jefframsey

Just when I though that this thread was slowing down... I am literally LOLing in my office right now! Too funny!

Now it all comes back... Those damn catalogs! I used to do the same thing. Circle something, write in the margins, and then leave that page open in the book on the table beside my mom's chair. What an ungrateful little greedy kid I was. And yes, that is how I got the games I wanted. But my mom would be the one who would buy a game that I didn't ask for, once it came down to $5-10. She'd just come home with it and say "For the price, let's try it. If it's no fun, we'll sell it at a yard sale." Not very often, but she did do this occasionally.

What'd be the fun in that? 😉 Exactly. Or even by NES-era standards.

Thanks for sharing. I'm far enough along now that I will just stick with the image that I got from @SS. I have reorganized that list quite a bit and I am going through and cleaning up file names/testing each ROM to make sure it will load and play on the UnoCart.

+1 I setup a new game for my daughter on her PS4 and it is like this. Spend an hour or more downloading updates, then start the game and spend another 30 min to an hour watching the cut scenes and opening credits. "If I wanted to watch a movie instead of playing this game I would do so."

This is true. I did read the manual to Superman. Without, that game would have been just flying around until I touched the kryptonite satellites (good name for a punk rock band) and then I would have just walked around aimlessly until I got bored. Star Raiders was a really personal one for me. My first home console was a 5200 and I had Star Raiders. I think maybe I had the manual at one point, but lost it before I ever read it. Needless to say, I hated that game for years, and spoke ill about it on occasion. It wasn't until I revisited it later on, found and read the manual, that I understood the game and enjoyed it.

I can totally see where I am being a revisionist, this review being 37 years later and all. I never played this game in 1983, or at least I don’t remember playing it. (I would have been 5.) And yes, it’s easy to say RTFM now, with all of the vast and complex places computers and computer games have taken us since then. In the 37 years that have passed, there have been several great games for other systems that would be nearly impossible to enjoy without reading the manual. (Star Raiders on 5200 was one for me personally.) In-game or on-screen instructions have since changed that but there were lots of them. The revisionist comment that you made really drives home my point: I think ET was as much of a case of being ahead of its time conceptually, than it being a rushed game or an unfinished game. In 1983, you could probably play 95% or more of the VCS games without reading anything before hand. Also, there were not many games at that time that tried to pull off a 3D landscape with such a limiting system to do it with. 3D on the VCS platform would be crazy hard to do a good job implementing today, even with all of the bank swapping and everything else currently going on with the platform. (Falling into a pit as soon as you enter a screen is frustrating, but I quickly learned that I should enter the screen near the middle of the right or left edge so that I minimize the risk of this happening. YMMV.)

It might if I could find it and download it. Do you have a link?

I played it again this morning and I finally beat it on the hardest difficulty! My score was low because I had eaten all of my Reese’s pieces in order to gain more life (time) but I wasn’t going for a high score. I wanted to see E.T. rescued. Great fun!

Last night, I watched a documentary on Amazon Prime called “Atari: Game Over” about the Great Video Game Burial in Alamagordo NM in 1983. During the movie they said that most top 10 worst video game lists picked E.T. on the 2600 as the worst video game of all time. I had heard this before, and seen a few of the lists, and I had even played it once in the past, but not before I had already heard about how bad it was from others. Maybe my opinion of the game was jaded by the rumors that it sucked so bad. I usually try to keep an open mind, but when you hear that it is the worst game ever, that’s a strong statement to try to ignore. After watching the movie, I decided to give it another try. One comment that was said in the movie was that it was not a bad game at all if you read the manual and learned how to actually play it. So I RTFM and discovered that there was much more to this game than I previously understood. You can actually get out of the pits reliability if you immediately move left or right when you get to the top of the pit. Most of the time, you won’t fall back into the pit if you practice this method. Also, there are clues on the top of the screen telling you what can be done while standing on a particular spot. Some of them even tell you which pit to go into to find a piece of your telephone that you are building so that you can “phone home”. Others tell you that pressing the button will send the FBI agent and scientist back to their homes. I ended up playing E.T. on the hardest difficulty level for about 2.5 hours straight. I never did beat it, although twice I had called the space ship and was trying to get back to the launch site when I died for the final time. To say the least, this game has a TON to offer. It really is a good game for this platform. If anything, maybe it was a bit ahead of its time. Too complex for the 1983 crowd, where you could pick up a joystick and play most games and never even look at the manual at all. I agree with the comment heard in the documentary: E.T. is not a bad game if you read the manual first. I think it may in fact be one of the better ones.

Would you be willing to make an image of your SD Card and allow me to download it?

I am thinking about configuring mine with the top level folders like Originals, Homebrews, Starpath, Prototypes, etc. and then alphabetical folders inside of those folders. Thoughts?

That’s cool! As I get a bit more time into mine, I can publish it as well. Would be nice to get a good rom pack with a good folder/file naming system that is compatible with the uno.

My UnoCart arrived yesterday! (Thanks @MacRorie!) The first thing I did was install a bunch of roms on an 8gb card and sort them into sub folders. I put the card in the cart and put the cart into my rev14 4 switch woody, fired it up and tested a few games. Pitfall II works great and I am also able to play the starpath Frogger. This thing is awesome! It’s like a RetroPi, but on original hardware! Best of both worlds! i am going to try out a few Homebrews next. How did I live without this thing before?

Thank you for sharing. I never met Stephen, but I will think of him while playing his game.