I think this game gets a worse wrap than it deserves. I played the game for years trying to figure out what the heck I was supposed to be doing, sure, but, it was very different than other games I had played back then, and intriqued me as to what was possible in gaming. Maybe if I had one of the Swordquest games as a child I wouldn't have felt this way, but, you actually had to pay to get a copy of those! lol. My favorite part of the game was the fact that the kid looked more like Ernie from sesame street than anything else.

I still have this game.... ;(

I hope Rygar (NES) and Super Pitfall make the list. Man, if I ever met the creator of either of those in a dark alley.

It's fun to read the behind the scenes stuff now. I mean, when I was a kid, playing games on my Atari, I knew only that ET the game sucked. Even if I had been privy to the story behind the scenes back then, I probably would not have cared. Now, I find the trip back down memory lane a fun one. Reading this article brought back memories of going to watch ET at the drive-in theater with my family, and of countless hours burned with an Atari joystick in my clutches. Reading about the behind the scenes deal that may have been the straw that broke Atari's back 25 years later places much of what I saw, but did not consider back then into a new context.

Keep them coming, Tom's, I enjoyed the first installment, and I'm looking forward to more.

Battlecruiser. What an arse-up of a game that was.

If you right click on the E.T. icon, and then add "-mblur" then you can get motion blur, and I think you need DX10 to get God Rays in E.T.

Look, Howard says he's sorry, ok? Can we move on now?

LOL i had the game when i was a kid and remember trying to figgure out what the heck i was supposed to do in it. from thining of ther game right now i still don't know what you were supposed to do. Unfortunetly all my atari games dissapeared like 4 yearss after so i don't have it anymore

Yeah, the only "movie" game that I can think of off the top of my head that was any good (IMHO) was Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay. I dunno tho - does it count as a "movie" game? It was actually just kind of another chapter in the story.

A huge number of the old 2600 games were incredibly bad. E.T. was a stinker, but Raiders of the Lost Ark was crappy too.

It's even funnier when both th movie and the game are bad.

Spiderman 3!

I've seen this story before. All in all, it is a pretty good example of how something can go horribly horribly wrong if you rush it. What would have been a huge seller ended up being an enormous money sink.