5. E.T. The Video Game
You'll have to take my word for it that this is no exaggeration; Atari's E.T. The Video Game is the worst video game
ever. Basically, every single decision made in its production was awful, resulting in what is essentially a broken, scarcely playable excuse for a game. Studio executives wrongly thought that they could release any old tripe and it would be a smash hit, given how hugely successful the movie was, but oh, how wrong they were. However, poor planning meant that designer Howard Scott Warshaw had a whopping five weeks to develop the game ahead of its Christmas release window, and boy, did it show. The game had players taking the role of the titular extra-terrestrial, as you run around trying to recover the pieces to an inter-planetary phone that would allow E.T. to go home. However, the game's horrible mechanics meant that after a brief surge in popularity, the game tanked, with many copies being returned, and Atari reportedly ending up with up to 3.5 million of the 4 million cartridges sold being returned to the publisher. Atari lost up to an estimated $100 million from the game's catastrophic failure and it helped cause the infamous video game crash of 1983. Perhaps the most hilarious kicker of all is that it's suggested that Atari dumped most of the unsold cartridges into a landfill in New Mexico, though some do attest that this is simply an urban legend. Whatever the final resting place, it's clear that even though most movie video games are awful, none have plumbed the depths of badness as glaringly as E.T.