Back in the 80s, my best friend got this game for xmas that year and we couldn't wait to play it.
Well weren't we sorely disappointed when we did played it! Chunky graphics and sheer boredom, we only played a few times.
Anyone else who played the video game?
Of course heard of the game, but never played it.
Heard years later how badly it sucked.
I recall there being a documentary or some such that ended in the search for landfill where thousands of copies of it ended up.
Its was a massive flop at the time.
In Australia the game cost $100 bucks to buy and our video store was renting it for $6 a night. The game did rent and made its money back for the video store but no one rented it again.
This game killed it for Atari 2600!
Wow, $100... and that's in 1982 money. Most games here in the States retailed for $25-30. That is until the big "game crash" of '83. You could walk into a Children's Palace, Toys'R'Us or other retail outlet and buy games as cheap as .10 on the dollar. I used to go with my Dad to Children's Palace on Saturdays and they had huge bins swimming over with games marked down %50-%90. With my allowance or paper route money I'd walk out of there with 2-3 games a week, and by the end of that year we had over 50 games.
Yes in Australia we got ripped off big time lol
shareIt's the fifth best selling Atari game of all time so not really a flop. It was really a case of hype verse reality and other issues with bad management at Atari that eventually killed them.
shareYes, the game sold a lot. Atari had very bad management. This game made them lose money because they were expecting a lot of Atari to sell to ppl wanting to play the game, and that made them build a lot of them and these unsold units made them lose money.
It was the biggest hype histeria in human's history, only to be surpassed in 2016 by sonystas hype over One Man's Lie.
Great game! I used to play it all the time. It was a bit random but I had figured out the tricks to complete it fairly easily.
shareAll Atari games had clunky graphics. There were FAR worse games on the market at that time. That one just had a huge amount of hype that I don't think any game of the time could live up to.
shareI have very vague memories of playing the game. I remember ET kept getting chased by the FBI or whatever. I think we got it for Christmas and I played it when I was 4 or 5. I think I was the only one interested in playing it, though. My brother HATED it!
I wish we still had the cartridge but the last time I saw it was around 1989 or 90. I'm sure it was tossed out when my parents moved.
When a cold momma gets hot, boy how she sizzles!
You can get one on ebay for under $10. They sold 1.5 million of them so they're pretty common. The problem was they made 5 million and paid a lot for the movie rights.
shareI played it like crazy back in the '80s. This game was tough as hell to beat!
The FBI & the Scientist guy showed up every darn time you thought you'd won the game.
Not to mention the game was ballsy in showing 'dead E.T' and having Elliott come bring you back to life if he could.
Not sure why the public was so hard on this game. Atari was novel for its time, and what it (literally) could not do in graphics it made up for in INTELLIGENT games!
No stealing cars or fancy soundtracks or comic-book characters here.
Just real fun games.
I'd say this cloud is Cumulo Nimbus.
Didn't he discover America?
Penfold, shush.
We had an absolutely hard time trying to work the game out...but absolute fun times back in the early 80s
shareIf you haven't seen Atari:Game Over is a pretty good take on what the ET game did to Atari.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3715406/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_8
Once or twice, but I had to put it down ... it just wasn't fun.
share