The worst game of all time was actually buried in the desert, but surprisingly, it can still be found quite often.

For many, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is considered the low point of interactive entertainment, but the game is not as rare as many people think.

What do you do when a game you just bought turns out to be unspeakably bad? Do you request a refund from Steam? Do you uninstall it while grumbling to yourself? Do you take the game box and bury it in the desert in front of your house?

The latter fate once befell the Atari version of E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial. The game is legendary for its awfulness, and even Atari itself once buried 792,000 copies somewhere in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico – an act went down in history as the “Atari Video Game Burial.”
Now you might think that a game buried in the sand would be harder to find than E.T. itself these days. But far from it! Recently, new evidence has emerged on Reddit that the alien is alive and kicking!

My grandmother has the game at home

Reddit user Animusicalposted a screenshot on Reddit and wrote: I never thought I’d see one of these in the wild.

Below is a picture showing a cardboard box with some ancient Atari games. One of them is E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial.

But instead of getting lots of equally surprised Wow! and Hui! comments, it turns out that the game isn’t that rare after all.

In the Reddit thread above alone, there are numerous responses like this one:

• It’s a very common and unpopular game, despite the desert story. – Source
• My grandmother has a copy at home. It was my aunt’s Atari. I never understood the game. – Source
• ET was one of the best-selling Atari 2600 games. It definitely shouldn’t cost ten dollars. In fact, none of the games in the photo should be worth more than a dollar. – Source
• You can get the game on eBay for about $10. – Source

Is that really true? We did some research.

Expensive? Rare? Here’s what we found out

As is so often the case, the answer is a slice of toast with butter on only one side. Uh, wait. A coin with two sides… a sword with two edges… oh, you know what we mean!

• Do you want E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial in its original packaging, preferably with grains of sand on top? Then you’ll have to dig deep into your pockets, because these well-preserved editions are really rare and will cost you a cool 229 euros Even then, you’ll have to accept signs of wear on the packaging, which is usually a no-go for collectors.
• Want E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial in its original packaging and in top condition? Then scrape together your savings (don’t forget the sofa cushions!), because prices often reach around500 dollars .
• Do you want E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial just as a game? Yes, then the Reddit users are right. The title itself is neither rare nor expensive. On eBay, it’s already available for less than twenty dollars. So if you want to catch up on this dubious gem of video game history, you don’t have to dig deep into your pockets.

To this day, E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial is considered one of the first major video game flops. According to Ray Kazar, Atari’s CEO at the time, four million copies were shipped, of which 3.5 million were returned – ouch!

Given the development time, however, the debacle was foreseeable. While other Atari games at the time usually took around three to four months to develop, E.T. was supposed to be finished in just 38 days.