5 Titles That Prove 1982 Was The Worst Year In Gaming

When the video game crash of 1983 shook the industry to its core, a lot of the warning signs could be traced to the preceding year. An oversaturation of the home gaming platforms flooded the market as companies like Atari and Coleco Industries competed for market dominance. That meant there was considerably less oversight when it came to things like quality control ahead of wide releases. The direct consequence of this is a proliferation of subpar games, some of which have since become particularly notorious in the years following their debut.

With that in mind, we're highlighting the most thoroughly mediocre video games released in 1982. This ranges from unauthorized titles that still managed to secure a wide release to rushed jobs that presaged the development crunch that still plagues the industry. With none of these games are the sole cause for the industry's widespread implosion, they certainly served as catalysts in their own way. Here are five titles that prove 1982 was the worst year in gaming, nearly taking the industry down with it.

As developers grew increasingly savvy on how to program and manufacture games for the Atari 2600 hardware, the console saw an influx of unlicensed games produced for it. This included adult titles with pornographic premises, made without the industry oversight and content safeguards that exist today. Among this wave of games in 1982 was the game "Gigolo," which was released paired with the other pornographic title "Bachelor Party." The game has players control a sex worker visiting clients around a city while avoiding muggers and the police.

"Gigolo" typifies the sort of sad, sex-oriented games that tainted the Atari 2600's legacy in the early '80s. It's also one of the few titles where we can actually show gameplay screens, given the graphic content for most of these games. "Gigolo," in particular, is basically a low-rent memory game with keep-away elements as players try to remember which buildings contain potential clients as they avoid enemies. There is one pornographic Atari 2600 game released in 1982 that is much more infamously vile that we'll also cover on this list.

To be clear, the classic "Pac-Man" originally released for arcades in 1980 is an iconic '80s game with endless replay value. This entry, instead, refers specifically to the 1982 port of the game developed and published by Atari for the Atari 2600. While the game maintained the broad presentation and gameplay of a top-down maze game with Pac-Man eating dots while being pursued by ghosts, the port visibly deviated from the arcade. Pac-Man and the ghosts barely resembled their arcade counterparts while the maze layouts were completely altered.

Though nearly 7 million copies of "Pac-Man" on the Atari 2600 were sold in 1982 alone, response to the game itself was overwhelmingly negative. What was an eagerly anticipated port of a fan-favorite arcade game was deemed to be glaringly inferior and not worth the two-year wait. Between this and other lackluster Atari titles, faith in the brand plummeted, serving as a warning to companies porting popular arcade titles. Not even as fun as any number of the "Pac-Man" copycats available at the time, the Atari 2600 port was a comparative embarrassment.

One of the most unrepentantly despicable video games ever made, no matter the year, is "Custer's Revenge." The game has players control nude cavalry officer General George Armstrong Custer, who starts on the left side of the screen. The goal of the game is to traverse horizontally to the right side of the screen where a nude indigenous woman is tied to a post. Players must avoid arrows cascading from the top of the screen as they make their short trek through the desert.

"Custer's Revenge" is so heinous and graphic in its presentation and concept that we're not going to show a screenshot from it. The game is built around the goal of sexual violence, specifically one against a woman from a historically persecuted community. Immediately and rightfully attracting controversy, the game was pulled from stores in the face of the resulting backlash. A stain on the legacy of the Atari 2600 library, "Custer's Revenge" is an unapologetically depraved title that always deserves being called out over how heinous it is.

"Raiders of the Lost Ark" was one of the biggest movies of 1981, introducing audiences to the iconic adventurer Indiana Jones. A movie tie-in game was released 17 months later, developed and published by Atari for the Atari 2600. The game actually requires players to use two controllers to proceed, with one maneuvering Indy himself while the other manages his inventory. As with the movie, Indy is searching for the biblical Ark of the Covenant, using items he picks up to solve obtuse puzzles in each screen.

"Raiders of the Lost Ark" should be cited among the worst Indiana Jones video games, precisely because of how obtuse and inaccessible it is. There is little on-screen to suggest how Indy should proceed, leaving players stuck and increasingly frustrated — remember this game was released long before widespread internet accessibility to look up clues. The necessity of using two controllers for a single-player experience really speaks to the limitations of the Atari 2600, something also highlighted by its rough technical presentation. While not the worst movie tie-in game released in 1982, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" barely avoids that distinction by another widely maligned Spielberg adaptation.

If you know anything about the history of the Atari 2600, you must've anticipated "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" showing up somewhere on this list. Widely considered the worst video game in history, the title was a tie-in for the highly successful movie of the same name. The game had players control the titular stranded alien as he searched levels for parts of a communication device to contact his species. E.T. must maintain his energy by consuming candy and has a limited time to reach the pickup area after successfully assembling the communication device.

After Atari bought the game license, in order to meet its 1982 holiday season release date, "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" had a development time of about five weeks. The results of the rushed production was evident, with crude graphics, even for an Atari 2600 game, and generally uninspired gameplay. An utter disappointment to fans of the movie, the game became a huge commercial failure, leading to its subsequent notoriety. When it came to games based on movies directed by Steven Spielberg, 1982 was a particularly infamous year.