E.T. Atari 2600 30th Anniversary Kickstarter

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[quote name='Shimrra']Is this a video game deal?[/QUOTE]

No, I don't think it's any kind of a deal period. I'm honestly baffled at why anyone would WANT this. I don't think I'd take it if it were given to me.
 
[quote name='Shimrra']Is this a video game deal?[/QUOTE]

Correct me if Im wrong, but nope.
 
Anyone who thinks E.T. is the worst game of all time hasn't played a lot of games, or is probably significantly younger than me.
 
[quote name='argyle']No, I don't think it's any kind of a deal period. I'm honestly baffled at why anyone would WANT this. I don't think I'd take it if it were given to me.[/QUOTE]

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Lol...I was hoping this would be some sort of kickstarter campaign to find and unearth the steamrolled cartridges or something.
 
E.T. is the consensus worst game of all time, but we'd love to hear of other terrible ones as we'll end up roasting plenty of them with various merchandise.

It's certainly the worst one I've ever played. Not "worse than expectations," but just the most purely unplayable game around. I'm an older gamer myself.
 
Thanks Vigilante. Will move in just a few minutes.

Definitely not a deal, as it is pricey as someone pointed out, but did think I saw other Kickstarters in the main forum from time to time. Thanks. Will delete once moved.
 
[quote name='TheScore']Thanks Vigilante. Will move in just a few minutes.

Definitely not a deal, as it is pricey as someone pointed out, but did think I saw other Kickstarters in the main forum from time to time. Thanks. Will delete once moved.[/QUOTE]No problem. Good luck! :)
 
[quote name='TheScore']E.T. is the consensus worst game of all time, but we'd love to hear of other terrible ones as we'll end up roasting plenty of them with various merchandise.

It's certainly the worst one I've ever played. Not "worse than expectations," but just the most purely unplayable game around. I'm an older gamer myself.[/QUOTE]

I remember getting a copy on clearance back in the day. And I did play it quite often. I didn't realize what a piece of crap it was.
 
[quote name='mer71']I remember getting a copy on clearance back in the day. And I did play it quite often. I didn't realize what a piece of crap it was.[/QUOTE]

Same here, actually - well, the playing it and not realizing what a piece of crap it was thing. My grandparents had an NES, and I used to play it when I was really young (early 90s, in other words). I beat ET a few times without too much trouble, so it's not that unplayable if a six year old can beat it.

EDIT: I just realized I put NES instead of 2600. They had both consoles, sure, but still. Oops.
 
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[quote name='simmias']Anyone who thinks E.T. is the worst game of all time hasn't played a lot of games, or is probably significantly younger than me.[/QUOTE]

32, played more than my share of games, E.T. is definitely up there. Buggy, awful to look at (by Atari standards), terrible music/sounds (again, even for Atari), and well known for having been a complete rush job to just have it on the shelf. What do you got?
 
[quote name='Lord_Kefka']32, played more than my share of games, E.T. is definitely up there. Buggy, awful to look at (by Atari standards), terrible music/sounds (again, even for Atari), and well known for having been a complete rush job to just have it on the shelf. What do you got?[/QUOTE]
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 name='simmias']Anyone who thinks E.T. is the worst game of all time hasn't played a lot of games, or is probably significantly younger than me.[/QUOTE]


This. People who tend to say that it's the worst are just parroting what they've heard without actually having played it. By Atari 2600 standards it wasn't that bad. Not even the worst game on the system much less of all time.
 
E.T. had the misfortune of bringing down an industry giant when it failed. The lore behind the game, in addition to its unplayability and confused approach, is why most consider it the worst game of all time.

There's always going to be a discussion here. Can't believe Krull was brought up, however - that was actually a good game!! LOL.
 
[quote name='DesertLeo']I still have my Atari copy sitting on my desk in my office.


No idea why.[/QUOTE]

If it'll make you feel any better, i have 2 copies for my 2600.
 
Why? Why would someone kickstart this? There are a lot of graves in the Mojave Desert. There is at least one of them that is there for good reason.
 
E.T. wasn't any more "unplayable" than Raiders, and was certainly more accessible than the Swordquest games. If you read the instruction manual with E.T. you were fine. People just crap on E.T. because they saw a YouTube video somewhere where a guy crapped on it. I saw one where a guy was crapping on Adventure and it made me equally mad. If you didn't live through these games coming out, I think you don't have the proper perspective.

Think of all the Wii shovelware games we got in the last few years. The 2600 went through basically the same thing, but with even crappier games. Everybody and their mother was designing games, and half of them stank. At least E.T. had a goal you could work toward and an end-game. I haven't played it in 30 years, so I'm sure my nostalgia goggles are fogging things up for me a bit, but it certainly wasn't my least favorite game when it came out. Not even close.
 
Again: Wii shovelware didn't bring down an industry. E.T. did. That is the argument.

Paradoxically, that makes me want to play E.T. far more than Wii shovelware. But still.
 
[quote name='simmias']E.T. wasn't any more "unplayable" than Raiders, and was certainly more accessible than the Swordquest games.[/QUOTE]

Geez, I forgot about that game. That was another title that my grandparents had, and I could never figure it out - that might've been because I could never find a comic (and you needed it to finish some puzzles, if I remember correctly), but from what I've read, it's ridiculously frustrating no matter what.
 
Odds are, if you bought a Activision, Imagic and maybe, Parker brothers game, you were buying a decent game. Also, Coleco made good games for the 2600. Football, baseball and frogs and flies.
 
[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.
 
What gets me is that the KS says people can't even figure out how to play whereas I figured out at... eight.

PS - I also liked Raiders of the Lost Ark but I'll admit I probably wouldn't have figured out the puzzles unless my brothers helped.
 
[quote name='TheScore']Again: Wii shovelware didn't bring down an industry. E.T. did. That is the argument.

Paradoxically, that makes me want to play E.T. far more than Wii shovelware. But still.[/QUOTE]
See, the funny thing is that people like to cite E.T. as causing the downfall of the gaming consoles, but neglect the fact that the Apple II and Commodore 64 were making huge inroads at exactly the same time with their superior games and better overall utility. Hell, I preferred my Atari 800 to the 2600, tape drive and all. And the shovelware point was to illustrate exactly what was going on at that time in the gaming industry. Do you buy an Apple IIe and play Wizardry, Ultima, Loderunner, Karateka, Choplifter, Zork, etc, etc... or do you play shovelware on a 5-6 year old system that's incredibly outdated?
 
[quote name='Lord_Kefka']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.[/QUOTE]
Ah, was I supposed to say how old I was? 39. You did get awfully defensive and somewhat name-cally there, so I guess I struck a nerve. Sorry about that. We'd probably like each other in real life, but since this is the Internet I'll remember to not like you from now on or something like that. I don't really remember the rules.
 
ET may have had poor collision detection and an infinite pit, but games today are pushed out before issues that would be similar to this are resolved. Today we have the benefit of being able to "patch" the game post release. You couldn't patch a cart.

Maybe ET was just a blueprint for the lazy/deadline driven programmers or production houses of today? It is amazing the amount of games that have day one patches. We should applaud all of the pioneers that didn't require this safety net and look upon those that require and utilize it with disdain.
 
I played it as a kid and enjoyed it. People don't know how to play the game. If you time it right when you fall in a hole, you can press the red button to stop from falling and float to the bottom, conserving energy. Find the question mark on the screen and it will tell you if a piece of the phone is in one of the holes on the screen. After you find the 3 pieces, find the alien sign to call home. Then, go to the forest and find the landing pad and be there when the timer runs out or else the ship won't show up. It's not hard, can be a pain in the ass with the nurse and fbi agent chasing you, and you give Elliot the Reeses Pieces to get more energy and chase off the bad guys.

In my opinion, Pac-Man was the biggest POS on the 2600. But no way am I in for this kickstarter.
 
Ah, Pac-Man 2600. Now there's a game with some god-awful sound effects.

I do apologize if I've come off as a dick playing devil's advocate with E.T. I just really think it gets a bad rap. I enjoyed it when it came out, and there were way worse games produced on the 2600. Just because Atari crazily overproduced it shouldn't give it the title of worst game ever. Didn't they make more cartidges than there were 2600s in existence?
 
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Interesting point about post-release patching. Totally agree developers are coming to take this for granted, when they shouldn't. You're definitely right that despite the incredible loss E.T. created for Atari and the industry, somehow this cycle of "too little time, rush job, sales implosion, company explosion" continues to repeat itself years and decades later.

E.T. changed the industry's mindset in a couple of other areas too, not the least of which was the beginning of the end of being able to return new games after opening them, simply because you didn't like the game. Gamers were able to return E.T. to retailers and/or Atari itself (direct mail) for a refund, which expedited the collapse. This practice was brought to a halt - shrink wrap gone, NO RETURN.

Which, in turn, led to the rise of the used game market as well.

Pac-Man on 2600 was notorious for many reasons, and perhaps deserves to be roasted as well, but at least it was intuitively playable despite all its failings.
 
But is it fair to call a game the "worst of all time" simply because it was overproduced? It seems like it should definitely be called the greatest commercial disaster or something of the sort, but I'm not sure how you make the leap to "worst game."
 
When an industry grows as quickly as the video game industry has, nuances like what you're talking about get dumbed way down for mass consumption. Sure, you can make those types of distinctions, but most people don't make it that far into the logic.

Labeling something "worst of all time" is easy and no-frills and helps people feel like they "get it." So it sticks.

I would say though that you can't just leave the argument at "it was overproduced" when it was the overproduction that led to the BANKRUPTCY of Atari which then in turn led to mass exodus of investment dollars and financial interest in the industry, causing its collapse. Until Nintendo.
 
I totally agree with everyone that says E.T. isn't even close to the worst game of all time. Since we are on the topic, neither is Deadly Towers.
 
[quote name='TheScore']When an industry grows as quickly as the video game industry has, nuances like what you're talking about get dumbed way down for mass consumption. Sure, you can make those types of distinctions, but most people don't make it that far into the logic.

Labeling something "worst of all time" is easy and no-frills and helps people feel like they "get it." So it sticks.

I would say though that you can't just leave the argument at "it was overproduced" when it was the overproduction that led to the BANKRUPTCY of Atari which then in turn led to mass exodus of investment dollars and financial interest in the industry, causing its collapse. Until Nintendo.[/QUOTE]
I agree with the first two things you said, but I still don't agree with the last part. There were more unsold cartidges of Pac-Man than E.T. - why wouldn't you say Pac-Man led to the collapse? The Atari 5200 didn't sell (but was pretty awesome) - what about that? Apple and Commodore sold way more units than Atari 8-bit computers - what about that? And Atari couldn't sell consoles any more. It wasn't just E.T that got buried in the desert - it was tons of unsold 2600 consoles, along with tons of shovelware crap that couldn't compete with the superior Activision games.

You sound like you were around back then. Don't you remember walking into Toys R Us and seeing the crazily discounted games that would only sell at $5? Nobody was buying the things any more. That wasn't E.T.'s fault.
 
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