I was perusing Retrontario's YouTube channel when I stumbled upon this commercial for the E.T. video game Atari promoted heavily back in 1982.
Back then, I had an Atari 2600 clone called the Gemini (not my award) but I never found E.T. under the tree in '82. Looks like I dodged a bullet there.
Negotiations to secure the rights to make the game ended in late July 1982, giving Warshaw only five weeks to develop the game in time for the 1982 Christmas season. The end result is often cited as one of the worst video games released and was one of the biggest commercial failures in video gaming history.
E.T. is frequently cited as a contributing factor to Atari's massive financial losses during 1983 and 1984. As a result of overproduction and returns, millions of unsold cartridges were buried in an Alamogordo, New Mexico landfill. The game's commercial failure and resulting effects on Atari are frequently cited as a contributing factor to the video game industry crash of 1983.
