yamamanama (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yamamanama) wrote2024-12-27 05:06 pm
yamamanama) wrote2024-12-27 05:06 pm
E.T. (Atari 2600)
82 days until the vernal equinox
This game is legendarily bad. Well, okay, it isn’t really as bad as its reputation makes it sounnd. It’s become a rite of passage for game reviewers to review this game. Since it’s not actually that bad (I’ve played Alf and Ren & Stimpy: Time Warp, damn it), it’s become a rite of passage for game reviewers to point out that E.T. is in fact, not the worst game ever, and no, this game is not singlehandedly responsible for the Video Game Crash of 1983 although Atari didn’t help by ordering so many copies that they expected people to go out and buy an Atari 2600 just to play this. Atari survived the crash but barely. They made another massive blunder with the Jaguar. As of 2023, Atari’s focus is on “video games, consumer hardware, licensing, and blockchain.” Okay.
They fared better than Pan Am, anyway.
As for the Alamogordo burial, that’s all true. Not just E.T., though. All sorts of different games, along with beer cartons and Starburst wrappers.
There’s also a defense of this game out there that veers into antivax propaganda for no reason. Sigh.
It suffers from being completely incomprehensible, of course, but once you know what you’re doing, it’s pretty short. It’s greatest sin is that it’s too ambitious for its console, with a control setup that’s way too complicated for a joystick and one button and also some toggle switches on the console itself. It’s like Bart vs. the Space Mutants in that regard, except less janky and more clunky.
That’s not to say there isn’t jank. If you walk off the right edge of this forest screen, you’ll end up in a pit. It doesn’t matter where you cross the screen edge.
It’s a fetch quest.
Activating your special ability when there’s a question mark on the HUD will show you if there’s a radio part in the pit. Otherwise, you’ll probably warp and that will often send you into a pit.
Find the three parts to the radio. They’re all in pits.
Rise out of the pit by using your levitation power.
Phone home. It looks less like a phone and more like a Space Invader.
And then find the damn landing point. It’s in the forest.
Since you’ve been moving around, the forest is the north room of the Corpus Hypercubicus that is this game world and the forum is on the south room. But it doesn’t rotate. So going north from any pit screen gets you to the forest and going south gets you to the forum.
And then just wait and hope the scientist doesn’t show up.
The end. Eliot is dressed as Ernie for some reason.
To stymie you, there’s the FBI Agent, who shakes you down your radio parts and puts them in random holes or your Reese’s Pieces, which he presumably eats.
And the scientist, who, like Officer Shrift, cares more about putting people in jail than he does about keeping them in there.
It’s been forever since I watched E.T. Wikipedia tells me it’s set in California and not in Washington D.C. or Rome or Ancient Greece or whatever this is supposed to be. Anyway, walking left from this screen causes you to fall into a pit, wasting time and energy and lifeforce
Oh, yeah, you have a time limit. Well, technically, it’s not a time limit. It’s energy. Falling into the pit uses energy. Walking around uses energy. Using ET’s powers uses energy.
Reese’s Pieces restore a portion of your life energy but only when you activate your powers at certain points.
If you really want to, you can give Eliot nine pieces of reeses and get a phone part in exchange. But that sounds like it would take for-fucking-ever and I have no idea why you’d want to do that.
There are also some Easter Eggs involving a flower turning into Indiana Jones. Alas, you can only get them to work after the phone is complete.
The problem is that if you touch a pit in any way with any part of your body including your head, you’ll fall in. Also, going right from the forum screen causes you to fall into a pit. And when rising out of a pit, you have to keep rising and move exactly right or you just fall back in the pit.
burning question: What would happen if E.T. and Mr. T had a baby? Well, you’d get Mr. E.T. I think he’d sound something like this: I pity the foo who doesn’t phone home.
This game is legendarily bad. Well, okay, it isn’t really as bad as its reputation makes it sounnd. It’s become a rite of passage for game reviewers to review this game. Since it’s not actually that bad (I’ve played Alf and Ren & Stimpy: Time Warp, damn it), it’s become a rite of passage for game reviewers to point out that E.T. is in fact, not the worst game ever, and no, this game is not singlehandedly responsible for the Video Game Crash of 1983 although Atari didn’t help by ordering so many copies that they expected people to go out and buy an Atari 2600 just to play this. Atari survived the crash but barely. They made another massive blunder with the Jaguar. As of 2023, Atari’s focus is on “video games, consumer hardware, licensing, and blockchain.” Okay.
They fared better than Pan Am, anyway.
As for the Alamogordo burial, that’s all true. Not just E.T., though. All sorts of different games, along with beer cartons and Starburst wrappers.
There’s also a defense of this game out there that veers into antivax propaganda for no reason. Sigh.
It suffers from being completely incomprehensible, of course, but once you know what you’re doing, it’s pretty short. It’s greatest sin is that it’s too ambitious for its console, with a control setup that’s way too complicated for a joystick and one button and also some toggle switches on the console itself. It’s like Bart vs. the Space Mutants in that regard, except less janky and more clunky.
That’s not to say there isn’t jank. If you walk off the right edge of this forest screen, you’ll end up in a pit. It doesn’t matter where you cross the screen edge.
It’s a fetch quest.
Activating your special ability when there’s a question mark on the HUD will show you if there’s a radio part in the pit. Otherwise, you’ll probably warp and that will often send you into a pit.
Find the three parts to the radio. They’re all in pits.
Rise out of the pit by using your levitation power.
Phone home. It looks less like a phone and more like a Space Invader.
And then find the damn landing point. It’s in the forest.
Since you’ve been moving around, the forest is the north room of the Corpus Hypercubicus that is this game world and the forum is on the south room. But it doesn’t rotate. So going north from any pit screen gets you to the forest and going south gets you to the forum.
And then just wait and hope the scientist doesn’t show up.
The end. Eliot is dressed as Ernie for some reason.
To stymie you, there’s the FBI Agent, who shakes you down your radio parts and puts them in random holes or your Reese’s Pieces, which he presumably eats.
And the scientist, who, like Officer Shrift, cares more about putting people in jail than he does about keeping them in there.
It’s been forever since I watched E.T. Wikipedia tells me it’s set in California and not in Washington D.C. or Rome or Ancient Greece or whatever this is supposed to be. Anyway, walking left from this screen causes you to fall into a pit, wasting time and energy and lifeforce
Oh, yeah, you have a time limit. Well, technically, it’s not a time limit. It’s energy. Falling into the pit uses energy. Walking around uses energy. Using ET’s powers uses energy.
Reese’s Pieces restore a portion of your life energy but only when you activate your powers at certain points.
If you really want to, you can give Eliot nine pieces of reeses and get a phone part in exchange. But that sounds like it would take for-fucking-ever and I have no idea why you’d want to do that.
There are also some Easter Eggs involving a flower turning into Indiana Jones. Alas, you can only get them to work after the phone is complete.
The problem is that if you touch a pit in any way with any part of your body including your head, you’ll fall in. Also, going right from the forum screen causes you to fall into a pit. And when rising out of a pit, you have to keep rising and move exactly right or you just fall back in the pit.
burning question: What would happen if E.T. and Mr. T had a baby? Well, you’d get Mr. E.T. I think he’d sound something like this: I pity the foo who doesn’t phone home.