That fixed version of E.T. from Neocomputer.org (and E.T. in general)

[Colmino]

Two different items to discuss here. The first one is a digression: Is there a resource out there somewhere which documents whatever various fixes / hacks of games may exist? It would be interesting to have those as part of the collection whenever my Harmony cart arrives, for example. The usual collections out there don't seem to include them (or at least not this one).

 

Anyway. This fixed version of E.T. is definitely an interesting project. I'd known about it for a couple of years and was randomly re-acquainted with it today.

 

I am in the same boat with the author: I've always considered E.T. to be a fun and very advanced game. I'd go further, and say it's one of the best games ever made for the console. Why? Because, as I pointed out in another thread, it is one of the only Atari 2600 games in existence which is not only the perfect balance of challenge and fun, but it has an ending, and a scoring system which invites perfection. I very much liken it to a more recent example of this: Pac-Man Championship Edition DX. You have a set (short) amount of time in which to do your absolute best, it's amazingly fun, and there is always room to tweak your effort for a better score - and the limited play duration lends your score relevance; it won't be drowned out by a hypothetical score of 999,999,999 or by the score flipping or the game ending after scoring too high.

 

E.T. is the same. Its play mechanics are startlingly deep. If you use the speed boost, you waste a bit more energy and thus score. Careful usage of the call signs is the key to maximizing energy. You need to collect as much candy as possible while eating as few as possible. And then we have the pits themselves: There are strategies here which I never see discussed (which makes me feel like I invented them). First of all, if you allow E.T. to fall to the bottom unarrested, you lose a pretty big chunk of energy. You have the option of starting the hover on the way down. The trick is in maximizing the timing; if there is no phone piece to collect, you want to hover as soon as possible; if there is a piece, you want to hover at the last possible second, but the game punishes you for hovering too late by imbedding you in the ground, which is doubly bad for the energy meter.

 

Now, the reason why people "hate" this game, in my opinion, is due to a few things:

 

1) Yes, the process of falling into pits is unintuitive and a bit buggy. The unintuitive component is covered on the Neocomputer.org page: Because of the unusual perspective at play, people don't expect E.T.'s head to count as touching a pit. Plus it is a bit dubious that some of the pits hug the edges of the screen, which promotes falling into them if one doesn't already know they're going to be there. The buggy component will be discussed below.

 

2) The call sign system demands either a high level of intuition and experimentation, or a careful examination of the instruction manual. In 1982, gamers were generally ill-prepared for games that actually required such preparation, and often didn't have the instructions in any event. And these days it's a non-concern because there's plenty of room for the games themselves to explain how to play them.

 

3) Even though E.T. is impressive by Atari 2600 standards, most people who decide to come into contact with the game are lacking this context, and E.T. cannot be favorably regarded by modern standards.

 

4) Legend, legacy, tradition, and recently the faux ire of certain gaming personalities.

 

The first two factors were what led to semi-disfavorable reviews back in the day. Frustration with the pits and confusion over how to play the game at all. Once one knows how to deal with those two things, the game is perfectly fine.

 

Now the real reason for this thread: I wanted to talk about the one bug in E.T. which I personally felt - even way back in 1982 - was its Achilles' Heel, and which is still not fixed in the Neocomputer.org rom. When exiting a pit, as soon as E.T.'s neck finishes retracting, his entire sprite moves down one pixel. The fallout of this is that if one exits a pit from the top of it (as opposed to the bottom or the sides), as soon as E.T.'s neck retracts, his sprite shifts down a pixel, so his feet touch the pit, and he falls right back in. Even after coming to grips with the too-exacting collision detection, one would still be very easily confounded by this subtle bug.

 

It would be interesting to see if this final bug could be squashed. Then all that would need to be done is to implement some means of preventing RNG-abuse and the game would be, in my view, perfect.

 

[+Random Terrain]

Related links:

 

To What Degree Do You Love E.T.?

E.T. Manual and Tips Sheet

E.T. Map

E.T. Tips and Reminders

E.T. Appreciation Page

E.T. Cake

[PacManPlus]

RT should be here any second

 

EDIT - Called it!

 

(For the record, I had E.T. back in the day, and I enjoyed it.)

Edited September 2, 2015 by PacManPlus

[+RichG1972]

I actually beat the game ET the 3rd time I played it after Dad bought it and have had many a chat with HSW about his games and the role they played in my medical rehabilitation as a kid after surgery

[Colmino]

E.T. Tips and Reminders

 

I see the phenomenon of falling back into the pit when exiting from above is noted in the above link. Since I believe it is an unintended result from an unintended sprite behavior (in addition to assuredly being one of the sources of frustration in general), I feel it would be worthwhile to investigate fixing the problem. I was surprised that it had not already been. ;p

[+RichG1972]

Playing ET (as told to me by Mr Warshaw), is simply a matter of timing, as you play the game each time you discover something new you didn't realize the previous time. It enables you to get better each time. Not only that but the ET game falls in line with Nolan Bushnell's gaming credo, "make games EASY to learn but DIFFICULT to master". Bushnell has always been that way even still is today and the man by no stretch of the imagination is an innovative GENIUS!

[RJ]

Fixed version? What's wrong with the original?

[p.opus]

Personally I think ET is the classic "reach exceeding ones grasp". I've played it, and enjoyed it quite a bit. The gameplay is rich, requires resource management and with a little polish would have been a runaway hit.

 

HSW did not have the time to put on the polish and as a result, a lot of kids, at whom the game was targeted, didn't "get it". I mean "power zones" are a pretty abstract concept. I mean it makes sense that ET has to find a secret spot to "phone home" but to find zones to eat his candy? I mean the game has some really cool concepts, but there just wasn't enough time to see "what worked and what didn't".

 

Had HSW simply done a PacMan Clone with Recees pieces as dots, and the Scientists as the "monsters" then the game would have been able to be picked up immediately, and guessing from the luke warm reception the "official" PacMan got, he could have had a runaway hit.

 

HSW had done similarly with Yars Revenge. He took the recognizable elements of Star Castle and added some original pieces to it and created a masterpiece.

 

ET is a much richer game, IMHO, but it certainly was not very accessible to it's target audience and I think that's where it failed.

 

"Dad....This game is broke, ET, keeps falling in a pit and I can't get him out".

"Here, son, let me show you how it's done........uh......yeah.....it's broken...How about a game of Space Invaders?"

[+RichG1972]

HSW in an interview stated bluntly he didn't want to do what had already been done BEFORE, he wanted to write a game based on his OWN ideas not ride the coattails of someone else's or he would have ended up being the JJ Abrams of the Atari world

[high voltage]

Well, it's a classic now and in museums all over the world:

https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/post/128176864496/haul-of-legendarily-bad-et-game-cartridges-sells

[Colmino]

Fixed version? What's wrong with the original?

 

The fixed version as outlined in the page I linked seeks to do a few things. The most conspicuous change is made to the circumstances which cause E.T. to fall down a pit - specifically, he now only falls when his feet touch the pit. Other than that, there are fixes (well, changes) made to the scoring system, which was in fact broken in ways that were not intended.

 

An arbitrary change was made to the energy system, based on the notion that the game is too challenging. Energy no longer depletes when walking around. It's a change I do not agree with. So all in all, the fixed rom is a kind of mixed bag.

[Colmino]

Personally I think ET is the classic "reach exceeding ones grasp". I've played it, and enjoyed it quite a bit. The gameplay is rich, requires resource management and with a little polish would have been a runaway hit.

 

HSW did not have the time to put on the polish and as a result, a lot of kids, at whom the game was targeted, didn't "get it". I mean "power zones" are a pretty abstract concept. I mean it makes sense that ET has to find a secret spot to "phone home" but to find zones to eat his candy? I mean the game has some really cool concepts, but there just wasn't enough time to see "what worked and what didn't".

 

Well, a couple of thoughts. First, Atari 2600 games quite often are, thanks to the hardware limitations, really much more reliant on one's imagination / interpretation than on direct recognition of concrete visuals. E.T. is somewhat less so than most, but I think of the abstract "power zone" idea as being in keeping with this defacto philosophy.

 

Second, HSW's previous entry (Raiders) is a far, far more abstract game, and is a perfect example of what I mean by being reliant on imagination and interpretation. So there was precedent for what HSW sought to achieve with E.T.; if anything, E.T. is a refinement of that approach. But it's true that the game lacks polish, as evidenced by the various pit-falling conundrums.

Edited September 2, 2015 by Colmino

[p.opus]

 

Well, a couple of thoughts. First, Atari 2600 games quite often are, thanks to the hardware limitations, really much more reliant on one's imagination / interpretation than on direct recognition of concrete visuals. E.T. is somewhat less so than most, but I think of the abstract "power zone" idea as being in keeping with this defacto philosophy.

 

Second, HSW's previous entry (Raiders) is a far, far more abstract game, and is a perfect example of what I mean by being reliant on imagination and interpretation. So there was precedent for what HSW sought to achieve with E.T.; if anything, E.T. is a refinement of that approach. But it's true that the game lacks polish, as evidenced by the various pit-falling conundrums.

I would defintely say that of HSW's games. Even Yar's revenge required a comic book to place the game in some sort of context. Most people I know simply played it as a simplified form of Star Castle, which was really what HSW's bosses were looking for.

 

Although I will get flamed for this, but the whole imagination/interpretation argument doesn't hold water for me. Adventure was a very deep 2600 game but didn't need a ton of instructions and a comic to put the game in context. HSW has always been a little out there. Yar's revenge is a fun game, and it's about as simple as one can get, but there's still some head scratching stuff about it. That big "neutral zone" where the drone can't kill you but you can still be tracked killed by the Quotle? The fact that your "super cannon" can only be activated by nibbling on the enemies shield or touching the enemy directly? Touching the Quotle directly???? That's so counter intuitive, you need a comic to explain it away.

 

HSW was unfairly judged as the author of the "game that destroyed Atari", but now as the pendulum swings back he's being hailed as an under-appreciated genius. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

[Colmino]

Although I will get flamed for this, but the whole imagination/interpretation argument doesn't hold water for me. Adventure was a very deep 2600 game but didn't need a ton of instructions and a comic to put the game in context.

 

You're just underscoring the difference between games with adequately simple mechanics (adequate in the sense that Joe Average can grok it) and those which aim a little higher and thus must offer a how-to to Joe Average in some form or other. Adventure would suffer much the same fate for anyone unfamiliar with castles, keys, magnets and swords; happily, the mandated concepts are generally known to its players.

 

My consideration that much of what we see in Atari 2600 games is dependent on imagination is inspired exclusively by its clear hardware limitations. Example: Every single Pac-Man clone uses "wafers" rather than dots. Because, of course, there's no way at all for the 2600 to have dots that persistently disappear one by one. Another: Generally speaking, full-screen graphics are rendered using the megapixels, such as the backgrounds in Superman, which must very generously be interpreted as city backdrops. Another: Heavy use is made of the hardware function of having a given sprite be horizontally duplicated 2 or 3x (or stretched fat), so that for example the mad rush through Journey Escape feels like an arcade fever dream and only very loosely resembles what the instruction manual says it's supposed to be.

The fact that your "super cannon" can only be activated by nibbling on the enemies shield or touching the enemy directly? Touching the Quotle directly???? That's so counter intuitive, you need a comic to explain it away.

 

That odd feature actually reminded me of Donkey Kong. In DK, Donkey Kong's sprite does animate, but it's tied to the horizontal flipping of Mario's sprite. Even back in the day, I recognized that this was probably because the programmer just didn't have enough variables and decided that using one for both events was a workable compromise. The trigger for enabling the Yar's super cannon may have been similar inspired. (Or else it just made sense that the Yar needed energy to power the cannon, and if he'd already destroyed all of the blocks, well the game couldn't simply be over at that point, so...)

HSW was unfairly judged as the author of the "game that destroyed Atari", but now as the pendulum swings back he's being hailed as an under-appreciated genius. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

 

I think he was perhaps the most capable (contemporary) developer of Atari 2600 games, but as you say, he clearly reached further than the hardware would let him, or, as I would prefer to put it, was over-reliant on the notion that the gaming experience on the 2600 is assumed to demand imagination and interpretation.

[+wongojack]

I believe that the "fixed" version originated here and there is a link to it in the "Hacks" section of the boards. I think I've actually played more than one "fixed" version from different people over the years.

 

When I play the hacks, it just makes me think that the original game is easy enough to learn. If I need some hack to keep me from falling in the pits then I just haven't taken the time to understand the game and how it works.

[Colmino]

When I play the hacks, it just makes me think that the original game is easy enough to learn. If I need some hack to keep me from falling in the pits then I just haven't taken the time to understand the game and how it works.

 

I agree. But at the same time I recognize that there is validity in a push to "correct" some of the behaviors in E.T. since after all they contributed to the early sense that it was a less than stellar game. I also maintain that the issue of E.T. shifting downwards by a pixel is a legitimate bug that deserves to be addressed.

[almightytodd]

I always enjoy these kinds of calm, reasoned discussions.

[+RichG1972]

 

You're just underscoring the difference between games with adequately simple mechanics (adequate in the sense that Joe Average can grok it) and those which aim a little higher and thus must offer a how-to to Joe Average in some form or other. Adventure would suffer much the same fate for anyone unfamiliar with castles, keys, magnets and swords; happily, the mandated concepts are generally known to its players.

 

My consideration that much of what we see in Atari 2600 games is dependent on imagination is inspired exclusively by its clear hardware limitations. Example: Every single Pac-Man clone uses "wafers" rather than dots. Because, of course, there's no way at all for the 2600 to have dots that persistently disappear one by one. Another: Generally speaking, full-screen graphics are rendered using the megapixels, such as the backgrounds in Superman, which must very generously be interpreted as city backdrops. Another: Heavy use is made of the hardware function of having a given sprite be horizontally duplicated 2 or 3x (or stretched fat), so that for example the mad rush through Journey Escape feels like an arcade fever dream and only very loosely resembles what the instruction manual says it's supposed to be.

 

That odd feature actually reminded me of Donkey Kong. In DK, Donkey Kong's sprite does animate, but it's tied to the horizontal flipping of Mario's sprite. Even back in the day, I recognized that this was probably because the programmer just didn't have enough variables and decided that using one for both events was a workable compromise. The trigger for enabling the Yar's super cannon may have been similar inspired. (Or else it just made sense that the Yar needed energy to power the cannon, and if he'd already destroyed all of the blocks, well the game couldn't simply be over at that point, so...)

 

I think he was perhaps the most capable (contemporary) developer of Atari 2600 games, but as you say, he clearly reached further than the hardware would let him, or, as I would prefer to put it, was over-reliant on the notion that the gaming experience on the 2600 is assumed to demand imagination and interpretation.

Gotta admit though, in the HISTORY of the 2600, out of all the programmers at Atari, every one of HSW's games he made while with Atari was a million seller, and he has even said this

[iesposta]

I believe that the "fixed" version originated here and there is a link to it in the "Hacks" section of the boards. I think I've actually played more than one "fixed" version from different people over the years.

 

When I play the hacks, it just makes me think that the original game is easy enough to learn. If I need some hack to keep me from falling in the pits then I just haven't taken the time to understand the game and how it works.

I think of it more like polishing it up.

Clearly it was rushed. If it was given proper play testing, the feedback would have led to the same changes.

As said, even the scoring is faulty.

 

As a young teen in 1984 I must have seen the blobs in the pits and read in the manual you needed to collect three pieces of the phone, which leads to saying that to phone home you need to find the "phone home" square and then be in the forest alone to get picked up.

 

I remember playing and enjoying E.T. with my two younger brothers. It was so much better than the letdown that was Pac-Man!

It had a title screen with music!

It was the biggest movie since Star Wars in '77. Our family went to the movies, and strangely the line was wrapping around outside to the back of theatre. We had no idea what we were going to see, but every detail of that movie stuck with us, and playing a game based on it was cool.

[p.opus]

Gotta admit though, in the HISTORY of the 2600, out of all the programmers at Atari, every one of HSW's games he made while with Atari was a million seller, and he has even said this

That's not too tough when two out of three of your games are based on two of the hottest Hollywood properties of the decade.

[privateers69]

Don't forget this when it's re-released. It should pass now.

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/242313-atari-seal-of-quality

[LS_Dracon]

 

...

 

Now the real reason for this thread: I wanted to talk about the one bug in E.T. which I personally felt - even way back in 1982 - was its Achilles' Heel, and which is still not fixed in the Neocomputer.org rom. When exiting a pit, as soon as E.T.'s neck finishes retracting, his entire sprite moves down one pixel. The fallout of this is that if one exits a pit from the top of it (as opposed to the bottom or the sides), as soon as E.T.'s neck retracts, his sprite shifts down a pixel, so his feet touch the pit, and he falls right back in. Even after coming to grips with the too-exacting collision detection, one would still be very easily confounded by this subtle bug.

 

It would be interesting to see if this final bug could be squashed. Then all that would need to be done is to implement some means of preventing RNG-abuse and the game would be, in my view, perfect.

 

 

The problem is not when ET retract his neck, it's when you walk, his feet downs one scanline and touches the pit.

So when you press up to exit the pit, you still pressing up when the playfield changes and ET walks up.

 

This was fixed by me year ago but I not made the rom public because it's based on "ET fixed" hack and it's not my work.

 

Anyway here's the hack, I don't want any credits for it.

ET_feet_fix.bin

[Colmino]

Good job fixing that. Too bad it's based on the "hack" but I suppose anyone who really cares can just compare the roms to apply whatever changes they want. My complaints with the "ET fixed" concern the decision to stop energy from draining when walking, and the fact that it changes the nature of the beeping when E.T. is hovering (it becomes slower among other things).

[sloth-machine]

That's not too tough when two out of three of your games are based on two of the hottest Hollywood properties of the decade.

 

True, but Howard definitely earned those 2 properties by hitting one out of the park for Atari with Yars'. He was given the Raiders project, and it was pretty innovative for it's time. Then Speilberg requested Howard for E.T because of his work with Raiders. Also in my opinion, Howard proved he was not a one trick pony in making Yars' with Saboteur (if only the game saw the light of day back then). For a time when no baselines were set for game design, he had some very forward thinking ideas, just like Warren Robinett.

[p.opus]

 

True, but Howard definitely earned those 2 properties by hitting one out of the park for Atari with Yars'. He was given the Raiders project, and it was pretty innovative for it's time. Then Speilberg requested Howard for E.T because of his work with Raiders. Also in my opinion, Howard proved he was not a one trick pony in making Yars' with Saboteur (if only the game saw the light of day back then). For a time when no baselines were set for game design, he had some very forward thinking ideas, just like Warren Robinett.

Hitting one out of the park, is a generous description. He is credited with creating the "best selling original Atari title".

 

While it was technically an original game, everyone, including me, at the time saw it as an unofficial "Star Castle" clone, which he was asked to make in the first place.

 

There is no doubt that he was a very capable game designer, but I think the recent love affair and rush to canonize HSW is a response more to the documentary Atari: Game Over, and the unfair blame he got for ET than to his actual greatness as a game designer. None of HSW's games are on my top 10. And while ET is nowhere near as BAD as it was claimed to be, there is no doubt that it was one of the 2600's biggest disappointments. And it can be argued that one of the reasons for that disappointment is the audiences failure to connect with some of his design decisions.

 

And while it is commendable the effort he put into ET, it should also be mentioned that he was asked to make a game, not commissioned to do a work of art. Atari was not asking HSW for his interpretation of the movie. He was asked to make a blockbuster game, and in that he failed.

Edited September 4, 2015 by p.opus