"[Adapted E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is based on the film of the same name, and was designed by Howard Scott Warshaw. The object of the game is to guide the eponymous character through various screens to collect three pieces of an interplanetary telephone that allows him to contact his home planet.
E.T. is often cited as one of the biggest commercial failures in video gaming history, as well as one of the worst video games released. The game is frequently cited as a contributing factor to Atari's massive financial losses during 1983 and 1984, and an unspecified number of unsold copies of the game are said to have contributed to the video game industry crisis of 1983. As a result of overproduction and returns, unsold cartridges were buried in a New Mexico landfill."
Source: Wikipedia, "E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_(video_game)," available under the CC-BY-SA License.