised of dozens of programmers, artist, designers, and directors, spending years to design, develop, and test. Not so in the early Atari 2600 days when, every game was created by a single programmer receiving a paltry pay and not even allowed to be credited for his work.
Many talented programmers ended up leaving Atari and first-party companies, fed up with low pay, short deadlines, and lack of acknowledgment. They banded together to establish third-party gaming studios: Activision being the first. In 1982, Atari lost a lawsuit it filed against Activision for creating games that ran on the Atari 2600. The ruling legitimized the creation of third-party developers to make titles for proprietary game systems, and before people knew it the industry was flooded by new and cheaply made games trying to cash in on the craze.
Feeling the pressure as customers were buying these cheap third-party titles over Atari’s full priced games, Atari bought the video game licensing right for Steven Spielberg’s new movie “E.T.” for $25 million in hopes of making a blockbuster hit.
After acquiring the rights in late July 1982, Atari insisted on a holiday season release. This meant that programmer Howard Scott Warshaw had to design, program, and publish E.T. in a time frame of six weeks leading to skipping the testing process in order to meet the deadline. Though this was an unthinkable and unrealistic task even for current industry standards of production time, Atari continued on with their plan releasing E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in December and consequently, earning its status as the worst video game ever made.
Shortly after release, Atari’s quarterly statement caused stock in all video game companies to plummet. Just after that Atari, once the fastest growing company in United States history, was bankrupt and $500 million dollars in debt and creating the video game crash of 1983. Sales of entertainment systems and software tanked from an enormous $3 billion to only $100 million, a decrease of 97 percent. Overstocked by the mountain of games from 1982, retailers began to return old unsold products to publishers. Unable to adequately refund these returns forced many of the leading gaming companies to collapse.
The gaming industry survived with a few third-party developers like Activision, releasing titles for the rising market of personal computers eventually recovering to grow into a new video game industry.
The catastrophe caused by E.T. painfully reminded the gaming world of the importance of maintaining a higher level of quality control. The industry’s bad business practices and a lack of oversight propelled it into the self-destructive combinations that lead to the video game crash of 1983. But, today gamers enjoy the benefits of a high standard of entertainment, and developers are appropriately recognized for their creative contributions.
Sure, terrible games continue to be released year after year, and the relationship between publishers and customers still tends to be an unsteady one. But the demise and reconstruction of gaming is what made it the improved business we enjoy today. Thanks to a game that lowered the bar for how awful a game could be, it slayed the mighty beast of the electronic entertainment industry so it could respawn stronger than ever before. E.T. The Extra Terrestrial may have been the worst game ever made, but it established itself as an infamous warning sign, as well as one of the most important, in gaming history.
Bad games are no longer a cautionary tale thanks to the crack marketing publishers tend to do these days. Activision, EA, 2K and a few others can sell you a polished turd after they take you on a b.s. video boat ride about how they made it, what features it will have that other turds do not, and how it will revolutionize the turd genre.
Nicely put, I might add that Vince, the Shamwow! Guy has been supplying these publishers for quite awhile now and they all get their weekly supply of Simonize shipped in 55-gallon drums
Wow I never thought E.T. was that bad a game. I mean with trype like Eve online and WoW its really a wonder the gaming industry is the highest grossing industry in entertainment. Anyway I thought E.T. was a great game. I remember waiting for it to come out and not at all disapointed when I finally got to play it. E.T. was just as bad a most of the other games on Atari at the time. I would sit and play it alot longer then the other games like Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Space Invaders and others that had just one screen that changed colors sometimes. Atleast E.T. felt like some sort of an adventure, at least to me.
Good on ya InvaderGUI. I didn’t think it was that bad either, and my kids loved it.
You know, Activision, once wanted to stray away from not being evil. But now, they are the evil ones, tried to cash in and milk the guitar hero franchise. And now with the same rehashed gameplay that is Call Of Duty, no engine upgrade, no different multiplayer, kids are still acting the same sucking it up and buying COD products like it’s a fad. COD is the WORST gaming franchise to date, and it NEEDS to die just like GH.
Good point. It is ironic that year’s Activision today is no better, even worse than giants like EA. Call of Duty, one of the most awesome WW2 FPSs I have ever played, died long ago; and today’s CoD concept is just an interactive Hollywood action movie filled with ultra-racist images. Besides Condemned Criminal Origins and FEAR 2, I probably haven’t played a more repetitive FPS than MW2. Thanks to stupid people willing to pay a full game price for just 3 DLC maps or like getting milked monthly for things like stat tracking; half baked games are rushed with no more improvements than “realistic” graphics and game industry is degenerating again.
And here I was under the false impression that “Outpost” was the worst game of all time. With that game, almost every revolutionary feature mentioned in the ads and on the box either didn’t work or was not implemented.
I liked it. As a matter of fact there were a lot of atari games I loved. My dad and I were always competing for high scores. It really is one of my favorite memories.
Ya well, i think the gaming industries greed makes it forget how bad it is to make bad games. you can blame youtube mentality for that. we are all to blame
Very interesting reading!
You know, I’ve heard a lot of crap about this game for nearly five years now, and with people like the AVGN talking about how it never should have existed, I see that they were a little to quick to judge. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say it was the CoD of the 80′s (And BTW I Hate CoD with a burning passion, and my prime reason is the fact that they’ve basically been using the same engine since CoD 2), but it does seem that it essentially made todays gaming possible. Wow.
I do believe the “ET” saga was inspiration for a “0Code Monkeys” episode. They guys were given a short suspense to develop a game based on a movie. Neither guys actually saw the movie and instead had one hell of a party with the money….They did manage to put something together….and well…lol
I do believe the “ET” saga was inspiration for a “Code Monkeys” episode. They guys were given a short suspense to develop a game based on a movie. Neither guys actually saw the movie and instead had one hell of a party with the money….They did manage to put something together….and well…lol
was my favorite game played it until it wouldnt play anymore
Let me just say that Atari was a big part of my childhood. I’m in the same boat as some of the other posters – I thought ET was a really good game. I thought it was very akin to the raiders of the lost ark game – granted, a little less complicated. And some guy put this game together in 6 weeks? Bravo, I never knew that…
Oh snap! I just realized that the same guy that did raiders of the lost ark also did ET. I guess that was probably why the feel was the same. Anyone remember
Star Raiders? The game came with, like a 16 key keypad that plugged into controller port 2 and it had an overlay so you knew what to press to fire weapons, activate shields, etc. That was a really big deal back then…
Another piece of trivia related to this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial
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How the Worst Game Ever Made Saved the World | FilePlanet’s Blog
How the Worst Game Ever Made Saved the World | FilePlanet’s Blog