Collection essentials #16: E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (2600)

 

E.T. is a game that’s listed here almost purely for its infamous historical significance. E.T., of course, was a new hit movie from Steven Spielberg during the Atari’s lifespan, and wanting to take advantage of its popularity, one of Atari’s developers was given a mandate to produce an E.T. video game in time for the holiday season, which was…much less time than a normal video game development cycle. Uh oh. The game was highly anticipated, and Atari produced many, many cartridges in anticipation. While the game did sell pretty well to begin with, it didn’t meet people’s expectations, and demand dried up prematurely, not to mention a lot of disappointed people returned the game. So Atari took a big hit both financially and to their reputation, and this was one of the major factors to the big video game crash of 1983. For years there was an urban legend that Atari buried a bunch of their excess stock in a New Mexico landfill, until a project in 2014 sought to investigate and found out…that it was true!! Though there were also many other Atari games buried as well, not just E.T.

What’s the game actually like? You play as E.T., and you go jumping into pits (which you can fly back out of) looking for pieces of a phone so you can call home, at which point you’ve won the game. There are various human characters which can help or hinder you as well as certain abilities you can activate at certain times to help you. This game has a reputation of being one of the worst of all-time, but honestly that’s a little overblown due to its historical infamy. There are far worse games out there. But that doesn’t mean E.T. is especially good, either. Falling in pits all the time can get old and boring pretty quickly. I don’t totally hate it, but it’s not a game I ever desire to play either. But with a game so significant to the early history of console gaming, it’s one I have to have.

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