Video games

Atari buried thousands of copies of a controversial Spielberg classic video game: 30 years later it ended up in a museum

The legend of Atari’s E.T., which the company decided to bury in the desert and finally ended up in a museum. What would Steven Spielberg think?

Roberto Barragán Gabriel Huerta

Update: Aug 12th, 2025 15:00 CEST

Today, in stories that are always worth remembering, the case of the video game that was buried in the desert after starring in one of the biggest failures of all time. We are talking, of course, about Atari’s mythical E.T., the title based on Steven Spielberg’s science fiction masterpiece, which cost a lot of money to develop, and the result was a real commercial tragedy. It will always be remembered as one of the worst video games in history, regardless of the fact that there are surely others that are much better.

In 1983, an article in The New York Times reported that the company had mobilized 14 truckloads of copies of Atari’s E.T. with the intention of dumping them in a New Mexico landfill, where, over the year,s the cartridges were buried in the desert. More than 40 years have passed since then, although the most interesting thing happened a little more than a decade ago, in 2014, and some of those copies of the game were unearthed.

Of the recovered units, some are on display at the New Mexico Museum of Space History, while others were sold through auctions. Curiously, their economic value was not excessively high, as about $107.00 was collected for 880 copies of the title, the equivalent of approximately $121 for each one of them. Others, on the other hand, ended up in the hands of the producers of ‘Atari: Game Over,’ who used them to show them in the documentary film about the decline of the mythical company (currently not available for streaming, but can be found on YouTube).

Atari buried thousands of copies of a controversial Spielberg classic video game: 30 years later it ended up in a museum

The worst video games in history

Talking about the worst always leads many people to mention both the aforementioned E.T. by Atari and the unforgettable Superman 64. However, it is one thing to create a kind of legend around a work and quite another to claim that they are the worst video games in history. Without going any further, there are titles that do not even reach 20 on Metacritic, and that is equivalent to having a score of less than 2/10. That’s how the list is at the moment.

Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade - 11
Ride to Hell: Retribution - 16
Yaris - 17
Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust - 17
Vroom in the Night Sky - 17
Double Dragon II: Wander of the Dragons - 17
SPOGS Racing - 18
Alone in the Dark: Illumination - 19
Deal or No Deal - 20
Infestation: Survivor Stories - 20
Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma - 21
Drake of the 99 Dragons - 22
Fast & Furious: Showdown - 22
Rambo The Video Game - 23
Charlie’s Angels - 23
Homie Rollerz - 23
FlatOut 3: Chaos & Destruction - 23
Pulse Racer - 24
Legends of Wrestling II - 24

Where to watch ‘E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial’

We are not going to recommend you to play the Atari 2600 video game, but it is worth remembering that ‘E.T.’, Steven Spielberg’s film, is a masterpiece of science fiction and a must-see classic. It can be viewed online at Hulu.