1982 ET Atari Game Christmas Commercial

1982 ET Atari Game Christmas Commercial

History of the game.

In 1982, the gaming company Atari decided to capitalize on the recent success of the hit movie, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Grossing a total of $359 million in North America alone by the end of its theatrical run, the exciting, kid-friendly adventure seemed like it’d lend itself well to a video game version.

According to the game’s programmer, Howard Scott Warshaw, the game’s failure came down to a mix of too much ambition and too little time.

Warshaw explained that he was asked to make the E.T. video game after creating a popular Atari adaptation of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Warshaw, who idolized Stephen Spielberg, enthusiastically agreed to work on the game. There was only one problem: Atari needed it finished in time for Christmas, which meant that Warshaw only had five weeks to make it. At the time, most games took six months.

But rather than play it safe and build off of existing video game formats, Warshaw wanted to make something that was worthy of his hero.

Warshaw worked on the game non-stop for weeks, even having a second work station built in his home so he could work at all hours. He managed to complete the game by the deadline, but though the finished game was original, most players didn’t think it was much fun. It was widely considered too difficult and too full of unexpected traps. Its problems weren’t in the game’s code, but in its conceptualization.

Reports from 1983 gave way to urban legend stating that as a result of overproduction and returns, millions of unsold cartridges were buried in an Alamogordo, New Mexico landfill. In 2013, plans were revealed to conduct an excavation to determine the accuracy of reports about the burial, and in April of the following year, the diggers confirmed that the Alamogordo burial did include E.T. cartridges among other titles.

James Heller, the former Atari manager who was in charge of the original burial, was also on hand at the excavation and revealed to the Associated Press that 728,000 cartridges of various titles were buried.

Here is one of the commercials that ran in 1982 for the game, Enjoy and Be A Kid Again....

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Sources Wikipedia, and Mental Floss