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Howard Scott Warshaw piece on NPR


phattyboombatty

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I'm tired of people saying "E.T. is the worst game ever made!" And "E.T. caused the video game crash!" Neither of those statements can be considered a fact whatsoever as some people claim they are. First, the worst game ever made does not exist, as it is merely personal opinions that would rate that. I think it's not nearly as bad, and can name MANY games I personally find far worse (Firefly, Haunted House, etc.) but that is just my opinion. Secondly, is is impossible that one game would have caused the entire crash of the early 80s. It was a mixture of MANY different cheap and terrible titles released in bulk for nothing else but making profit. There were no rules or standards in the industry yet, and it was bound to happen at the rate things were going.

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10 minutes.. Oh come on. This is a gaming site with gamers. The pits were easy to figure out. :P

Yeah, but only if you're tilting the joystick in exactly the right direction when you ascend. Quit making excuses for an obviously badly programmed game. Sure it's not the worst game ever made, but if it's so bad I rarely get past the title before shutting it off, something is obviously broken. Of cource Firefly or any Mythicon game is worse (I even consider Mystique games to be better made than anything by Mythicon), but these were trashy 3rd party games and not hyped and over-produced to hell and back. Pacman was overhyped, ET was overhyped, and both could have been far better with a few minutes worth of tweaks. Just look at Ms Pacman or Pacman Arcade to show what could have been. I'm not even including polished homebrews such as Hack Em, Pacman 4K, or "NEW" Pacman 8k, all of which are infinitely better than what Atari put out in 1982. Pacman was practically alpha but the execs sent it to the press despite the programmer desired to tweak it further. And the fact that with ET Howard Warshaw produced a finished game under the extremely short deadline demanded by the execs is nothing short of a miracle. ET was and is still a hot mess. But I'm not blaming the programmers; I'm blaming the execs making them work 16 hour days for peanuts. Many programmers just slept overnight in the office, they were so overworked.

 

Also the tendancy of the gaming populace to remember the duds and forget the gems. How many "duds" did the NES have? A LOT. How many gamers obsess over how bad every single game ever made for the NES was? Not many, unless your AVGN. Nobody remembers the Atari for it's gems... :sad:

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Zero excuses here..I'm less talking about E.T. lore, and moreso about simple video game skills of us who cut our teeth with Atari. And my sole point is: The pits were easy. :)

 

Yeah they were offputting at first, but at this point if someone is REALLY saying they are "frustrating"/impossible, etc. It just makes me think they either didn't really try, or just are not exactly the most skilled twitch gamers.. They take but a minute or two of experimenting to figure out. Just saying!!

 

 

Yeah, but only if you're tilting the joystick in exactly the right direction when you ascend

 

Come on man that's not even true. Once you're out, you can move left, right, round and round and up and down, as long as any part of you is touching the pit graphic. Here I even made proof: :P

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ydlzt45ujrsmcfj/2017-06-05%2023.15.32.mov?dl=0

Edited by NE146
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Zero excuses here..I'm less talking about E.T. lore, and moreso about simple video game skills of us who cut our teeth with Atari. And my sole point is: The pits were easy. :)

 

Yeah they were offputting at first, but at this point if someone is REALLY saying they are "frustrating"/impossible, etc. It just makes me think they either didn't really try, or just are not exactly the most skilled twitch gamers.. They take but a minute or two of experimenting to figure out. Just saying!!

 

I second that.

 

It took me only five minutes back then to figure out how to exit the pits.

 

It was even mentioned it the manual (hint 5).

 

8)

Edited by Rom Hunter
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Howard is not full of himself, except in a playful fashion. I've known him for a while and had lunch with him. Recognizing the 2600 wasn't an ideal platform for Star Castle and making a game perhaps better suited to its capabilities isn't a bad thing.

 

The biggest issue I have with Yars', and a lot of VCS games, frankly, is the really flat difficulty curve. Nothing new is introduced after the second level, and it's just A, B, A, B, harder and harder. Some more variation between levels (no ion zone in one, etc.) would have kept it fresher and more interesting.

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Yeah, but only if you're tilting the joystick in exactly the right direction when you ascend. Quit making excuses for an obviously badly programmed game. Sure it's not the worst game ever made, but if it's so bad I rarely get past the title before shutting it off, something is obviously broken.

And I completed the game many times, so it's obviously not broken. Pits are not hard to get out of. Yes, it's too easy to fall into them, but there is now a patched version online that makes pits much less sensitive.

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