The story of ET, the worst game ever?

[Elixer]

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35560458

"I became extremely emotional," he says. "This little game that I had written in five weeks more than 30 years ago was still generating excitement. I was full of gratitude.

"Is ET really the worst game of all time? Probably not. But the story of the fall of the video game industry needed a face and that was ET.

"I actually prefer it when people do identify it as the worst game of all time because I also did Yars Revenge and that's frequently identified as one of the best of all time. So between the two, I have the greatest range of any designer in history

5 weeks to produce that... so, yeah, a turd is born in 5 weeks.

*edit D'oh... didn't want to post this in PC gaming.. more like OT.

 

[Jeraden]

I remember playing that as a kid on my Atari 2600. Never could figure out what the hell you were even supposed to do. I watched a walkthrough of it a couple years ago -- and still not sure how one was supposed to figure out that's what you were even supposed to do. I just remember falling in pits over and over and not being able to get out.

 

[Pariah]

I don't remember the game being that bad. I didn't own a copy of it, but some of my friends did. It was confusing at times, but we were able to beat the game.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I didn't own it but I remember playing it somewhere. Honestly I remember it being essentially the first open world game. There was no real point other than not getting caught. Honestly the vast majority of atari 2600 games were crap even for the time. Atari had very little quality control.

 

[Sonikku]

Back then when a game came out for Atari they didn't necessarily get a cut. It was basically free reign bullshit. And when mom and pop had the choice between one hit game for $40 or ten other "games" for the same amount, they often opted for the latter.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I didn't own it but I remember playing it somewhere. Honestly I remember it being essentially the first open world game. There was no real point other than not getting caught. Honestly the vast majority of atari 2600 games were crap even for the time. Atari had very little quality control.

Atari arcade games were amazing. Ahead of their time even (I Robot is basically a Starfox ten years before Starfox).

The problem is the 2600 was junk.

 

[Exophase]

I don't remember the game being that bad. I didn't own a copy of it, but some of my friends did. It was confusing at times, but we were able to beat the game.

"ET is the worst game of all time" is one of those strange memes that's more of a thing that gets repeated a lot than something a lot of people actually think on their own.

It's flawed but really not that bad. It had some pretty complex ideas for its time, a few of them pretty decent, it was just rushed and therefore poorly executed/badly polished.

 

[Fallen Kell]

"ET is the worst game of all time" is one of those strange memes that's more of a thing that gets repeated a lot than something a lot of people actually think on their own.

It's flawed but really not that bad. It had some pretty complex ideas for its time, a few of them pretty decent, it was just rushed and therefore poorly executed/badly polished.

I agree with this completely. I believe a couple years back someone made a couple byte fix for the ROM, which solved almost all the problems. It all had to do with the hit-detection having a bug whereby a mistake was made causing you to fall into a pit if any part of ET touched the hole, when in fact that code had originally intended for only if the bottom line of pixels in the feet touched the hole that you would fall in. It also fixed a mistake in the color processing which turned ET green instead of brown (a piece of code meant to save memory space was used incorrectly which turned ET and several background screens green instead of the pinkish/brown that ET really was).

 

[Vivendi]

The first time I heard about this game was when someone mentioned that Atari had to bury millions of unsold copies in a landfill.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Atari arcade games were amazing. Ahead of their time even (I Robot is basically a Starfox ten years before Starfox).

The problem is the 2600 was junk.

I mean that there were many games that I'd cut lawns & save for then the game would turn out to be a poor copy of another game

 

[Slew Foot]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUsQmYRfynw


the avgn did a nice video on this, nsfw of course

 

[Zenoth]

It's a bad game, simply because it's bad. But it functions, it's just boring to death.

It shouldn't be considered the worst game of all time, even as a meme. There's real turds like Superman 64 and Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing out there that just scream for attention and literally ask you to hate them with burning passion. Not only because they're bad enough to make you puke, but because they're also excessively broken and unfinished, and to add insult to injury they were actually sold that way, which should have been illegal. No laws protecting video gamers from companies releasing a giant pile of digital shit on the market leads to "games" like that.

E.T. was gawd awful, but at least it worked.

 

[OlyAR15]

IMO Jurassic Park: Trespasser would be the worst game ever, mainly because it was so hyped as being this amazing technological advancement in gaming.

 

[Homerboy]

You guys have seen the movie about this, right?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3715406/

 

[slag]

IMO Jurassic Park: Trespasser would be the worst game ever, mainly because it was so hyped as being this amazing technological advancement in gaming.

Trespasser was an amazing game. The voice over was phenomenal. The gameplay was meh, especially the holding of guns and shooting, but that was easily overlooked. I've beaten the game a few times and its enjoyable.

 

[louisalviss]

Thanks for your review

 

[clok1966]

ET was not the worst game ever, if you owned a 2600, as mentioned it was unregulated, anybody could make a 2600 game, and everybody did. Much like the Crap Wii user where getting a few years ago, the 2600 got in its day. There where much worse games back then. If you look at ET in perspective to games in its time it was just OK to poor. It was not a GOOD game. It was much like the SwordQuest game, or Adventure or Hunted House. The 2600 was no powerhouse, even in its day. Opinion: it was annoyingly frustrating. The pits had poor collision detection, while most 2600 games seemed forgiving on touching "bad" items, ET was brutally accurate and adding the plodding controls you fell into them quite often. The odd part is many pits contained items you needed. So a game where you run away from agents and do NOT want to fall in pits, also includes items you want in those same pits. Add on that fact that some screens looked the same, have you been in this pit or not? It was hard to tell screens apart. Then tack on a SLOW and boring levitation thing to get out of pits, which if not done perfectly meant you fell right back in.

In the end, pretty standard 2600 gameplay for the time, but with some very frustrating game mechanics that where magnified by somewhat clunky controls.

its real problem was Atari overpaid for the licence, Rushed the product, and overproduced carts. From a pure sell through, it was a huge success (2nd or 3rd biggest selling 2600 cart ever, even after returns), but when the Company overestimates (by a astronomical amount) its ability to sell. Up to that point NO 2600 game had sold in the numbers they produced, if that isn't HUMAN error nothing is. You cant assume you will sell more games then you had ever sold before on guesswork.

it is amazing nobody remembers those little video gaming lessons. The 2600 suffered from shovelware, and just a few years ago the Wii did also. Steam is getting close with the 500-Miner wars/Minecraft clones.

just opinions, nothing more.

 

[Ferzerp]

ET was ok for an Atari game. We had a copy. It was no worse than any of the other stuff available for it. Apart from the bug where you could only exit the wells from two of the four directions without falling back in, it was fine. It was actually less shallow than most other Atari games, but that isn't saying much.

I think it was probably more fun than that smurf game.

edit: I just watched a youtube review of it that posited that the reason people think it is worse than it is was that they didn't understand the objective. This makes sense I guess. If you didn't read the book, or have someone explain it to you, it would be bewildering and stupid.

 

[sweenish]

its real problem was Atari overpaid for the licence, Rushed the product, and overproduced carts. From a pure sell through, it was a huge success (2nd or 3rd biggest selling 2600 cart ever, even after returns), but when the Company overestimates (by a astronomical amount) its ability to sell. Up to that point NO 2600 game had sold in the numbers they produced, if that isn't HUMAN error nothing is. You cant assume you will sell more games then you had ever sold before on guesswork.

They produced more carts than they had sold actual consoles, banking on the fact that people would buy their hardware to play this licensed game.

It's good to see some actual history. I usually have to go to emulation boards for that.

I believe it's referred to as the worst game ever not just on the game's actual merits but the fact that Atari, through this game, nearly killed the entire industry. Good thing Nintendo came around.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

I'm going to have to chime in here and agree that ET was by no means the worst Atari game. As some have already mentioned, practically anyone could create games for the 2600 and as video games were seen as a hot ticket with a seemingly endless future, even established companies in other industries tried to get in on the act. How many of you knew that Quaker Oats had a video game division, for example (bonus if anyone can tell me the name of it)?

The late 70s and early 80s were an awesome time to be alive if you enjoyed video games and I consider it the best time of my life. There were so many choices, lots of innovation, and new and cool products introduced all the time. It all changed during the video game crash of 1983 and that's when I moved on to the Commodore 64 for my gaming fix.

 

[QueBert]

most 2600 games sucked, I remember I had ET, I don't remember liking it hating it. Pac man was SHIT, pretty much every 2600 game felt like it probably rushed and had a really log budget. I never understood why they decided to make ET the game to push the system so hard. IMHO Raiders Of The Lost Ark was better, and the movie was uber popular.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

most 2600 games sucked, I remember I had ET, I don't remember liking it hating it. Pac man was SHIT, pretty much every 2600 game felt like it probably rushed and had a really log budget. I never understood why they decided to make ET the game to push the system so hard. IMHO Raiders Of The Lost Ark was better, and the movie was uber popular.

Raiders was better (maybe the best 2600 game), but it came out in 1981 and then ET came out in 1982. The 2600 version of Pac-man came out in 1981 IIRC and yeah, it was very disappointing.

 

[paperfist]

There was a show on Showtime I think where the local municipality excavated a bunch of ET and other Atari games from the local dump. I think the show mentioned ET was the death of Atari.

 

[Exophase]

I think the show mentioned ET was the death of Atari.

The funny thing about that is that E.T. sold about 1.5 million carts which is a very good number for an Atari 2600 game in 1982. In fact, it was the fifth highest selling Atari 2600 game.

This was far below expectations and they lost a ton of money on the very expensive license and an absurdly overly ambitious manufacturing run of the cartridges. So it was, more than anything, a glaring sign of the terrible management at Atari and one of several things that led to the 1983 crash. If by some miracle E.T. doesn't lose money they would have probably inevitably been doomed by other poor decisions.

 

[skipsneeky2]

You're winner!