It might be news to you younger folks, but us oldsters know that "E.T." for the Atari 2600 is considered a legend among bad games -- often named the worst game OF ALL TIME.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_(Atari_2600)
For those of you looking to make a name for yourself in the video game world, you could do worse than finding and documenting the legendary E.T. landfill.
But here's the shameful part: I enjoyed the E.T. game. In fact, I think I enjoyed it more than the movie itself -- though the movie came out in the exact same month that I discovered Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (1st Edition), so of course it paled in comparison. Like Superman (http://www.videogamecritic.net/2600ss.htm#Superman), E.T. was an embryonic version of what we today know as the "free-roamer." The Wikipedia article quotes the game's creator as being proud of it, given the unique constraints he faced, and I say good for him.
ID:43954
 Jun 9 2008, 7:12 pm
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I never owned a 2600 although my wife did, my cousins did, and several friends did. My family had an Atari 400 (a 16K home computer) and later an 800XL, which had both more sophisticated games and a lesser variety. The 2600 had a lot of merit. (I still say though that the visual superiority of the 800's graphics vs. the 2600's make the later port of River Raid a much better game.)
Interestingly, the homebrew scene for the 2600 is alive and well. I've recently been playing a homebrew game called Cave In that's quite enjoyable. Had the game been written in 1982 it would've buried all competition. | |
I played ET at some point, but I quit after just a few minutes of randomly falling into holes and going back out. I was completely lost and just gave up.
Call it what you want, but any game that makes a gamer like me completely give up in the first 10 minutes is a failure. At least if I gave up because the first 10 minutes of the game left a rancid taste in my mouth. | |
The Colors of your blog nearly killed my eyes.
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Danial.Beta wrote:
I played ET at some point, but I quit after just a few minutes of randomly falling into holes and going back out. I was completely lost and just gave up. I neglected to mention that I was a compulsive reader of instruction manuals in those days -- Atari encouraged it by including multiple game variants (identified only with a number), two difficulty switches which could affect anything the programmer wanted, whether or not it was even vaguely related to difficulty, and of course, no in-game tutorials. Here's a manual if you ever want to give it another go: http://www.atariage.com/ manual_html_page.html?SystemID=2600&SoftwareID=998&ItemTypeI D=HTMLMANUAL I'm not arguing that it was a great game -- but I did enjoy it at the time. | |
Duelmaster409 wrote:
The Colors of your blog nearly killed my eyes. Only nearly? Then I must try harder. >:) | |
I'm always innately skeptical when someone says "the worst [thing] of all time", because that means they're predicting that no one in the future could possibly be as stupid. If anything, my experiences have indicated the opposite to be true.
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The gamer mom's worst nightmare: Finding little Gug hiding under his covers with a flashlight doing a disgusting thing...playing E.T.!
"Dear, couldn't you have gotten into drugs???" | |
Gughunter wrote:
Duelmaster409 wrote: My eyes were actually relieved but maybe thats because I was over at Jokah's Blog. | |
Yeah, I have this game too. Only I didn't like it at all. I gave up trying to beat and I could never get out of those pits that you have to fall into to get items.
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The Wikipedia article is interesting... that they only had five weeks to make the game is freaking insane.