Trying to understand the hate

[celerystalker]

There are several games that always get bandied about as the worst game of all time. I get some of them. Superman 64 is not just glitchy, but completely fails to deliver any kind of satisfying action befitting a superhero, etc. Some, though, confound me.

The main one I'm thinking about is ET. I'm not taking the apologist route of, "It's a miracle that it got completed in 5 weeks!" My thought is more along the lines of "Hey, it's ET. What sort of video game were they supposed to make about ET?"

I mean, that movie doesn't have a bunch of physical combat to play on. There's not a ton of stealth scenes to play out, not that the Atari VCS could've really gotten it across if there were. It's just a boy growing attached to an alien and the themes surrounding it with trust and innocence. What sort of game was gonna come out and be really satisfying to fans? Another maze game? A platformer that has literally nothing to do with the film?

The only thing that might've fit in that era would've been a text adventure, and that wouldn't have had mass appeal to sell carts like they planned. The fact is, it was never a good license for a game from the beginning. What did parents expect? A shooter where ET rains down punishment on his would be captors Independence Day style?

I get why people expected something from Superman. What did they expect from ET?

[Aussie2B]

I firmly believe that most people quipping "worst. game. ever." about E.T. these days have never even played it. Likely never even played a 2600. I wouldn't be surprised if many haven't seen the movie either. They're just little parrots who will repeat whatever the AVGN-style Internet "celebrities" tell them because they think it's funny. They never had any expectations for E.T. in the first place and have no intention of ever trying it out because, as long as they've known of the game's existence, they've known it as "the worst video game ever".

[Edmond Dantes]

Ironically Kris Asick of "Ancient DOS Games" did a review of E.T. where he said its actually a pretty good game, just if you don't have the instructions then its impossible to understand without hours of experimenting or trial and error.

Other games I see people hate on that really don't deserve it:

Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures. You know what? Screw anyone who hates this game. Nothing is better than going on adventures with bipolar, gibberish-speaking Pac-Man... especially when you get to intentionally piss him off. I'd love to see a fan remake that expands the concept.

Hydlide. Okay, I'm not gonna say that this is good or anything, but most critics don't seem to understand that it was made in 1984, and even then a lot of critics hold it up against games like Final Fantasy VII, somehow expecting an NES game to have in-depth cutscenes and artsiness.

The Sega Genesis sequel is awesome tho.

For that matter RPGs before the PS1 in general tend to get the shaft, especially if they don't play like typical JRPGs.

[MASTERWEEDO]

Im 90% sure that most E.T, hate comes from people that didnt have a manual.

[celerystalker]

Yeah, the internet parroting has always been a pet peeve of mine. People get so jaded and think that they know everything. Even here, how often do you see people post that there's nothing left to say about classic games that hasn't been said, yet on dozens of the GOTD posts, I see replies along the lines of, "Oh, I've never seen that" or "I always heard that that game sucked, but it looks interesting." People watch a few videos, read a Wikipedia article, and assume that all facts are present. Nothing replaces experience.

I still just don't get what people ripping ET want from it other than to jump on the bandwagon. I mean, even with modern tech, what kind of game makes for a good ET game? Telltale adventure, maybe? In the early '80s, I didn't want ET. I was only ok with the movie anyway, but I just couldn't imagine what I'd be doing in the game... so I played Pitfall, Warlords, Maze Craze, and Air Sea Battle a lot.

I guess what I'm saying is that if these folks, especially the YouTube crowd, want to rag on the game, where is the obvious way it could have been better?

Edmond-I want to like Hydlide, but its sluggish pace has always been what holds me back. I keep thinking that one day, I'm gonna be in a really patient mood and "get it," but it hasn't happened yet. Maybe I should spend a little more time with Super Hydlide on Genesis. I've had it for decades, but it's one I've never given a proper go due to not enjoying the NES game much. Maybe playing that one might open my mind to the NES game better.

[Aussie2B]

I don't think most of these people parroting "worst game ever" even consider how E.T. could've been better. A lot of them are younger gamers who are of the mindset that ALL Atari 2600 games are bad and that E.T. is supposedly the worst of the worst. They see all pre-NES gaming as some sort of "dark ages", when games were bad and gamers didn't know any better until they wised up and the industry died because of all of Atari's bad games, and then Nintendo came along and saved it. That's the general narrative that they've swallowed and endlessly regurgitate. Though, now it's starting to shift such that younger gamers are also beginning to see everything before 16-bit gaming as totally unplayable, at least without Nintendo re-releasing it in a dumbed down form (just imagine the whining there would be if the NES Classic didn't include save states).

[Emperor Megas]

I was one of those freaks who thought E.T. was an alright game. Here's the REAL shocker though. You ready for this? I actually REALLY liked Raider's of the Lost Ark!

Now, I've never ended the game, and honestly never really understood the cryptic game play. I don't think I ever had a manual, but I loved the trial and error and incredibly cryptic experience. It was always SO mysterious to me, and seemed so much deeper than anything else I'd played at the time. The game play was so varied, and I actually felt as though I was accomplishing things the farther along I got.

[bb_hood]

I think its fair to consider E.T. a bad game without hating on it too hard. Personally I consider E.T. a bad game because I think its just a boring game. But yeah, its stupid to simply regard E.T. as the worst game ever because technically speaking there are many games that are worse or just as bad.

E.T. has long been considered a bad game and I feel that it does deserve that reputation. When it was originally released, very many people bought it/recieved it for Christmas and public opnion was overwhelmingly negative. Many units were returned because consumers thought the game was bad. I think its more accurate to consider E.T. to be the most notorious 'bad game', as well as the first bad game to recieve such a large amount of attention for being bad.

So some people returned the game, and Atari had to dispose of unsellable stock which included games other than E.T. as well. This just formed the opinion that E.T. was soo bad that Atari had to bury them in a landfill. This 'legend' just snowballed over time, and so you end up with a re-hashed public opinion of E.T. being the worst game ever.




Hydlide. Okay, I'm not gonna say that this is good or anything, but most critics don't seem to understand that it was made in 1984, and even then a lot of critics hold it up against games like Final Fantasy VII, somehow expecting an NES game to have in-depth cutscenes and artsiness.

The Sega Genesis sequel is awesome tho.



Yeah, people hate on Hydlide too much. For what it is its not a horrible game, and once you know what to do its an enjoyable challenge.
And the genesis sequel is awesome, i really like the music

[Emperor Megas]

I think I can agree with bbhood's take on the whole E.T. debacle.

[Mangar]

E.T is a terrible game. Anyone who says otherwise is just revising history and comparing it to other MORE terrible games. I say this as someone who also LOVED Raiders of the Lost Ark on the 2600. However, I agree that E.T is nowhere near the worst game of all time. Not even close to the worst on the 2600.

To understand why people consider E.T the worst game in history, you have to consider the time-frame. There's a legit hit movie in the theaters that was universally loved. The concept that a game based on such a great movie could be bad was unfathomable. There was no internet, or early reviews. So kids saved or bugged their parents, listened to the tons of hype, and when it was released - Over everything else, they got E.T. They could pick ONE game, and only ONE game. So they bring it home and...... Garbage. For many kids of the era, it was their first legit let-down or experience with a bad game. I mean, I saved all my Christmas money one year and spent it on Atari Pac-Man, and was actually "Ok" with it. E.T was just on another level of bad.

Worst of all time? No. But for a heavily anticipated and hyped game, that was purchased in large numbers - It was pretty damn terrible. Which is why it has that reputation.

[Tanooki]

Depending on the time, place and generation...it often happens. ET had the movie behind it ,but it wasn't a good game or a great one, but it wasn't rotten either just well there. People probably thinking it was licensed it would do far more and in comparison it sucked. But in the market today, you can get something built up not even by the developers but my the media sharks and fanboys that'll really wreck the reputation of a team despite the limitations of the developer. For ET it was 1 dude and 5 weeks, and then say like with No Man's Sky you had like what a huge ass expanding self generating to a point game made by maybe a dozen people who only worked on little projects that gets really crapped on. They never built it up as some wannabe Tie Fighter, Elite, Trade Wars, WC Privateer or any of the rest, yet all the trolls put that thought out there and they got their asses collectively ripped treating them like some 100 person dev team looking to bamboozle people.

The hate mostly ends up being unjustified, but not always, there are times when stuff really is like a bloody abortion on a ROM or disc like Superman 64 with all its glorious bugs, crash bugs, graphics fails and total lack of any sense of direction to make any sense. Yes there are bad games, but often you get an average game or even a good one that just gets built up either by the developer (stupidly) or often enough media and their lemmings and they just get destroyed.

[AdamAnt316]

I didn't play the game growing up, so I never built up my own opinion of it (I do have a copy of it now, though I have yet to play it much). However, when I was in high school, one of the older students in the electronics shop enjoyed playing it. He brought his Atari 2600 into the shop a few times, and I saw him playing ET quite a bit, and he seemed to be pretty good at it. Nevertheless, I can see why it garnered a negative reputation over the years, though I rather doubt it truly ranks high in the 'pantheon' of horrible video games (how can it when stuff like Custer's Revenge exists?!).

As for the landfill thing, I can see how that'd be inflated. Another early '80s product which got a similar treatment was the Apple Lisa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa). Introduced in 1983, it was the first commercially-available computer to sport a graphical user interface, which was high-tech at the time; consequently, the hardware specs required to make it work pushed the price to nearly $10,000, which meant that sales were slow. The introduction of the original Macintosh (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_128K) a year later for a quarter of the price (with a similar interface, but lesser specs) sealed its fate. Apple eventually buried a few thousand Lisas in a Utah landfill as a tax write-off.

In spite of its fate, the Lisa was a perfectly usable computer. When the Macintosh proved popular, Apple turned a number of the remaining Lisas into low-cost large-screen equivalents of the Mac; the resulting Macintosh XLs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_XL) sold out far faster than Apple expected them to. Another company, Sun Remarketing, made their own equivalent of the Macintosh XL, which they continued to sell well into the early '90s. I own an example of one of these aftermarket Mac XLs (as seen in my avatar (http://www.electronixandmore.com/adam/temp/lisa2.jpg)), and apart from some glitches here and there, it functions quite nicely for its intended purpose.
-Adam

[OldSchoolGamer]

I firmly believe that most people quipping "worst. game. ever." about E.T. these days have never even played it. Likely never even played a 2600. I wouldn't be surprised if many haven't seen the movie either. They're just little parrots who will repeat whatever the AVGN-style Internet "celebrities" tell them because they think it's funny. They never had any expectations for E.T. in the first place and have no intention of ever trying it out because, as long as they've known of the game's existence, they've known it as "the worst video game ever".


Agree 100%

[Aussie2B]

The landfill is another funny thing about the narrative people parrot. You'll have so many people claim that it was all about dumping E.T., yet there were far more copies of other games dumped than E.T. Just look at the chart in this article that shows the print run sizes versus what was sold of Pac-Man, Asteroids, and E.T.:

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/extraterrestrial/et.htm

Though, there's something to be said for the fact that they couldn't even sell through half of what they manufactured of E.T. There may have been more unsold copies of Pac-Man than unsold E.T. copies, but at least Atari succeeded in selling over half of the stupidly large Pac-Man print run they produced.

[Greg2600]

E.T. is just meh, I don't love or hate it, I'm really ambivalent.

[Tanooki]

I don't remember how it played, but I did play it on a friends 2600 back around 1990. I don't remember loving it and I don't remember it leaving a hatred for it either as I do remember when a game really gets me mad or I hate it heaps from awful design. I do remember being more bored by it, but not for it being awful or not working right. I've played far worse, so that's why I felt the way I did in the first post and wrote that. It's just not good(great) or bad(awful) it just exists.

[FieryReign]

Hydlide and Super Hydlide were lame and boring slogs. Virtual Hydlide was a great cheesefest.

[Jorpho]

What sort of game was gonna come out and be really satisfying to fans? Another maze game?How about a Frogger clone?
http://www.videogamehouse.net/gamemain/cartsde/et/
http://www.videogamehouse.net/gamemain/cartsde/et/et3.png


I mean, even with modern tech, what kind of game makes for a good ET game?As per the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_in_video_games), there have been many attempts at making an ET game, even with "modern tech". None of them have been even remotely memorable, clearly (I can't even seem to find any evidence of the games listed near the end) – but they definitely weren't infamously bad, either.

[Steve W]

I definitely remember seeing a couple of those Gameboy titles and being surprised since there was such a stink on the idea of an E.T. game that anybody would ever try and make one again.

There are far worse games on the 2600. Try playing any of the Mythicon games (you don't need to try all three, since they're hacked versions of the same tech demo that's barely fun or playable) for more than 5 minutes. Skeet Shoot is another example of a programming demonstration that was released as a game.

I've played E.T. but found it completely unmemorable. It's not terrible or great, it's just... there. I didn't have the instruction manual so I'm sure I was missing the point of it all. It's just dullness punctuated by frustration with falling in pits. For a five-week effort, it's actually not bad. I wonder how it would have turned out if he had five months instead.

[celerystalker]

How about a Frogger clone?
http://www.videogamehouse.net/gamemain/cartsde/et/
http://www.videogamehouse.net/gamemain/cartsde/et/et3.png

As per the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_in_video_games), there have been many attempts at making an ET game, even with "modern tech". None of them have been even remotely memorable, clearly (I can't even seem to find any evidence of the games listed near the end) – but they definitely weren't infamously bad, either.

That's at the core of what I feel about ET. Not that it's a good game, though it's clearly not the worst ever, but rather that I don't think you can make a good ET game that has anything to do with the movie. You don't make a shooter built around Sophie's Choice, you don't make a platformer based on The Bridges of Madison County... some properties don't blend well with the medium.

That said, I want a vertical shooter based on Sophie's Choice.

[Emperor Megas]

Couldn't you make it like Krull? With different segments that play differently that relate to different parts of the film?

I stage where you sneak through the house or backyard or woods trying to avoid the mother, or a dog or forest creatures, a stage where you're avoiding men in black trying to catch you, a stage where you're controlling Eliot on the bike racing through the streets, an obligatory bike flying stage, maybe overhead where you avoid trees, cliffs and predatory birds, etc..

[Aussie2B]

Well, if a movie doesn't match well with action gameplay, then just make a story-focused game. It could've been some sort of adventure game or visual novel or what have you. Of course, they wanted a big-seller and were limited by the hardware, so the types of games that were more suited to hardcore PC gamers in those days wouldn't have been very feasible to that end.

[Niku-Sama]

ET and PAC man wasnt why they wound up in a landfill it was because they closed a customer service, distribution and repair center in El Paso Texas.
They closed it because they couldn't figure out how to run a proper business

[Steve W]

ET and PAC man wasnt why they wound up in a landfill it was because they closed a customer service, distribution and repair center in El Paso Texas.
They closed it because they couldn't figure out how to run a proper business
Weren't they buried in 1985? Because Atari had already been sold off to the Tramiel family by that point, and I'm sure (as legendarily cheap as they're known to be) didn't want to pay for the storage of returned games anymore.

[BlastProcessing402]

ET's not a good game, but, given the era, it's not even close to terrible. I actually beat it once back in the 80's so it's not broken, but it certainly was rushed, and has some bad design choices, likely due to that. Oh those fuckin pits... But there were certainly worse ways to waste an afternoon back then.

Pac-Man 2600, not the best version of the game, but c'mon, it's for the 2600. You have a little guy with his mouth opening and closing, and you run around a maze eating stuff while ghosts try to eat you and powerups that turn the tables. It's absolutely Pac-Man and not missing any essential element. Yes, Ms. Pac-man on the same system blows it away, but even that was hardly a perfect port, and it also came out later and not as rushed. Anyway the 2600 version of the original is still better than the version that was on my official Pac-man watch, so it's not that bad.

Hydlide on the NES, I've always found nigh unplayable. Super Hydlide on Genesis (apparently actually an enhanced port of Hylide 3) I had a lot of fun with, and for an 89 release has some AWESOME use of the Genny's sound chip. There are things in the game that I can see not liking it for, but I had a blast playing it before Phantasy Star came out the next year. Then Virtual Hydlide came out for the Saturn and reshit the bed.

[SparTonberry]

Hydlide might have been excusable in 1986 (when the Japanese version was released) or 1984 (when the original Japanese computer version was released, I forget which ones), before we had games like Zelda, but to release it in 1989? I just assume it was a fairly cheap release.