00:00 - Myth and Initial Game Reception 01:29 - E.T. Found in Alamogordo 02:27 - Game Start 03:48 - How to Play (Map Breakdown) 04:54 - How to Play (Icons Breakdown) 07:41 - How to Play (Character Breakdown) 09:13 - Unedited Gameplay Walkthrough 11:08 - How to Avoid Falling Into Wells 12:09 - Call Ship Zone Found 15:53 - Gameplay (Call Mothership) 17:25 - Gamebreaking Glitch 17:49 - Easter Eggs 19:22 - Howard Scott Warshaw 20:10 - Worst Game Ever? 20:44 - Then What Is? 21:04 - Closing (Why Did Everyone Hate It?) 21:51 - A Special Thank You
Excellent video. I was prepared to watch the "worst game ever made", but as the video continued I could see this isn't that bad. In fact, I'm astounded that the developer did this in 5 weeks and even had time to include Easter Eggs!
The "The FBI agent might be the most accurate representation of a Government official" is genuinely the most underrated joke in this entire otherwise serious documentary. Still love your work Lord Kayoss, even if this is 4 years old.
I got E.T. for Christmas that year, my sister read to me the manual, and I played it just fine, I think I stuck with just ET and Elliot mode, but she had no problem with higher difficulty. Guess most people wanted a flying bike simulator.
I really don't see what the issue is with playing the game. I was a kid in 1982. Read the instructions and had no problems beating the game. I didn't realize that so many people just don't read. 🙄 I was at a gaming convention recently. They had a station where you could play e.t. I picked up the game and played it, and beat it like 1982. People around me were watching and were so amazed. giving me high fives. But all I was doing was what I learned from the instruction manual back in 82. 😎
same here!! Of course I didn't buy it until I saw it in Odd Lot (discount store) for .99c. This was in the late 80's.. 85-86 maybe. Since it was bought for .99c in a dollar store it wasn't even in a box. Thankfully I was good at figuring it all out on my own. Remember learning how to get out of the damn holes?!?!? LOL.
I completed it back in the day. Only thing that happens is ET's spaceship comes back to Earth and gets him once you collect all the pieces of the urn? I mean it was kind of stupid, but I don't understand why everybody hated it? It wasn't as bad as people made it out to be.
Awesome video my dude! Thanks for making it and filibustering so many details that involves the game and the creators! Personally, I'd also love to see a yar's sequel as well!
Good video. I got et in 84 after the crash. I didn't even know there was a crash. Only that for some reason Atari 2600 and the games were dirt cheap. Anyway...when I got et I read the manual. It just seemed like the natural thing to do. I got the concept of the game and beat it. No problems really.
Kids didn't read the manual? 😮 Actually, I guess that makes sense...I don't remember any of my friends reading game manuals either, but I did. 😁 After playing E.T. a bunch of times not knowing what the heck was going on, my dad found the tips poster in the box and walked me through how it suggests playing it. (He never played it though; only watched other people play.) When I went to look at it again, I saw the manual and was curious about what it was. Sooooo informative! It quickly became my favorite Atari game other than Jr. Pac-Man. ❤️ How did you find all those Easter eggs though?? Makes me wanna pull my Atari out and try finding them too. 😁 Thanks for making and uploading this vid!!! Edit: Also, I like how you called Elliott by the actor's name Henry. 😁 I wonder if anyone else caught that.
Thanks for the cool comment! I'm glad you enjoyed the video. This one was definitely a labor of love. I had discovered a couple easter eggs over the course of time through playing the game. I found the "JD" one a long time ago, but wasn't sure how I made it happen until the method was revealed some years later.
My mom bough a mass of old atari games at a yard sale, and we didn't have any manuals. I honestly don't think I ever got a brand new cartridge. So... Yeah. Going in blind to the rules of this game...impossible. And I could figure out the the object of most games. But man. This one was super enigmatic. Good job on the play though. I don't think I've ever seen someone play it that actually understood what to do.
Great explanation of how ET works. The game still sucks, but I played worse ones back in the early '80s. One thing I realized is that ET has quite a few similarities to the original Castle Wolfenstein Apple II game.
Thank you, Sir! This one was a true labor of love. Here's one that was done in a similar style; ruclips.net/video/3WO72Daq-9Y/видео.html. 'Really enjoyed making it as well.
I still remember the day I choose my first atari game as a bithday gift with my father in a store. The cartridge had an amazing image on it with an warrior holding a sword and I got very hyped. Then I got home and the game had nothing to do with the image and was boring as f*. It was a kind of misleading advertisement, maybe Atari deserved what they got.
Wow, I didn't realize that the game included everything you needed to know to play the game. I think people in the Internet Age are just quick to parrot what someone says.
Awesome job! this is the first video of yours i watched and it’s perfect. Thank you for your detailed explanation to this particular mystery from my childhood 🙏
I loved this game as a Kid, and was surprised when I got older at how much hate it got. I think most people who had Atari game systems at the time liked the fact you could just pop in a cartridge and point and shoot, no story or knowledge of game mechanics required. ET, you had to know what you were doing, and what you were looking for and that is not what people expected from an Atari Game in the early 80's. The truth is ET was a game ahead of it's time, albeit confined by the graphics and constrictions of the Console itself. A very comparable and well loved game from the same console is Adventure! and I don't here much hate about that, although it carries many of the same elements and frustrations.
So true. The hate stems from people not knowing how to play the game and not expecting it to have any depth, since very few other games on the systems were anything more than "shoot everything." This is a great video really detailing how to properly play the game.
I can't remember my age when I played this for the first time. It was at my father's friend's home, I recall he was able to finish it but, for me as a child, it was frustrating.
I recieved the atari the summer before the nes release and it came with E.T. along with lots of others, but it had no manual. I remember playing over and over until I would figure out the next move, then I would repeat. I never completed the game, I don't believe, but it did teach me at a young age about problem solving through trial and error. I got the nes for Christmas that yr and that atari became a thing of the past, but E.T. always stuck with me.
Nicely done! Everyone is looking for the simple answer to what is the worst game of all time? It is trendy to say E.T. This game was far from the worst and your video does a good job of not only showing that, but also explaining how to properly play the game without having to read the manual!
Thank you! I've been defending this game tirelessly and everyone looks at me like I'm nuts. The game was one of the earliest open world survival adventure games and it was so complex. You were REQUIRED to read the manual to understand it. But because you can't just turn it on and blast away enemies for a high score nobody truly understood it. I would urge anyone to watch this video, which clearly described the actual game without biases, before making a judgement. Such a shame for one of the BEST games on the Atari to be mislabeled as the WORST game of all time.
I was talking to an employee at a retro store and I thought this game would be expensive because it’s nostalgic and a piece of gaming history but he said it genuinely sucks so it still remains cheap 🤣🤣🤣
I knew Congo Bongo from its arcade version. It's basically a Zaxxon-style 3-D cousin to Donkey Kong. It starts off with the ape giving the sleeping explorer a hotfoot, and the entire point of the game was to pay the ape back in kind. :-) But the arcade graphics were MUCH better than the 2600 version, of course.
Thanks for the video. I had an Atari back in the day. I borrowed this game from a friend. I had a hard time getting out of the pits and gave up. Since then I've played many games on many systems. I have bought an Atari and have bought many of the old games. I'm playing E.T. today after watching this video, and I must say, this is a very, very, bad game. I don't want to take any joy away from those who do like it, but as someone who has played many games over the years and who understands the limitations of the Atari 2600, this is a bad game by objective standards. It is frustrating even if you unterstand how to play it. I think most people who would give this game a fair chance would come away disliking it. I bought it today, because I wanted to add it to my collection, but I still don't like it at all. It may not be the worst game ever, but I do believe it has earned the bad press it has received. At least H.S.W. proved he could make a great game when he gave us "Yar's Revenge."
I enjoyed the video. Something I really like about this channel is that you look at games like this independently and give them a fair review. You seem to have an aim of helping people understand how to play and enjoy games that are normally dumped on by lazier reviewers. It's refreshing. I haven't been able to accept the premise that this game was widely hated or specifically responsible for any public backlash in the 1980s. Maybe it's true, but I haven't seen convincing evidence. News articles about Atari's collapse, for example, are talking about Atari as a whole and not just the ET game. What I've seen is a bandwagon that started in the early internet, and was amplified after youtube came along. The overblown hate of ET was one of the first internet memes, and at a time when memes themselves were a novelty, this one took hold easily. I believe that Atari was on the verge of collapse irrespective of ET, and this game only became notable because Warner had invested such a huge amount of money into licensing and overproduction just prior to that collapse. This financial debacle highlights that Atari's management was clueless about the state of the market, but I don't think the game itself was the cause of the company's implosion. I'm sure there were some kids (and adults) who didn't understand what to do in this game, but reading manuals was a pretty quick impulse back then. Anything more complex than a shooter required a manual, and people understood that. Manuals were a part of the gaming experience, and that's why they were nicely laid out and printed in full color. They weren't just filler to stuff the box with. Nowadays people don't want to engross themselves in a game long enough to open a manual. They frequently don't remember or just aren't able to get back to the mindset of what 2600 games were like, and often aren't playing on a real console. They're so far removed from 1982/83 that they're in a poor position to judge the experience fairly. Combine that with a preconception that the game will be unplayable, and it's easy for people to quickly give up and decide that it is. I've also been a bit confused at people who think the ET landfill myth was proven. The classic "ET myth" I always saw on forums and internet sites like SeanBaby held that Atari had to make special arrangements to bury millions of unsold copies of this one game, because it was oh so bad that it sank the company. But no, as mentioned in the video, what has been found buried is a wide variety of unsold inventory. Nothing particularly specific that points a finger at one game. This game is flawed, sure, but the exaggerated modern condemnation of it is one hell of a hype train. Atari's problems were a lot bigger than ET.
Well said! I agree with that assessment. Atari certainly didn't do themselves any favors with E.T., but they were already in trouble before they invested $20 million for the licensing and targeted the holiday season that year which only gave the developer 5½ weeks to make the game.
The part that you are missing is that this game is not from 100 years ago- the kids who played it on its original release are not only alive, but only in the 42-48 year old range. I loved a lot of Atari games when I was 6-7 years old (Megamania was my favorite, sort of like Space Invaders, and I remember liking pitfall too.) Anyway, I played E.T. at a friend’s house, I didn’t actually own it, so I remember vividly my experience playing it a few times. It also meant that I hadn’t read the manual. The bug/glitch regarding getting stuck in a pit was very common, and a kid was not going to automatically figure out how to prevent it. And as much as it seems now to be a precursor to Legend of Zelda regarding the map, it was the least intuitive game imaginable. The “fun” of the game was avoiding getting stuck in a pit long enough to try different things to reverse engineer HOW to play the game. That is my complete memory of it, and AT THAT TIME everybody I knew hated it, and everything I read about it bashed it as complete trash. There is no revisionist history going on, I promise you. Game-breaking glitches for a console game are extremely extremely uncommon, and completely unacceptable, and easily make this the worst game ever.
Groups tend to hold shared opinions. If a few people in a group like a game, then the others are more likely to decide they like it also. If a few people don't like a game, the same principle applies. Traditional media are a subculture of their own and subject to the same habits, so it would be atypical for them to not all write the same article, for any game. Nobody is comfortable sticking their neck out with independent opinions. There are many examples of games that I and/or friends enjoyed, but which today's internet hype holds to be awful. The internet has expanded the scope of groupthink to much larger numbers of people. If a few popular websites and reviewers decide to throw a game (or anything else) under the bus, then everyone is inclined to share that opinion in order to fit in. Things start to get exaggerated. I accept that many people did play this game on real hardware when they were kids and legitimately dislike it. But the rest are just absorbing what they've been told, and maybe trying it in a clunky emulator for a few mins to affirm that preconception. It's not easy for new players to fairly evaluate early 80s adventure games for several reasons. I played a lot of Atari in the early to mid-80s, but I didn't have this game. I had the personality to read the manual to figure it out, but I don't know if I would have succeeded. Holding onto game manuals and reading them was quite necessary and common for games that had complexity at that time. This game was marketed to a broad audience, and I can accept that the complexity of it wasn't going to appeal to enough people for it to succeed on that scale. It was designed to be loved by a few 100 thousand people, but not to be liked by the millions they were selling it to.
I had a chance to play this at an anime convention about a decade ago and yeah, it's just as meandering and mind boggling as so many have said and in the end, it wasn't the graphics that got me. I understand that there were better and worse looking games from that era. It's just for such an anticipated game, it's a letdown even for the time you can't believe this was all they could come up with. It's a victim of what is a killer of a lot of ambition; rushing out a product. A lot of it makes sense when it's explained but like I said, I think a lot of people expected MORE given how popular the game was. The Reese's Pieces mention in the manual was a great meta joke.
Anyone who says this is “the worst game ever” has never played a heck of a lot of bad Atari games. ET was actually technically impressive, and cleverly designed. Spielberg was just expecting a half-assed Pac-Man clone but when he saw the finished product he was impressed. If you’re ever playing Atari (i recommend it fir everyone, at least on an emulator) fire this bad boy up.
I had the game back when it came out, and while I had better ones to play, I never considered E.T. to be that bad. Given the notion that most kids didn't read the manual, I'd say Dragster for the 2600 is the worse. It's a racing game that includes shifting gears, something kids wouldn't understand, and without a manual (a friend had the game) you're pretty much screwed from the get go.
Love the videos. I'm 41 so I relate to a lot of your content. I loved this game as a kid and beat it more than once when I was younger than 10 years old. I never knew how much hate it got until I was older. TBH I still think the hate is overblown.
A story about Atari and the videogame crash of 1983 in the U.S. and the golden gaming Christmas at the same year in Brazil: The Atari 2600 was not imported into Brazil in the 1970s, the country was in economic crisis and there were economic barriers created by the government to protect the local industry, and this affected the gaming area. But richer people who, traveling for tourism abroad, imported the Atari console. Part of the press began to report on this and how it was a fever in the first world. The console started to be timidly imported to Brazil, in a small number of units, illegally, and the rumors grew. It was something new, fun, forbidden. Of course it became something attractive. Then, in the early 1980s, a Brazilian company got the right to market the console and games in Brazil. They invested in advertising but had to postpone the launch. More people became more and more curious about it. Executives at Phillips, an European company that was producing televisions in Brazil, then bought the rights to launch Odyssey 2 in Brazil. They made the effort to sell as much as they could before Atari games were finally released in the country. More aggressive advertising campaigns being launched. Another company, noticing the buzz about that electronic "thing", launched Colecovision to try to grab a slice of this market. They didn't sell much, but they arrived in the same year in the country. Finally, on Christmas 1983, when the E.T. game was a disaster in the U.S., the console was launched in Brazil and was a smash hit, because it already had a huge collection of games that had been released over many years in the USA. Because of the delay in launching the second generation of video games in Brazil, the golden Christmas of games in this country coincided with the crash of games in the country of origin of this industry. A cycle was closing in the north, while it was just being born in that country far to the south.
Thank you very much for your video and I agree with you: ET is not the worst game ever. I had the opportunity to play it when I had the Atari 2600 (I was 10 years old) and I remember that I more or less understood, along with my brothers, the goal of the game without reading the manual (we didn't speak English at that time). Today, I played it on an emulator and with the manual and its video, I found the game quite interesting and even entertaining. In my opinion, there are many Atari games that are worse than ET, but the circumstances and the popularity of the movie (which was not reflected in the game), caused the bankruptcy of Atari.
ET did not cause the video game crash. I lived through it. What really created it was all the unlicensed games in grocery stores and other stores for 30-40 dollars, people buying them and getting ripped off with horrible games. Yes, ET was bad and was one of those games, but there were far worse games than ET. The issue was shitty games. Nintendo fixed this issue by adding the Nintendo seal of approval on all it's games. ET is not only NOT the worst game of all time, it is not even the worst game on the 2600 console.
People who hate ET clearly weren't born in the early 80s when the movie first came out, it was arguably the second best movie of 1982 after The Dark Crystal IMO.
I've never played it, but it seems too complicated for a little kid to understand. I think video games in general (with the exception of simple action or puzzle games) are too difficult for young children to understand. When you talk to people about Mario games, they assume that it's it's something a 6-year-old would like. But Super Mario Bros. on the NES is an example of a game that takes a lot of practice. I was probably 5 when I played it for the first time, but I didn't become good at it until I was 15. Even then, it was only because I had a lot of practice from playing the ported version, Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, for Game Boy Color. You could lose all of your lives and still be able to repeat the same level because of the added save feature. The NES version was probably too frustrating because you had to start over at World 1-1 when you ran out of lives. The point is that people shouldn't assume video games are only for kids.
I blame this game for putting me off of games for 30 years. LOL I could NEVER make any progress on it, or even master the most basic concepts of game play. I did read the manual, I was that kind of kid, and I did play it for hours, but basically I just ended up constantly stuck and lost and confused. I was probably just a combination of too young and the game is highly complex for an Atari 2600 game, not to mention having bugs, which isn't a thing I understood was a thing as a kid. Watching now, I can see so many concepts that I entirely failed to grasp as a young child. For instance, I'm not sure that I ever saw Eliot, but I didn't realize it would take SO LONG for him to show up! I also don't think I comprehended that the actions on the top were associated with places on the screen that ET is standing. They seemed to just randomly change for no reason.
How to win at ET The Video Guide (Strategy book from 1983). Strategy books were available. Also, available in the box, Hint Sheet from Atari, Tips on getting ET home fast.
Glad to see you back in the tube LK. Classic games look so badass and must've been SUPER fun back when people had nothing but it. I was born on the Gameboy advance/PS2 era (year 2000). Mostly play Tenchu wrath of heaven for hours with my brother and neighbor. Good times
I liked ET back in the day. Even then I appreciated that it wasn't a single game screen over and over again like most 2600 games of the time. The over saturation of those types of games are more to blame for the crash, imo. Still like the game now too. If I retro 2600 games this is one I'll play. Btw, there is a fan hack of the rom that fixes some of the colors to make them more accurate, ET is brown instead of green, and more importantly fixes the pit detection to make the game less 2d so you're not accidentally falling into pits as much. Worth seeking out if you like the game at all.
Looks like a fun game. I always read the manuals when I was a kid. My friends thought I was nuts. Also, this game looks like a crude prototype for the first Toejam and Earl.
By the time I got to 7:20 I gave up in a daze And I'm an experienced Systems Engineer with a Masters degree The complicated verbal instructions would make any kid's eyes glaze over
There's only ONE legitimate complaint against ET and that is the one about how easy it is to fall into a pit. All the rest can be solved within about 3 minutes. RTFM.
I have just completed the ZX Spectrum version when messing with it since viewing this video. ZX Spectrum has a clone version called E.T.X and it has speech. I never understood the purpose of the game but I thought it was meant for Speech related things.
Wow. This deserves game of the year! Way better than God of War, Arkham City, and Witcher 3 combined! Show Superman 1999 who's boss! We want more levels as DLC's! Praise nostalgia! (You know I'm sarcastic right?)
I wish I had seen that there was instructions booklet...I would have loved some clue as to how to play. I couldn't even figure out that I was falling into a pit. I just thought the screen changed when I moved. I lost my enthusiasm for playing it in less than 10mins.
The picture with what looks like Kathleen Kennedy at 21:36 is interesting (and it would make sense for it to be her if this photo is from the E.T. development project). "...most accurate representation of a government official in a video game." kek
This might sound pathetic but I had childhood nightmares after watching 2002 edition of E.T. and unfortunately might have to put off watching the full video after seeing a cutaway to a footage of the horrid alien's face in the map breakdown section. Sorry!
00:00 - Myth and Initial Game Reception
01:29 - E.T. Found in Alamogordo
02:27 - Game Start
03:48 - How to Play (Map Breakdown)
04:54 - How to Play (Icons Breakdown)
07:41 - How to Play (Character Breakdown)
09:13 - Unedited Gameplay Walkthrough
11:08 - How to Avoid Falling Into Wells
12:09 - Call Ship Zone Found
15:53 - Gameplay (Call Mothership)
17:25 - Gamebreaking Glitch
17:49 - Easter Eggs
19:22 - Howard Scott Warshaw
20:10 - Worst Game Ever?
20:44 - Then What Is?
21:04 - Closing (Why Did Everyone Hate It?)
21:51 - A Special Thank You
Excellent video. I was prepared to watch the "worst game ever made", but as the video continued I could see this isn't that bad. In fact, I'm astounded that the developer did this in 5 weeks and even had time to include Easter Eggs!
I really enjoyed this video, you not only discussed deeply about the actual game, but even its backstory.
When talking about the character design, I thought for sure you were going to mention E.T.'s lil' p.p.
It really has one
Thx man this video was extremely informative and fun to watch.
The "The FBI agent might be the most accurate representation of a Government official" is genuinely the most underrated joke in this entire otherwise serious documentary.
Still love your work Lord Kayoss, even if this is 4 years old.
Oh so that’s why South Park kept making the joke about remastered movies guns being replaced with walkie talkies lol
This was absolutely fantastic! Thank you for this!
I got E.T. for Christmas that year, my sister read to me the manual, and I played it just fine, I think I stuck with just ET and Elliot mode, but she had no problem with higher difficulty. Guess most people wanted a flying bike simulator.
I really don't see what the issue is with playing the game. I was a kid in 1982. Read the instructions and had no problems beating the game.
I didn't realize that so many people just don't read. 🙄
I was at a gaming convention recently. They had a station where you could play e.t.
I picked up the game and played it, and beat it like 1982. People around me were watching and were so amazed. giving me high fives. But all I was doing was what I learned from the instruction manual back in 82. 😎
same here!! Of course I didn't buy it until I saw it in Odd Lot (discount store) for .99c. This was in the late 80's.. 85-86 maybe. Since it was bought for .99c in a dollar store it wasn't even in a box. Thankfully I was good at figuring it all out on my own.
Remember learning how to get out of the damn holes?!?!? LOL.
Good video. I've completed the game several times. It's actually fun when you know what to do.
Have never seen this game completed. Thanks for the upload dude!
I completed it back in the day. Only thing that happens is ET's spaceship comes back to Earth and gets him once you collect all the pieces of the urn? I mean it was kind of stupid, but I don't understand why everybody hated it? It wasn't as bad as people made it out to be.
Awesome video my dude! Thanks for making it and filibustering so many details that involves the game and the creators! Personally, I'd also love to see a yar's sequel as well!
Good video.
I got et in 84 after the crash. I didn't even know there was a crash. Only that for some reason Atari 2600 and the games were dirt cheap.
Anyway...when I got et I read the manual. It just seemed like the natural thing to do. I got the concept of the game and beat it. No problems really.
Howie yeah but i guess people dont read manuals... it really isnt as bad as they make it seem
This game dose look like a real pain in the ass. Great video LK, thanks for the upload. Keep up the great work
It can be. If you set the game on its easiest, it’s a walk in the park.
Kids didn't read the manual? 😮 Actually, I guess that makes sense...I don't remember any of my friends reading game manuals either, but I did. 😁 After playing E.T. a bunch of times not knowing what the heck was going on, my dad found the tips poster in the box and walked me through how it suggests playing it. (He never played it though; only watched other people play.) When I went to look at it again, I saw the manual and was curious about what it was. Sooooo informative! It quickly became my favorite Atari game other than Jr. Pac-Man. ❤️ How did you find all those Easter eggs though?? Makes me wanna pull my Atari out and try finding them too. 😁 Thanks for making and uploading this vid!!!
Edit: Also, I like how you called Elliott by the actor's name Henry. 😁 I wonder if anyone else caught that.
Thanks for the cool comment! I'm glad you enjoyed the video. This one was definitely a labor of love. I had discovered a couple easter eggs over the course of time through playing the game. I found the "JD" one a long time ago, but wasn't sure how I made it happen until the method was revealed some years later.
My mom bough a mass of old atari games at a yard sale, and we didn't have any manuals. I honestly don't think I ever got a brand new cartridge. So... Yeah. Going in blind to the rules of this game...impossible. And I could figure out the the object of most games. But man. This one was super enigmatic. Good job on the play though. I don't think I've ever seen someone play it that actually understood what to do.
40 years later, people still don't read the manuals for games.
Great walkthrough. Proves that ET was the great game that it was. Thank you sir!
Great video! Honestly the most intriguing part of all this is there is an unreleased Yars' Revenge sequel out there!
Great video mate. I wish you had more videos I could watch.
Great explanation of how ET works. The game still sucks, but I played worse ones back in the early '80s. One thing I realized is that ET has quite a few similarities to the original Castle Wolfenstein Apple II game.
Such a great video! Love the way you put everything together, keep making videos like this
Thank you, Sir! This one was a true labor of love. Here's one that was done in a similar style; ruclips.net/video/3WO72Daq-9Y/видео.html. 'Really enjoyed making it as well.
@@lordkayoss I watched that one as well, I was binge watching your videos.
@@gabemoler6682 Ah, nice! Thanks for the cool feedback, Bud.
According to the Netflix documentary, Spielberg himself game tested and approved this?!
I still remember the day I choose my first atari game as a bithday gift with my father in a store. The cartridge had an amazing image on it with an warrior holding a sword and I got very hyped. Then I got home and the game had nothing to do with the image and was boring as f*. It was a kind of misleading advertisement, maybe Atari deserved what they got.
You have to give them credit for working with the tech available at the time.
Wow, I didn't realize that the game included everything you needed to know to play the game.
I think people in the Internet Age are just quick to parrot what someone says.
Awesome job! this is the first video of yours i watched and it’s perfect. Thank you for your detailed explanation to this particular mystery from my childhood 🙏
Excellent video! Very complete, infomative and fun!
Glad you put the record straight even if the Myth will no doubt live on.
🙋🏻♂️
I loved this game as a Kid, and was surprised when I got older at how much hate it got. I think most people who had Atari game systems at the time liked the fact you could just pop in a cartridge and point and shoot, no story or knowledge of game mechanics required. ET, you had to know what you were doing, and what you were looking for and that is not what people expected from an Atari Game in the early 80's. The truth is ET was a game ahead of it's time, albeit confined by the graphics and constrictions of the Console itself. A very comparable and well loved game from the same console is Adventure! and I don't here much hate about that, although it carries many of the same elements and frustrations.
Well said!
Tim Nickerson
*high five* I LOVED this game too! I finally managed to beat it when I was 5. 😁❤️
I also enjoyed "Riddle of the Sphinx"; did you?
So true. The hate stems from people not knowing how to play the game and not expecting it to have any depth, since very few other games on the systems were anything more than "shoot everything." This is a great video really detailing how to properly play the game.
I can't remember my age when I played this for the first time. It was at my father's friend's home, I recall he was able to finish it but, for me as a child, it was frustrating.
Congrats on the milestone!!!
I recieved the atari the summer before the nes release and it came with E.T. along with lots of others, but it had no manual. I remember playing over and over until I would figure out the next move, then I would repeat. I never completed the game, I don't believe, but it did teach me at a young age about problem solving through trial and error. I got the nes for Christmas that yr and that atari became a thing of the past, but E.T. always stuck with me.
Nicely done! Everyone is looking for the simple answer to what is the worst game of all time? It is trendy to say E.T. This game was far from the worst and your video does a good job of not only showing that, but also explaining how to properly play the game without having to read the manual!
Thank you, Sir! 🍻
Hey! Always nice to see a new LK video. Hit the thumbs up before I even watched the video
Thank you! I've been defending this game tirelessly and everyone looks at me like I'm nuts. The game was one of the earliest open world survival adventure games and it was so complex. You were REQUIRED to read the manual to understand it. But because you can't just turn it on and blast away enemies for a high score nobody truly understood it. I would urge anyone to watch this video, which clearly described the actual game without biases, before making a judgement. Such a shame for one of the BEST games on the Atari to be mislabeled as the WORST game of all time.
I was talking to an employee at a retro store and I thought this game would be expensive because it’s nostalgic and a piece of gaming history but he said it genuinely sucks so it still remains cheap 🤣🤣🤣
its like $10 even now
Thanks for the nostalgia. You sound like Lawrence from Office Space. "Hey Peter Man! Turn on channel 9!"
I knew Congo Bongo from its arcade version. It's basically a Zaxxon-style 3-D cousin to Donkey Kong. It starts off with the ape giving the sleeping explorer a hotfoot, and the entire point of the game was to pay the ape back in kind. :-) But the arcade graphics were MUCH better than the 2600 version, of course.
Thanks for the video. I had an Atari back in the day. I borrowed this game from a friend. I had a hard time getting out of the pits and gave up.
Since then I've played many games on many systems. I have bought an Atari and have bought many of the old games. I'm playing E.T. today after watching this video, and I must say, this is a very, very, bad game.
I don't want to take any joy away from those who do like it, but as someone who has played many games over the years and who understands the limitations of the Atari 2600, this is a bad game by objective standards. It is frustrating even if you unterstand how to play it. I think most people who would give this game a fair chance would come away disliking it. I bought it today, because I wanted to add it to my collection, but I still don't like it at all. It may not be the worst game ever, but I do believe it has earned the bad press it has received. At least H.S.W. proved he could make a great game when he gave us "Yar's Revenge."
Thanks! Finally finished a round, 30 years later 😂
Good video. Just finished watching Atari:Game Over. Things given the "worst" tag never are the worst.
I enjoyed the video. Something I really like about this channel is that you look at games like this independently and give them a fair review. You seem to have an aim of helping people understand how to play and enjoy games that are normally dumped on by lazier reviewers. It's refreshing.
I haven't been able to accept the premise that this game was widely hated or specifically responsible for any public backlash in the 1980s. Maybe it's true, but I haven't seen convincing evidence. News articles about Atari's collapse, for example, are talking about Atari as a whole and not just the ET game.
What I've seen is a bandwagon that started in the early internet, and was amplified after youtube came along. The overblown hate of ET was one of the first internet memes, and at a time when memes themselves were a novelty, this one took hold easily.
I believe that Atari was on the verge of collapse irrespective of ET, and this game only became notable because Warner had invested such a huge amount of money into licensing and overproduction just prior to that collapse. This financial debacle highlights that Atari's management was clueless about the state of the market, but I don't think the game itself was the cause of the company's implosion.
I'm sure there were some kids (and adults) who didn't understand what to do in this game, but reading manuals was a pretty quick impulse back then. Anything more complex than a shooter required a manual, and people understood that. Manuals were a part of the gaming experience, and that's why they were nicely laid out and printed in full color. They weren't just filler to stuff the box with.
Nowadays people don't want to engross themselves in a game long enough to open a manual. They frequently don't remember or just aren't able to get back to the mindset of what 2600 games were like, and often aren't playing on a real console. They're so far removed from 1982/83 that they're in a poor position to judge the experience fairly. Combine that with a preconception that the game will be unplayable, and it's easy for people to quickly give up and decide that it is.
I've also been a bit confused at people who think the ET landfill myth was proven. The classic "ET myth" I always saw on forums and internet sites like SeanBaby held that Atari had to make special arrangements to bury millions of unsold copies of this one game, because it was oh so bad that it sank the company. But no, as mentioned in the video, what has been found buried is a wide variety of unsold inventory. Nothing particularly specific that points a finger at one game.
This game is flawed, sure, but the exaggerated modern condemnation of it is one hell of a hype train. Atari's problems were a lot bigger than ET.
Well said! I agree with that assessment. Atari certainly didn't do themselves any favors with E.T., but they were already in trouble before they invested $20 million for the licensing and targeted the holiday season that year which only gave the developer 5½ weeks to make the game.
The part that you are missing is that this game is not from 100 years ago- the kids who played it on its original release are not only alive, but only in the 42-48 year old range. I loved a lot of Atari games when I was 6-7 years old (Megamania was my favorite, sort of like Space Invaders, and I remember liking pitfall too.) Anyway, I played E.T. at a friend’s house, I didn’t actually own it, so I remember vividly my experience playing it a few times. It also meant that I hadn’t read the manual. The bug/glitch regarding getting stuck in a pit was very common, and a kid was not going to automatically figure out how to prevent it. And as much as it seems now to be a precursor to Legend of Zelda regarding the map, it was the least intuitive game imaginable. The “fun” of the game was avoiding getting stuck in a pit long enough to try different things to reverse engineer HOW to play the game. That is my complete memory of it, and AT THAT TIME everybody I knew hated it, and everything I read about it bashed it as complete trash. There is no revisionist history going on, I promise you. Game-breaking glitches for a console game are extremely extremely uncommon, and completely unacceptable, and easily make this the worst game ever.
Groups tend to hold shared opinions. If a few people in a group like a game, then the others are more likely to decide they like it also. If a few people don't like a game, the same principle applies.
Traditional media are a subculture of their own and subject to the same habits, so it would be atypical for them to not all write the same article, for any game. Nobody is comfortable sticking their neck out with independent opinions.
There are many examples of games that I and/or friends enjoyed, but which today's internet hype holds to be awful.
The internet has expanded the scope of groupthink to much larger numbers of people. If a few popular websites and reviewers decide to throw a game (or anything else) under the bus, then everyone is inclined to share that opinion in order to fit in. Things start to get exaggerated.
I accept that many people did play this game on real hardware when they were kids and legitimately dislike it. But the rest are just absorbing what they've been told, and maybe trying it in a clunky emulator for a few mins to affirm that preconception. It's not easy for new players to fairly evaluate early 80s adventure games for several reasons.
I played a lot of Atari in the early to mid-80s, but I didn't have this game. I had the personality to read the manual to figure it out, but I don't know if I would have succeeded.
Holding onto game manuals and reading them was quite necessary and common for games that had complexity at that time.
This game was marketed to a broad audience, and I can accept that the complexity of it wasn't going to appeal to enough people for it to succeed on that scale. It was designed to be loved by a few 100 thousand people, but not to be liked by the millions they were selling it to.
I grew up on the Atari 2600, and watching this video brought back lots of great memories!
amazing video!
the cartridges pulled out of the landfill looked to be in better condition than every game I own. hope they were put on ebay
Awesome video man,You’re 100% correct about Superman 64.I’m not mistaken Didn’t cost 60$, I never bought the game I rented from Blockbuster 😣😣
thank you Nintendo for bringing video games back to life
I had a chance to play this at an anime convention about a decade ago and yeah, it's just as meandering and mind boggling as so many have said and in the end, it wasn't the graphics that got me. I understand that there were better and worse looking games from that era. It's just for such an anticipated game, it's a letdown even for the time you can't believe this was all they could come up with. It's a victim of what is a killer of a lot of ambition; rushing out a product.
A lot of it makes sense when it's explained but like I said, I think a lot of people expected MORE given how popular the game was. The Reese's Pieces mention in the manual was a great meta joke.
You should make more videos like these. Pretty awesome! Congrats.
Anyone who says this is “the worst game ever” has never played a heck of a lot of bad Atari games. ET was actually technically impressive, and cleverly designed. Spielberg was just expecting a half-assed Pac-Man clone but when he saw the finished product he was impressed. If you’re ever playing Atari (i recommend it fir everyone, at least on an emulator) fire this bad boy up.
I had the game back when it came out, and while I had better ones to play, I never considered E.T. to be that bad. Given the notion that most kids didn't read the manual, I'd say Dragster for the 2600 is the worse. It's a racing game that includes shifting gears, something kids wouldn't understand, and without a manual (a friend had the game) you're pretty much screwed from the get go.
Love the videos. I'm 41 so I relate to a lot of your content. I loved this game as a kid and beat it more than once when I was younger than 10 years old. I never knew how much hate it got until I was older. TBH I still think the hate is overblown.
Dude you are a legend !!! 🔥🔥🔥
Great video man
A story about Atari and the videogame crash of 1983 in the U.S. and the golden gaming Christmas at the same year in Brazil:
The Atari 2600 was not imported into Brazil in the 1970s, the country was in economic crisis and there were economic barriers created by the government to protect the local industry, and this affected the gaming area.
But richer people who, traveling for tourism abroad, imported the Atari console. Part of the press began to report on this and how it was a fever in the first world.
The console started to be timidly imported to Brazil, in a small number of units, illegally, and the rumors grew. It was something new, fun, forbidden. Of course it became something attractive.
Then, in the early 1980s, a Brazilian company got the right to market the console and games in Brazil. They invested in advertising but had to postpone the launch. More people became more and more curious about it.
Executives at Phillips, an European company that was producing televisions in Brazil, then bought the rights to launch Odyssey 2 in Brazil. They made the effort to sell as much as they could before Atari games were finally released in the country. More aggressive advertising campaigns being launched.
Another company, noticing the buzz about that electronic "thing", launched Colecovision to try to grab a slice of this market. They didn't sell much, but they arrived in the same year in the country.
Finally, on Christmas 1983, when the E.T. game was a disaster in the U.S., the console was launched in Brazil and was a smash hit,
because it already had a huge collection of games that had been released over many years in the USA.
Because of the delay in launching the second generation of video games in Brazil, the golden Christmas of games in this country coincided with the crash of games in the country of origin of this industry. A cycle was closing in the north, while it was just being born in that country far to the south.
Great Program 👍🏾
Thank you very much for your video and I agree with you: ET is not the worst game ever. I had the opportunity to play it when I had the Atari 2600 (I was 10 years old) and I remember that I more or less understood, along with my brothers, the goal of the game without reading the manual (we didn't speak English at that time). Today, I played it on an emulator and with the manual and its video, I found the game quite interesting and even entertaining. In my opinion, there are many Atari games that are worse than ET, but the circumstances and the popularity of the movie (which was not reflected in the game), caused the bankruptcy of Atari.
Great video really enjoyed it
ET did not cause the video game crash. I lived through it. What really created it was all the unlicensed games in grocery stores and other stores for 30-40 dollars, people buying them and getting ripped off with horrible games. Yes, ET was bad and was one of those games, but there were far worse games than ET.
The issue was shitty games. Nintendo fixed this issue by adding the Nintendo seal of approval on all it's games.
ET is not only NOT the worst game of all time, it is not even the worst game on the 2600 console.
People who hate ET clearly weren't born in the early 80s when the movie first came out, it was arguably the second best movie of 1982 after The Dark Crystal IMO.
I've never played it, but it seems too complicated for a little kid to understand. I think video games in general (with the exception of simple action or puzzle games) are too difficult for young children to understand. When you talk to people about Mario games, they assume that it's it's something a 6-year-old would like. But Super Mario Bros. on the NES is an example of a game that takes a lot of practice. I was probably 5 when I played it for the first time, but I didn't become good at it until I was 15. Even then, it was only because I had a lot of practice from playing the ported version, Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, for Game Boy Color. You could lose all of your lives and still be able to repeat the same level because of the added save feature. The NES version was probably too frustrating because you had to start over at World 1-1 when you ran out of lives. The point is that people shouldn't assume video games are only for kids.
I blame this game for putting me off of games for 30 years. LOL I could NEVER make any progress on it, or even master the most basic concepts of game play.
I did read the manual, I was that kind of kid, and I did play it for hours, but basically I just ended up constantly stuck and lost and confused. I was probably just a combination of too young and the game is highly complex for an Atari 2600 game, not to mention having bugs, which isn't a thing I understood was a thing as a kid. Watching now, I can see so many concepts that I entirely failed to grasp as a young child.
For instance, I'm not sure that I ever saw Eliot, but I didn't realize it would take SO LONG for him to show up!
I also don't think I comprehended that the actions on the top were associated with places on the screen that ET is standing. They seemed to just randomly change for no reason.
How to win at ET The Video Guide (Strategy book from 1983). Strategy books were available. Also, available in the box, Hint Sheet from Atari, Tips on getting ET home fast.
There was a manual? I got this game second hand in either the late 80s/early 90s and my version did not come with the manual lol.
Nice! I might get this game!
Glad to see you back in the tube LK. Classic games look so badass and must've been SUPER fun back when people had nothing but it. I was born on the Gameboy advance/PS2 era (year 2000). Mostly play Tenchu wrath of heaven for hours with my brother and neighbor. Good times
Some of my early video game memories were playing the Sonic demo at Circuit City and the Vectorman demo at Toys R Us.
dude for some reason i have a collection of the most underrated games in history
Bad ass. 5 weeks wasn’t just the programming time.
I liked ET back in the day. Even then I appreciated that it wasn't a single game screen over and over again like most 2600 games of the time. The over saturation of those types of games are more to blame for the crash, imo. Still like the game now too. If I retro 2600 games this is one I'll play.
Btw, there is a fan hack of the rom that fixes some of the colors to make them more accurate, ET is brown instead of green, and more importantly fixes the pit detection to make the game less 2d so you're not accidentally falling into pits as much. Worth seeking out if you like the game at all.
This was amazing Imma subscribe
If u raise your head when the ship comes, the will be a vibrating noise at the tally screen
Looks like a fun game. I always read the manuals when I was a kid. My friends thought I was nuts.
Also, this game looks like a crude prototype for the first Toejam and Earl.
By the time I got to 7:20 I gave up in a daze
And I'm an experienced Systems Engineer with a Masters degree
The complicated verbal instructions would make any kid's eyes glaze over
that game is better than i tough at the origin 35 years ago lol .. kid like me wasnt ready to play that kind of game
There's only ONE legitimate complaint against ET and that is the one about how easy it is to fall into a pit.
All the rest can be solved within about 3 minutes.
RTFM.
I have just completed the ZX Spectrum version when messing with it since viewing this video. ZX Spectrum has a clone version called E.T.X and it has speech. I never understood the purpose of the game but I thought it was meant for Speech related things.
Convoluted story with unclear objectives IE "I didn't real the instruction manual"
Big thanks
Wow. This deserves game of the year! Way better than God of War, Arkham City, and Witcher 3 combined! Show Superman 1999 who's boss! We want more levels as DLC's! Praise nostalgia!
(You know I'm sarcastic right?)
What's the name of the cartoon at 7:40? ("Did you get all that?")
Beavis and Butthead. Episode is "Customers Suck".
I love the lore of the Year's Revenge universe... I'd gladly buy a well-made sequel.
It's called "Sabotour"; you can play it if you have an emulator or an "Atari Flashbacks" console.
I wish I had seen that there was instructions booklet...I would have loved some clue as to how to play. I couldn't even figure out that I was falling into a pit. I just thought the screen changed when I moved. I lost my enthusiasm for playing it in less than 10mins.
have u seen firefly or sorsorer it makes et look like a masterpiece , firefly is broken shovelware
The problem with this game wasn’t the quality. This game was way ahead of its time.
I got a Reese’s Pieces ad while watching this, haha.
This was an awesome piece of work (your video - not the game 😆).
Is the game really that bad?? It’s really cool in my opinion.
The picture with what looks like Kathleen Kennedy at 21:36 is interesting (and it would make sense for it to be her if this photo is from the E.T. development project).
"...most accurate representation of a government official in a video game."
kek
How crazy to think that the head designer of E.T would go on to make gta5
Hated this game as a kid. I didn’t play any games after this until mario bros on nes.
The inside of the cube is the inside of the well
This might sound pathetic but I had childhood nightmares after watching 2002 edition of E.T. and unfortunately might have to put off watching the full video after seeing a cutaway to a footage of the horrid alien's face in the map breakdown section. Sorry!
I pulled up the part you're talking about because I honestly couldn't remember what happens there.... 😆
All people had to do was read the damn book, and atari may never have gone bankrupt
It was misunderstood! If only they read the manual! It was it like the witcher 3 of 1982
so if we had read the manual.. we would have understood how it actually worked .. OMG
That's not too bad a game actually. It's even decent.
We had that game when I was a kid. And it was ... That bad.
9:17 Wait. You have Atari 2600 games on an SNES Classic? I didn't know you could do that.
Yes Sir, with "hakchi". You can load it with games from multiple systems. It's fantastic.
I think the moral of the story is to read the manual.
This is not the worst game of all time by a long shot. It isn't even the worst Atari 2600 game.
Not a GOOD game, but not the worst by a long shot.