E.T. Angry Video Game Nerd reviews E.T.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

http://cinemassacre.com/2014/10/10/e-t-atari-2600-angry-video-game-nerd-episode-120/

[karokoenig]

The movie was nothing to write home about, I must say. It wasn't terrible either. Just a B-movie with some mildly enjoyable scenes. Not more, but also not less.

 

The review was at least not the complete bashing his worse fanboys would have expected/wanted to hear. I thought it was (almost) fair - which is not a given with AVGN game reviews.

[+Random Terrain]

Obligatory E.T. links:

randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-et.html

randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-et-manual.html

randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-et-map.html

randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-et-tips.html

randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-et-appreciation.html

 

[Rhomaios]

The movie was nothing to write home about, I must say. It wasn't terrible either. Just a B-movie with some mildly enjoyable scenes. Not more, but also not less.

 

Aw, I loved the movie. I did watch it as a young kid, so I'm sure that's coloring. I recently had my wife watch it, and she seems to agree with you, maybe liking it a bit more, though if she had seen it as a kid she might have considered it great.

[karokoenig]

 

Aw, I loved the movie. I did watch it as a young kid, so I'm sure that's coloring. I recently had my wife watch it, and she seems to agree with you, maybe liking it a bit more, though if she had seen it as a kid she might have considered it great.

 

I was talking about the AVGN movie, at the end of which James reviews the game.

 

But now you mention it, I might as well give my two cents... I saw E.T. in the cinema back when it came out. It was one of the first movies I watched on the big screen, and I find it totally and utterly forgettable. I guess I'm more of a Jim Henson guy. As far as SciFi/Fantasy movies go, Labyrinth and Dark Crystal impressed me much more back in the days.

[Crazy Climber]

I find AVGN to be pretty fair with his Atari reviews, I have only seen a few but it would seem he actually likes the 2600 which I didnt expect, seeing some of his other reviews, etc

[AtariLeaf]

An even handed review, which I wasn't expecting. I did already see this since it's basically the end credits of the movie, which was ok, not great but a decent fun b-movie

[Greg2600]

Even though it's a bad game, you can't really get that much material from the game to review. You just keep falling into holes. Big whoop!

[Buyatari]

Not what I expected to see from AVGN.

 

He has been far more critical of far better games in the past. He actually held back and was kind in his review of this stinker. I'm sure the movie had a lot to do with it.

[Rhomaios]

Not what I expected to see from AVGN.

 

He has been far more critical of far better games in the past. He actually held back and was kind in his review of this stinker. I'm sure the movie had a lot to do with it.

 

He's stated time and time again that he actually likes many of the games he reviews, and that the vulgarity and harshness are parts of the act.

[+Random Terrain]

Even though it's a bad game, you can't really get that much material from the game to review. You just keep falling into holes. Big whoop!

 

Related video:

 

youtube.com/watch?v=1u2AMzau_nI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u2AMzau_nI

[Raticon]

Yeah, its my impression that he likes the 2600 quite much, but he's also more forgiving and positive about the games for the 2600 because they are so old and simple and many developers in those day didn't really know what or how to do stuff. Basically taking the 2600 for what it is.

 

The NES games has taken a lot of flak from him on the other hand on the basis that it is a much more capable system and bigger and better developers and as such you expect more from the system and games.

[Mr SQL]

Not what I expected to see from AVGN.

 

He has been far more critical of far better games in the past. He actually held back and was kind in his review of this stinker. I'm sure the movie had a lot to do with it.

Good observation Buyatari, no doubt participation from the programmer in the movie production positively influenced the review. Add to this that the game has tremendous noteriety and you can see why authors writing about ET who develop a personal rapport with Warshaw will tend to become ET apologists.

 

Likewise we see the opposite effect (scathing review) when a VCS personality like Nolan Bushnell refuses to participate in a production.

 

Agree it's pretty transparent, I find the less biased opinions far more interesting!

[Joe Stella]

 

Related video:

 

i dunno man. i dislike contrived videos like this.

[+Random Terrain]

I dunno man. I dislike contrived videos like this.

 

If Noobs made a video of themselves playing E.T., you'd think what you're watching is contrived because nobody could be that bad at playing a video game.

 

Noobs fall into the wells. Noobs can't figure out how to use the power zones. Noobs can't avoid the Scientist and the FBI Agent. Noobs can't figure out the map and the sides to avoid.

[AtariLeaf]

 

If Noobs made a video of themselves playing E.T., you'd think what you're watching is contrived because nobody could be that bad at playing a video game.

 

Noobs fall into the wells. Noobs can't figure out how to use the power zones. Noobs can't avoid the Scientist and the FBI Agent. Noobs can't figure out the map and the sides to avoid.

 

True, if we're going to base our opinion of how bad a game is based on our personal abilities to play it, then my opinion is that all the SMB games are the worst games of all time

[Torr]

I find it funny how quickly things can go from a couple statements on the internet to, what's basically, a belief system.

I don't want to get too politically incorrect/religious here so I'll keep it short...

 

As many of us say, especially those growing up in the era, ET had it's flaws yes, but was it the worst game? far from it!!! Good/Bad? Matter of opinion. WORST? No. Case Closed.

But now after just 15-20 years of internet chatter, people who DID the play the game growing up and DIDN'T like the game, have been convinced by all the propaganda that YES, ET was even worse than SO many other games that the list is too much to put here. And people who have never played it, or the VCS in general just hear and accept the statement as truth, because why else would the statement be out there? Just like "Chicken of the Sea" brand tuna, they wouldn't say that on the can if tuna WASN'T actually an marine fowl now would they?

And nothing will change their minds. No amount of proof. You could hand them Stella and just two ROMs: ET and SwordQuest: EarthWorld, and they will somehow find a way to say running around from identical room to identical room and randomly picking up/dropping objects is a better and more fun game. They Will. And as I said above the list goes on, there are so many "Worse Than ET" games out there

 

So I just find it's easier not to get involved in the whole shebang. It's like trying to convince a Christian that there was no Christ, or convincing a Jew we've already HAD a Christ. Nobody has any proof one way or the other, it's just a belief system. But a Belief system wrapped around hundreds and hundred of years of writings, teachings, wars and holidays/celebrations. ET itself has only been around ~30 years and the internet propaganda surrounding it, 15-20 years at the MOST. Yet I bet you I could go and find someone who'll say that ET is "The Worst Game Ever" easier and more plentifully then I could I find someone who understands what Kosher really means, or what Ash Wednesday is all about.

 

 

AND

I like that The Nerd, who often goes over the top to get a popular "opinion" out there, gave an honest and "proper" review of this game, because many people follow him like a Preacher and this just might help quell some of the hate towards this game.

Edited October 19, 2014 by Torr

[Rhomaios]

I feel like we're preaching to the choir again here.

[Video]

I think part of the "ET is the worst game ever" comes from the fact, that like most people, and most systems, they haven't played a huge variety of games. I played ET, and have never playedd any of the "world" series of games. I couldn't compare them. Of those games I'd be likely to say ET's worse, simply because I don't know what the others are like.

 

Of course, I've played a lot wider range of games than a lot of people do, and i know for a fact the ET isn't the worst, even among just 2600 games.

[Cynicaster]

The high-profile nature of the ET flop has caused the actual early-80s reality of it being “a pretty bad Atari 2600 game” to morph into the internet-age truth of “the worst video game in human history”. Not surprising, since a sizable chunk of the commentators perpetuating the modern-day version of the truth have probably never played ET, have no idea how to play ET, and have very little (if any) familiarity with the rest of the Atari 2600 catalog.

 

I think the vast majority of gamers who grew up with the 2600 and have at least a decent familiarity with the game catalog will tell you—if asked to be brutally honest—that there are several games on the system that are markedly worse and less playable than ET.

 

Still, in my experience, there is no question that ET has always carried a conspicuous “bad game” stigma, even before the advent of internet groupthink. I clearly remember it being a joke among the neighborhood kids, and I remember ending up with about 6 copies of it because people would bring it over with their box of carts and “accidentally” leave it behind (oops!). Even while Atari was still popular in my area, I’d see the game at yard sales for next to nothing. I’ll never forget the time I was looking at a table of games at a yard sale across the street from my friend’s house and saw ET for $0.25. Right next to it was a copy of Seaquest for $12.

[Video]

That's another thing, people make an assumption that the game was only deemed bad "after the net"(mid 90's ish) And that simply isn't true. A game that has the reverse applied to it would be pacman, never had anybody claim back in the day that it was bad (at least in my neighborhood, but then, maybe a datapool of only a few hundred kids wasn't enough to go by?)

 

Another assumption made, quiet commonly (even, or maybe I should say especially) around here,is that people that don't like the game, didn't know how to play it. "you just didn't have the instructions" Uh, hello, I had it new (not day one, mind you, but new none the less) "you just didn't read the instructions" Uh, hello, I'm one of those that bitched when they started taking instructions out of games, I not only read them, I LOVE to read them, and often read them before I play the game. "you just weren't good at it" Really? I beat it the first day I had it, and while yes, the holes are annoying, they aren't a game breaker. It's just six screens of get parts, get picked up by the ship (unless it er..."crashes" on eliot LOL"

 

I don't know when the game came out, in relation to Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Adventure, but to be honest, even as a kid, I saw ET as a level, not an entire game. Aren't t rest of that type of game in the 32-64 screen range? ET is 6 (I guess you could count the holes as more screens, but you don't have to go down them, unless you just want to find the flower)

 

Come on, worst game ever? Hell no. Best game ever PFT, even among adventure games it ranks pretty low. It's complete, it's beatable, it's simply not that fun. Get over it.

[WildBillTX]

As many of us say, especially those growing up in the era, ET had it's flaws yes, but was it the worst game? far from it!!! Good/Bad? Matter of opinion. WORST? No. Case Closed.

But now after just 15-20 years of internet chatter, people who DID the play the game growing up and DIDN'T like the game, have been convinced by all the propaganda that YES, ET was even worse than SO many other games that the list is too much to put here. And people who have never played it, or the VCS in general just hear and accept the statement as truth, because why else would the statement be out there? Just like "Chicken of the Sea" brand tuna, they wouldn't say that on the can if tuna WASN'T actually an marine fowl now would they?

And nothing will change their minds. No amount of proof. You could hand them Stella and just two ROMs: ET and SwordQuest: EarthWorld, and they will somehow find a way to say running around from identical room to identical room and randomly picking up/dropping objects is a better and more fun game. They Will. And as I said above the list goes on, there are so many "Worse Than ET" games out there

 

I totally agree. People will believe anything as long as someone is always around to keep reinforcing it into their brains. One generation of gamers hears the stories, believes it and passes it on to the next.

 

I have to give credit to the Nerd for showing how poorly designed the game is, and then attempting to demystify the mystique ET has gotten over the decades.

 

BTW I remember reading a bad review of ET right after it was released, maybe in Electronic Games Magazine. Does anyone have a scan of that review?

[+Random Terrain]

BTW I remember reading a bad review of ET right after it was released, maybe in Electronic Games Magazine. Does anyone have a scan of that review?

I went looking through the scans I have from digitpress.com. E.T. was released in December of 1982, but it took months to get into the magazine, as you might expect.

 

This is from February of 1983:

 

(page 10)

 

 

This is from March of 1983:

 

(page 49)

 

 

 

This is from April of 1983:

 

(page 37)

 

(page 38)

 

The moron who wrote the review thought you were supposed to follow the arrows and that E.T. had to reconstruct his spaceship. His spaceship? He also said that it might work well as a kideogame, but there's virtually nothing to recommend to adults. He had that screwed up too. It was too advanced for the average nose-picking kiddie, but teens and adults should be able to grasp the advanced concepts in the game.

[WildBillTX]

The moron who wrote the review thought you were supposed to follow the arrows and that E.T. had to reconstruct his spaceship. His spaceship? He also said that it might work well as a kideogame, but there's virtually nothing to recommend to adults. He had that screwed up too. It was too advanced for the average nose-picking kiddie, but teens and adults should be able to grasp the advanced concepts in the game.

 

Thanks for your detective work, I think this is the exact review I read in 1983.

 

I dont think this reviewer was a moron. He probably did what millions of others did. He just plugged the cartridge in and tried to play it without reading the manual first, got frustrated with it and wrote a nasty review.

 

Back then you expected to a videogame to be easy to learn in a couple of minutes just like in the arcade. If Atari was smart they would have put a big sticker on the box or cartridge saying "Please read the manual before playing". I bet Atari didn't even send him the manual. Still I bet even if the reviewer figured out how ET is played he still would have blasted it just because of its awful programming and gameplay.

 

It's fascinating to me that nobody in the video game industry back then understood the impact bad reviews and the word-of-mouth of gamers would have on their sales and industry. They were setting themselves up so bad to fail..

Edited November 5, 2014 by WildBillTX

[atarilovesyou]

Man, ET was terrible then and it's terrible now. Sure, lots of folks jumped on the bandwagon, but the game was a stinker from both a kid's perspective, teen and adult. Sure, some people will find it fun. There's people that find a lot of terrible games fun (I'm sure I'm one of them!). But make no mistake, the game was a turd. Even when you figured out what you were supposed to do, it just wasn't much fun. Not ONE of my friends thought the game was fun, or even worthwhile. We didn't need the internet to help us out; just like the many turds on the NES and other systems, ET was a turd. Someone out there might just like it. Those are in the minority, and that's all I hear when people go on and on about how "ET wasn't that bad". Let me tell you, there were just far too many GOOD games out there in those days to play, and ET was shit from the word go. Oh wait, there was one good thing:

 

It had that cool opening screen shot.

 

But so did Earthworld. And let's face it, that 'game' has a limited audience as well.

 

There, that's all you need to know. But for those who have never played it, go ahead and do so if you're so inclined.