Every Steven Spielberg game: what he really made and where it is just his name

Steven Spielberg's name sits in the credits of 56 video games, according to MobyGames. He actually worked on six of them: The Dig, Director's Chair, Trespasser, the first Medal of Honor and both Boom Blox games. A seventh, LMNO, was cancelled. The rest are games based on his films, "special thanks" lines and one famous meeting with an Atari programmer in 1982. Here is all of it in order, with dates, scores and what you can still buy in 2026.

Why go by the credits and not by the usual lists? Because the lists are wrong. Spielberg's filmography on Wikipedia calls him the writer of E.T. on the Atari 2600, the writer of Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and a creative consultant on Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings. The credits back up none of the three. Meanwhile the same list skips Trespasser, where he has a real "Additional Design" credit. Roles below were checked against the credits, EA press releases and developer accounts. Scores come from Metacritic, reviews and prices from Steam as of 3 October 2026. The full table is at the end.

E.T. on the Atari 2600, 1982: five weeks and a request to "do something more like Pac-Man"

The first game with a Spielberg connection went down as the worst game ever made. Warner, which owned Atari at the time, paid around 22 million dollars for the E.T. license (Engadget's figure; other retellings say 20 to 25 million). Programmer Howard Scott Warshaw got about five weeks, from late July to 1 September 1982, so the cartridges could hit shelves for Christmas.

Warshaw flew out to pitch the design to Spielberg. The director listened and asked whether he couldn't do something more like Pac-Man. Warshaw kept his own idea, the one with pits, phone parts and an alien who keeps falling into those pits. That was the extent of Spielberg's involvement: he approved the license and sat through the pitch. He has no credit on E.T. (nobody did, Atari 2600 games had no credits), so the "writer" line on Wikipedia has no visible source.

You know the rest. Estimates put sales at around 1.5 million cartridges, while millions more came back unsold. In September 1983 Atari trucked unsold stock to a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. The legend was put to the test on 26 April 2014, when the landfill was dug up for the documentary "Atari: Game Over". About 1,300 cartridges came out, roughly ten percent of them E.T. The city sold 881 on eBay for about 108,000 dollars. Not bad for the worst game in history.

The Dig, 1995: a TV idea, six years of development and a call for a hint

The Dig started life as an episode of Amazing Stories, Spielberg's anthology show on NBC. A story about astronauts stranded on an alien world was too expensive for television, so around 1989 he took it to LucasArts. By then he was already a regular there, having followed Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as an unofficial beta tester.

What followed is what Jimmy Maher at The Digital Antiquarian politely calls a long road. Noah Falstein led the project first, then Brian Moriarty, then briefly Hal Barwood, who recommended cancelling it, and finally Sean Clark, who shipped it in November 1995. Spielberg held four brainstorming sessions with Falstein's team over about 18 months, two of them with George Lucas in the room. His credits read "Based on a Concept by" and "Additional Story by". Science fiction author Orson Scott Card wrote the dialogue.

My favorite detail of the whole saga: while playing a near-final build, Spielberg got stuck and phoned Sean Clark at home for a hint. The man whose idea it was couldn't finish his own game. Which, to be fair, says a lot about LucasArts puzzles.

The Dig is still sold on Steam and GOG for 5.99 dollars, and until 8 October it is 1.19 in the Steam Autumn Sale. Reviews are 92 percent positive out of 1,288.

Director's Chair, 1996: Tarantino, Jennifer Aniston and the director as your teacher

Steven Spielberg's Director's Chair came out in 1996 from Knowledge Adventure and is the strangest piece of nineties movie software you will find. You got a script and a budget, picked takes, edited the scenes, added sound and music, and finally designed the poster. Your stars were Quentin Tarantino, as a death row inmate, and Jennifer Aniston, with Penn & Teller as the villains.

Spielberg did more than lend his name here. The credits list him as executive producer and director of all the filmed footage, and he appears on screen to explain how editing works, alongside his longtime editor Michael Kahn and cinematographer Dean Cundey. You can't buy it anywhere today. What remains are playthrough videos and a trailer uploaded by the project's producer, Roger Holzberg.

Medal of Honor, 1999: a 92 Metascore and a game sparked by his son's GoldenEye

DreamWorks Interactive was founded in March 1995 as a joint venture between DreamWorks, the studio Spielberg co-founded, and Microsoft. Nearly everything it made was a movie game: The Lost World: Jurassic Park on PS1, Small Soldiers, Warpath. Spielberg only gets "thanks" credits on those, with one exception. On Trespasser, the 1998 physics sandbox set on an island full of dinosaurs, he has an "Additional Design" credit. The game flopped, though people still talk about its physics.

Then came Saving Private Ryan. During post-production Spielberg watched his son Max play GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64 and came up with a World War II shooter. His credits on Medal of Honor are "Original Concept" and "Created by". Dale Dye, the film's military adviser, was hired for the game too; according to Wikipedia he tore apart an early build and then stayed on. The score was written by a young Michael Giacchino.

Medal of Honor launched on PlayStation in November 1999 and scored 92 on Metacritic from 17 reviews. That is the highest score of any Spielberg game, and higher than any game based on his films. Medal of Honor: Underground followed a year later (86), but by then his only credit was the series creator line. Neither PS1 game is sold digitally today.

Allied Assault, 2002: how Medal of Honor gave birth to Call of Duty

Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for PC was made by 2015, Inc. in Tulsa, and Spielberg had no direct hand in it. His credit is the same "Created by" line he gets on every game in the series, so the "writer" credit on Wikipedia is unsupported here too. It came out on 22 January 2002, scored 91 and is remembered for its Omaha Beach landing, clearly lifted from the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan.

What happened next matters more. Around twenty Allied Assault developers, including Vince Zampella, Jason West and Grant Collier, left 2015 and founded Infinity Ward. Activision signed them at E3 2002 and took a 30 percent stake. Internally the project was nicknamed "MOH Killer", and it shipped on 29 October 2003 as Call of Duty. So, strictly speaking, no Spielberg means no biggest military shooter series of the past twenty years either. He plays it himself, by the way, more on that below.

Unlike the first game, Allied Assault is still for sale: GOG sells the War Chest bundle with both expansions for 9.99 dollars.

Boom Blox, 2008-2009: creative director on the Wii

On 14 October 2005 EA announced that Spielberg would create three new franchises for it. He was to work on site at EA Los Angeles, the former DreamWorks Interactive, and EA would own everything that came out of it. The first result wasn't an epic but a Wii puzzle game. According to producer Louis Castle's GDC talk, it was Shigeru Miyamoto who showed Spielberg the Wii, and the director wanted something he could play with his kids.

Boom Blox launched on 6 May 2008: towers of blocks, a ball, the Wii Remote as your throwing arm and almost four hundred levels. Spielberg's credit is "Creative Director". It scored 85. A year later, on 19 May 2009, the sequel Boom Blox Bash Party arrived with 86 points and a level editor. In EA's press release Spielberg says the original came from a need to bring families back into the same room, playing together. Neither game is sold digitally today, you need the Wii discs.

LMNO: the gun-free game cancelled in 2010

The second project under the EA deal was far more ambitious. Under the codename LMNO, EA Los Angeles and Arkane built a game for Xbox 360 and PS3: a cross-country escape with an alien girl called Eve, first person, parkour and not a single gunshot. According to Wikipedia the lack of guns was Spielberg's requirement. The team included Doug Church and Randy Smith, veterans of Looking Glass and Thief.

Work reportedly stopped around 2009, and the cancellation became public in late 2010. In November 2010 1UP showed target footage, meaning how the game was supposed to look, and in 2020 more footage turned up in Noclip's Arkane documentary. The third franchise from the EA deal was never named, and I couldn't find out what it was meant to be.

Where Spielberg is credited by mistake: Staff of Kings and two more

The Wikipedia list ends with Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings from 2009, where Spielberg is listed as creative consultant. The game's credits only give him "Special Thanks". The line most likely comes from an Engadget video of 11 May 2009, but that's producer Matt Shell speaking, saying the team "worked closely with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg" to get the story right. That's a producer describing the process, not a credited role. The Wii version scored 55.

So, three lines from a popular list that the credits don't support:

Indiana Jones games, 1982-2024: from the Atari to an 87 for Great Circle

There are more games based on Spielberg's films than games he worked on, and he had nothing to do with almost all of them. Indiana Jones reached the Atari 2600 in 1982, the same year as E.T., made by the same Warshaw. Then came Atari's Temple of Doom arcade machine in 1985 and two versions of The Last Crusade in 1989. The Lucasfilm Games adventure is worth buying even now: 5.99 on Steam, 77 percent positive reviews. Spielberg is only in its thanks, even though this is the game that got him hooked on LucasArts adventures.

LEGO Indiana Jones arrived in 2008 (78 on PC, 88 percent of 4,437 Steam reviews), and MachineGames released Indiana Jones and the Great Circle in 2024. Great Circle is the best-reviewed game based on a Spielberg film: 87 on PC, 90 percent positive out of 20,809 Steam reviews, and in May 2026 it reached the Switch 2 as well. The story is original, set between Raiders and The Last Crusade, and Spielberg is once again only in the "Very Special Thanks".

Jaws, Jurassic Park and Tintin: movie games without Spielberg

The other films had less luck. Jaws on the NES in 1987, Hook in 1992, the 1993 wave of Jurassic Park games on anything with buttons, The Lost World in 1997, Minority Report in 2002, Jaws Unleashed in 2006, Telltale's Jurassic Park: The Game and Ubisoft's The Adventures of Tintin in 2011. Spielberg worked on none of them; at best he is thanked or credited through Amblin. These are the games the Angry Video Game Nerd tore into in his 2011 "Spielberg Games" episode, which now sits at almost 11 million views.

This corner of the list had one good and one bad piece of news in 2026. The good: on 13 February Limited Run Games re-released the NES Jaws as JAWS: Retro Edition on Switch, PS5 and PC, with the original plus an expanded version. It sits at 98 percent positive on Steam, though from only 41 reviews so far. The bad: the same publisher's Jurassic Park Classic Games Collection was pulled from every digital store on 31 March 2026. The Telltale game was delisted back in 2018, and Tintin can't be bought either.

There is also a new game based on the very first Jurassic Park on the way: Saber Interactive's Jurassic Park: Survival, which picks up the day after the events of the 1993 film. Steam doesn't list a release date yet.

What Spielberg plays himself

He has been gaming for a long time. At the Ready Player One premiere at SXSW in March 2018 he recalled spending 1974 on Martha's Vineyard, during the Jaws shoot, glued to Pong. In the eighties he had arcade cabinets at Amblin and, according to Ernest Cline, seriously chased a million points in Missile Command. In the nineties he called LucasArts for hints, and not only for The Dig.

The latest comes from his son Max. In September 2024 he told the MinnMax podcast (as reported by Tom's Hardware on 29 September) that his father plays Call of Duty campaigns on PC, asks Max for a list of the top five shooters and can't stand controllers: keyboard and mouse only. On his phone it's Golf Clash. The man whose game led to Call of Duty plays Call of Duty. I like that more than any quote about games becoming art.

There is one of those as well, of course: Spielberg has said more than once that he will believe in games as art when someone admits they cried at level 17. I couldn't pin down where and when he first said it; the earliest dated version I found is on Shacknews in June 2006.

For Ready Player One itself there were only eight free VR experiences from HTC Vive, and Spielberg had no hand in them. One of them, Ready Player One: OASIS beta, is still free on Steam with mixed reviews.

Every Spielberg game: the full table

First the games he worked on or has a real credited role in, then the main games based on films he directed. Games where he only appears under "thanks" number in the dozens and are left out.

Steam reviews: what is still alive in 2026

The Dig is the only game Spielberg actually worked on that you can get on Steam, and it holds up remarkably well: 92 percent positive reviews thirty years on. Only JAWS: Retro Edition ranks higher, but it has few reviews so far. The Ready Player One VR demo comes last at 59 percent.

Where to start in 2026

More from this series, one creator at a time: every John Carpenter game, Guillermo del Toro's games, cancelled ones included, Kiefer Sutherland's roles with the wrong credits sorted out, plus Clive Barker, Akira Yamaoka and Mick Gordon.

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Every Guillermo del Toro Game: From Blade II and P.T. to Death Stranding 2