E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial

The Good
I first played this game a couple of years after it came out, when I was ten years old or so. It didn't seem all that bad at the time, and a lot of the subsequent criticism which has been heaped on the game just seems to be bandwagon-jumping. It's no worse than any of the other 2600 adventure-style games, such as 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' and... well, 'Adventure', I suppose, although the latter has historical interest. It has a nice theme tune and a good picture of ET, the game is simple enough to play, and passes the time well enough. The graphic of ET during the game captures his likeness effectively. If you get bored, you can make his head go up and down, and up and down. Up. And down.

The Bad
However, ET is nowadays a notorious software failure; Atari paid a lot of money for the ET licence, and when the game underperformed, thousands of unsold cartridges were buried in landfill, as there was no demand for them and it was cheaper than storing them or selling them at a loss. The major gameplay element involves exploring a set of holes in the ground - something which wasn't in the film - but perhaps due to a lack of testing, it's very easy to fall back into the holes after you have clambered out; furthermore, several of the screens have holes in such a position that, if you enter the screen from a certain direction, you tend to automatically fall into them. It's frustrating. Fandango trombone. The basic gameplay makes no sense if you don't have the instructions, as it is based around a set of icons which are meaningless in themselves.

The Bottom Line
ET is a notorious flop. As a game, it's so-so; frustrating and hard to follow, but easier to complete than most of the few other 2600 adventures ('Haunted House', however, thrashes it in every respect).However, the tale of surplus cartridges being pulped and buried gives it a certain cultural resonance, and along with the shoddy conversion of 'Pac-Man' it's an icon of the 1983 video games crash.

The Good
Seriously, E.T. was actually not as bad as many people say. It was just not nearly good enough to be treated as a serious video game platform. It isn't much fun and doesn't deserve the license of the fantastic movie its based upon.

E.T. is a game where you control E.T. throughout several landscapes looking for pieces of his telephone, so that he can call home. I'm sure someone on Earth has managed to do this although rumor has it that if you actually managed to beat the game it would simply freeze (or worse).

The most impressive thing about the game was that the programmer managed to pull it off in less than two months. That probably doesn't make you want to go out and buy this old relic.

The Bad
At the time the graphics were truly state of the art and you could actually discern the shapes of buildings, trees, humans, and E.T. himself. However as of 2006, my cheap cell phone uses more advanced graphics.

E.T. was quite difficult. Most adults and children found it impossible and unrewarding. My cousin discovered how to lift E.T. out of the pits when he fell in and showed me how to do this and after that it was fun for another forty minutes ("fun" might be stretching it).

The really bad thing about this game was that it just wasn't a great platform game and could not live up to the hype Atari promised. It really should not have been given the license for the movie. It wasn't the programmer's fault as I understand he was forced to develop the title in less than two months.

The Bottom Line
Amusing piece of video game history. Worth checking out just to see what people are talking about. I definitely would not pay for it. Its probably a collectors item simply based on its mythic stigma.

The Good
This game is based on the movie with the same name, which I have yet to watch. The movie was released in 1992, with a game from Atari released the same year. There are also a few more games that were released over the years, for different platforms, with varying degrees of success.

E.T. for the Atari 2600 doesn't have much of a plot.The object is to collect three pieces of a telephone located in the many pits, while avoiding two guys (scientists and Mr. FBI guy) that will chase you around, making your job difficult, stealing pieces or transporting you elsewhere if you are caught. Once you manage to collect all three pieces, you then have to return to your home base in a limited amount of time so that the spaceship hopefully comes back and picks you up. Moving around decreases your health, but pieces belonging to Reese can be picked up and used to restore some of that health.

E.T. is one of the few Atari 2600 games to actually have a title screen, and the title screen in this game is good enough. E.T. is drawn the way it should, and Howard Scott Warshaw, the game's programmer, provided an excellent rendition of the theme.

Although the graphics are blocky, this is what Atari's games look like back then, and the sound effect heard when E.T. beams down in his spaceship sounds futuristic. You can press the fire button while moving the joystick left or right to make E.T. scurry across the screen if his enemies are on his tail.

The Bad
After developing two excellent games, namely Raiders of the Lost Ark and Yar's Revenge, HSW should be ashamed of himself for creating a game so mediocre it was partly responsible for the video game crash of 1983. Sure, much of the game is spent falling down pits to collect the necessary pieces, but falling into these pits every five seconds gets tiresome after a while. When I played this game, I knew how to levitate out but, more often than not, I moved to get out of the way only to fall back in again.

I didn't fully manage to complete my objective, mainly because I was too busy trying to avoid the bad guys. Even if I did complete it, I went back to the home base, only to discover that the spaceship is not there. When you arrive at your home base, you're supposed to call out for your spaceship. I didn't have any time to do that, however, since the bad guys can even chase you on the home screen. Furthermore, I thought I could evade them by deliberately falling down pits, but they were just waiting for me to get out and steal whatever it is I'm carrying.

The Bottom Line
Anyone can argue that E.T. is a game aimed squarely at kids, but you need to ask yourself: would a kid spend at least five minutes of their time falling down pits when they could be doing something constructive? In my opinion, the gameplay stinks. Nearly half of the game is spent falling down pits and dealing with two guys that are difficult to evade. HSW had just six weeks to complete the game, but had he been given more it wouldn't be as crap as it is now.