
The making of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the “worst” video game - newest
https://thehustle.co/worst-video-game-in-history-et/
======
mypalmike
I played ET as a kid when it came out and then many years later. It was a
massive disappointment when it came out - it made no sense, and of course it
had those infamous pits. When playing it as an adult, I realized it wasn't the
adventure game it looked like (and arguably ought to have been) but rather a
fun little puzzle game. An interesting novelty, and flaw for a mass market
mainstream game, was that the printed manual was an integral part of the game.
Without the manual to look up the cryptic glyphs that would appear on screen,
the game truly made no sense.

So most of the ET demographic (young kids) played it without really playing
it... wandering around what seemed like an adventure world (a la 2600 Superman
or Raiders), not even noticing the glyphs, and certainly not working out the
glyph puzzles using the book.

ET really wasn't that bad of a game once you RTFMed. Definitely not the worst.
The 2600 had so many awful games that were worse.

~~~
ASalazarMX
I guess I had a lot of time to waste as a kid, because I bought it used and
figured the gameplay without help. For an Atari 2600 game it was more involved
than average, but the game itself gave you clues like the cryptic glyphs.

I also bought used the SwordQuest games, and with no comics or Internet, those
really left me stumped.

------
dang
Similar from 2016:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11148093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11148093)

Fixing it (2015):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9668734](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9668734)

Fixing it (2014):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994180](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994180)

Cartridges were found in landfill (2014):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7652473](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7652473)

Long Harper's article about the landfill dig:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17870402](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17870402)

A different worst game (2013):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6023484](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6023484)

------
hliyan
The Icarus effect here is both sad and eye-opening:

 _After Atari crumbled, his outsized role in the video game crisis earned him
a scarlet letter in the industry. He found work as a real estate broker and
spent nearly 2 decades soul searching before discovering his true passion:
psychotherapy._

A man of that talent should never have had to work as a real estate broker.
It's almost as if the business put him in a position he couldn't handle, and
then shunned him when he couldn't handle it.

~~~
epx
How important is to learn to say “no”.

~~~
philpem
"Okay, we'll get Billy the intern to code it. By the way, clean out your
desk."

~~~
raverbashing
I don't think the interns would be able to code an Atari game by themselves at
the time

Still, sometimes getting the pink slip is better than getting a black mark on
your cv

~~~
zaarn
Back then the video game companies didn't think developers were important.
Hence games from this era didn't include them in the credits ("for what?
should the blinds and the printer get credit too? FURNITURE!"). If he said no,
he would have been given the slip without second thought.

~~~
arkades
He was paid >1M/yr(>2M in modern dollars); I doubt he ranked quite so low as
people are saying. Interchangeable widgets don’t pull down that salary.

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newnewpdro
Howard Scott Warshaw did a postmortem talk @ GDC for Yars' Revenge, in it he
speaks briefly about E.T. as well. I found it interesting, worth a listen.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqH4k_OEqhY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqH4k_OEqhY)

~~~
unnouinceput
Postmortem? He's very much alive

~~~
nabdab
Postmortem refers to the subject not the person. It’s a term Beverly commonly
used in tech circles:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmortem_documentation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmortem_documentation)

~~~
Johnny555
_Postmortem refers to the subject not the person. It’s a term Beverly commonly
used in tech
circles:[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmortem_documentation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmortem_documentation)
_

Ok, I give up -- who is Beverly? I checked the page you linked to, and there
was no mention of her.

~~~
exlurker
Possibly auto-corrected "very"

------
sircastor
Atari: Game Over made for a really interesting watch in explaining what the
game was meant to be, and how it works

There's also this treatise on why people thought it was broken, and how to fix
it:
[http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/](http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/)

~~~
smelendez
It seems like there are substantial issues!

* The code handling whether things overlap, like your character and a hole in the ground, and the graphics don't tell the same story so you get hurt in frustrating ways.

* You can't leave certain areas in certain directions that aren't clear to players.

* The documentation on game scoring is very wrong.

* Elliot,a major character, can die for a reason that makes no visual sense

------
protomyth
E.T. might be considered the worst, but Pac-Man for the 2600 was surely the
most disappointing. The plumber wrench Pac-Man had to be one of the worst
adaptations ever. The 8-bit Atari computer version was such a amazing leap.

~~~
Johnny555
What was disappointing about it? I owned an Atari 2600 and played Pac-Man many
times. But I've never played it on another game console or in an arcade, so
I'm not sure what I was missing.

~~~
krige
Pretty much everything: the flickering and the altered map with misaligned
dots is the most obvious change, but it's missing all the different value
bonus items, the iconic sounds, and lots of tiny graphical touches like ghost
eyes facing the direction they move in, or up and down sprites for the pac. In
short, it's severly cut down on all features, and poorly coded to boot (mrs.
pac-man shows you can do better than this).

~~~
Johnny555
I guess I was very forgiving back then... I loved Pacmac on my 2600. Or maybe
it's because it was my first game purchase after "Combat!" (which came with
the 2600)

~~~
krige
I mean, I'm in the same boat as you. 2600 pacman is the only one I knew for a
long while and I still kinda prefer the meaty beep sounds over the original
sound effects. But for people who knew arcade pacman beforehand, the
perception was obviously rather different.

------
thrower123
Immortalized in the animated docu-drama Code Monkeys.

[https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1070119/](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1070119/)

------
EliRivers
Here's someone cutting the game open and editing the assembly, to improve it
by various means:
[http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/](http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/)

------
teej
Wikipedia has a really good history on the video game crash of 1983.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_crash_of_1983)

~~~
29athrowaway
The revenue curve beautifully resembles the hype cycle.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle)

------
deepaksurti
Slightly OT, but one of the best ways to master graphics programming is to
write at least a few "worse" video games yourself :-)

~~~
kgwxd
Graphics programming on the 2600 is super weird, I'm not sure the skills
learning it are even transferable, but it's really fun to do.

------
29athrowaway
$39.95 (1982) = $106.48 (2019)

That was an expensive game.

~~~
swimfar
I think many people don't realize how expensive games and consoles were 20-40
years ago. I remember paying $70 for a few different SNES games back in the
90's ($110 now based on a quick inflation check). Are there any computer or
console games now that cost anywhere close to $100?

~~~
michaelmrose
It's not unusual for a new game to have dlc available at launch which is the
say the game is split into pieces and monetized that way. A new game will have
different editions ranging from 60 to 80 bucks and 2-4 dlc at launch and later
for 10 - 20 bucks each.

I guess the maximum spend you could end up with is $100 to $160 depending on
quantity of dlc and original purchase price.

Call of duty ghosts has a pack with the game all the dlc for $100 now.

[https://store.steampowered.com/app/255163/Call_of_Duty_Ghost...](https://store.steampowered.com/app/255163/Call_of_Duty_Ghosts__Digital_Hardened_Edition/)

~~~
29athrowaway
How many people was involved in the creation of CoD, vs ET? I think the
production costs are very different.

