E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial

"E. T. must be avenged for this horrible act against humanity...and Atari."

Back in the early eighties Atari thought it would be a good idea to make an E. T. game. They spent about 21 million dollars just to get the license to make the game and then spent millions more actually producing it. What they didn't know was that E. T. was a total bomb. This game damn near destroyed Atari's reputation. Over a million copies were sold, but more than five million copies either went unsold or were thrown out by the consumer. Now I'll explain what went wrong.

So you have E. T. the Extra Terrestrial himself landing on the Earth in his little spaceship and then getting left here by all of his other Extra Terrestrial friends. He gets chased around by strange men who I hope don't want to molest him. Instead if they catch him they take him back to what looks like the White House.

You must make sure that E. T. is not found by the strange men and keep him safe from caves. Yes, sometimes E. T. will fall down a hole and end up in a cave. You must press the button to extend his neck and then press up to make him magically float out of the hole. You're thinking, ''TheIronMan can't be serious can he?''
Well, I am. Oh, and sometimes there will be a wilted flower in one of the caves. Make E. T. walk over it to bring the flower back to life. That's no joke either.

Your life is a four digit number at the bottom of the screen. Each time you make E. T. walk the number goes down. E. T. becomes just a little more lightly colored as the number goes down. When the number reaches zero E. T. turns white and collapses, the E. T. theme music plays and a little kid, I guess Elliot, comes and brings E. T. back to life for reasons I can't understand. All you do is collect Reeses Pieces and try to avoid men and caves. What a waste of a game.

Atari definitely made a mistake with this game. I do believe that this game started the piece-o-trash-movie-based-game, and E. T. is such a cool movie. I actually do recommend this game for one reason and one reason only. To make fun of it and see just how bad it really is. Go download the ROM somewhere, or look in a garbage dump. I'm sure you'll find the game in either place. Then of course there's always Ebay.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 12/27/01, Updated 12/27/01