To me, the game was a case of "how could they possibly make a game out of this movie, much less make it any fun" because there was nothing about the movie that could feasibly translate into a workable game experience, even for the system it was programmed for. So in this case, E.T. for the Atari 2600 is like the elephant trying to perform ballet, and the people marvel not because of the elephant's grace at performing ballet, but just at the fact that it can perform ballet at all.