E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

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 honestly one of the worst Atari 2600 games, and it's really poorly gameplay, the visible and invisible holes everywhere, and the confusing directions, it's honestly and admittedly a broken down game.

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.

I've been reading a lot of worst of lists as far as video games and this one pops up on said list a lot. I can agree that it deserves its spot on such a list; however, I generally think it absurd when it appears in the top spot. Superman on the Nintendo 64 is another game I see a lot of and have seen it number one and that one I think is a better contender for the spot as I do not even think this is the worst playing Atari 2600 game. With that being the case, then no, it absolutely is not the worst video game of all time.

The story, well you are E.T. and I give them props for making you control E.T. rather than Elliot. You wander the landscape looking for things so that you may piece them together to make a device to call the mothership and head home. That is about all there is to it and it is repetitious and gets old quick. I may think it is unfairly ranked as the worst game of all time, but I didn't say it was good; however, how many games for the Atari were not overpriced boring games where you did little beyond one simple task? The designer had only five weeks to program this and, frankly, Atari most likely felt the need to get this game ready in time for Christmas due to the fact they paid the absurd price of 25 million to Steven Spielberg for the rights, yikes!

In the end, the developer probably did as well as he could in the limited time frame. The dude also made the very fun Yar's Revenge, but then he made the overly complicated Raiders of the Lost Ark too. Honestly, Atari should have given Steven the finger instead of 25 million, because honestly, E.T. was not a action movie, it had very little going on and is more known for its comedy moments and pulling at the heartstrings. There is really nothing to make a game about in there, unless you perhaps adapt the bike chase at the end and make it much longer than it was, then it would be like the other half of the Atari library, where you speed around doing something as the enemy gets progressively faster until you die.

E.T. has not been in too many things since the movie. No more movies, which considering how they make sequels to stuff these days I am surprised it has not happened, no more anything really. He has appeared in like two other games, but I couldn't tell you if they are computer games or console games so it isn't like they were big hits either. I believe his most memorable apperance was for being in that horrible Universal Studios game which is another game I consider worse than this thing and does include the bike scene! In the end, I just do not think it is a property that would work all that well in a video game and apparently in nothing else except the one movie, though it is nice that they accepted this and have not tried to dig him out of the attic like they do to another alien all the time, I'm looking at you ALF!

I've heard that this is the worst video game of all time. I think the reason why it has a lot of negative reception, is because gamers got frustrated very easily, because of the gameplay or something like that. But I agree on them. There's even a documentary about this game. But I'm gonna have to watch it sometime. Even though I'm usually not into documentaries. I would rather watch the movie than play this game.