E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial

The contract negotiations for the Atari implementation of the Steven Spielberg film were concluded only after the cinema premiere in the summer of 1982, but the game is due to be released for Christmas business in 1982. So programmers Howard Scott Warshaw only have five and a half weeks to complete the game. The frustrating and unintuitive gameplay soon after sales start provides countless negative reviews. E.T. sells about 1.5 million times, but Atari remains on millions of unsold modules.

In popular culture, E.T. is often considered the worst game of all time. While this is an exaggeration, the game still stands for the high expectations of players who collide with the greed for fast money and the complete self-overestimation of a manufacturer.