E.T.
When Steven Spielberg's movie E.T. appeared in May of 1982, it was an instant hit. Ray Kassar, the CEO of Atari, decided that Atari must have an E.T. game for the Christmas 1982 season. He therefore flew to New York, camped out in Spielberg's outer office, and eventually got the video game rights for the appallingly high figure of $20 million. He immediately called the programming department of the VCS division, instructing them to get to work on an E.T. game for Christmas sale.
The VCS people were aghast at this. In order to have a game cartridge ready for Christmas, the game program had to be completely finished by September 1. This was because the process of manufacturing the ROMs was slow and required long lead times. Kassar had called ...
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