Atari Corporation, the brainchild of engineering wunderkinds Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, has long been the leading name, not just in video games, but in Silicon Valley. So much so, Hollywood wanted a piece of the video game craze, with Warner Communications acquiring the game maker themselves in 1975. What a smart move by Warner, who alongside Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon, rule the tech sphere.

The game that changed it all was ET. New Atari CEO Ray Kassar, in his infinite wisdom, assigned the exciting project to rising game designer Howard Scott Warshaw. He gave Warshaw a tight deadline, but promised him a nice all expenses paid vacation for his trouble, so Warshaw went down to Los Angeles to meet with the big cheese himself, Steven Spielberg.

From that meeting, Warshaw created an instant classic, a game unlike anything released on the 2600. The challenge, the gameplay, the story, all of it made the 2600 the item for Christmas 1982. And it only grew from there. Later, Nintendo, a small toy company in Japan, agreed to license their Famicom to Atari, as the Atari Advanced Video System, which sold boatloads during the mid to late 80s. Suddenly, besides Bugs Bunny, Superman and Batman, Warner now had characters like Super Mario and Link under their roof. The stock surged, and new consoles rolled out every generation, better than the one before. Howard Scott Warshaw, as we all know, is a game design legend, and Atari remains the leader in the gaming industry. Not bad for a company founded by a former Mormon who enjoyed pipe smoking and hot tub meetings.

My next review will be on the Sony Walkman 24, from those geniuses over in Tokyo. Wonder why they've never gotten into the video game space...

I've played quite a few 2600 games. I own almost 100 carts. (i cant justify a purchase to make it an even 100, but its definitely that close) I never much liked this but i didnt find it notoriously bad amongst my other carts. I played it before 'internet' lol

Let me put it this way.: Honestly guys, LJN didnt do better. No. They did not. XD

pretty much everything i've played by LJN's games really have the same kind of insufferable pitfalls (no pun intended lol) yet LJN doesnt get much flak, mostly a blind eye. ('That's just old') What's worse is they continued to do it! Bah. But this game is singularly supposedly the worst game ever, so bad they are burying it. My reaction to that was 'oh?' lol

Now, there is something interesting about this reaction to the game. Consider for a second Nintendo... They might well have just decided "Americans do not like RPGS, be very careful about letting them play any adventure games on our console!"

Could this ET fiasco (if it's true) explain that? It really makes me wonder, and it's something I never did consider until writing this review that maybe, Nintendo did note the reaction to ET and decided americans dont like adventure games! So why bother? :(

In any case the concept however of ET is quite good, fairly imaginative given the times, (it's certainly more creative than what they did with alien, which is more or less a pacman clone) its basically an adventure game. While Riddle of the Sphinx and Adventure are much better (as they are less frustrating, thus interesting to play) they are suprisingly very similiar games. I personally found Raiders of the lost ark (aka Indiana Jones) to be the most frustrating 2600 game i have (and basically the SAME cookie cutter game as ET, yet it's not produced by same company!) but the internet isnt burying indie in a pile of snakes.* Why not?* really why not... HISSSS

being buried is a fate reserved for us androids/non humans! not harrison ford. :o

Sidenote: honestly if the rumor about burying the ET carts is true, i think it's appropriate, because supertoys last all summer long anyway