Most people would recognize E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 by its reputation as one of the worst video games of all time. We’ll have more to say about that in a moment, but E.T. was nevertheless chosen as the inspiration behind [Martin Fitzpatrick]’s re-imagining of the game in ten lines of BASIC code for a contest that encourages and celebrates games written in ten lines of BASIC, or less.
Ten lines of BASIC is a big limitation, even when getting clever by stacking multiple statements into a single line, so [Martin]’s game has a much narrower scope than the original Atari 2600 version. Still, the core elements are present: E.T. must find and gather all the parts of the phone in order to contact his ship, after which he must meet the ship in time to escape. All the while, FBI agents attempt to interfere. The game was written in SAM BASIC, used by the SAM Coupé, a British Z80-based home computer from the late 80s with an emulator available for download.
Now, for lovers of “um, actually” topics, do we have a treat for you! Let’s take this opportunity to review a few things about E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. That it was a commercial flop is no doubt, but the game itself is often badly misunderstood. Way back in 2013 we covered an extraordinary effort to patch improvements into the binary for the 2600 game, and in the process there’s a compelling case made that the game was in many ways far ahead of its time, and actually quite significant in terms of game design. You can jump right in on an analysis of the hate the game receives, and while reading that it’s helpful to keep in mind that In 1982, many of its peers were games like Space Invaders, with self-evident gameplay that simply looped endlessly.
Yeah, I got that game new for Christmas one year after Toys-r-us closed a bunch of stores and we’re selling copies in piles out of kiddie pools. Pretty sure my mom paid a buck or less for it.
Anyways, there was no mention of collecting space ship parts, I just remember getting thrown into a pit and never being able to get out, except once when I somehow managed to make ET float. Obtuse gameplay is an understatement, no documentation, it’s like they fired the Dev before it was finished or even could explain it.
> it’s like they fired the Dev before it was finished or even could explain it.
It’s not the dev’s fault; management gave him only *five weeks* to do everything, on a system that’s notoriously difficult to write for and without modern tools. Just try to do better.
As far as “obtuse gameplay” goes, these days exploration games are everywhere. Maybe it was strange and unfamiliar at the time (and the collision bugs and energy timer didn’t help) but these days people wouldn’t even bat an eyelid at it.
Additionally, that same developer produced some of the most highly regarded games for the platform.
“Anyways, there was no mention of collecting space ship parts, ”
Ummm, actually…
All anyone with complaints like this had to do was RTFM.
The entire game was laid out in the instructions, everything was explained .
Like the article points out, most people expected simple game play, not something this advanced for the time.
The biggest problem was the energy it took to get out of a pit and the ease of falling into them. It would have been an excellent game for the time if it wasn’t for that.
As it was, it was the reason I stopped buying games for the Atari. $50 was a lot of money to pay for an unplayable game in 1982!
The dev went back and fixed the game a few years ago. It only took a few hours, but it was a few hours that management wouldn’t let him have.
You know it’s a quality port when you see the line
POKE c+32,112,120,24,24,88,56,24,60 # telephone / space dildo
> the game was in many ways far ahead of its time, and actually quite significant in terms of game design
Yes. It paved the road for Bethesda in releasing games that are sold on pure hype, are unplayable on release, and take 40 years for the bugs to be fixed.
Forgot to add “…by the players themselves.”
“Ahead of its time” and “bad” often go hand in hand in the world of video games, unfortunately.
Look at Jurassic Park Trespasser for example. Physics-based gameplay and immersive lack of a HUD before either of those was common. Unfortunately, the game ran poorly on the hardware of the time, the difficulty was high in no small part because of the unwieldy controls, and to determine your health you had to look down at a heart tattoo conveniently placed near your character’s cleavage.
Plenty of early third-person 3D games probably would be more fondly remembered if their control schemes were relative to the position of the player’s view rather than what we now refer to as “tank controls”.
That’s the problem with being ahead of your time. You have to solve all the hard problems yourself.
I always thought that Space Invaders was a great example of a bad game, with Pacman as its following up ones.
What’s so hard about eating dots and chasing ghosts?
Agree on Space Invaders. Stank on it then, stink now. I think that a good part of its success was being among the first and the novelty of a new paradigm. Now Galaxian-THAT was good and IMO enjoyable today.
It’s amazing what color, mproved sound effects and a few tweaks to enemy behavior can bring to a game.