E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

OK. I know how many people think that E.T is Rubbish and the Worst Game ever but it is OK for Atari 2600 Standards. There is a plot and it was one of the first games to have an ending video. The holes are annoying and the game glitches and has its fault but it is OK. If you bought it when it came out in 1982 with the instructions then you would actually know what to do. Games on the Atari 2600 that are worse include Custers Revenge, The Kool Aid game, and Beat em and Eat Em just to name a Few. I know that it isn't Adventure or Pitfall but it is alright. I have finished this game a few times so it is finishable. Thats about it. It is OK for its time which was during the great video game depression.

CONS

• Pretty much everything is wrong with this game, but first, let's talk about the gameplay. E.T. 2600 is an adventure game in which the titular character lands on Earth and must pick up phone pieces from pit holes to escape, while also communicating with Elliott, the young deuteragonist as in the film, and avoiding the government agents from hindering progress. You know everything that made Steven Spielberg's film a success, right? Well, Atari tried to do just that by programming an Atari 2600 game in just 5 weeks, as opposed to the typical 9 months, to meet the deadline for 1982's Christmas, and the result is a remotely-related 8-kilobyte code of garbage. It is simply a strange-looking alien falling down pit holes to pick up telephone instruments, send a signal through the telecommunicator, and then escape in the only level. It is the type of game whose tone can only appeal to children (which is not to say that I want anything obscene in it, which I clearly do not).
• It was 1982 by the time both the film and the game and adaption were released, and with plenty of console (i.e. arcade) games and decent computer games out there, we should have all been out of the Stone Age of gaming, right? Apparently, E.T. 2600 is not, and it was a huge mistake on Atari's part to insist that their 1977 console was still the predominantly superior console to play on. The result is absolutely primitive, in terms of low-resolution graphics; beeps, doots, and a complicated sequence of kinks for audio; and limited controls. On a creative level, it is not even that great. The graphics and animations generally look amateurish and somewhat redundant, and the only controls are the joystick for movement and the only button for running, climbing out of pits, and performing special functions. As for those functions, E.T. can teleport, consume Reese's pieces for health, detect telephone instruments in the pit holes, call in Elliott to hold on the Reese's pieces, send away the government agents, and signal an alien ship through the telephone to escape, but E.T. must be in certain areas of the maps to perform those particular functions. Unfortunately, the positions to perform a function as indicated at the top of the screen (and I had to read the manual to understand all the symbols of the functions) are randomized for every new game, so it seems that the only way to beat the game is to strictly memorize every vital and helpful part of the game.
• E.T. 2600 is perhaps the most difficult game of the 1980s not because it is meant to be challenging, but because it is buggy and anti-player. First of all, we have the abysmal pit holes, which are easy to accidentally fall in but hard to float out, where if you do climb out, you may fall back in, and if a single part of your character sprite overlaps the pit hole sprites, you fall in. On top of that, the enemies are able to walk over the pit holes without a problem, and if you stand near a border of one of the 6 sections of the map, there is a great chance that an enemy will appear in your spot without a warning and steal your vital resources. Additionally, running or even teleporting from section to section is likely to result in bumping into an enemy or falling down a pit hole. Even worse is that the player is required to fall down some of the holes in order to progress.

PRO

• The only thing that saves this Atari game from being a complete zero is that it can be completed, provided that the player has read the manual and fully understood the game's atrocious mechanics, but even after beating the game, it does not take much of the frustration from the game's proud and showy flaws, and the player is ultimately better without.

CONCLUSION: The game that deserved to, and had to, be buried in New Mexico (which is no longer a myth), E.T. deserves a spot in a museum that serves to remind humanity never to repeat those mistakes.

Ahhhh, the Atari. So many good games. Dokney Kong, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Super Breakout, Nightdriver, so many epic games. But everything has bad side to it. Something dark. E.T. is the bad game on the Atari 2600. When you first look at the game, want to play it. Seeing the Atari logo, Eliot, E.T., the E.T. logo, the game just looks good. Put when you pop it into your Atari 2600, you are disappointed,on it being the bad game that it is. So at first your walking around as E.T., and you gotta admit, that's awesome. But get you get chased around bu this random guy, and he pulls you back to a random place, then when you run away, if your not careful, you fall into a pit! And some pits, you cannot get out of. There is no way possible. I spent hours trying to find out how to get outta the pit, but there is no way to do it. So, then, angry, you take it out, hoping to never play it again. As you can tell, this game is bad. A lot of people consider it to be the worst game ever, but I don't think it's THAT bad. I think the worst game ever is Superman on the Nintendo 64. But this game is cool to play once, but you will get very mad at this game. Just like I did. So don't destroy it like some do, keep it, it'll be a collectors item.And if your friends haven't heard of the game, you can trick them saying it's a GOOD game, and watch them get angry. VERY angry.

It is believed that ET: The Extra Terrestrial helped bring about the video game crash of 1984. Many feel that after having been burned by the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man that buyers adopted a 'once bitten, twice shy' attitude about buying this game. I, too, have played this so I feel your pain. The guy who programed this also made Raiders of the Lost Ark and Yar's Revenge for Atari 2600. Problem here was he only had 5-6 weeks to design, program and test this game (they wanted it in stores by Christmas and he was given the job in late July).

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.