It's no wonder Atari buried thousands of these cartridges in a landfill. Not only did it drive the once mighty Atari company to bankruptcy, but it even caused the great video game crash of 1983 that nearly destroyed the entire business in America. Yes, it was truly THAT bad.
Your objective is to guide ET across multiple screens on a single level to collect three separate phone parts to phone home and escape planet Earth, all the while avoiding government agents and scientists trying to hinder your progress, as well as holes inexplicably dug everywhere. Your life meter is displayed at the bottom of the screen. If it reaches zero, Elliot comes along to revive you. If you lose three lives, it's game over. That's all you do.
Production for this game took a mere five weeks, and it shows. First of all, the gameplay is totally aggravating. You'll be constantly falling into the holes that are not only numerous but very difficult to avoid due to their size and prevalence. The poor hit detection and clunky controls only made it more infuriatingly difficult. But that's not all. Even for an Atari game from the 80s, the graphics are bad. ET is just a sickly green blob with eyes. The level designs are completely dull and bland, the sound effects and music are poor. By comparison, Donkey Kong Jr. And Mrs. Pac-Man, both also released in 1982, looked and sounded far better.
In the end, this was just a disastrous attempt at a cash grab of an otherwise awesome and successful movie. If you're a hardcore ET fan, don't even play this for free if possible. Just stick with the movie.
