E.T. Angry Video Game Nerd reviews E.T.

[Keatah]

I personally neither liked or disliked E.T. If I was coerced into picking sides I could say it was an ok game. With me being one of those slow-learner retards, I never fully understood its story or gameplay mechanics. And thus never got into playing it beyond inserting the cartridge and drawing a blank stare wondering what to do. Staring and drooling like an idiot.

 

But Missile Command, Video Pinball, Video Chess, Space Invaders.. Now you're talking! Those I could understand and enjoy to no end.

[+Random Terrain]

I dont think this reviewer was a moron. I bet he did what millions of others did. He just plugged the cartridge in and tried to play it without reading the manual first, got frustrated with it and wrote that nasty review.

 

Back then you expected to a videogame to be easy to learn in a couple of minutes just like in the arcade. If Atari was smart they would have put a big sticker on the box or cartridge saying "Please read the manual before playing". I bet Atari didn't even send him the manual. Still I bet even if the reviewer figured out how ET is played he still would have blasted it just because of its awful programming and gameplay.

Problem with that is he mentioned Raiders of the Lost Ark, a game that you just can't just slap in and play. You have to read the manual. Knowing that, someone with at least a few working brain cells left might wonder if an adventure game that was released a month after Raiders of the Lost Ark would also require a bit of manual reading.

 

 

 

 

Even when you figured out what you were supposed to do, it just wasn't much fun.

Did you like to hunt for Easter eggs when you were a kid? For those who did, E.T. has the same type of fun. And the unique zone concept has the same type of fun to it that the Civilization games have. Instead of exploring to find resources, you're exploring to find useful zones. E.T. had that kind of fun 9 years before Civilization was released.

[atarilovesyou]

Funny you should mention Raiders, RT. That game, even with a manual, was just so abstract that I really think that you'd have to be some kind of savant to have known what to do with it back in the day. I remember the commercial for it looked like an action game. Then i played it in the early 90s and said, WTF? A few years later, with this new thing called the internet, I printed off a walkthrough...ya know what? I was boggled by it, and still took all I could to play it through. I mean, you really had to have had experience with games like Adventure or other computer games to make sense of it. It was like the programmers targeted their audience as computer gamers, not Atari kids. The graphical representations, without the help of the manual, are just out there.

 

With ET, it was just too frustrating. Yes, you needed the manual, but I was that kid: I didn't own the system, so I'd borrow the manuals from my friends so I could learn about the games. I figured out how the matrix worked (lol, that was quite an achievement for back in the day!), and games like Swordquest. ET, though, we never had a manual. But think about what the target range for that game was: kids! And they gave those kids an adventure game that would have frustrated adults. Yes, it used cool ideas and all that, but so did that Activision spy game, where you're bouncing around in that car. A game that I thought was pretty lame back then, but later when I figured out what to do, was actually fun. ET?...it deserves all the negativity it gets, in my opinion.

 

The thing is, Atari couldn't have come out with anything better if they tried. I mean, looking at their attempts in the later days, stuff like the arcade ports of Jungle Hunt, Kangaroo, Moon Patrol...I could go on. ET was just a game that deserved its rep, back then and even today. Now I don't mean that it's the worst game in the world that caused the crash, but it was terrible none the less.

 

Again, my opinion and it's not unique. I fall into the category that rails against the opinions of, "Aw, ET wasn't that bad!" and make excuses for a rushed, sloppy game. But to be fair, I can't see how it could have been any better. Other than a more intuitive kind of map system, where you knew the goal was get parts of a phone, ways to get around the enemies, and then escape to a spaceship. The idea just sounds awesome, but plays like crap.

 

THAT'S IT...now I gotta go fire the damn thing up just to see if my opinion has changed

[high voltage]

Here's a great ET review, Company error by DP:

 

 

 

 

 

12 year old girl managed to play ET properly, it's a fun game, most boys were just ???stupid??? And those NES fanboys like to slag it off, talking about ET causing the crash (getting that wrong too, saying crash was in 83, when in fact it was in 1984)

 

Edited November 5, 2014 by high voltage

[atarilovesyou]

...so the fact that some kid out there who begged and pleaded for a game that she obviously had some considerable emotional investment somehow makes with makes ET a good game? Good grief. I'll write two full pages about how back in 86 when I finally, FINALLY tracked down a copy of Destructor for the Coleco and played the shit out of that game for the next two years.

 

That doesn't change the fact that the game is and was shit, no matter how much my nostalgic tinted glasses says it ain't so.

 

And aren't you one of those guys who doesn't even believe the crash happened?...too busy playing your Master System and it's five good games?

[WildBillTX]

Problem with that is he mentioned Raiders of the Lost Ark, a game that you just can't just slap in and play. You have to read the manual. Knowing that, someone with at least a few working brain cells left might wonder if an adventure game that was released a month after Raiders of the Lost Ark would also require a bit of manual reading.

 

True, but besides him praising Raiders, the inaccuracies in his review are signs that he didn't read ET's manual thoroughly or he never got one in the first place and tried to figure it out by himself.

 

Still I think this was the first review I read that bashed ET. I never bought it, I wasn't just interested in adventure games, just shoot-em-ups and action games at the time. And in 1983 I remember Atari's games getting worse with a lot of mediocre arcade ports and Activision and Imagic's games getting better.

 

It was the glut of too many bad 2600 games, along with no improved consoles, and the rise of home computers that really did Atari in. ET was massively hyped, poorly programmed and universally panned on a worldwide scale. Because it was the first game to get the shaft, it became the poster child for worst game ever.

 

That doesn't change the fact that the game is and was shit, no matter how much my nostalgic tinted glasses says it ain't so.

 

And aren't you one of those guys who doesn't even believe the crash happened?...too busy playing your Master System and it's five good games?

 

I'm so tired of this kind of "it wasn't so bad" revisionism with games, movies and music. They're always written by somebody who was a kid that saved up all their lunch money to buy a horrible game, album or movie and learned to love it despite their flaws because they were stuck with it.

Edited November 5, 2014 by WildBillTX

[+Random Terrain]

Funny you should mention Raiders, RT. That game, even with a manual, was just so abstract that I really think that you'd have to be some kind of savant to have known what to do with it back in the day. I remember the commercial for it looked like an action game. Then i played it in the early 90s and said, WTF? A few years later, with this new thing called the internet, I printed off a walkthrough...ya know what? I was boggled by it, and still took all I could to play it through. I mean, you really had to have had experience with games like Adventure or other computer games to make sense of it. It was like the programmers targeted their audience as computer gamers, not Atari kids. The graphical representations, without the help of the manual, are just out there.

I wouldn't get a VIC-20 until the summer of 1983 and a Commodore 64 until the end of 1984, so I was happy to get these more advanced Atari 2600 games. I was 17/18 in 1982, so I could understand games that someone under 12 might have a harder time with. I didn't like Raiders of the Lost Ark as much as E.T., but it was fun for a while. My favorite part was blowing a hole through a wall. That one cool thing infected my brain with ideas about alternative paths in games. One of these days I hope to make my own Atari 2600 game where you can find alternate paths by blowing holes through walls and going over or under things that may not be obvious.

 

 

 

 

With ET, it was just too frustrating. Yes, you needed the manual, but I was that kid: I didn't own the system, so I'd borrow the manuals from my friends so I could learn about the games. I figured out how the matrix worked (lol, that was quite an achievement for back in the day!), and games like Swordquest. ET, though, we never had a manual. But think about what the target range for that game was: kids! And they gave those kids an adventure game that would have frustrated adults. Yes, it used cool ideas and all that, but so did that Activision spy game, where you're bouncing around in that car. A game that I thought was pretty lame back then, but later when I figured out what to do, was actually fun. ET?...it deserves all the negativity it gets, in my opinion.

Yep, I said on my E.T. page that E.T. is a fairly complex adventure game, so making it seem like a little kid's game was a mistake. Only kids with advanced gaming skills for 1982 could figure out how to get out of the wells, how to levitate when they enter a well, how to run around the wells without falling in, how to use the power zones, how to avoid getting anything stolen, and how to get E.T. back home before E.T. runs out of energy.

 

 

 

 

The thing is, Atari couldn't have come out with anything better if they tried. I mean, looking at their attempts in the later days, stuff like the arcade ports of Jungle Hunt, Kangaroo, Moon Patrol...I could go on. ET was just a game that deserved its rep, back then and even today. Now I don't mean that it's the worst game in the world that caused the crash, but it was terrible none the less.

It should have been simpler for E.T. to exit a well so the game would be easier for people who aren't good at learning skills. Keeping from falling into the wells seems to be a skill that a lot of people couldn't master either, so maybe E.T. should have needed to stand in the center of a well as the player double-clicked the fire button. Then E.T. would never mistakenly fall into a well. I'm sure that some would complain that they couldn't get into the wells because they couldn't figure out how to get the timing right on the double-click, but some people will always be bad at playing video games no matter what you do.

 

Just about every video game I have ever played has skills you have to learn that are frustrating at first, but once you figure it out, it can become almost too easy. For example, when I tried the 3 survival missions in Iron Brigade on the Xbox 360 (I play solo), I couldn't even get close to finishing 100 waves. After learning the necessary skills, I can finish all 100 waves in each of the 3 survival missions and now I wish there were 200 waves or more:

 

atariage.com/forums/blog/120/entry-10058-finished-wave-100-on-iron-brigade-survival-hospital-solo/

 

atariage.com/forums/blog/120/entry-10101-finished-wave-100-on-iron-brigade-survival-swamp-solo/

 

atariage.com/forums/blog/120/entry-10131-finished-wave-100-on-iron-brigade-survival-settlement-solo/

 

 

If you can learn the skills necessary, E.T. is no longer frustrating. If you like an Easter egg hunt, E.T. is fun instead of terrible. E.T. improved on Adventure. There are multicolored characters, no flicker, no speed bump mazes, the "bat" is easier to avoid, you don't murder anything, and you can play round after round to build up your score if you care about scores.

 

 

 

 

Again, my opinion and it's not unique. I fall into the category that rails against the opinions of, "Aw, ET wasn't that bad!" and make excuses for a rushed, sloppy game. But to be fair, I can't see how it could have been any better. Other than a more intuitive kind of map system, where you knew the goal was get parts of a phone, ways to get around the enemies, and then escape to a spaceship. The idea just sounds awesome, but plays like crap.

The game plays like crap if the person playing is a crap gamer. I'm not one of those people who had to learn to love E.T. because my parents paid good money for it and I better damn well love it or because I didn't have anything else to play. I treated it like every other game I had up to that point and learned the skills needed to play it. I played what was in front of me instead of bitching that it wasn't what I expected. Well, I bitched a little at the beginning. Wells? Zones? Why does E.T. only have a certain power depending on where he is standing? After the initial shock, I learned how to play and ended up playing it more than the games I already owned and more than the games I would get or buy after that. I love randomness and Easter egg hunt/Civilization games, so E.T. was perfect. You could play a quick round or pause the game by hopping into a well, then do chores or homework or whatever. It's not one of those games where you just sit there and play for as many hours as possible until all of your lives are gone.

[high voltage]

too busy playing your Master System and it's five good games?

 

5 good SMS games? You obviously don't know about the excellent range of European SMS titles. Try again.

[IHATETHEBEARS]

I got E.T. when I was a kid – probably sometime in 1983. I acquired the majority of my Atari games during the infamous video game crash era. But I was completely oblivious that there was some sort of “crash” going on. Until I discovered Atariage.com in 2008, I had no idea about the crash and no idea that E.T. was such a maligned game. So my thoughts and memories of the game weren’t tainted by the notoriety surrounding it.

 

E.T. wasn’t my favorite game. But it was an adventure game. And I enjoyed it. I read the instructions of course. I had to. Without reading them I’d have had no idea how to play it. The pits were annoying at first. But it didn’t take a lot of effort to figure out how to avoid falling into them right away again once you got out. In fact if you read the instructions it gives you a tip on that. I challenged myself to beat the version with both the scientist and FBI agent because it’s quite difficult to achieve. E.T.’s spaceship won’t come down if one of those idiots is on the screen when it arrives. As I recall I had to call the ship, then let myself get captured as the clock was ticking down. Then once they’d dragged me back to their headquarters, I’d wait there just long enough so that I could sprint to the landing zone in the woods just before the spaceship came down – thus avoiding one of those two guys being on the screen.

 

E.T. was not a bad game by any means. And it wasn’t a difficult game to learn either. If it didn’t have such a rotten reputation preceding it, I think old school gamers would be more open to it, and would enjoy it.

[atarilovesyou]

 

5 good SMS games? You obviously don't know about the excellent range of European SMS titles. Try again.

 

 

You should know by now I'm just grinding your Sega gears

 

...but I still don't like ET, for the record. Hell, I don't even like the movie anymore!...I sure did way back then, though.

 

Enough of this madness: I'm going to go play the damn thing and see if I might change my mind after all these years. I still stand by my first assessment, as that was what it was back in the day. I never actually had problems with the wells; I didn't fall into them, but due to our lack of reading instructions (I guess they were just tossed out that first Christmas), we actually thought you were SUPPOSED to fall in the wells, just so you could levitate out of them. But that got boring. There was a cool looking flower in some of the pits....we thought it might have been something worthwhile, but...then we just went back to playing Defender.

[karokoenig]

E.T. good

 

Sorry to resurrect this thread. RT, you will be delighted to hear that we are playing E.T. (among two other games) in the current SciFi movie weeks in the 2600 High Score Club.

 

Feel free to post a score. No, wait. I guess for you, posting a score and kicking all our asses is MANDATORY

[+Random Terrain]

Sorry to resurrect this thread. RT, you will be delighted to hear that we are playing E.T. (among two other games) in the current SciFi movie weeks in the 2600 High Score Club.

 

Feel free to post a score. No, wait. I guess for you, posting a score and kicking all our asses is MANDATORY

Related thread:

 

atariage.com/forums/topic/88347-hsc-season-4-week-5-et/