$37,000 Atari games

[tharpdevenport]

A few months ago I learned something only video game fans would know: one of the most infamously terrible games ever made, maybe the worst, is the E.T. game made by Atari, which was so bad excess games met a fate that spawned a movie a few months ago with "Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie".

It's been dug up.


Wow. $37,000? If I were a rich video game fan I'd pay that much to get a bunker buster and make sure they could never be dug up. I wouldn't play it for free after watching couple Youtube reviews.

 

[Trekker4747]

I bought it, being a fan of the AVGN, it's a movie he made largely on crowd sourcing and personal revenue from his website.

It's not *too* bad of a movie overall. Some fun, some corniness and a lot of humor along the AVGN's style. He's been working on it forever and I'm not sure the movie entire reflects that but he was largely working on the movie by himself with limited time, resources and help, so it is what it is.

 

[Jedi_Master]

Meh. Collectors pay silly prices for stuff all the time.

 

[Owain Taggart]

I had heard about the digging, but I didn't realize it was done for this movie. I thought I had heard it was being done for another documentary that was also an exclusive on Xbox Live.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

There are worse 2600 games than E.T. I don't know why everyone rags on that one so much. Pac-Man, anyone?

 

[Trekker4747]

There are worse 2600 games than E.T. I don't know why everyone rags on that one so much. Pac-Man, anyone?

Pac-Man is a worse game than ET?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ On the Atari? Honestly, I think it is.

 

[tharpdevenport]

^ On the Atari? Honestly, I think it is.

To quote Gordon Ramsay: "Wow. Stunning."


I played Pac-Man on Atari. No way that's worse.

 

[137th Gebirg]

On the 2600, Pac Man was barely recognizable to its namesake and maybe a half-step more playable than Pong. Once the 5200 came around (which was basically the Atari 400/800 without a keyboard), it had more colors, better player/missile graphics and memory handling which produced a better version of the game to the coin-op original. Honestly, back in the day, the only first-gen console that ever came close to producing game quality to their original coin-op versions was Colecovision. Never understood why any of the other machines couldn't come close (Atari, Intellivision, etc.)

As for ET? I had it on the Atari 800 computer, so it was definitely a better port from the 2600 console version. I honestly didn't find it all that bad. Some of the noisy sound effects were irritating, but it had a good use of multi-color P/M graphics and little-used Antic graphics modes and I can clearly remember my heart racing when being chased by cops & scientists - exactly what a good game should do. Not a killer app, but certainly not the worst by any stretch.

 

[tharpdevenport]

Interestingly enough, now that I remember, the worst game I played on Atari was a different E.T. game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3-2JTkVTyA

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ DIFFERENT E.T. game? That's the only one I've ever seen...

As for ET? I had it on the Atari 800 computer, so it was definitely a better port from the 2600 console version. I honestly didn't find it all that bad. Some of the noisy sound effects were irritating, but it had a good use of multi-color P/M graphics and little-used Antic graphics modes and I can clearly remember my heart racing when being chased by cops & scientists - exactly what a good game should do. Not a killer app, but certainly not the worst by any stretch.

Only real problem I had with the game is that I totally suck at it. I can't even play the versions that have the FBI guy and scientist chasing ET. Bastards keep stealing the pieces of the phone.

 

[137th Gebirg]

IIRC, I think you had to strategically use Elliot to run interference on the chasers, getting them hung up between buildings in trees to buy you enough time to escape with the phone piece. Been so long, can't really remember, but I think that was the by-and-large of it...

 

[tharpdevenport]

I got it mixed up. No, the "diferent" one was the one and same buried deservedly in a landfill.

The other game I was thinking about was from Nintendo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJraw-GYl3I

 

[Mr. Adventure]

^ DIFFERENT E.T. game? That's the only one I've ever seen...

As for ET? I had it on the Atari 800 computer, so it was definitely a better port from the 2600 console version. I honestly didn't find it all that bad. Some of the noisy sound effects were irritating, but it had a good use of multi-color P/M graphics and little-used Antic graphics modes and I can clearly remember my heart racing when being chased by cops & scientists - exactly what a good game should do. Not a killer app, but certainly not the worst by any stretch.

Only real problem I had with the game is that I totally suck at it. I can't even play the versions that have the FBI guy and scientist chasing ET. Bastards keep stealing the pieces of the phone.

I found this piece and its linked content to be really interesting and helps explain a lot about the mechanics of the game.

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

 

[Marsden]

There are worse 2600 games than E.T. I don't know why everyone rags on that one so much. Pac-Man, anyone?

I think it's because they produced over 4 million cartridges and sold about 1.5 million. 2.5 million unsold cartridges is kind of hard to ignore.

 

[Mike Farley]

The Atari 2600 Superman game was way worse than E.T..

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Well, yeah, there's the part about the Daily Planet apparently having their offices inside Metropolis' subway, but apart from that...

 

[Unicron]

It's a pity kryptonite poisoning wasn't so easily remedied in the comics, especially during the Silver Age when there were tons of forms of kryptonite.