It’s a good game! It’s misunderstood!
Or so I remembered reading many years ago (almost ten, as it happens).
When trying to find this article, I couldn’t do it because search is incredibly broken now, but with a little help I found it. So here it is.
The E.T. game being “the worst game” thing is all myth. It was a tremendous flop, but it had nothing to do with game quality. I’d say that 90% of Atari 2600 games were objectively bad and E.T. was amongst the 10% of good ones. They over estimated demand, overhyped it, and sold it during the holidays, which means extended and relaxed return policies. That resulted in too many units manufactured and too many units returned. Thus the landfill full of cartridges.
Source: I was one of the kids that got it for Christmas. It was fine, but wenty minutes later, I was back to Yar’s Revenge.
I just finished the audiobook from the guy who made the game. He made that game in 5 weeks. He also created one of the most profitable games as well. He has games on both ends of the spectrum. Should read his novel. Once Upon a Atari.
Reminds me of this attempt at fixing some of the issues with ET
http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/
I think the most interesting fix is the perspective issue/collision detection problem with the pits.
It was a good game. You just needed to know how to play it. I would beat it routinely as a kid.
The article is really well written, if you haven’t enjoyed it yet you should. Maybe in ten years you’ll be thinking about it and trying to find it again.
