Raiu

There was a book sequel to the movie, E.T.: The Book Of The Green Planet, based on an idea by Spielberg and written by the same person who wrote the novelization of the movie. It tells E.T.'s attempts to return to Earth after he's demoted from space explorer to gardener because he interacted with the humans. -DS-

I'm VERY late here, and, admittedly, Ladybug was never one of my favorite games in its heyday, but... this is incredible. A perfect, dead-on-in-every-respect port. Very well done -DS-

Joust is one of those games, like Phoenix and Moon Patrol, I like better on the Atari 2600. There's something about the feel of the game that I like better. In Joust's specific case, I find the flapping a lot easier than the arcade version. Yeah, the floating eggs are weird, but what are you gonna do? You don't play the Atari 2600 for exact 100% faithful ports.

A few more for your list: Atari, by Muckafurgason, Tossing A Friend album. ("Plug it into the back of my TV. Come with me back to 1983. Reliving my happy childhood, with my 2600") Atari Atoll, a promo record by Warner Inc. ("Atari, Atari - that's the name, that's the game") Life Was Easy, by Atari Champ, There Were Times EP ("Sometimes I'd like to go back to when life was easy, playing Star Wars in the field, Atari on the TV") My Atari, by Kevin Davis. ("And I didn't like board games like Monopoly or Sorry, all I ever liked was my Atari") - this one is just about impossible to find, ever since pityfive.com went down. Video Games, by Ronnie Jones ("Speedway, Star Wars, Space Invaders, I loved them all the same") Video Games, by Tony Ezzy ("Laser Blast! Pac-Man! Word Zapper! Plaque Attack! Tennis! Breakout! Super Breakout! Ms. Pac-Man!") Oh, and you might find this one amusing: http://www.macjams.com/song/4761 -DS-

The Yar was more Howard Scott Warsaw's mascot than Atari's in general, since he used it in all his games for Atari. (Yars' Revenge was his first Atari game, with RotLA, ET, and Saboteur (all of which feature Yars, in Easter Eggs or as enemies) being his other games. As for the idea that Pitfall Harry was Atari's mascot... not likely that would EVER happen, because Pitfall is from Activision, a third-party company in a time when Atari pretended that third-party companies didn't exist. -DS

E.T. is extremely well known, if only for the wrong reason. Also, the "thirty gazillion cartridges were dumped in a landfill!" story causes a lot of people to think that the game is actually really rare and hard to find (as opposed to dirt-common). The world hasn't gone mad, they just haven't done their research -DS-

Aside from the "classics" that everyone knows about, I really enjoyed the silliness of Park Patrol and the sheer insanity of Toy Bizarre. ... I liked Gamemaker, too, though it was needlessly rigid and complicated. (Far better than the Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit, though). -DS

"Schatzinsel" literally translates as "Treasure Island", so it's more than likely that the two games are the same. "Duck Shoot" or "Duck Shot" is some sort of pirate title, since there are no ducks in the game (again, those are ships that just look a lot like ducks. That's why your "duck" is facing to the left - it's actually a ship facing to the right). -DS-

I don't think 2600 Pac-Man was a horrible game in itself, but as the official version of Pac-Man, it was a horribly inaccurate translation. (If you count handhelds, though, I'd nominate the Tomy Pac-Man. You could only eat dots while going to the left, and controls were stiff and unresponsive). Best version.... the Atari 5200 version is my favorite, but I think the NES version caught more of the game's feel. The C64 version was also very true to the arcade. I haven't played enough versions of Ms. Pac-Man to really judge. I think the 2600 version is still my favorite after all these years, though. -DS-

Is the game even finished? It looks very jittery and buggy to me. I can move what looks like my ship's cannon to different angles (by holding in the fire button and moving the controller up or down), but I can't seem to actually shoot anything, and colliding with other ships or sealife incurs no penalty. (The name "Duck Shoot" is kinda funny, since there's no ducks in it. There are pirate ships, whales, and shark fins.... but the ships look a lot like ducks, with their sails resembling a duck's head. The game's real title is Kampf um die Schatzinsel, which Babelfish tells me means "Fight for the Treasure Island") -DS

I like Circus Atari, too. It's not my #1, but it's above Breakout and Super Breakout. -DS

I like Starship I wouldn't say it's anywhere near my favorite, though. Adventure is probably at the top of the list, but also high on the list are Missile Command, Space Invaders, Dragonfire, Atlantis, Cosmic Ark, Star Voyager, Stampede, Dolphin, Chopper Command, Kaboom (needs to be played with real paddle controllers), Circus Atari, Video Pinball, Caverns of Chaos, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Maze Craze, Kool-Aid Man, Space Attack, Frogs 'n Flies... So difficult to pick just one. There are very few Atari games that weren't my "favorite" for a short time, even if it was something mediocre (but still playable) like Planet Patrol or Cosmic Creeps. Of course, as usual, the "Master" asked a loaded question. It's easy to say what games are your favorite, but pretty much impossible to state which game is the "best". -DS-

According to HardWork's posts on the Modern Gaming subforum, the game is still being made. Of course, why it's taken him three years without a single screenshot to show for it is a mystery. (And even those posts are over two months old now). As for me... I'll believe it when I see it. Or at least when somebody sees it. -DS

Incidentally, there is a blue shield, according to the instruction manual: http://www.atariage.com/manual_page.html?S...e=8&maxPages=12 Your screen colors may differ, of course. -DS

I have the NTSC version. A friend of mine donated his entire 2600 collection to me, and that game was among the carts. -DS-

As I recall, when the game was first released, Video Game Player magazine gave it an F, and the unusually short review pretty much compared the game to an eternity burning in hell (with the eternity in hell coming out as the victor in that matchup). -DS-

I think part of the reason that Tod made the colors so close to each other is that he used the corresponding missile for the energizers. If the ghosts had wildly varying colors, then the energizers would noticeably cycle through the colors. (In fact, you can see this in some early builds of Nukey's 8K Pac-Man hack) Not a good reason, but still a reason. -DS-

I have no idea how true this is, but I've heard the tale that Tod Frye showed them what he'd intended to be a work-in-progress Pac-Man, and they decided to just publish it as it was, and that's how we got the Pac-Man we got. Again, I don't know how true that is, but it wouldn't surprise me As for those screenshots, the first one is Rob Kudla's Pac-Man (aka A Better Pac-Man), which is a Ms. Pac-Man hack. (There's two other similar Ms. Pac-Man hacks that also turn it into Pac-Man). The second one is Nukey Shay's hack of Pesco, entitled Hack 'Em (which includes Pac-Man, Pac-Man Plus, Hangly Man, and Hangly Man Plus). The last one is also by Nukey Shay, but it's not in the hacks section (I think it's because he's not quite done with it). There's a thread about it in the Hacks forum, though (The title screen - and, yes, it now has a title screen - calls it simply 8K Pac-Man). Almost all the sound effects are new, and the game plays much differently than the original. (When Nukey hacks a game, he doesn't just change a few sprites and call it a day, he basically overhauls the thing until it's barely recognizeable) -DS-

Three, at least. 1024719[/snapback] Well, I was counting the three steps to find "HSW3" as one Egg (since you simply repeat the same procedure over and over), but if you count them as separate, then there are four (Yar, Indy, HSW3, and JD). I decided to avoid giving any sort of exact figure for the number of carts produced, because every time I do, someone else tells me that my figures are wrong. (One set of numbers I was told would have made E.T. a gigantic success, with nearly 90% of the carts sold). I've also heard that E.T. was, in fact, the eighth best-selling Atari 2600 game of all time, even not counting the returns and buried carts, and the game was only a financial disaster because of the overproduction. (Assuming they were buried at all - no two sources can even seem to agree on THAT). Frankly, I don't know what to believe anymore. Does anyone have a single definitive source about how many carts were produced? Your statement makes no sense anyway. Every copy was crushed into powder and buried under tons of cement, so that's why the game is so common in the wild? Wha? -DS-

The thing is, if you've played a lot of Atari games, you'd quickly see that both games are far from the worst for the console. They're the two most notorious, because they both took a popular license and then turned that license into a mediocre game - but that's just it. They're mediocre. Both games are playable and as bug-free as can be expected. Pac-Man's a fun game if you forget that it's supposed to be the official home version of Pac-Man. E.T. can be fun once you know how to get out of the pits (there's a trick to it, yes), and it even has two Easter Eggs to find. There's a difference between being a bad game and being a disappointing game. Both games are disappointing, but they're not as bad as their reputations suggest. (Both games, for example, were actually good sellers, which is why they're both common today. E.T. only lost money becuase they produced far more cartridges than the laws of supply and demand would advise, and I don't think Pac-Man lost money at all). I can't answer the question as posed, because I played both games to death back in the day and I'm still fond of both of them, warts and all. If you want to see bad games, try some of the REAL dogs for the system - Mythicon's three games (Sorcerer, Fire Fly, Star Fox) were all nearly unplayable, and just about all of the X-rated games were not only in bad taste but just flat out bad games as well. And that's why "Worst game: Pac-Man or E.T.?" is generally going to get the same unwelcome reaction on here as "Mike or Joel?" on a MST3K group or "Death Star vs. Unicron" on a Transformers group. -DS-

Most likely, no. Giving a NES game blockier graphics doesn't mean that an Atari is automatically capable of duplicating it. There's more differences between the NES and the 2600 than just the resolution of the sprites. -DS-

My Atari-related dreams usually involve going to a Circuit City-esque electronics store and finding that they have an entire row devoted to new-in-box Atari 2600 games, usually by third-party nobodies that I've never heard of. Sometimes I also find them in the back of such stores along with loose NES games. I've also had dreams of swap meets and indoor flea markets where they have piles of first party Atari carts with non-existent titles stacked up on every table. (The only title I remember is Star Wars, but it wasn't Parker Brothers, it was an old Atari text-label cart, with the end label in dark blue lowercase letters, and it had no subtitle). A variation of this has them stacked up inside glass cases in what looks like a supermarket. Edited becuase I just remembered others: not buying, playing. Finding them at friend's houses, and playing weird games that I've never seen before or since. Also, visiting my cousin's house (the cousin who in real life had an Atari long before I did) and finding that they still had their Atari set up for play. And sometimes just dreams of playing weird side-scrolling Atari games on the big TV in the den of my old house. (Definitely Atari games, despite the side-scrolling bit. Graphics were similar to Adventures of Tron) -DS-

I'm a 35-year-old straight male, and I am NOT IN ANY WAY GETTING THIS GAME!!!!!!!1 ..... but only because I don't own a DS. (Ironic, given how I sign my posts) -DS-

This may help: General Custer is not a desert item. -DS-

That's correct. The left switch speeds up the dragon's attack animation. On Game 2 or 3, Left difficulty on A, the dragons give you less than a second to react before they swallow you. (Game 1's attack time is much longer on any setting. On A it's about the same as Game 2 or 3 on B). -DS-