E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

E.T. is the most important game you should never play. Howard Scott Warshaw had five weeks to develop it — Atari wanted to capitalize on Spielberg's film for Christmas 1982. The result was confusing and frustrating. Atari produced millions of unsold cartridges buried in Alamogordo, New Mexico — confirmed in 2014 when they were excavated. E.T. symbolizes the 1983 crash: the industry nearly died from greed. But from those ashes, Nintendo was reborn.