It’s a pity to begin a game reviewing career with a title infamous for its shameful gameplay, but what drew me to ET: Extra Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 is just how much criticism it gets. If it’s bad for Atari, it ought to be bad by any standards (no offence to Atari intended). I thought it would be an idea to get hands-on gameplay just to see what was so unattractive about such a modest title. Needless to say, there were problems with it.

In 1983, some may not know that Atari buried truckloads of unsold ET game cartridges, among others, due to over production and lack of sales, in a New Mexico landfill in the desert. This largely contributed to Atari’s bankruptcy and its eventual collapse in 1984. It begs the question: how bad could this game have been to bring down the company which created it? ...

In the game you are controlling ET. Your objective is to find three pieces of the intergalactic telephone and get ET back home. You find these pieces in craters which you can descend into as you go around the landscape. Along the way, a cop is trying to take the telephone parts from you, with a bit of persistent chasing. There is also another mysterious figure whose job is to pick you up and carry you into a building, although nothing else bad comes out of this other than sheer inconvenience. As you move, a step counter depletes. The game ends when this counter ends up at zero or when you acquire all the parts and call your spaceship.
Holding the action button while moving will make you sprint, whereas pressing it stationary makes your neck extend and detects telephone pieces in your vicinity. I don’t know whether this is intentional, but pressing the button will also make you teleport randomly on most occasions. What is up with that? The reason I question whether it was intended or not is because it is incredibly frustrating. Most of the time you simply teleport into a hole! You can also collect these tiny squares, but they’re of no use! The HUD at the bottom of the screen cares to count how many you have (at one point I had five) but, although most Atari games force you to use your imagination a bit to figure out what objects are, this square is two measly pixels! As far as I know, they do nothing, and as far as I care, they are nothing.

But that is not even on the brink of frustrating compared to some of the games other flaws. Even if you pick up a signal of which hole has a piece in it, getting to it is a different issue. If you accidentally fall into a hole, and trust me this happens A LOT, it’s agonizing having to wait for ET to get back up there! Quite often, you only have to enter a different area to fall into an unexpected hole. Not only that, but the majority of the time you climb out the hole, you find yourself falling back in almost immediately! In the event of rising to the surface, your neck grows longer for a moment, and somehow the sudden resizing of your neck makes your movement temporarily impaired. The controls sometimes become stiff and frustrating, making it hard not to fall back in.
But the worst thing about this game? It’s no fun! It seems like it punishes you more than rewards you. People are chasing poor ET and counting down how many times he’s allowed to move because they just don’t want the little guy to phone home. The holes are your worst enemy; easy to get in, slow getting out. You will not find yourself enjoying this experience. It doesn’t even compare to GOOD Atari games such as Space Invaders, Pacman, Donkey Kong, which are fun, dynamic and rewarding. ET is a boring game, frustrating, and you’ll end up going over the same steps over and over again in utter futility if you don’t, at the very least, master this game.

It’s no wonder it has received so much criticism, but it’s still managed to make it to the Top 5 best selling Atari 2600 games. It’s a shame when you consider the wonderful titles which could have taken its place. Stay away from this game! You will want to complete it, but I assure you it is not worth the amount of tears you’ll be shedding over this appalling, dreadful excuse for a video game. If I had the chance, I would definitely bury this game and every copy of it in a desert all over again.

>>/Alex