[quote name='simmias']So you played E.T. when you were one? No wonder you couldn't figure it out.
Off the top of my head: the Swordquest series, Kaboom, the Smurfs game (but it was awesome on Colecovision), almost all sports games (but the RealSports games were awesome), Haunted House, Krull, the freaking Coke game... I could go on and on. Any 2600 game looks dated and awful years after the fact. When these games were coming out, we played them, liked them, and didn't know better.[/QUOTE]
Yes, cause no one plays it at any point except for right when it comes out (Dec 1982, which I'd have been two.) Played it years later, it's one of my earliest gaming memories besides Q*bert, Adventure, Haunted House, Mario Bros and Spiderman. Oh and of course loading floppies for Commodore 64. Still didn't say how old you are, but good of you to keep up the 'all-knowing' attitude though. Cause that doesn't make you sound conceited.
E.T. was incredibly confusing, short, worked on luck (the pattern placement for the items), and really set that bar high for poorly produced, overpaid for the license game which gets rushed to market. The ramifications it had on Atari were massive. And yes, I played it. Can't recall which Smurfs game I played, but I did enjoy that. I know I didn't fully understand how to follow along Adventure, but that was nothing compared to the very early WTF that E.T. brought.
TLDR; It deserves its spot among the worst ever for more than the game itself. That's my opinion. Don't like it, go blow.