If you’re up on your “bad games” history, you’re likely already familiar with the reputation of E.T. the Extraterrestrial on the Atari 2600, and its contendership as one of the supposed worst games of all time. If you’ve additionally hung around this particular website for a while, you might also know that said game was the subject of our very first article, and that I personally don’t consider it to be all that bad a cartridge on its own. So, rather than recapping that tired old story about the industry crash and “Atari Shock” and whatnot, let’s just assume we’ve already got those bases covered?

It’s an incredible feat that the E.T. film franchise has remained sequel-free for nearly 38 years running, considering Hollywood’s penchant for follow-ups and rehashes. But while movie producers have thus far demonstrated restraint, the same could not be said of video game industry executives. Despite the notoriety surrounding that original Atari cartridge – with its [undue] reputation for nearly killing the whole format – developers and publishers just couldn’t help themselves but to try and milk E.T.’s grotesque teet for his sweet name recognition. Needless to say, none of those attempts have been particularly successful. But their existence does bring about a number of questions: Were the game’s developers all aware of the low bar they had to surpass? What other subjects and genres could these subsequent releases center around? And is it possible that somehow, within this small catalogue, there exists a game worse than the supposed “worst ever?”

In this round-up, I’ll be playing every E.T. title I can get my grubby little glowing fingers on, and determining which of them rate better or worse than the original 1982 release. The parameters I’m setting are that the games in question have to have been sold for money at some point  — or at the very least, intended to be. This gives me lee-way to cover a couple odd prototype titles, as well as some unlicensed releases that nonetheless attempted to profit off of the lucrative little alien. So, without further ado, let’s go and phone this one home.

With the end of the decade comes time for reflection: A cause for contemplation on how far we’ve come, and deliberation on its most impactful moments. For folk invested in the games industry, it’s around this time where many get to posting their personal “best games of the decade” lists, and attempt to rank the releases that managed to stick with them during these past ten years. Obviously, I think this trend is all well and fine — a fun little exercise in racking your brain and recalling your favorite titles. Even I ended up getting into the spirit of things, and posted my own list on Twitter, for whatever it’s worth. At the same time though, I feel like I can do more to help ring in the 2020s, while keeping with the spirit of this here website of mine.

And so it goes: On this list, I’ll be compiling my top ten favorite “bad” games released in the past decade! Which is to say, we’ll be paying homage to ten titles which received overwhelmingly negative critical reception, but which I maintain hold some merit — or at least provide ironic entertainment value. Call it a collection of “the best of the worst,” if you will. Now, I should also note that this list [mostly] avoids releases which lacked retail distribution / came from independent creators; as I’m not looking to punch down at amateur developers, who might still be trying to figure out the trade or otherwise establish themselves. I made basically one exception to this principle within the list, but I like to think that most readers will agree it’s well-deserved.

The past decade has marked something of a turning point for bad games, where bad business practice has become a front and center point of condemnation. As major publishers continue to churn out titles with ballooning budgets and more egregious microtransactions – taxing overworked studios on ever-shortening deadlines – the measure of a bad game can often come down to circumstances outside the developers control. As such, so many of the more reviled releases in recent years have been more depressing than outright disastrous — more disappointing than dire. When it sometimes feels like the fun is missing from bad games, the titles on this list can hopefully remind us that the magic can still happen: When a developer’s ambitions reach either extreme end of the scale, their budgets don’t quite align with their scopes, and the necessary know-how simply isn’t there.