E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600) - Positives - Rerez

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In 1983 North America saw the very first video game industry crash and while many people like to blame a lot of factors as to why it happened one game stands alone as being blamed for pretty much everything. Considered by most to be the worst game ever made, released one month before the video game industry crash even happened, it was a warning shot of what was soon to come. On the Atari 2600, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. Let's find the positives.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial is a game known all over as the worst game ever made. Based off the Steven Spielberg film of the same name the player takes on the role of E.T. a small, child sized alien with a really long neck whose marooned on Earth and is trying to find a way back home. Your objective is to collect randomly scattered electronic components all over the game world, assemble them, call for a ride and get your alien homies to pick you up. However while you do this you need to avoid getting caught by the Government. The faster you accomplish your goal the higher your score is. Once you complete a round the game repeats forever like many other arcade games of the era. So why is this game considered bad well the game is a little difficult. If you just picked up the cartridge and started playing it you probably wouldn't know what to do. Like some other games for the Atari 2600 you need to read the manual. If you do you'll know that you need to pick up three parts to assemble your phone. Each area of the map has specific zones that E.T. can utilize that grant him special powers and one of these zones is a question mark. This will light up where a part can be found. All the parts are in pits that E.T. can fall into and once you pick up all the pieces you'll find a phone call zone. You call home, head to the pickup zone before the timer runs out and bam you win. I think what happened was that all the kids who picked up the game either didn't read the manual or got frustrated with falling down in pits. Since the hit detection on E.T. is so pixel perfect it sometimes feels unfair. Once you figure out how to maneuver around and get out of pits properly it's all kinds of simple.

One of the great things this game does is reference the movie in multiple ways. The government agents chase after E.T. all the time just like in the film. E.T. has the power of flight and levitation referencing one of the most iconic scenes from the movie and if E.T. gets sick from being out in the wild for too long Elliot comes to your rescue. Larger parts of the game focusing on building a device to call home, that's all gathered from the film so if you're a fan of the movie you may appreciate a lot of the events that happen in this game. So positive number one is it makes reference to the movie.

Many games on the Atari 2600 placed you into limited actions for the sake of gameplay. Games like Pong, Asteroids and Combat are great games but they're limited in their own ways while few games gave you the chance to explore worlds like Adventure and Hero did. E.T. actually has several different screens that can be explored freely. There's even a secret that you can find as a sort of Easter Egg for those willing to search for it. So positive number two is you got an explorable world.

Each time you play the game it randomly generates zones. Like I mentioned earlier zones are areas of the game that E.T. can activate to enable a special power or trigger an event. You can see them on the top of the screen as E.T. walks around. There are zones to find parts to your phone, call home, send the government agents away and even warp to other locations on the map. What this means is that you'll have to explore and discover where the zones are every round. This gives the game replayability making it just a little bit different every time you play. So positive number three is randomly generated zones.

I'm not going to claim that this game is the greatest thing to ever happen. It's got flaws and some are worse than others. The hit detection alone is a problem and probably the biggest complaint about the game but taking everything else into account there's a lot to do in this game. And you know what it's not that bad in fact I kind of like playing it. I was expecting something a lot worse when I was picking this game up but it just seems to be a fairly decent game. So positive number four is while it's not a great game it's a decent one.

Playing E.T. has proven to me that video games can be a very subjective experience. One person that plays a game can feel completely different than somebody else playing a game so while it may not be the best game in the world I'm actually kind of glad to have this game in my collection. E.T., go give it a shot.

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