When Did Et Atari Game Come Out

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E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Developer(s)	Atari
Publisher(due south)	Atari
Distributor(south)	Atari
Designer(s)	Howard Scott Warshaw
Release date(s)	1982
Genre(s)	Adventure
Mode(s)	Single player
Platform(s)	Atari 2600
Media	16Kb ROM cartridge
Input	Atari joystick

Due east.T. the Actress-Terrestrial is a video game adult by Howard Scott Warshaw based on the film of the aforementioned name and released by Atari for the Atari 2600 video game system in 1982. It was widely considered a poorly produced and rushed game that Atari thought would sell purely based on brand loyalty to the names of Atari and E.T. Instead, the game fared horribly and cost Atari millions of The states dollars. E.T. is seen by many equally the decease knell for Atari and is widely regarded equally one of the worst video games ever produced as well as one of the biggest commercial failures in video gaming history. A major contributing factor to Atari's demise, the game'southward failure epitomizes the video game crash of 1983. Over ii million excess cartridges were dumped in a landfill in Alamogordo, New United mexican states.

Gameplay

The gameplay of E.T. consists of maneuvering the fictional conflicting character E.T. through several screens to obtain the three pieces necessary to gather a device to "phone home". The telephone pieces tin can be obtained by finding them scattered randomly in various wells (pits) or the role player can collect 9 Reese's Pieces and then "call Elliot," who will so bring him a phone piece. Additionally, the actor must avert an FBI agent and scientist in pursuit. If either enemy catches E.T., the histrion is carried to the Washington D.C. screen. If the FBI agent catches E.T. he besides volition lose all nerveless phone pieces (or Reese's Pieces if no phone pieces have been collected). The difficulty setting can exist inverse with the game select and left and right difficulty switches located on the console. This volition either modify the number of humans present, the speed of movement of the humans, or the weather condition needed to call the spaceship.

E.T. is also given a express supply of energy and starts the game with 9999 points. Any action, including movement, depletes the energy. East.T. can utilise Reese'southward Pieces at an "eat candy" spot and press the button to furnish energy. If E.T. reaches zero free energy he will turn white and dice. Three times per game, Elliot will and so appear to revive E.T. by "merging" with him, letting the player continue with 1500 points. Locating and reviving a wilted flower adds an actress revival from Elliot. If E.T. dies more times than Elliot can revive him, the game ends.

Four of the half-dozen screens are riddled with wells of varying size that Eastward.T. falls into if he gets too close, causing him to lose some free energy. In order to go out, the actor must levitate E.T. by pressing the controller push button and tilting the joystick frontwards. Since phone pieces and wilted flowers are found at the lesser of wells, this often leads to the majority of the game consisting of players intentionally falling into wells in lodge to complete the round.

Once E.T. has all three phone pieces, the actor may press the controller button at a "call send zone." This causes a timer to appear and count down the time E.T. has to make it at the landing zone. In most cases, E.T. cannot call his ship when a human is present (lower difficulty levels will permit it). One time the player finds the landing zone they may press the controller button once more to call the ship. If no humans are present when the timer has run out, the ship volition appear and option E.T. upwards. This volition finish that round of play. The player is and so given bonus points based on how many Reese'south Pieces he has left and may continue playing for some other circular. Bated from bonus points earned, all rounds are functionally identical and practise non increment in difficulty with play.

E.T. is also notable for being the get-go video game to "credit" a graphics artist, with the initials of Eastward.T.'due south artist, Jerome Domurat, being hidden as an Easter egg. Howard Scott Warshaw too had his initials hidden as an easter egg, just past this point, programmers having their names hidden as easter eggs had become somewhat commonplace and thus is not every bit notable.

Production and sales

Following the record-breaking success of E.T. at the box office in June 1982, Steve Ross, CEO of Atari'due south parent company Warner Communications, entered talks with Steven Spielberg and Universal Pictures to obtain rights to produce a video game based on the picture. In late July, Warner announced that it had acquired the exclusive worldwide rights to market coin-operated and console games based on Due east.T., the Extraterrestrial. Although the verbal details of the transaction were not disclosed in the announcement, it was widely reported that Atari had paid United states of america$xx–25 million for the rights—an abnormally loftier figure for video game licencing at the time. Atari CEO Ray Kassar's response to Ross' query of how he liked the idea of making an Due east.T. based video game was, "I think it's a dumb idea. We've never really fabricated an action game out of a movie." Ultimately though, the decision was non Kassar's to brand, and the bargain went through.

The task of designing and programming of the game was then offered to Howard Scott Warshaw, whom Spielberg requested due to his previous work on the video game adaptation of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Due to the considerable amount of fourth dimension that had been spent in negotiations securing the rights to make the game, only five weeks remained in order to meet the September 1 deadline necessary to transport in time for Christmas shopping season. By comparing, Warshaw's previous works, Yars' Revenge and Raiders of the Lost Ark, each took, respectively, four to 5 months and six to 7 months to complete. An arcade game based on the E.T. property had also been planned, but this was deemed to exist impossible given the short borderline. Warsaw accepted the assignment, and was reportedly offered 200,000 USD and an all-expenses-paid holiday to Hawaii in compensation.

Spielberg's idea was to make E.T. into a Pac-Human-type game, which Warshaw rejected to try a more original idea. Warsaw had favored a design that was more than story based in hopes of creating a game that would capture some of the sentimentallity he saw in the original film, but eventually ended upward scrapping some of his own ideas due to fourth dimension limitations. Ultimately, Warshaw designed a game based on what he believed could exist reasonably programmed in the amount of time he had available to him. The basic design was worked out in two days, at the decision of which Warshaw presented the thought to Kassar before proceeding to spend the residue of the allotted five weeks writing, debugging, and documenting virtually 6.5 kb of original lawmaking.

Even with a rushed game in hand, Atari anticipated enormous sales based on the popularity of the motion-picture show, as well as the enormous boom the video game industry was experiencing in 1982. By the fourth dimension the game was complete, so petty time was left earlier the game's desired ship-date that Atari skipped audience testing for the cartridge altogether. Emanual Gerard, who served as co-chief operating officer of Warner at the fourth dimension, afterward suggested that the company had been lulled into a false sense of security by the success of its previous releases, particulary its home video version of Pac-Man, which sold extremely well despite inferior graphics to the original version.

Additionally, Atari had expected the game would perform well simply because, the previous October, it had demanded its retailers place orders in accelerate for the entire year. At that time, Atari had dominated the software and hardware market, and Atari was routinely unable to fill orders. At kickoff, retailers responded by placing orders for more supplies than they actually expected to sell, but gradually, every bit new competitors began to enter the market, Atari started receiving an increasing number of order cancellations, for which the company was not prepared.

While the game did sell well (it ranks as the eighth best selling Atari cartridge of all time), it was only able to sell approximately 1.5 1000000 of its iv 1000000 cartridge stock. It is an frequently stated bit of misinformation that more copies of E.T. were produced than Atari 2600 consoles owned; in reality, company research by Atari showed that about 10 one thousand thousand consoles were owned in May 1982 (the actual game that produced more than cartridges than consoles endemic was Pac-Man with 12 million copies). Despite reasonable sales figures, the quantity of unsold merchandise coupled with the expensive movie license caused East.T. to be a massive financial failure for Atari.

This game was one of many bad decisions that led to the bankruptcy of Atari, which posted a $536 one thousand thousand loss in 1983, and was divided and sold in 1984. It is also seen as one of two major video game releases (along with the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man) that sparked the video game crash of 1983.

Critical response

**Reviews and scores**
Source	Score
Reviews
Ten-Play	0/five
SwankWorld	i/10
Game Freaks 365	4.ane/10
User rankings
MobyGames	one.0/v
Average GameFAQs review score	2.viii/10
IGN reader boilerplate	3.0/10
GameSpot reader average	3.4/x
External review average at AtariAge	fifty%

E.T. has been well-nigh universally panned by critics and gamers. The well-nigh mutual complaint is the tedious repetitiveness of falling into holes coupled with the additional hassle of it being also easy to autumn dorsum into a hole once out. Other complaints include the frustration of losing phone pieces to the FBI agent, poor graphics, and the story given in the manual beingness inane, a deviation from the serious tone of the movie.

What practice I do now? The but ane I tin can trust is that nice little alien— Ellleeott. He gives me those tasty energy pills (What did he call them? Reeessseess Peeesssesss?)
― Excerpt from Eastward.T. the Extra-Terrestrial's manual

"The worst video game of all time"

E.T. is i of the most usually chosen candidates for worst video game of all time past gamers and is often brought upwards in any discussion of "worst game ever". This viewpoint was about famously made by Seanbaby when he ranked it #1 in a list of the 20 worst games of all time in Electronic Gaming Monthly's 150th outcome. Michael Dolan, deputy editor of FHM magazine, has too ranked it equally his option for the #1 worst video game of all fourth dimension. Additionally, G4 bear witness X-Play's score of 0 out of 5 was the lowest grade they have ever given a game in the show's history and some other G4 show, Filter, picked Eastward.T. as #1 in their "Top ten Biggest Flops of All Time" countdown.

Other views

However, Eastward.T.'s championship of "worst video game of all time" is largely influenced by its notorious failure, which in plough was influenced by loftier expectations. When compared objectively to other, less infamous Atari 2600 duds, E.T. is frequently thought to exist "not that bad". Among communities that have played a broad variety of Atari 2600 games, titles such as Karate, Skeet Shoot, and Sssnake are more ofttimes chosen as existence the worst game for the Atari 2600, sometimes with E.T. non fifty-fifty making such "worst of the Atari 2600" lists. A small minority of people even get beyond the "bad but non the worst" opinion and admit to genuinely enjoying the game. Howard Scott Warshaw himself doesn't testify whatever regrets for E.T. and feels he did a practiced job on the game.

But the fact is E.T. was a tough technical challenge that I experience I met reasonably well. I made that game start-to-finish in five weeks. No one has ever come shut to matching that kind of output on the

VCS. It could definitely be a better game ;), simply information technology's not too bad for 5 weeks.

That said, I also realize that consumers don't (and shouldn't) care almost development time. All they should care about is the playing experience. I feel E.T. is a complete and OK game. Some people like it. It certainly isn't the worst game or even the least polished, simply I actually like having the stardom of it being the worst game. Between that and Yar'southward, I have the greatest range of anyone always on the auto :)
― Howard Scott Warshaw

The Atari landfill

In September 1983, The Alamogordo Daily News of Alamogordo, New Mexico reported in a series of articles that between 10 and twenty semi-trailer truckloads of Atari boxes, cartridges, and systems from an Atari storehouse in El Paso were crushed and buried at the landfill within the city. It was Atari'south start dealings with the landfill, which was called considering no scavenging was allowed and its garbage was crushed and cached nightly. Atari'southward stated reason for the burial was that they were changing from Atari 2600 to Atari 5200 games, but this was later contradicted by a worker who claimed that this was not the instance. Official Bruce Enten stated that Atari was mostly sending broken and returned cartridges to the Alamogordo dump and that it was "past-and-large inoperable stuff."

Starting on September 27, 1983, a layer of physical was poured on top of the crushed materials: a rare occurrence in waste disposal. An anonymous workman's stated reason for the concrete was: "There are dead animals down at that place. We wouldn't desire any children to become injure digging in the dump."

On September 28, 1983, The New York Times reported on the story of Atari'due south dumping in New Mexico. An Atari representative confirmed the story for them, stating that the discarded inventory came from Atari'southward establish in El Paso, Texas, which was beingness airtight and converted to a recycling facility. The Times article did not propose whatsoever of the specific game titles being destroyed, but subsequent reports have generally linked the story of the dumping to the well-known failure of E.T. Additionally, the headline "Metropolis to Atari: 'East.T.' trash go home" in one edition of the Alamogordo News implies that the cartridges were E.T. As a result, it is widely speculated that most of Atari's millions of unsold copies of E.T. ultimately wound up in this landfill, crushed and encased in cement.

Somewhen, the city began to protest the large amount of dumping Atari was doing; a sentiment summed up past commissioner Guy Gallaway with, "We don't want to be an industrial waste matter dump for El Paso." Local manager Jack Keating ordered the dumping to exist ended before long afterward. Due to Atari's unpopular dumping, Alamogordo later passed an Emergency Management Act and created the Emergency Management Task Forcefulness to limit the future flexibility of the garbage contractor to secure outside business for the landfill for monetary purposes. Mayor Henry Pacelli commented that, "We do not want to come across something similar this happen again."

Today the story is often misrepresented as an urban legend, despite considerable documentation of Atari'due south dumping on record in the urban center of Alamogordo. As recently as Oct of 2004, Warshaw himself expressed doubts that the destruction of millions of copies of E.T. e'er took place, citing his conventionalities that Atari would have recycled the parts instead in order to save money.

In popular civilisation

The urban legend of E.T.'s mass burial has sparked the imaginations of gamers for years and has led to fantastical depictions of trips off into the desert in search of the Atari landfill:

In the same episode in which they reviewed the game, X-Play hosts Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb ventured into the New Mexico desert in search of the missing cartridges in a parody of the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
The indie rock band Wintergreen released a music video for their song "When I Wake Upward" that retells the urban legend of the mass burial of E.T. cartridges. All the cartridges were actually fake. Some speculate they were made from cardboard with the ET cover printed. The music video is an idealistic imagination of the Atari landfill story, with the cartridges being only buried in the middle of the desert in relatively pristine condition.
In the Stiff Bad email "trading cards" (featured on the Homestar Runner website), an easter egg brought up by clicking on the words "adept graphics" reveals a championship screen similar to the one in the game, just with the series character The Cheat (spelled C.H.Eastward.A.T.) rendered instead of E.T.
In the cartoon "Wake me up when we're at E3" for Cubetoons, it shows a truck dumping out E.T. cartridges into a land fill up and blowing them upwardly after the video game crash existence caused past "them releasing E.T."
The Moonintites from Aqua Teen Hunger Force are rumored to have somehow derived from a storm over the Eastward.T. landfill.