Ottawa game studio to scour New Mexico landfill for worst video game ever made

E.T. probably shouldn't phone home. At least not in video game form.

Argued to be the worst video game ever, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari (and other games like it) may soon see the light of day, if a Canadian video game studio can find them.

According to the Alamogordo Daily News, Canadian developer Fuel Industries has been given permission to scour an old landfill in New Mexico where old copies of the game may be buried. Legend has it that Atari buried several million copies of the game in that landfill, along with copies of an unsuccessful port of arcade classic Pac-Man to the Atari.

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Atari paid Steven Spielberg tens of millions of dollars to license the E.T. name back in 1983, and the dud of a game caused the troubled company's worth to sink even further at the time.

Alamogordo Commissioner Jason Baldwin says he played the E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial game, and said it was horrible.

(With files from The Canadian Press )