E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

History
The game to end all games.

E.T. is widely recognized as one of worst games ever made. E.T., along with many other terrible Atari games released in late 82 and 83, caused the Atari system, and the video game industry, to die. One of the best examples of the quality of a movie game, and was also the very first one.

It's only because the later release of the NES that commercially produced video games are still around today.

It was really, really, bad. It was so bad, the millions of unsold copies that were sent back to Atari by the retailers were buried in a New Mexico landfill, along with the millions of unsold Pac-Man ports.

Gameplay
Well, there really isn't much. You move E.T. around, and he kind of falls into these hole things, but you have no way of knowing what will trigger this falling into holes. There are also men who capture you and bring you back to the town-like screen. When E.T. is in a hole he has to stretch his neck up slowly to get out. If he moves too fast he'll break his neck and die, and have to start back in town. The goal in the game is to walk around and randomly fall into thousands of holes looking for pieces of a telephone. The pieces are randomly placed in the otherwise identical holes. When all the pieces are connected, the player wins the game, but loses his soul.

12/1982, Remember
Every year at Christmas time millions of gamers will put themselves through excruciating pain by purchasing terrible games based on terrible summer blockbusters to pay penance for this massive and unthinkable sin. Lest we forget.