Since the former genre of superhero loosens his iron in Moviegoers, Hollywood turns to video games as a source of blockbuster success, and so far it seems to be working. Of course we had historical chicks like that As the largest bomb of 2024, "Border Territories", But on the eve of Minecraft claiming two of the biggest boxing weekends from 2025 And "Super Mario Bros. is becoming one of the 20 biggest films everVideo games seem to be the next IP ripe for robbery.

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For a long time, of course, things have worked mostly in another way: Hollywood will provide IP and video games developers to do their best with the license. But for the most part, it seemed that adjusting successful films in video games was a tough business. There were so many terrible games based on successful films that fans mostly accepted that such games would be terrible.

But there is a game that remains really infamous because it is such a huge mistake that you could make a decent argument for what is a patient zero from the epidemic of a bad video game that followed. That game is "ET Extra-Terristal" for the 2600 console.

"ET Extra-Copy" has become notorious since its 1982 debut, but is that reputation deserved? Well, that's complicated. The designer of the game responsible for ET, Howard Scott Warsaw, talked NPR For his adaptation, explaining that rapid development is partly guilty of the brazen reputation of the game. Varava actually worked on the first adaptation of film video games, "Indiana Ons: Thieves of the lost casket", which Spielberg apparently loved and, according to Warsaw, felt like "watching a movie". As such, the director seems to have personally asked Warsawu to make a video game adaptation to his next film, "Et alien".

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The only problem was that it took Atari and Spielberg for some time to wait for the legal side of things. The ET film debuted in theaters on June 11, 1982, and was immediately accepted, becoming a moment Spielbergian Classic that today maintains a almost perfect result of rotten tomatoes. But it was supposed to reach an agreement by the end of July of that year. After this, Atari's CEO contacted Warsaw and gave him to make the game in just five weeks, so the company could announce it for the Christmas holidays. For any reason, the ambitious young developer agreed. "I don't know exactly what I was full at that time," Warsaw told NPR. "But whatever it was, I was overwhelmed with it and I believed I could get it out. I mean, a decoction of it!"

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Warsaw designed the game around a plot in the film in which the title of alien collected parts for the construction of a communicator that would allow him to "telephone at home". According to the investor, Spielberg appeared susceptible when he first saw construction of the game, responding with shine, "Can't you just do something like a Pac-Man?" While those words clearly hurt Warsaw, it turned out that Spielberg had the right to propose a different approach, as the "ETS-Wonzema" proved to be not just a flop, but a gold standard of terrible movie video games.

The miracle is in the essence of a good movie Steven Spielberg, and ET is a major example, perfectly catching the unlimited miracle that we are capable of feeling like children and covering it in a hearty story that is technically impressive as well as touch. The video game, however, has not only failed to match the miracle of the film, it has quickly become known as the worst video game ever made (a reputation that has to this day) and is one of the biggest commercial failures in video game history. It did not help Atari fall in difficult times just around the time of the ET debut, which means a narrative that the game with one hand was brought by the knee video game industry. That is, of course, not true, but it is far from the only unusual element in the game in the troubled heritage of the game. Following his announcement, an urban legend broke out that Atari had buried all his unsold cassettes "ET" in a landfill. This proved to be partly true, when investigators found buried cartridges in 2014, although only some of the nearly 800,000 games were ET and it turned out that Atari only buried the unused fund after the closure of his Texas production plant.

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However, there is no doubt that the game "ET" would benefit from following the idea of ​​emulation of Spielberg's "Pack Man". Adaptation is not remembered well and it is not too difficult to see why. Part of the problem was the way the game used the design of the "wrapped" level that looked at users, playing as a title alien, starting on a screen before traveling through several others just to go back where they started. The levels were also intertwined with a little pits in which ET could, and very often, fell. It's all frustrating, but according to Warsaw, it was at least partly plan. "There is a difference between frustration and disorientation," he told NPR. "Video games are for frustration. It's okay to frustrate the user. In fact, it's important to frustrate the user. But you don't want to disorient the user."

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Unfortunately, this is exactly what he did. Critics were not too impressed, but as Gamehistory He points out, the notorious reputation of the game is not entirely indicative of its true quality or tenor of modern views. The web site actually collected several views from the time period and revealed that critics were lukewarm at worst and at best neutral. However, Softline Readers vote the game The second worst program of 1983 and contemporary critics were much stricter of ET that led to become known as the worst adaptation of video games ever-although The legately bad video game "Man Man Man" or Chaos that was a video game "Island Giligan" They certainly have strong claims about that irreplaceable title.