The World’s Most Unfairly Treated Game (documentary)
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- Опубликовано: 13 сен 2024
- I set the record straight on one of the most misunderstood games ever.
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#atari #atari2600
Some of you are saying I accidentally called James Rolfe the name Pat the NES Punk. It's not a mistake. That clip is from The Video Game Years 1982 which was shown on Pat's channel. That's why it says "RUclips Channel" in parenthesis. James has done a lot of stuff on other channels.
I thought that Pat looked a lot like James Rolf
I mostly recall that the game was just difficult to intuit so within minutes you'd get frustrated with it... At the time, I wasn't even aware that Atari games _had_ manuals.
Many many years later, I think around the time AVGN was kicking his movie off, I emailed Howard Scott Warshaw just to say I think he got a raw deal and that the game aged much better than it was born. I also congratulated him on Yars Revenge being one of my favorite games of the era. To my surprise, he wrote me back. He seemed like a good guy and he said he occasionally goes to local conventions (somewhere in California, as I recall) and does signings. He has long ago left the software industry.
(raises hand) I was one of the kids who owned E.T. for Atari 2600 (or rather, my brother did, since it was his system!) when I was a kid. And I thought it was a perfectly fine game! So yeah, I really appreciate you taking this particular deep dive.
Retro game collectors really need to remember that games of this era had ABSURDLY low memory space to work with -- every byte counted, and text actually takes up a LOT of space when your whole game's storage is measured in kilobytes. So the manuals were absolutely ESSENTIAL back then, almost every time. A small handful of games are intuitive enough that you can figure out how to play them without a manual, but that is absolutely the exception, not the rule.
I currently collect for the MSX microcomputer, and I'm seeing a lot of the same ways of thinking there. In particular, there's this absolutely outstanding game from Activision called "Alcazar: The Forgotten Fortress" that everyone in the MSX community seemed to dismiss as a mediocre dungeon-crawler, similar to the dungeons in The Legend of Zelda, but with less variety and just less interesting in general -- and this despite the game being released in the West, not just for MSX, but for Colecovision and a number of other microcomputers as well!
A quick Google search later, and I found a PDF of the Colecovision manual, which I read front to back... and man, Alcazar took on a whole new identity at that point. It's no dungeon-crawler, it's a frigging STEALTH game, a la Metal Gear -- but in many ways, even more sophisticated, despite being released long before Metal Gear was even conceived! It's an incredibly ambitious game for its time, and on the hardest difficulty level, it's genuinely tense and engrossing.
I pity those who tried to play this game and dismissed it without ever consulting the manual, as they genuinely missed out on one of the most remarkably nuanced games of its time, which honestly still holds up to this very day.
Tbf, a lot of these complex computer games tend to be too complex at times.
Metal Gear is famed because it manages to find the perfect blend of complexity while simultaneously not too taxing to the point of it being only accessible to what seems like Mensa graduates. A lot of computer games fall to this trap.
That, and Metal Gear's narrative are simply more compelling. There are quite a few mechanically complex games back then, but a narratively complex games were a bit more rare, so Metal Gear earns bonus points there as well.
Also, I found that a lot of people at the time, especially in US, seems to embrace the simpler, pick up and play games over anything remotely complex.
In Japan and to a lesser extent, Europe, there are a lot of complex computer games that in US didn't exactly fly off the shelves. For example, Wizardry didn't really fare all that well in US for its lifetime, while Japan seems to be all over it, to the point that it feels like the franchise is from Japan instead of US.
@@ZX3000GT1 Well, Alcazar isn't exactly
"complex," it just doesn't explain its mechanics to you at all in-game. You NEED to read the manual in order to learn what all the items actually do, or to realize that, hey, you can shoot enemies from the next room, or that the presence of enemies one room over is actually communicated to the player through aural or visual clues. It's actually a very simple and straightforward game ONCE YOU KNOW HOW IT WORKS. Which is kind of my point. You actually have to read the manual to learn how it works.
Metal Gear is, I'd say, a MORE complex game, it just is also a little more intuitive, especially to modern players. Alcazar's only real failing is its inability to intuit its mechanics, which isn't really its fault IMHO -- and gamers should probably take the age of the game into account before playing it and RTFM, as it were. ;)
@@Wyrdwad I suppose the intuitiveness of some (not all) of Nintendo’s output on the NES at the time doesn’t help Alcazar’s apparent “shortcoming”. A lot of people are conditioned and used to how NES games tend to communicate the gameplay parts better than a lot of computer games, forgetting the fact that a lot of console games, especially NES games, were made with the equivalent of current AAA teams at the time, while a lot of computer games were made by a small team of devs, more akin to current indie teams.
I mean when you compare it to TLoZ, there’s no denying that that TLoZ is a much more intuitive game in general. A lot of high profile Japanese games at the time was really intuitive to pick up and play relative to Western games.
Which is ironic when you see the current games from respective regions. Just recently I tried Star Ocean : The Divine Force demo. It’s a game slated for release ~2 weeks from now. The in-game tutorial is some of the most unintuitive thing I’ve seen - it’s literally just walls of text. It literally feels like I’m reading a manual, just happened to be embedded in game instead of being in a separate paper. Meanwhile a lot of Western games nowadays rely on cues to teach players, and is much more intuitive as a result. Quite funny.
@@ZX3000GT1 Well, again with Alcazar, do note that it wasn't exclusively a PC game -- I think it was actually on Colecovision first! -- and it was developed by Activision, so pretty close to a AAA company for the era.
But what you're saying is quite accurate -- I just think you need to compare NES games to, say, Colecovision games as opposed to computer games of the time. Because although Famicom was out in Japan when Alcazar released, it still hadn't reached the West yet, so I think it's fair to rank Alcazar as part of the "pre-NES era." And while some Atari, Intellivision, and Colecovision games were so simplistic that they were rather intuitive by default, others certainly were not, nor were they expected to be. I can recall a number of full-on tactical games for Intellivision especially that you DEFINITELY wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of without the manual. I think either Intellivision or Colecovision had a full-on flight sim, too, that was absolutely inscrutable without having not only the instructions open in front of you, but a plastic insert in the controller to identify how the keypad was mapped.
If those games were released in the NES era, there would most likely have considerably more rom space on the cartridge, leading to more of an attempt to communicate gameplay nuances without the need of an external manual. But even on NES, this wasn't always the case -- there were plenty of NES games (and Famicom games especially!) that you really wouldn't be able to figure out too easily without consulting the manual.
I don't think we saw an almost complete proliferation of tutorials (either implicit or explicit) until the 16-bit era. Though the NES and Master System era certainly did manage a good 80-90% proliferation, granted.
To this day, there are still people who don't read manuals (or play tutorial levels), who skip cutscenes and dialogs, and then say "Wtf am I supposed to do? This game sucks!"...
I will never understand them.
The as seen on tv channels are the same way they say a product fails and yet they never read the manual on it.
Basically DarkSydephil.
@@mellojoe9421I was gonna suggest darksyde phil vs amelia watson both playing the same puzzle in Tears Of The Kingdom 😂😂😂
Great video. As someone who played the game as a child and traded games with friends, I can confirm that no one talked about E.T. being terrible at the time. I had a couple of friends who really liked it. It has a very unique gameplay and can actually be quite challenging if you know the rules.
Yeah I don’t remember it being considered terrible either.
I would have rather been playing Adventure, Pitfall, and dozens of other Atari cartridges at the time. ET was maybe a poor man’s Superman at best. But I don’t remember hating it or anyone else hating on it.
Given how many stupid demon attack clones there were, the gameplay was unique. ET suffered more from the feeling it was a little kids movie. Sword quest was the worst though, such a huge letdown.
The sword quest games were designed specifically for a contest, and once their was no more contest, the games became kinda pointless. I don't think that the sword quest games are terrible exactly, just that they were created for a purpose, and once that purpose was fulfilled, they weren't worth playing much afterwards. There's no reason to play them today and really no reason to play them back then ether unless you were entering the contest.
In my opinion, E.T. is one of the BEST Atari 2600 games. Lots of variety, good sound, colorful, interesting level design... just don't get out of the holes to the NORTH.. instead, climb out to the left or right. My friends and me had lots of fun playing E.T. in the 80s and beat the game countless times. Good video, thanks!
I loved this ET videogame. My mom wouldn't let me play a game until I read the manuals . I hated reading. It was a way to get me to read, so I kinda new how to play the ET game before placing the cartridge in the Atari system. Great video btw.
Great mom!
Dude, your channel is going to be huge in no time. You did an amazing job shining new light on this game imo. Bravo man, very good video!
I also grew up playing ET and Tunnel Runner and such... It was actually a very enjoyable sorta-puzzle game. The lack of direction and user-friendly controls wasnt noticed, because that didnt exist yet, these were videos... tha were also games! What an amazing concept, we were all so glad to explore this new world of video.
ET was CONFUSING and DIFFICULT, but it was also suprisingly complex for an Atari, and half the fun was decoding the rules.
Notably, i didnt have the manual, but neither did most people, and internet was NOT a possibility, even though it technically existed.
The videos bashing ET would be like us making Videos about how bad wheels were on the original cars, and how terrible the steering was. Like... your steering qheels that are moving automatically and carrying you forward, thats amazing for the time. Get it in perspective.
ET had more Replayability than most Triple A games... we didnt exactly make BETTER games over time, they just got flashier and easier to play regardless of your experience.
One thing that's not a myth, is how awesome this channel's Patreon benefits are. See for yourself: www.patreon.com/GamingTheSystems?fan_landing=true
I also never blamed ET for the video game crash. The game itself is decent enough. Only for certain games I absolutely need to have the manual. Amazing video as always.
I think the problem with E.T. was the expectations. The movie was a blockbuster, so people expected the game to be awesome. Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to expectations.
I was so gutted when my brother got Raiders of the Lost Ark. Turned out my Seaquest was a lot better 😄
I’ve played tons of 2600 games, but never ET mainly due to what people have said about it. That being said, your explanation of needing the manual totally makes sense and it actually looks pretty fun!
I had alot of fun playing the game! Even tho I can't beat it!
Amazing documentary Kevin, this piece explains and corrects every misconception about ET 👍
This won't get enough coverage it deservers, well done
All you had to do to understand this game was RTFM. That's it.
But I was an odd child in that I always read the manual if it was available. They always explained the game and even gave some hints to earning high scores and secrets.
So I read the manual and thought this game was a ton of fun. Whenever I met someone who hated it I asked them if they read the manual. The answer was almost always "no".
Hell, some games printed story material that’s not in the game. There was plenty of good Atari manuals
Great video that shed real light on how rumors can turn into truths over time, when left unchecked. Thanks!
ET was one of the earliest games I can remember playing at my aunt’s house. As a very young kid, maybe 6 or 7 yo, I had no clue how to play this game and I remember being very frustrated trying to play this. I’ve not played it again in the last 30-something years. Maybe it’s not as bad as I remember, you inspired me to give it another try.
Riddle of the Sphinx was also a game that needed a manual. All I could do was throw rocks. I was like 2 when I first played it, though.
We had ET, I think. I remember it being without a cartridge so we had to put the circuit board into the slot.
Space Shuttle is another that comes to mind. It pretty much uses every button on the console, like the black and white switch.
You gave the key explanation: you played a lot of Atari games! Indeed, even if ET is not perfect, it is still much more fun and enjoyable than 90% of the Atari games...
Truth! Many modern games can't hold a candle to this classic. I loved it when i was 11, and still enjoy it, today. Thanks for this informative video.
I had E.T. as a kid and I loved that shit, I was surprised to find out decades later that it was "the worst game ever"
Good video. It's frustrating to see that often what people believe is the most exciting story or the one most people tell, rather than the reality based on historical facts and data. But the more people who tell a story that is closer to the real thing, the better, I think that little by little in the face of a more realistic view people will start to abandon the naive idea of what happened.
As for the quality of the game itself, I think ET is a bad game, but in my opinion it wasn't particularly worse than the vast majority of Atari games. As you've well shown, there are games on that system that are clearly worse and have almost no entertainment potential. I played Atari games as a kid because it was the only thing my family had until the early 1990s and while I enjoyed the experience, playing Atari wasn't exactly the most exciting thing for kids. I clearly remember that I didn't start considering video games as the "top" toy until I played the NES for the first time, as there's a huge jump between the two systems.
Great analysis. I’m 47 and this is how I remember it. I hated gamepads even to this day I buy arcade sticks. But the NES took video games to a whole other level. I still play NES games frequently and play Atari games every once in a while.
Yeah not the worst but when it's based on a popular movie yeah it's gonna be called the worse
It certainly isn’t the worst game ever made. And given the fact it was the work of one person basically nonstop for weeks, it definitely isn’t a work of laziness. I played it on an emulator years ago when I first heard about and I totally agree with you. It’s an average 2600 game.
This was a great presentation. It's always bugged me how the video game 'crash' got reduced to "Atari made sooooo many copies of the worst game ever and it ruined the whole industry until Nintendo single handedly saved it". When I watch most video game reviewers talk about old games, they never seem to read the manual to figure out what to do and it drives me nuts.
I am so happy I found you again. I think back in the day when you did both retro and fix videos I was subscribed. Only for your retro stuff. I don't think I ever saw the channel split happen and unsubbed due to only repair videos. But I'm back and subscribed again.
Glad you mentioned something about the title screen with music. Also thanks for being authentic!
Yeah, music was a hard thing on the 2600. In Pitfall 2 they added a special chip to do it, but for ET they got decent music without a chip and within a short time period.
Very interesting and compelling video. Loved that you back it up with facts and didn't just throw out numbers.
Years ago, when I was in Jr. Hight, my brother and I found an explanation of everything, not really a walkthrough since the game changes so much, on the net and we played it. We had our original Atari and cart. It didn't take that long but afterwards we concluded that it wasn't a great game, it was beatable, but even as we were playing it we had to look at what the symbols meant. It was more of a play once and never revisit game. Really I don't like any of the complicated games on the Atari 2600 console, just the most basic ones. We didn't have the manual so we just thought the myth was correct though. The site we used didn't have pictures of the manual, just screenshots, and didn't even mention the manual.
A game that RUclipsrs hate and paint it as one of the Worse is Batman Forever. It's amazing to me as i remember me, my father, my friends and even late teens of my building liking it a lot.
It's true, as far as 2600 games go this game isn't that bad. ET is Hardly deserving of a title like 'worst game of all time'. Especially if you compare it to some more modern 'worst' games which aren't even playable compared to other games of their time.
Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T. are 2 of my all time favorites
Great video! I also want a copy of E.T., just to show this game the love it deserves. However, I think that 3D Tic Tac Toe also deserves more respect. You must realize that it was programmed by Carol Shaw, the same lady behind River Raid, and that she managed to create a really competent AI.
Great video! I played the game back in the mid-80s time era and also agree that it wasn't the worst game ever.
I love these types of videos!! Very well done!
This video was informative and really fun to watch. Great work.
The funny thing about including Sneak 'n Peek is that it was one of the few games I actually plugged in a fair bit. I got it way after the crash. Even after the NES had been around for a while. I knew it was a two player game on a console released in 1977 but I was in that phase where it made sense to collect. It's actually pretty advanced for an Atari 2600 game.
The biggest problem is that most people didn't bother to read the manual which would of explained things that would be useful to know.
A very intellectual review. Most critics lacks context. Thanks for an entertaining video
Thanks enjoyed your vid, keep them coming please. i grew up on the 2600 it was my friends console and i played space invaders,boot hill type game oh and the planes then she moved and i only eventually got back in gaming with the msx and the rest is history.
I kinda doubted the whole "digging down games" story, so I remember being convinced when the images of the dig showed up. I do appreciate deeper documentaries and reports from people who was actually there at the time.
I’ll be honest, objectively, ET isn’t necessarily a bad game, just a lot of setbacks that contributed to its perceived terribleness. The biggest one was its 5 week development schedule when at a time games were developed in the span of 6 to 8 months.
As for the landfill…It wasn’t just ET. It was a whole slew of games released at the time. One of the main contributors of the 1983 video game industry crash in the US, was the preorder policies from Atari combined With over saturation in the market. This led Atari to overproduce more cartridges overall than there were consoles owned by consumers and on store shelves. Even if they sold out the consoles over the Christmas season, they’d still have produced major overstock of those cartridges.
I'm glad some people are pushing back on this myth. I got ET with my Atari.. also PacMan.. and my dad and I loved both. Sure, ET took longer to figure out, but unlike some, we actually read the manual... and even at 5 or 6 I could beat it every time. and I learned how to work around the quirks... like, you don't have to fall back down a pit every time if you just exit the pit on the lower side on the overworld map... a fact that seemed to elude every youtuber for the last 15 years but I figured out in first grade.
What it tried to do was perhaps overly ambitious, though tame next to HSW's Raiders game. Why ET always gets dumped on but Raiders gets a free pass baffles me. And like it or not, ET is a precursor to adventure games like Zelda.. and I'd argue its also the birth of the "Escape / Survival" genre.... like Spy VS Spy (where you collect items and avoid enemies so that you can leave a space), or more recent games like Dead By Daylight or Friday the 13th (2017).. also confined spaces where you have to collect items, avoid enemies and perform tasks to escape.
I was also born in 1975. I had an Atari as well, and probably about 40 games or so. Some were great, some were duds, but as a 7-8 year old kid, nothing frustrated me like ET. I couldn't figure out what to do, and i kept falling down that damned hole. I never heard about the whole widespread hatred for the game until i was an adult, and when i did, all i could do was sympathize because i felt that way, too. It may not have been the worst Atari game ever, but i was the one i hated most.
I bought the game loose from a garage sale for $1 around 1987 so I never had the manual and the internet didnt exist so I never figured out how to play it as a kid
I love the game, back then all the games were obscure and difficult. And I played the heck out of them not knowing what I was doing half the time and that was part of the fun. At least for the 5-year-old version of me.
Yeah I’m 47. Originality made games fun and interesting. Every time I went to the arcade they had something new and it created a memorable experience. I remember when Pitfall came out. What an experience that was. Space Invaders, Galaxian, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Dig Dug, Mappy, Zaxxon, Punch Out, Dragons Lair, Pac Land, Kung Fu Master, Karate Champ, Gauntlet, Outrun, Super Mario Bros, Double Dragon, TMNT, Street Fighter II. I feel like I got to see it all! These were such fun times I put together my own arcade kiosk with dual sticks and trackball and collected almost all these games I had and didn’t have and still enjoy them.
James Rolfe is the only ET vid I didn't mind as the Nerd but he also made another vid explaining the gameplay like this
This is awesome dude, I never followed the mass narrative and re ET I fully relate to this !
Thank you for this, I always thought this game just wasn't that bad.
In fact I find a LOT of online game reviewers are full of shit about the game's quality.
It’s actually very nicely designed. It has nice graphics and the cube world I only discovered a few weeks ago. It would be neat to finish the game. Maybe one day I will try.
We’ll done documentary. Thanks a lot for sharing this one with us and giving context
Very good documentary. Thank you for sharing
I played it when I was a kid too. I somehow managed to beat it without ever reading the manual. Yes, I had a lot of free time.
I would defend this game. It's not as good as Pitfall!, Solaris, Haunted House or Adventure but it was by far not the worst Atari 2600 game.
You were a smart kid.
Nice to see Rolfe countering the narrative since it's unfortunately his popularity that made mindlessly trashing old games so trendy for a while. For him it was just a character but others took it seriously.
I haven't played ET but after playing Zelda Ocarina of Time I realised that every "best/worst game ever" that gets repeated often is just a meme.
As a kid, I did not know I wasn't supposed to like it. It quickly became one of my favorite games.
I really liked the "documentary" format, which is a bit different from other videos on your channel! Keep on rocking!
back then me and my brothers got the game used, without a manual, we had to figure out how to play it on our own, and still it was fun, one of the most elaborate atari 2600 games, you gotta love it just for that
Wow, so inspiring how you got Pat the NES Punk to participate in this video! What a cool guy. :)
BTW, it's not a mistake. That clip was from The Video Game Years, which is a series posted on Pat's channel.
I find it funny that not only is ET for Atari 2600 the only physical game I currently own, I've had it for about 20 years now. A girlfriend in high school gave it to me. I didn't keep it out of sentimental reasons, just because of how infamous it is.
Thank you for taking a different view of the game!
This was my understanding as well when I played it. ET is definitely a shit game, but out of the hundreds of Atari games I played, it's average. Atari is just a shit console library, no doubt due to it being an era of grave limitation and high experimentation. The only games I can think of that were good were hyper smplistic, and ET was one of those games that tried to be more than that. It's a failure for poor business decisions, but as far as it being overly bad, that's best saved for garbage like Action 52.
edit: Jesus, I just realized your sub count. I don't know why RUclips recommended you to me but glad to have found you :)
As a visually impaired kid, ET was a nightmare because you keep falling into those pits like mad, but I still played through it over and over and over. Also a 1975 kid heh. Kaboom was my fav.
Wow. Very reflective. I always tell my nephew how some of the old games at the time were revolutionary or "great" at the time. I just read IGN making fun of Resident Eviil 1 graphics on PS1. When that game came out it was beautiful. I felt that I was there at the time. I was thinking the writer must been young or didn't play it at the time.
First: merchandising ET for various products was difficult for many companies back then
Next: ET wasn't as bad as the 2600 port of PacMan, the game design on that was very frustrating
I still have my original copy AND manual which I read when I was 9 years old and I beat the game many times and never once thought it sucked.
The game apparently was very dependent on the manual and at the same time was aimed at small children. It is also true that falling into holes can be defined as an error in the gameplay, but apart from that it is true that the bad reputation has been exaggerated. of that game
There's this mindset that's great to have, which is: when you hear a mention that something is the worst ever, always doubt it - same with hearing a mention that something is the best ever, always doubt it. This makes it all fall to that middle ground. There is good and bad no doubt, but the bad stuff I bet is not as bad and people make it seem. Likely this comes from not wanting to read those instructions (if people even have any) and if the has options inside, not bothering to even see them and going straight to the game and then having this "right what is going on here, this sucks" -stuff. I bet that once one knows how stuff works one thinks that it's not that bad. Seriously.
As an example I like to defend those 007 games on Sony PlayStation. People have issues with them that can be avoided.
- (In TND) Moving around sucks as sneaking happens abruptly at times. Yes, I know, using the analogue stick sucks* in that game. D-PAD and strafe keys are the way to go. Skiing and driving work fine with sticks, driving even uses both sticks!
- (In TWINE) See previous, without sneaking issue. Again, D-PAD and strafe keys do the trick.
- (In TND) Everyone just shoots at bosses constantly, clearly seeing that they take damage at intervals, when it's wiser to just tap the shoot button in a slow rhythm, which would save a lot ammo (and yield better points at the end of a mission).
- (In TWINE) Previous point of taking damage at intervals now applies to every single enemy, so machine guns are now useless. Pistol and one shot kill weapons are enough there.
- (In both of those games) Controls can be customized, why won't people do that? I do.
- (In 007R) You can scroll the weapon/item list backwards by holding R2 and pressing L1. I'm giving peoples some slack with their complaints of not being able to do this, despite it being incorrect, as nothing tells you that you can do that, not even the manual. What it does tell you that holding R2 allows you to shoot multiple rockets.
- Also reading the manual helps, despite the fact that they don't always tell you everything.
- "Trial and error" is also a common complaint. Everything in life is trial and error.
* = Yes, if you ask me, with PS1 games analogue stick usage sucks most of the time if the game is not a (simulation) driving game. I tend to use the D-PAD with me PS1 games, am not bothered by the early games only being able to control with it and think that it works well enough and is not bad. Doesn't help that the analogue is otherwise the same as D-PAD movement anyway, just with more possible directions, which sometimes doesn't help, and partly is the reason I don't get peoples bashing the D-PAD movement. Controversial opinions, the world wouldn't be fun without those.
I'm surprized double dragon was considered one of the not fun games for the Atari 2600
and thank you for educating us on E.T., admittedly the Atari 2600 was before my time, and I had limited experience with it
Good stuff. I first played ET as a young adult. I agree with you that once you know what to do its not a bad game.
Great video. I was old enough when this came out to appreciate it. It was complex and required thought. Personally I always thought that it pushed the system in interesting ways. This and Raiders of the Lost Ark were among my favorites on the system.
I never remember seeing ET in the shops, one minute cartridges were £40 a pop, the next shops were ditching them for £5 each
I was on the tail end of atari 2600 being born in '82 so my experience was limited. I'm curious of price points for 2600 games back in the day 🤔
Great coverage btw 😃👍👍
I was born in 84, my first console was the nes, played the 2600 in the 90’s and I liked it, it the game I liked the most was enduro then asteroids, I haven’t played ET yet. 😢
I feel like back in the 2000s-early 2010 internet, there was a particularly intense habit of taking internet content as gospel. Maybe its just because there was a lot less of it, so something like a top 10 list calling a game the worst game of all time felt like more of an authority on the topic. Suddenly, everyone starts repeating it, and then it just became fact. Superman 64 and Bubsy 3D felt like they met a similar fate. Awful games? Of course. But did they have any particular reason to be called out over other awful games? No, the internet just latched onto them because they became a household name.
Brilliant vid, thanks. Think you are right. Most people today are comparing against later generations and maybe they just don't know the atari 2600 and its gen.
I didn’t know the landfill story was that exaggerated, although even as a kid I didn’t think ET caused the crash. I always heard other reasons such as too much supply, too many consoles, games, and poor quality.
ET sure doesn’t look like a great game, but it’s also well before my time. I grew up mostly playing NES, SNES, and, N64 games, despite being only born in 96. I definitely like old games, but pre NES feels too old for me.
Some people probably complain because the game came out in 1982.
The Atari 2600/VCS was developed all the way back in 1977. In the early days of the Atari, E.T.'s graphics and game play would have been groundbreaking or at least acceptable. But in 1982/83 we expected more! Realize that Atari didn't want to put out a new console when the marketing people asked them to (after a year or two). This is one of the reasons that Bushnell rightly says that Atari committed suicide. The Atari 2600's days were simply over in 1982. And then they decide go go all out on the game E.T. Well, I think they had to. The Colecovision and Vic20 weren't popular/affordable enough yet to justify a major release like E.T. And reasonably predictably it backfired on 'm in spectacular fashion. Sad if you think about it.
Nicely done -- this was a good concept for the channel. I now stand corrected on this topic, having only really heard the hearsay. I've always considered the Atari about as entertaining as a bug zapper, but with slightly worse graphics. Now, I understand it has _much_ worse graphics. :-D haha Seriously, though, breaking ground is not easy. We owe a lot to those early systems. Respec.
I was born September 1976. My father also bought me this game at some discount after the video game crash. Anyway, I must have been playing it in 1983. I was 7. I has no problem figuring out this game. Played it quite a lot for an Atari game. It was different b/c unlike most Atari games you could actually beat it.
If I as a 7 year old was able to easily figure this game out and beat it over and over again. Then if some adults around today can't figure it out, it just means they are idiots.
And Demon Attack was awesome.
I am a 1975 baby and I experienced the same thing, including the game trading. However, we were poor and didn't get ours till like 1984 or so
This is well done, thanks.
I agree ET gets a bit of a raw deal, but the unusually high level of consumer, not commercial returns is verified. Documents that are currently on the internet archive include memos of Warner Bros talking about having to promise reduced cost games to major retails because of the high level of returns, which had ruined their holiday pre order policy.
Now whether those returns were because the kids couldn't work out how to play ET or because ET was just the most recent games they'd bought and their kids weren't interested, who knows.
But it did have more returns than usual. That part is one of the few verifiable parts of the legend.
ET was like a more primitive version of Zelda. The game was pretty ambitious given the technical limitations of the hardware. I never thought that it deserves the hate. There were many more disastrous games that should be credited with the videogame crash - most of them were cheap, crappy, uninspired copies of other titles.
It would be interesting to learn if Atari as a company had any kind of program to test games with their target age group of kids before releasing the game. The mind of a 7-8 year old is certainly different from a 20+ year old computer programmer in terms of "what's good." It's too bad about the landfill, but the "millions" that were dumped were "dollars," not cartridges. I bet if ET was flying around on a bicycle avoiding enemies, picking up candy (I'm thinking Fast Food style action) and getting points like a "normal" game things may have turned out different.
Atari may have done focus groups from time to time, but the fast track nature of this game would have made it impossible, I figure.
4:26 I don’t think that kids know the difference between a bad game and a good game, they simply decide if it’s boring or not
Or confusing.
That being said, i was put off by the difficulty, but it DID keep drawing me back to fogure it out. You only had a dozen options, so youd feel yourself pulled to retry out the other non-terrible possibilities.
ET stands out as confusing, it wasnt bad for the time at all though
I like E.T. 👍
Excellent analysis.
I never understood why this game was so reviled. Especially since people who heap praise on Raiders of the Lost Ark (a game far inferior and infinitely more confusing to play IMHO) tend to discount this one in the same breath.
I remember I had a whole box full of unopened ET carts when I was a kid. Promptly threw it out at that time. Wish coulda kept it.
ET's problem was that it was different than every other Atari game you can pick up and in seconds know what to do. You had to read the manual to learn what to do, the controls, and avoid parts of the playfield that would hinder your progress. Once you learn what do it was actually pretty fun. Was it the best game on the Atari? No, far from it - but it certainly wasn't the worst.
ET's closest comparison game would be Superman on the same console. Another game where you had to learn what to do in order know what was going on.
I think about 90% of the people who say ET is a bad game just aren't accustomed to playing Atari 2600, as in they haven't played anything else from the time that they can compare ET to. Anybody from the current generation might say ANY Atari game is bad because of the primitive graphics & sound.
ET is only a bad game by word of mouth. Most Atari games are crypic and confusing as f*ck without the instruction manual. This coming from someone who loves Atari. Including ET!
I remember spending at least a few hours on it trying to perfect it, finding Easter eggs, and most importantly, spending time with friends figuring it all out. It wasn't that bad, and yes, there was countless other garbage on the Atari.
There's a similar phenomenon with the Virtual Boy as well. People love to hate on things. Makes for easy views.
Hand-me-downs never had the manual, and you've gotta remember $30 in 1982 was $100 today. Poor kids had to figure games out.
Sadly, you missed one point by not looking over the edge (of the US). In Europe, the game got above average ratings (some even praising it) from the gaming journals of the time.
Most RUclipsrs in mid 2000’s and the 2010’s honestly were just repeating rumors like sheep. There were a ton of bad Atari games so there’s no way ET somehow was the last nail in the coffin.
The fact this game was created in 6 weeks is baller.
As far as ET's quality goes, I think most people would probably just have this type of reaction to any non-arcade pre-NES game, especially from anything Atari. ET might be more of a figurehead for general dislike of pre-NES home video games in the west than anything, in that case.
Can't say I'm any different tbh. The only time I ever stomach games older than NES/Famicom is when they are especially well made arcade games, like Galaxian or Pacman.
14:40 I was in high school in the early 80s and we still played Atari, even into college. Computers were definitely taking some of our time, but I didn't acquire my 2600 and games collection until high school and I made my own money. The "crash" was actually incredible because suddenly my collection ballooned. Journey Escape for 50 cents? Sure, why not. It certainly beat paying $25 for something that ended up being not fun (I really was not happy with Gorf). Also, as to ET being returned to stores in droves? I'm not buying it. Video games, at least in Southern California, were unreturnable once opened, unless defective, at all the stores I visited -- department stores, record stores, toy stores (and I did try to return Gorf, they wouldn't take it).
I got ET when I was 7. I did not hate it and even finished it at the time. There were some games out at the time that I did think were terrible and still do; the idea that this is the worst game ever was news to me and definitely not the sentiment at the time.
"The ship will not come down if there is a human on the screen."
Even though I grew up with the 2600, I don’t have the fondest of memories of it, not like I do with the 8-bit systems or C64. Too many of the games were really basic. Mind you, because of my age then, I don’t remember really reading any manuals (once again I think that didn’t start until the 8-bit gen) so all Atari games that weren’t basic were cryptic to me. Superman comes to mind when I think of such games. Like you pointed out, games that actually had endings rather than just looping were rare. I think that’s where my problem really lied, was it worth the grind for no real reward? If you didn’t enjoy the game from the offset, probably best not to torture yourself too much as the only reward was normally just playing more until you eventually give up on it. I never played E.T., but it looks far from being bad from my own experiences.