When you google for the worst games ever, chances are that the E.T. game for the Atari 2600 will be mentioned. When it is mentioned it usually also mentions that the game was responsible for the videogame crash of the eighties and that Atari has had thousands of unsold cartridges buried in the New Mexico desert. Whether that was true, was doubted regularly.

I have to admit that when I received the game as a kid I actually had a great time with it and finished the game various times. The game consisted of holes you had to drop yourself into to find parts of phone you could use to finally “call home” and be taken by the spaceship. Atari: Game Over looks at the history of the game company itself, but also wants to investigate whether those cartridges were indeed buried in the desert. Continue reading →