E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (video game)

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E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 action-adventure video game for the Atari 2600 console, developed by Howard Scott Warshaw and published by Atari Inc. Based on Steven Spielberg's iconic blockbuster film, the game tasked players with guiding the alien E.T. to collect three pieces of an interplanetary phone to return to his home planet. Infamously rushed to market in just five weeks to meet the 1982 Christmas shopping season, it was widely panned for its confusing gameplay, poor graphics, and technical flaws. The game is widely regarded as one of the worst video games ever created and a key contributor to the 1983 North American video game industry crisis due to massive overproduction and unsold inventory.

Key moments

Late July 1982Atari secures rights to adapt the E.T. film into a video game; Howard Scott Warshaw is assigned development with only five weeks to complete the project.
November 1982E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial launches for the Atari 2600 console, timed for the Christmas shopping season.
1983Massive unsold copies of the game lead to severe financial losses for Atari and become a major factor in the North American video game industry crash of 1983.

A Defining Cautionary Tale for Game Development

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial remains a critical case study in the dangers of prioritizing commercial deadlines over product quality. Atari's push to release the game in five weeks to capitalize on the film's hype resulted in a broken, unenjoyable experience that betrayed the source material's charm. Its failure highlighted the need for proper development cycles, even for high-profile licensed properties, and has since been referenced by developers as a reminder of the consequences of rushing creative work.

Legacy in Industry History

Beyond its reputation as a bad game, E.T. played a pivotal role in reshaping the video game industry. Its commercial collapse, alongside a flood of low-quality titles, eroded consumer confidence and triggered the 1983 North American industry crash. This crisis cleared the way for Nintendo's entry into the market with the Nintendo Entertainment System, which introduced stricter quality control measures and revitalized the industry, establishing new standards for game development and publishing.

released
title	E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
alt	Artwork of a grey, vertical rectangular box. The top half reads "Atari 2600. E.T.* The Extra-Terrestrial". The bottom half displays a drawn image of a brown alien with a large head and long neck beside a young boy in a red, hooded jacket.
developer	Atari, Inc.
publisher	Atari, Inc.
designer	Howard Scott Warshaw
programmer	Howard Scott Warshaw
artist	Howard Scott Warshaw Jerome Domurat

genre	Adventure

modes	Single-player

platforms	Atari 2600

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 adventure video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. for the Atari 2600, based on the film of the same name. The game's objective is to guide the eponymous character through various screens to collect three pieces of an interplanetary telephone that will allow him to contact his home planet.

The game was designed by Howard Scott Warshaw, who intended it to be an innovative adaptation, but Atari held unrealistic expectations for sales based on the international box-office success of the film. Negotiations for the game rights ended in late July 1982, giving Warshaw just over five weeks to develop the game in time to meet the production schedule for the 1982 Christmas season.[3] The final release received negative reviews and is often cited as one of the worst video games of all time, as well as one of the biggest commercial failures in video game history. It is cited as a major contributing factor to the video game crash of 1983, and has been frequently referenced and mocked in popular culture as a cautionary tale about the dangers of rushed game development and studio interference.

In what was once deemed only an urban legend, reports from 1983 stated that as a result of overproduction and returns, unsold cartridges of E.T. were secretly buried in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico, and covered with a layer of concrete. In April 2014, diggers hired to investigate the claim confirmed that the landfill contained several E.T. cartridges, among other games.[4][5][6] James Heller, the former Atari manager who was in charge of the burial, was at the excavation, and admitted to the Associated Press that 728,000 cartridges of various games (not just E.T.) were buried.[7] Marty Goldberg, co-author of the book Atari Inc.: Business Is Fun, added that the dump was in fact a clearing out of the Texas Atari manufacturing plant's unused cartridge stock of a number of titles, as well as console and computer parts.[8] According to the 2014 documentary Atari: Game Over, only 10% of the approximately 1,300 recovered were E.T. cartridges.

Gameplay

E.T. is an adventure game in which players control the alien E.T. from a top-down perspective. The objective is to collect three pieces of an interplanetary telephone. The pieces are found scattered randomly throughout various pits (also referred to as wells). There is no overall time limit.[9] The player is provided with an on-screen energy bar, which decreases when E.T. performs any actions (including moving, teleporting, or falling into a pit, as well as levitating back to the top). To prevent this, E.T. can collect Reese's Pieces, which are used to restore his energy or, when nine are collected, E.T. can call Elliott to obtain a piece of the telephone, or the player can save the candy pieces for bonus points at the end. After the three phone pieces have been collected, the player must guide E.T. to an area where he can use the phone, which allows him to call his home planet. Once the call is made, a clock appears at the top right of the screen; E.T. has to arrive at the landing zone before it reaches zero.[10] Once E.T. gets to the forest where his ship abandoned him and stands and waits in the designated area for the ship to come, the ship will appear on-screen and take him back to his home planet. Then the game starts over, with the same difficulty level, while changing the location of the telephone pieces. The score obtained during the round is carried over to the next iteration.[11]

Development

Following the commercial success of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in June 1982, Steve Ross, CEO of Atari's parent company Warner Communications, began negotiations with the film's director Steven Spielberg and its distributor Universal Pictures to acquire a license to produce a video game based on the film. Later that month, Warner announced its exclusive worldwide rights to market coin-operated and console games based on E.T.[13] Although the exact details of the transaction were not disclosed in the announcement, it was later reported that Atari had paid US$20–25 million (US$– million when adjusted for inflation to ) for the rights, a high figure for video game licensing at the time.[14][15][16][17]

Reception

Anticipation for the E.T. video game was high, and Atari hoped it would be a sought-after Christmas gift.[23] In early December 1982, The New York Times reported that video games based on successful films, specifically E.T., would become "an increasingly profitable source" for video game development.[26] At first, retailers ordered more supplies than what was expected to be sold, but Atari received an increasing number of order cancellations as new competitors entered the market, which they had not anticipated.[25][27][28] John Hubner and William Kistner of InfoWorld have attributed the cancellations to changes Atari initiated in its relationship to distributors. On November 1, 1982, Atari informed them that their contracts were canceled and that exclusive deals would be established with select distributors. Hubner and Kistner believed the action prompted retailers to cancel orders, which Atari had not properly tracked.

Impact

E.T. is often cited as one of the most important video games.[50][51][52] GamePro, GameTrailers and Bowen cite the game as the first poor quality-film–video-game tie-in.[11][46][53] Patrick O'Luanaigh of SCi Games called it the most famous disaster story among film-inspired video games as well as within the industry.[54] GamePro publication named it second-worst movie game ever, citing it as an example of how poor gameplay can bring negative reception to strong licenses.

Legacy

Atari video game burial

In September 1983, the Alamogordo Daily News of Alamogordo, New Mexico, reported in a series of articles that between ten and twenty[63] semi-trailer truckloads of Atari boxes, cartridges, and systems from an Atari storehouse in El Paso, Texas, were crushed and buried at the landfill within the city, which was covered with concrete.[64] It was the first time Atari dealt with the landfill, which was chosen because no scavenging was allowed and its garbage was crushed and buried nightly. Atari officials and others gave differing reports of what was buried,[65][66][67]

Bibliography

Periodicals

Archived 2005-04-01.
Archived 2005-04-01.

External links

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial manual at archive.org

References

E.T. Needs Your Help! (advertisement) Atari Age, The Atari Club Inc., November–December 1982, retrieved May 14, 2020^
第2回：TVゲームグラフティー[〜1984年日本編] テレビゲーム・ファーストジェネレーション - コミニー[Cominy] / ブログ www.famitsu.com, retrieved December 7, 2025^
Stilphen Scott. DP Interviews

Critical response

Upon release, the game was criticized by reviewers, with the gameplay and visuals both areas of concern. New York magazine's Nicholas Pileggi described it as a loser compared to other games Atari could have released during the time period, such as Donkey Kong and Frogger,[28] and Video Games called it "really for kids (the littler ones)".[34] In 1984, the game was named by readers of Softline as the second-worst Atari program of 1983, after Congo Bongo.[35]

Nevertheless, the game received some positive contemporary reviews. An editor for The Miami Herald described it as difficult to learn to play, but believed that doing so was worth it.[36] For Vidiot's Kevin Christopher, "about the only flaw with an otherwise A-1 game" was that E.T. repeatedly falls back into holes.[37] Arcade Express scored it six out of ten in December 1982.[38] Len Albin of TV Guide wrote that "after seeing the motion picture E.T. 14 times, there's no more suspense left—unless you bring home this one-player cartridge", adding that "it's certain that your patience won't run out—if you're a kid. (Adults may prefer to wait for a game based on My Dinner with Andre.)"[39]

Later reviews were comparably negative. Kevin Bowen of GameSpy's Classic Gaming called the gameplay "convoluted and inane", also criticizing its story for departing from the serious tone of the film,[11] and author Steven Kent described the game as "infamous" within the industry, citing "primitive" graphics, "dull" gameplay, and a "disappointing story".[16] Children who scavenged the landfill where surplus Atari cartridges were buried gave away the E.T. cartridges, with one child noting that the game "sucked", and was impossible to complete.[40][41] Modern critics have also bemoaned the repeated need to fall down pits.[16] Emru Townsend of PC World discussed the game with a group who described the pits as "monotonous". Sean "Seanbaby" Reiley claimed that the pits are "time-consuming" and "difficult to leave without falling back in". Trent Ward, formerly a reviewer for Next Generation described returning the game as a result of the pits.[42]

In published materials written more than a decade after its initial release, E.T. has frequently been listed among the worst video games ever made. Reiley ranked it number one in a list of the 20 worst games of all time in Electronic Gaming Monthly's 150th issue.[43] Interviewed for the PBS documentary The Video Game Revolution, Michael Dolan, deputy editor of FHM magazine, gave E.T. a similar ranking.[44] Townsend placed E.T. at the top of his list of the worst video games, and said that "about a third of the people I quizzed came up with this title almost instantly, and it's not hard to see why."[45] GameTrailers ranked it second worst on their "Top Ten Best and Worst Games of All Time" list.[46]

Critics often attribute the poor quality to the short development time.[48] Townsend commented that the rushed development was very apparent.[45] Warshaw's contributions have been met with mixed responses. Classic Gaming called the game poorly designed, while IGN's Levi Buchanan stated the "impossibly tight schedule" given to Warshaw absolves him of blame.[49] Warshaw does not express regret for his part in E.T., and believes he created a good game given the time available to him.[15][20]