![\"ET](\"http:\/\/www.gratuitousscience.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/ET-box.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThis is definitely a terrible video game, and I do loathe it.\u00a0 I can find no enjoyment in playing it.\u00a0 But the story of E.T. is historically important, and it’s interwoven with the story of Atari’s fall from the top of the video game industry.\u00a0 It’s especially relevant now, with news of the Alamogordo dig<\/a> all over the Internet.<\/p>\n I don’t know exactly why so many news article writers call this game the worst ever made.\u00a0 One would suppose they’ve only ever heard of this game and about a dozen others, I guess.\u00a0 Surely most of these supposed “journalists” have never played E.T., and are only repeating what they’ve been told.\u00a0 Sadly, that’s a defining trait that many high profile news article writers share.<\/p>\n There are many, many, many more games that can be called worse than this.\u00a0 My pick for worst ever made would have to be “Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing<\/a>“.\u00a0 Amuse yourself with this delightful review<\/a> and fake commercial<\/a>, courtesy of the Angry Video Game Nerd.<\/p>\n What I think can be fairly said about E.T. – and the appropriate superlative that can be awarded – is that it has been the most disappointing video game to ever be released, ever.<\/p>\n Back in 1982, the E.T. movie was a smash hit.\u00a0 Atari fought hard to get the rights to produce a video game.\u00a0 By the time they had won and secured those rights, they only had six weeks to create, program, manufacture and distribute that game before the Christmas shopping season.\u00a0 The total creation process for a game at that time was at least six or seven months.\u00a0 Atari’s reckless, idiot management was asking an impossible task.<\/p>\n The only programmer they had who would agree to such a crazy time limit was Howard Scott Warshaw<\/a>.\u00a0 He’s the genius behind the 2600’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark<\/a>” and “Yar’s Revenge<\/a>“.\u00a0 Some consider the latter to be the Atari 2600’s best game.<\/p>\n He came up with the idea for the E.T. game and programmed it all within that time limit.\u00a0 You can read up on the whole story here<\/a>, including what Steven Spielberg thought about it.<\/p>\n There was no time for bug testing, and no time to tweak playability.\u00a0 What Howard coded was put into cartridges and sold.\u00a0 Oh, about that… Atari manufactured way more E.T. cartridges than they should have – something like 5 million.\u00a0 The game sold 1.5 million copies, making it one of the best-selling Atari 2600 games released.\u00a0 But this left Atari with millions and millions of unsold copies of a really bad game that no one would buy.<\/p>\n So that’s where the current story of landfills and cement trucks comes in.<\/p>\n But I decided to really try to play this game today, and see how far I got.\u00a0 Every time I’ve played this game in the past, I’ve given up after a minute or two in frustration because the game seems so pointless and frustrating.\u00a0 If you read the game’s manual, as no kid ever did back then, you found out that you were supposed to play as E.T., and you would roam around looking for pieces of a telephone.\u00a0 You would assemble these and then phone home, and then you would win the game.<\/p>\n The trouble is, well, take a look.<\/p>\n Since I don’t have a real 2600, I loaded this up on the excellent Z26 emulator<\/a>.<\/p>\n And I must say, for an Atari 2600 game, the intro screen is impressive.\u00a0 The out-of-tune music loops until you press the button.<\/p>\n Then you come down in your pink spacecraft to some kind of forest area.<\/p>\n And then what?<\/p>\n Well, as you wander around, you will see some information in the form of changing icons at the top of the screen.\u00a0 You need to refer back to the instruction manual to really figure these all out, but the arrows are telling you which direction to go.\u00a0 The counter at the bottom of the screen tells you how much energy you have left.<\/p>\n And this here is the biggest problem with the game.\u00a0 These fucking pits.\u00a0 They’re also an integral feature of the game as you need to actively search for and enter them in order to find the pieces of that god damned phone.\u00a0 The worst part about them is that you can fall into them without warning right after leaving the previous screen.\u00a0 The pixel detection is so precise in this game that your on-screen alien bastard will fall into a pit if any part of his green body intersects with any part of a pit.\u00a0 Even if a pixel at the very top and back of his head momentarily crosses a pit – BAM.\u00a0 You’re in.<\/p>\n You get out of these pits by pressing and holding the button, which extends your neck and levitates you.<\/p>\n You have to be careful when you exit a pit, because you will more often than not fall right back into the very same pit again when you release the button.<\/p>\n This dude in the yellow trench coat will steal anything your holding, so don’t let him get near.\u00a0 That dark green block on the ground is supposed to be a Reese’s Piece.\u00a0 You need to collect those too, and that trench coat dude will steal those too.\u00a0 He moves as fast as you and he never falls into the pits, and he will be waiting for you when you exit the pits, so FUCK.<\/p>\n And then there’s this guy.\u00a0 He’s a government scientist, hence the lab coat.<\/p>\n When he catches you, he carries you back to the Parthenon.\u00a0 Or at least something that looks like the Parthenon.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n