E.T. The Extra Terrestrial

E.T. Extra Terrestrial is a video game based off Stephen Spielberg’s popular movie with the same name. This game is about E.T. collecting pieces of a telephone to contact his home planet. This game is one of the most infamous video commercial failures of all time, even caused the "Market Crash of 82".

Development
Atari asked Howard Scott Warshaw to make this game, but he had to make this game in 5 and a half weeks when the Atari 2600 game Raiders took 10 months to make. They rushed the game for the Christmas holiday. Warshaw even went to Spielberg to approve of this game's concept.

Reception
The game is known as one of the worst video games of all time, the game was criticized for its ugly graphics, confusing gameplay, giant levels, and multiple glitches, such as the game teleporting you all over the game. Howard Scott Warshaw has talked about the problems in the game and has taken some responsibility for it.

Sales And The Video Game Crash Of 83'
The game sold well at first, selling 1.5 million copies, but copies of the game were going back to Atari, that’s because the game was a critical failure, the game was criticized for its gameplay, graphics, and glitches. The game also needed to sell 4 million copies, but they got a little more than a quarter than its budget. Atari lost about 310 million dollars. This game was the game that "broke the camel's back" and caused Video Game Crash of 83. Atari went from 10,000 employees to 2,000 employees after this game horribly flopped. Howard Scott Warshaw left Atari and the gaming industry for good. It took several years for video games to be restored after the game, until Nintendo revived the industry.

New Mexico Landfill
There was a supposed rumor that Atari buried 700,000 copies of E.T. in a landfill in New Mexico, they did this because there were too many cartridges in the warehouse. They buried it so people couldn't find them. In 2014, Microsoft evacuated the site to find 1,300 cartridges remaining. A fraction of the cartridges were given to The New Mexico Museum of Space History while the rest were auctioned for more than 107,000 dollars. There are only 300 left remaining unsold.

Links
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35560458

https://www.npr.org/2017/05/31/530235165/total-failure-the-worlds-worst-video-game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXs_pI4Tcmk&t=1s

https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/landfill-smithsonian-collections-et-extra-terrestrial-atari-2600-game

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial#Excavation