Shortest development period for a videogame film conversion

Often widely derided as one of the worst videogames ever made, Atari's 1982 film tie-in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial had to be programmed in an incredibly paltry five weeks. "By the time Atari and Steven Spielberg finished negotiations for the E.T. licence there were only five weeks left to create the game and still make the Christmas market," its coder Howard Scott Warshaw (USA) recounted in UK magazines Games TM/RETRO. "No one had ever done a game in less than five or six months and I had five weeks!"

Warshaw confirmed that the actual time-frame for the game was from Tuesday, 27 July to Wednesday, 1 September 1982.

The game, which was released for Atari 2600 consoles, became the stuff of folklore when multiple boxed copies of the game (albeit with other Atari 2600 games), were dug up in a landfill in Mexico in 2014.

Warshaw said that he technically had 36 days to make the game, but it was already dinner time by the time he'd accepted the job on the first day.