31 Aug
2015
31 Aug
'15
10:56 a.m.
"3.5 million of the 4 million produced were sent
back to the company as unsold inventory or customer returns. Despite sales figures, the
quantity of unsold merchandise, coupled with the expensive movie license and the large
amount of returns, made E.T. a major financial failure for Atari"
Thats not good for Atari, but that doesn't make it the worst game ever.
I agree with those who say Pac Man... I mean it looked nothing like the Arcade and it
sounded like they sampled a rubber band.
Not a good game at all.
But it was the Atari 2600, at that day and age I don't think there was an
expectation that the game on the home system would look like the arcade?
It was from the era of tennis tv games and such? It had a mouth, and a
pass thru, and ghosts and dots.
Colecovision and others started to change expectations. I guess it wasn't
too long after ColecoVision that Atari 8 bit computers and that brought
with it pretty good ports of Arcade titles -- I was probably late to the
8bit atari (800XL here) I guess the people with the 400/800 were first to
have arcade-ish gameplay. The 8bit computers still isn't as same as
playing the real arcade PCB though. Just closer.
That day I got the NES..... I think I hit reset 100 times over and over
just to hear the intro music from the Gyromite cart. It had clear
drumbeats! And multiple part music. It was so good. The reset button felt
nice and quality even.
--
Ethan O'Toole