E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial

"So this is why E.T. once frightened me...he starred in this game!"

Oh. My. God. If this game is any indication of where Atari was going at that time, I feel so much better now that this game made them crash and burn miserably. In fact, it's almost a shame that the occasion is 20 years behind us, because had you read this review back then, when the game was recently released, it may have saved your life. And yes, what you've heard about the landfill rumors are true; there really are millions of copies of this game in a landfill, but no thanks to emulation, curiosity got the better of me and I had to see how bad it was.

The history behind this game is almost as interesting as its reputation. At the time, Atari was collapsing ever so slowly with the atrocious games being released by third-party companies that had no professionalism. So, to rake in big bucks and keep themselves afloat, they nabbed the gaming rights to E.T., a movie that would soon be released and become one of the all-time highest grossing movies ever. There was no way Atari could lose!

That was before they came to their senses and realized that to release the game in synch with the movie, it had to be made in 5-6 WEEKS. So, as you can expect, the big rush job that followed meant fan expectations couldn't possibly be met and that Atari could do nothing except hope that it was the truth-in-advertising people's day off. Sadly for them, it wasn't.

I'm sure all of you reading this know about E.T. the movie, so I won't explain anything there. This game is supposedly based on the movie, though if it is, I must have fallen asleep during the part where E.T. searches through hundreds of marsh pits looking for pieces of a phone. That's all you do in this game, is search for phone pieces. You can also pick up Reese's Pieces along the way that don't do anything other than resemble one-dot versions of all those marsh pits.

To win (and I use the term loosely), you fall into pits and hope that a phone piece is inside. Regardless of outcome, you hit the button to stretch E.T.'s neck out and then push the directional keys upwards. Once out of there, you have to quickly hit the right direction or you'll fall back in. Did I mention that you won't know the right direction until after you make one attempt at figuring it out?

If it stopped right there, the game would be tedious enough to automatically get about a 3. What makes it hit rock bottom is the numerical life bar that gauges E.T.'s health. Unlike his movie counterpart, our cute little alien somehow loses health every time he moves. Walking, stretching his neck, floating upwards, and dashing are all supposed to drain him of what little life he starts out with. Running, which is a necessity due to a factor covered later, drains your bar twice as fast, leaving it at next to nothing! However, it is the focus of one of the game's most amusing aspects, shown later.

Why will you need to run? Because the scientists are after E.T. to conduct some unpleasant experiments on him. If you get caught by one of these guys, you are taken to what looks like a museum complex and left there to roam free again. (Are these scientists dumb or what?!) You'll also lose all your phone pieces, which is really frustrating because these pieces are so hard to find!

Now for that amusing aspect I mentioned earlier. If your life bar drops to zero, Elliot comes by to give you some more health to carry on with, and also to send all those phone pieces back where they came from (am I the only one with this thing called logic?). Problem is, that amount of health is so insignificant as to be rendered worthless. It's a shame that the one thing that could have given this game some worth was rendered moot thanks to that lovely rush job.

Of course, what would a rushed game be without GLITCHES OUT THE WAZOO!!!! First, there's the Reese's Pieces glitch mentioned earlier. Then, there are marsh pits that don't exist until you walk over them. A rather nasty little glitch is that moving one screen down, regardless of your location, will send you to the area with the scientist's lab/museum. But my personal favorite, one that a code in Tomb Raider 2 somewhat mimicked, is E.T.'s fantastic ability to fall into a pit and die on the spot! Yeah, thanks a lot, ya dumb Atari [censored].

The graphics are so bad they're almost a glitch in and of themselves. About 95% of the graphics are some shade of green. E.T. is bright green, the ground is regular green, and the marsh pits are dark green. Speaking of which, there are about 2 different screen graphics other than the scientist's place, meaning there's no way to know where the hell you are in relation to anyplace else. In colors other than green, the scientist's place is all blue with gray buildings, the scientists themselves are orange (?), and the inside of the marsh pits are all gray and black. Even for Atari, that's way too few colors. It's also worth mentioning that there's a pixel between E.T.'s legs that appears and disappears every time he moves. Uh...ick.

Sound is very rare (thank the Lord!) and just amounts to a beep whenever E.T. stretches his neck or gets caught by the scientists. Music is just some big fart resembling a movie track that plays during the title screen, and a little slower whenever E.T. dies. It's quite forgettable, really.

I hate you, Atari. I actually respected you before I knew that you gave this game the green light. Even after about 10 minutes with it, I knew it had become one of my most hated games ever. Though I don't know which is worse, the fact that you still overhype all the trash you come out with or the fact that people buy into it (ahem, Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee).

The Kelly Clarkson:
- Um...this review is not as long and tedious as a Psycho Penguin review?

The Kelly Osbourne:
- glitches
- repeating graphics
- The green!THE GREEN!
- nonexistent gameplay
- It's not even bad-good.
- Oh, I'll just say everything now, before I'm here all day.

Final Thought:

Shadow Geenhx hopes that a game version of Mystery Science Theater 3000 will surface with this garbage up front.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 02/16/04