04/06/2026
Did you know that Atari’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is largely considered the worst video game of all time?
Rushed through development in just five weeks to hit holiday store shelves, the game was released as a confusing, virtually unplayable mess where players constantly fell into inescapable pixelated pits. The backlash was so severe that it left Atari with millions of unsold cartridges, which they famously buried in a New Mexico desert landfill and helped trigger the massive 1983 video game industry crash.