E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600, 1982) is infamous for being one of the worst video games ever made and a major trigger of the 1983 video game crash. Its failure was the result of a perfect storm of rushed development, poor design, and a disastrous business strategy. Atari produced millions of cartridges for the holiday season, but the game sold poorly and generated huge unsold inventory. Unsold copies were famously buried in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico, becoming a symbol of gaming’s overreach. While not the sole cause of the 1983 crash, E.T. was a high-profile failure that damaged consumer confidence and accelerated the crash. Atari gave developer Howard Scott Warshaw only 5 weeks to design and build the entire game, conceived over a 36-hour planning period. By comparison, his earlier hit Raiders of the Lost Ark took 10 months. Atari wanted a must-have holiday blockbuster tied to Spielberg’s massively popular film, so they overproduced cartridges before the game was even finished. The game featured confusing navigation, frustrating pits that constantly interrupted play, unclear objectives, and weak graphics even for its time. Players quickly realised the game was terrible, leading stores to cancel orders and Atari to be stuck with millions of unsold cartridges. Atari was overproducing mediocre titles and overestimating demand; E.T. became the most visible symbol of this bubble. E.T. failed because Atari tried to cash in on a blockbuster movie with a game that was rushed into production, poorly designed, and overproduced, leading to a high-profile commercial disaster that helped crash the industry. (Image source: Wikipedia)
