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

[Jason Scott]

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/
>
>