E.T. is not the worse game for the Atari 2600 (was Re: Sales of unearthed Atari games total more than $100, 000)

drlegendre . drlegendre at gmail.com
Sun Aug 30 22:58:49 CDT 2015


I never said E.T. for Atari 2600 was the Worst Game Ever.. I put that in
"quotes" because so many games have been granted that title, and logic
dictates that there's no one, true "Worst Game Ever".

Since you mentioned 'Chase the Chuckwagon' - have you ever played through
Legend of Zelda - Twilight Princess? There's a hilarious
chase-the-chuckwagon mini-game in there, that's frustrating as all hell -
and I swear, it's gotta be an homage to the Atari game..

On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 5:10 PM, Jason Scott <jason at textfiles.com> wrote:

> Someone went through E.T. and fixed a lot of the bugs and oversights,
> releasing an improved version. It's playable here:
>
> https://archive.org/details/ET_Fixed_Final
>
> On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 5:54 PM, Sean Conner <spc at conman.org> wrote:
>
> > It was thus said that the Great drlegendre . once stated:
> > >
> > > The game [E.T.] is very common, and generally considered worthless.
> It's
> > a joke,
> > > possibly the "worst video game ever made" - up there with Superman 64
> for
> > > N64.
> >
> >   I would think it depends upon your criteria for "worst video game
> ever."
> > I mean, "Chase the Chuck Wagon" [1] or "Custer's Revenge" [2] could
> easily
> > take the "worst video game ever" slot.  E.T. actually had a plot (as
> E.T.,
> > collect parts to "phone home").
> >
> >   Also, given the story behind E.T., it's an incredible accomplishment in
> > Atari 2600 programming---only five weeks to come up with an idea and get
> it
> > programmed on a machine where you had to program the screen nearly
> > pixel-by-pixel in about 4K of ROM (and 128 bytes of RAM).
> >
> >   I think the main problem with the game is the pixel-perfect collision
> > detection that makes it all too easy to fall into the pits.  It can be
> > fixed
> > [3] but not with some addtional issues.
> >
> >   -spc (It's certainly more complex than Adventure ... )
> >
> > [1]     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_the_Chuck_Wagon
> >
> > [2]     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custer%27s_Revenge
> >
> > [3]     http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/
> >
> >
>


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