Video Game Harmony

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Released: December 1982

Developer: Atari, Inc

Composer: Basically John Williams

I have been looking forward to talking about this classic for so long! I mean, it was based off of the hit Steven Spielberg movie so obviously it’s got to be good! Atari really outdid themselves with this one. It’s so fun getting to fall into holes, pick up phone pieces, fall into holes, get captured by people, and fall into more holes. Plus it was an awesome experience getting to hear the theme from E.T.! I mean it’s shortened and continually looping, but it’s based off of John Williams so it’s obviously a banger. I recommend this game to everyone because of how beloved it is, and you get to play as E.T. for goodness sake! I give this score 5 out of 5 stars.

★★★★★

Wait… what’s that? No one liked this game? Oh yeah, that’s right. This is considered one of the worst games of all time and there were so many unsold copies that they were buried in a landfill. It looks like this is my April Fools joke!

Whenever you hear about the worst video games of all time, often this one gets brought up. It was criticized for it’s confusing game play and rushed development. This game was created by Howard Scott Warshaw, and to be fair, the failure of the game wasn’t totally his fault. He created other games previously such as Yars’ Revenge and the game tie in to Raiders of the Lost Ark, both of which were fairly popular.

I guess Spielberg thought “he’s already done one game based off of one of my movies, so he might as well do this one.” He seemed like the obvious choice, but the problem is that for Raiders he had 10 months to make it, and for E.T. he had 6 weeks, all to get it done by the Christmas season. This shows how rushed the game was, and why it didn’t live up to people’s expectations. Gamers probably know the story, as it played a big part in the video game crash of 1983 and the remaining unsold copies were buried in a landfill (along with some other unsold games too).

So if you don’t know much about the game then you’re probably wondering “what was so bad about it?” Well I’ll tell you what it was like playing it. You play as E.T. who gets dropped off on earth with no clear mission (except if you’ve seen the movie then I guess you’re to assume his mission is to “PHONE HOME!”). You walk around and fall into holes. Then after what feels like an eternity of flying out you most of the time accidentally immediately fall back in.

You pick up these candy things (which I can only assume are Reece’s Pieces) and try to avoid getting captured by these people who want to lock you in a cage for no apparent reason. If you run out of energy (and refilling on energy is annoying because it’s not clear how to do so), this kid who I assume is Elliott from the movie comes and revives you. If you fall into the right holes (and the way to get the hints for which of the holes are correct is also not clear) you get parts of a telephone to be used to phone home. You basically keep running around and accidentally fall into holes before falling into the correct one and then phone home, and don’t even get me started on how you phone home because that’s also confusing.

Basically this game is an excruciating chaotic mess that’s not made well and is frustrating because of how many times you accidentally fall into a hole! Plus I’m pretty sure everyone who played it was thinking “what am I doing?” The objective of the game and how you get there is not clear at all.

So now I’ll get to the score. This could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it, but there’s not a lot of music to this game. There’s the main menu music, which is the theme from the movie but the notes go a different direction and gives me OCD because I want it to sound right. It’s a short loop of that and it’s about all the music you get to hear. I recall when running out of energy that what sounds like the same music plays. As far as I now there’s no other music to the game.

Basically the music doesn’t help this poorly made game. It’s just a short loop of E.T.’s theme that doesn’t sound right. Most of the game there is no music, but then about all you get to hear is his footsteps, which isn’t the most pleasant thing to hear either. My real rating is 1 out of 5 stars.

★

At least this was a good history lesson, and if this is the worst game ever made then we can only go up from here. We’ll see though. I’m thinking about making April 1st a regular day to talk about awful games, and maybe the whole month of April too. Let me know what you think and I will see everyone next time! Have fun listening to soundtracks (not E.T. though, watch the movie instead).

Sources:

https://www.npr.org/2017/05/31/530235165/total-failure-the-worlds-worst-video-game