No more E.T bashing, there are games that are really garbage, ET is not one

[Swami]

I wonder how much influence there was by the media frenzy on how the 2nd gen video games and arcades would make kids grow up overweight and unskilled and video games are like drugs. I don't think it did much considering the Nintendo saturation a few years later. I'm sure kids didn't listen to it but parents might consider it. Although i often hear people in their twenties referred to as the Nintendo generation in a way on par with "no child left behind" condescension.

 

When my nephew was ten and would go to my moms house he would bring his Nintendo along and would play my old Atari, but when he went to his other grandparent's house they would make him go outside rather than play video games. I know he preferred my mom's house , so maybe that's why the parents never fell for the media frenzy. Whatever the case, video games are at least more interactive and social than the typical 15 hours of tv a week people watch. Or maybe the parents liked them as much as the kids ... probably, LOL.

[Corby]

butt... ET is so cute and bashable thou!!

[zzip]

Good post zzip. You're dead on about retail realities, it's a hard business even if you're not trying to sell objects d'fad. When I think back on the places where I'd see games showcased, they're gone or mostly gone. Zayre, Murphy Mart, Ames, Montgomery Ward, Toys R Us, Sears, Kmart.

JC Penney too, as unimaginable as that seems now. They had an entire videogame counter and it was the first place I ever saw a VCS in action. They also had a toy dept in those days too.

[Flojomojo]

JC Penney too, as unimaginable as that seems now. They had an entire videogame counter and it was the first place I ever saw a VCS in action. They also had a toy dept in those days too.

 

I forgot about that store (as did many people, judging from their numbers). Al Nilsen has given some interesting interviews about his role as JCP's buyer in the Atari days. He went on to help Sega market Sonic the Hedgehog.

 

http://segaretro.org/Interview:_Al_Nilsen_(2008-03-11)_by_Sega-16

https://soundcloud.com/retrogamingreddit/rretrogaming-podcast-episode-11-al-nilsen-part-i-atari-intellivision-and-the-crash

[zzip]

I wonder how much influence there was by the media frenzy on how the 2nd gen video games and arcades would make kids grow up overweight and unskilled and video games are like drugs. I don't think it did much considering the Nintendo saturation a few years later. I'm sure kids didn't listen to it but parents might consider it. Although i often hear people in their twenties referred to as the Nintendo generation in a way on par with "no child left behind" condescension.

 

When my nephew was ten and would go to my moms house he would bring his Nintendo along and would play my old Atari, but when he went to his other grandparent's house they would make him go outside rather than play video games. I know he preferred my mom's house , so maybe that's why the parents never fell for the media frenzy. Whatever the case, video games are at least more interactive and social than the typical 15 hours of tv a week people watch. Or maybe the parents liked them as much as the kids ... probably, LOL.

Well before video games, parents complained that we sat inside and watched too much TV.

 

Nowadays, it's not just gamers, but practically the entire young generation is glued to ipads and/or phones.

[zzip]

I forgot about that store (as did many people, judging from their numbers). Al Nilsen has given some interesting interviews about his role as JCP's buyer in the Atari days. He went on to help Sega market Sonic the Hedgehog.

At some point in the past JCP decided their stores were too interesting, so they made them as bland and forgettable as possible. Then when the old people with JCP brand loyalty started dying off, they made changes to alienate even more people.

 

But now I hear they are on a rebound, or at least trying? Last time I was in there it was somewhat improved.

[Flojomojo]

Well before video games, parents complained that we sat inside and watched too much TV.

 

Nowadays, it's not just gamers, but practically the entire young generation is glued to ipads and/or phones.

 

And it was headphones before that, comics before that, radio before that, and novels before that. https://aeon.co/essays/how-books-can-sap-the-soul-and-poison-readers-with-ideas

 

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with someone walking around with his/her nose in a book, and a phone isn't much different. There are always new and interesting ways for the older generation to complain about media behaviors they don't like in the younger generation. We see it in this forum, too.

 

And of course, it's always fun to flip the expectations. "Everything bad is good for you" was an interesting take on this kind of thinking.

[+KaeruYojimbo]

 

This reminds me of my boring personal story with this ... Even though I had an Odyssey 2 and a mess of games, I don't think I had ever seen one in a store. My family bought "our" (my) O2 from a friend's family when they upgraded to ColecoVision. They had purchased everything from a Magnavox store the next town over, probably where they bought their televisions and other home entertainment stuff of the day. I got a few new games via mail order (mostly through ordering Power Lords but receiving two "sorry, it's delayed, pick two free games instead" vouchers) but it was pretty much a games desert for me.

The only place I ever saw an Odyssey2 for sale was a Magnavox store. It was also the only place I ever saw a CD-i for sale.

 

There have always been things to keep kids busy in the car or while "the grown-ups talk," those things just change with time. Before it was coloring books and board games, now it's video games and ipads, in a few years it will be something else.

 

It seems like with ipads though, they're getting used more often and for shorter trips. When I was little, if we were just going down to the store I didn't bother bringing any entertainment with me. Now I see kids get handed an ipad the second they're strapped in, even if they're only going to be in the car for 10 minutes.

[Mr SQL]

Players who really like ET should create new homebrew sequels in BASIC like this player did back in the day!

 

This version looks like a lot of fun, I like the way the forest gets drawn as you observe:

 

https://youtu.be/QXXq2aCRaP8

 

[Bill Loguidice]

For what it's worth, I have a pretty distinct memory of seeing the Odyssey2 in Sears stores. I don't recall seeing it in very many other places. There was girl I knew in my school in Sayreville, New Jersey, who had one. Most everyone else had an Atari 2600 if they had anything else. There was one boy who had an Intellivision. Later on, myself and a few others got ColecoVisions and there was one boy with an Atari 5200. There was a similar imbalance on the computer side, with most of us having C-64s, a decent percentage having Apple IIs, and the rest having miscellaneous machines like the Atari 800XL, TI, Kaypro, etc.

 

In terms of screen time, it's not something I worry about with my three daughters aged 12, 10, and 2. I grew up in front of screens and think I turned out OK. They're all intelligent, creative, etc., so I don't feel like any of their development is being retarded. In fact, it's probably just the opposite.

[Flojomojo]

Agreed -- being tech savvy is a new form of literacy.

[up2knowgood]

Retailers never did stock everything. In 1982, you did not see Channel F systems on the shelf, at all. Nor Astrocade. Odyssey 2 was falling by the wayside.

 

 

This was always a risk in retailing though. By rights those retailers would normally have known better than buy all those titles from unproven publishers. But they believed the 2600 was so hot they could sell literally anything that plugged into it. So they took a risk that didn't pay off.

 

 

Again, bargain bins were nothing new. You found them in music/books stores and video stores as well.

 

Here is how retailers would have behaved in simple oversupply:

1. Discontinue systems that flopped, like Vectrex, Arcadia, etc

2. Stop buying games from companies like US Games, Games by Apollo, etc that weren't selling

3. Closeout what you need to

4. Continue stocking systems that actually sell like Atari, Coleco, Mattel and games from reputable publishers.

 

Number 4 is telling because many retailers discontinued these too. That means they couldn't even sell them, since demand for games had dropped so much.

 

Over-supply doesn't destroy markets. It leads to a shakeout of weak players. Like I said before: Sony enters, Atari leaves. Microsoft Enters, Sega leaves. Market doesn't die, instead it grows. That's normal

 

Bad content doesn't destroy markets. Bad albums get released all the time, even highly disappointing ones. They might cause sales slumps and earnings misses, but the industry keeps ticking. And again why would INTV or Colecovision players care if ET sucked or the 2600 was flooded with fly by night publishers? Colecovision players should have been too busy with their exciting new system and arcade-quality graphics. But the fact that these systems were hit with slow sales shows that the typical narrative about the crash is lacking.

 

The answer is Pacman created a videogame craze, a bubble, a fad-- whatever you want to call it. It was obvious in the pop culture at the time. Suddenly you had pacman and donkey kong cereal, donkey kong trading cards, mediocre pop songs like "Pacman Fever" on the chart. Videogame cartoons on Saturday morning. It was all everybody in school talked about.

 

But fads have a shelf life of 18-24 months tops, and that's roughly how long it was from when "Pacman fever" hit to the videogame crash. Kids were no longer talking about games everyday, they were now as I recall, more into MTV, Madonna, breakdancing, Motley Crue, Def Leppard, etc. Many of the new arcades that sprung up were starting to close. Again, if the problem was too many bad 2600 games at retail, why would arcades be affected at all? They should have been the refuge from the home crap.

 

I don't understand why so many people want to ignore the "faddish" aspects of the early 80s game market and instead believe media narratives that we already know are are revisionist with regards to ET? We've seen the same pattern repeat with the Wii and Pokémon GO.

 

I've seen people believe the media explanation and claim for years that the games industry is about to crash again from oversupply and shovelware. But the crash never comes because they ignore this critical aspect. Gaming is now a hobbie/lifestyle for gamers. They aren't all going to leave the market en-masse like what happens when a fad ends.

Sure, I'll admit that after you explained it like that, and reading to comments of several others, the fad factor sounds important. But then again, if it was the result of a fad, why wasn't there a crash in Japan in 1980 after Space Invaders? That caused a much bigger boom than Pacman did. I also feel like it doesn't really counter my point, fads and oversaturation kind of go hand in hand. In fact, a fad by definition leads to oversaturation, so I am starting to think our points are essentially the same, just from slightly different points of view.

 

Also, I'd like to point out that its not like Mattel and Coleco didn't have the same problems as Atari, because they did, its just that most tend to focus on Atari and its problems because they sold about 10 million 2600s by 1982, compared to 3 million Intellivions and about 1 million Colecovisions. So literally more than double its two biggest competitors combined, and many more games in its libraries compared to the others thanks to its longer life, which is why Atari gets so much more attention. (To be fair though, if I remember correctly, the Colecovision was also released in 1982, so to tell the truth, 1 million in that year seems pretty good to me.) Also, Atari was a HUGE company then, a big part of Time Warner's empire, so when it went bankrupt, and was sold off, that was a real shock to a lot of people, drawing more attention to itself. I mean I don't know if I can think of a really good analogy, but to give it a shot, it would be something like Apple declaring they weren't going to make computers anymore.

[vidak]

Aren't you guys forgetting the perverted crap that was put out by Mystique and Playaround?

 

Completely agree. Sexist games are immediately awful because they're sexist, regardless of how fun they are to play.

 

ET is Howard Scott Warshaw right? He maintains that ET is fun to play, and that the reviewers of the game didn't really understand it.

[zzip]

Sure, I'll admit that after you explained it like that, and reading to comments of several others, the fad factor sounds important. But then again, if it was the result of a fad, why wasn't there a crash in Japan in 1980 after Space Invaders? That caused a much bigger boom than Pacman did. I also feel like it doesn't really counter my point, fads and oversaturation kind of go hand in hand. In fact, a fad by definition leads to oversaturation, so I am starting to think our points are essentially the same, just from slightly different points of view.

I don't have enough experience with the Japanese market to know why it was different there. My experience is from what I observed at the time. Games were the big topic of conversation among kids one year, then the next they weren't. Suddenly only nerds played games. One year the girl next door is into frogger, ms pacman and owns the entire Buckner and Garcia videogame LP. Then suddenly she is into Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Boy George and didn't care a bit about games. I saw arcades pop up in every strip mall in my area only to see most close within two years. So to me the faddish aspect was as obvious as any other 80s fad. To me it was never a fad, I always liked them and was kinda distressed in those lean years when it seemed like nobody else did

 

Yes fads cause oversaturation, but my point is oversaturation alone doesn't destroy demand-- It only hurts the weaker suppliers. I think even if Atari had managed to keep third parties off its console, the crash would have still happened. But now the narriative would be "there wasn't enough to play and people got bored.." or "It was because Atari killed third parties and stifled innovation"

 

Also, I'd like to point out that its not like Mattel and Coleco didn't have the same problems as Atari, because they did, its just that most tend to focus on Atari and its problems because they sold about 10 million 2600s by 1982, compared to 3 million Intellivions and about 1 million Colecovisions. So literally more than double its two biggest competitors combined, and many more games in its libraries compared to the others thanks to its longer life, which is why Atari gets so much more attention. (To be fair though, if I remember correctly, the Colecovision was also released in 1982, so to tell the truth, 1 million in that year seems pretty good to me.) Also, Atari was a HUGE company then, a big part of Time Warner's empire, so when it went bankrupt, and was sold off, that was a real shock to a lot of people, drawing more attention to itself. I mean I don't know if I can think of a really good analogy, but to give it a shot, it would be something like Apple declaring they weren't going to make computers anymore.

The other half of the equation here is for the people who didn't leave the gaming market, they were being pushed into buying home computers instead of consoles in 83. Colecovision was probably ultimately destroyed by the Adam which they rushed out. Commodore pushed computer prices so low that it no longer made sense to buy a console. There was never any crash in computer games, but their revenues never matched the loss in revenue for console games at the time, which indicated that many people still left the market.

[jongolo]

There are games that are garbage out there, E.T. is not one.... I actually kind of like E.T. and even find I prefer it over the similarly movie based game of the time, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

[high voltage]

Aren't you guys forgetting the perverted crap that was put out by Mystique and Playaround?

That was continued on the NES with Hot Slots, Peek a Boo poker, Bubble bath babes and so forth.....so what

[PRIMUS_XXVI]

A few months back I played ET for the first time. I don't know if you can classify it as "playing" something though... I walked around as ET for 10 minutes, then he seemed to be very persistent on finding out what was in that hole. I couldn't get out of it, lol. Yes.. I know.. "READ THE MANUAL!!".. I didn't have one at the moment.

[ZippyRedPlumber]

E.T. is at least programmed with some effort.

 

Do you want lack of effort whatsoever, three words for you: Fox. Video. Games. But that's just my personal opinion.

[redsteakraw]

E.T. Sucks because it was convoluted and was not designed for it's target demographic. Kids don't read much and many where used to just picking up a game and playing it. There was no real expectation that you would need to read a manual to at least be able to play the game. Pacman, Space invaders and all of the other hits were self evident, and you are able to pick them up and play them. E.T. while trying to be groundbreaking missed the mark, a simple playable game would have been far more better received than what was delivered. So lets say you read up on how to play it, it still isn't that fun you basically are collecting items and avoiding the annoying people, while falling into holes. Furthermore the whole hole mechanic isn't necessary, simply removing the holes and placing the objects on the ground where they would be visible and apparent would have been preferable. Simple obstacles like bushes would be far better and creating tension between ET and while the agent was chasing him. If you think about it then what you have is at it's base pacman, collect items(pellets) and avoid Humans(ghosts). So why not just make a simple pacman clone with the ET cutscene and intro screen / music? Making the game convoluted took away the fun factor for many people as well as caused many to simply not understand how to play it at all. At it's core it was Pacman just pretending to be something bigger and more. If you put even the VCS pacman vs ET side by side and see which one is more fun, Pacman easily is the winner. The 2600 isn't capable of convolution because it isn't easy to add tutorial levels or extra in game explanations because there was no space for that. So simple is better when you are on limited hardware and targeting kids as the major demographic. Because of the design decisions failings it makes ET suck, and an example of a bad game.

[Mr SQL]

E.T. Sucks because it was convoluted and was not designed for it's target demographic. Kids don't read much and many where used to just picking up a game and playing it. There was no real expectation that you would need to read a manual to at least be able to play the game. Pacman, Space invaders and all of the other hits were self evident, and you are able to pick them up and play them. E.T. while trying to be groundbreaking missed the mark, a simple playable game would have been far more better received than what was delivered. So lets say you read up on how to play it, it still isn't that fun you basically are collecting items and avoiding the annoying people, while falling into holes. Furthermore the whole hole mechanic isn't necessary, simply removing the holes and placing the objects on the ground where they would be visible and apparent would have been preferable. Simple obstacles like bushes would be far better and creating tension between ET and while the agent was chasing him. If you think about it then what you have is at it's base pacman, collect items(pellets) and avoid Humans(ghosts). So why not just make a simple pacman clone with the ET cutscene and intro screen / music? Making the game convoluted took away the fun factor for many people as well as caused many to simply not understand how to play it at all. At it's core it was Pacman just pretending to be something bigger and more. If you put even the VCS pacman vs ET side by side and see which one is more fun, Pacman easily is the winner. The 2600 isn't capable of convolution because it isn't easy to add tutorial levels or extra in game explanations because there was no space for that. So simple is better when you are on limited hardware and targeting kids as the major demographic. Because of the design decisions failings it makes ET suck, and an example of a bad game.

 

Excellent analysis. No one should take it personally including HSW, not every game is a hit and those are good design points; I wrote a couple of bad games bitd but no one saw them outside of the test groups.

 

I think what's really telling is that no programmers today are writing ET; I would expect to see clones and genre variations.

[Torr]

Kids don't read much and many where used to just picking up a game and playing it.

 

I've never understood this quote.

 

Damn near EVERY game released on the Atari had "hard to decipher" graphics, unobvious gameplay mechanics, and tons of game select variations that can be further altered with the difficulty switches.

The idea that "most people" never read the manuals just seems unbelievable to me.

 

How would you know you're supposed to bring a golden cup back the yellow castle in Adventure?

How would you know what Game Variation to pick for Hyperwarp or Shields in Asteroids?

How would you know that if you want to see Evil Otto in Berzerk you have to pick a certain Game Variation?

How would you figure out the Hyperwarp or Smart Bombs in Defender?

How would you know to use two controllers in Defender II / Stargate?

How would you know you're supposed to find 3 pieces of an Urn and then get back out in Haunted House?

How would you know what the other 'moving blocks' do in Maze Craze's many Game Variations?

How would you know what all of Space Invader's 66(!) Game Variations are?

Not even to mention games like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Riddle of the Sphinx, Space Shuttle...

How would you know that you return all the bridge pieces, bring all the bad guys to jail, turn back into Clark Kent at the phone booth and then go to the Daily Planet to win Superman?

Sounds a lot like ET.

 

Growing up I had 9 game of my own that I received. The boxes were of course thrown away, but I still to this day have the manuals.

Plus about 20 more hand-me-downs. None of which had manuals. And I had difficulty with them all.

Berzerk I understood, but never knew about Evil Otto until AtariAge

SwordQuest, Raiders, and ET I had fun muddling with but never figured out.

Damn near every Activision game threw me... I just couldn't understand that the point of the game was to get the best "time"!

Barnstorming, Sky Jinx, Skiing... you just play for a while, then it makes you stop... am I going for the longest or shortest time? I didn't know, generally in games the longer you play the better right?

Dragster, once I figured out how not to blow my engine, it was still no fun, cause know one else could work the transmission for me to race against... and again, I didn't understand the "time" aspect.

Master Builder... HAH!

Basketball... if My cousin never told me there was a one player mode using the second joystick, I sure wouldn't have figured it out...

The list goes on.

 

My best memories are of my "own" games. Because I knew how to Play them

I also had some Great hand-me-downs, but with no manuals, I couldn't enjoy them properly.

 

People read these manuals back in the day. They had to have.

[AtariWarlord]

The thing about ET isn't that it was a bad game. It's that Atari over marketed and overproduced too many of them at a time when Video games took a minor, temporary dip in popularity. Everyone calls it the "crash of 1984". But there wasn't really a crash. The market was over saturated, but the products weren't increasing in quality. So people started buying home computers, and went back to the arcades until 1985, when NES, Sega, and later Atari came back to home consoles with higher quality games.

 

If you want to blame anyone for the "crash", blame Colecovision, Atari's 5200, and Apple.

 

But it wasn't a crash. It was a generational transition. It was the first time home consoles got a big overhaul. Were used to every 6-8 years companies come out with a new console now. Back then, everyone wanted something better, but most companies were holding onto old tech to squeeze the life out of them, dollar wise.

This is what I try to tell people all the time. Video games didn't suddenly become unpopular; the arcades were doing just fine and home computers (along with their games) were really taking off in that period. The console market was saturated and most of the hardware was old. The 2600 came out in 1977, the Intellivision in 1980 and the 5200 was based on Atari's older 8-bit tech. Only Colecovision had anything that could hold a candle to the arcade games. Kids didn't just become sick of video games all of a sudden -- it was parents who recognized the console industry for the monetary sinkhole it was and decided to make smarter investments in home computers.

[Bill Loguidice]

People read these manuals back in the day. They had to have.

 

It depends on the game of course. I had lots of games with manuals. I had lots of games without manuals (just the cartridges). Certain games like Raiders of the Lost Ark absolutely needed the manual. Other games, like Space Invaders, didn't. I recall very distinctly "exploring" certain games on my own, trying the different game variations, etc. "Experimenting" in other words. The same thing happened with my Commodore 64. I got a lot of pirated games. No manuals. Part of the fun was trying to figure it all out. Again, some games, like Ultima IV, obviously needed some type of documentation. For the most part, though, unless it was a deep strategy game or RPG, things could be figured out on their own.

 

Today of course, almost all games have digital manuals. For the most part, though, they also have tutorial modes or pop-up modes that explain as you play. They're sort of discover-as-you-go in that regard. I've rarely touched a manual with a modern game. Part of it is laziness on my part. The other is again, the games are designed to rarely need them.

[AtariWarlord]

As @Flojomojo points out below, there are more gaming platforms today. At the time of the crash, the computer game market wasn't yet much of a market. I mean that was around the time Lord British was selling games in Ziploc baggies!

 

With regard to oversaturation. The 2600 had somewhere between 500-600 games total, and half of those came out after 1982 when the crash is said to have started. So we'll say the 2600 had 300 games released between 1977 and 82, with a large number hitting the shelves in 82. Is that really oversaturation? Look at how many games are on Steam. Walk into Gamestop and see how many titles they stock for PS4/XB1. In 1982 walk into a video store or record store and see how much content they had. Lots of content is good thing for your platform, lack of content is what kills it.

 

When a market oversaturates what typically happens is the weaker players are forced out and the stronger players survive. Revenues stay roughly even, they don't drop 97%! When Sony entered the console market, Atari exited. When Microsoft entered, Sega left. No market crash, only individual players hurt.

Then people say "oh but the discounting". But bargain bins exist in music, video, and books too, and that doesn't destroy those industries

 

Or people say "the games were bad". Look at the list of games released between 1982 and 85, lots of gems in there, they weren't all bad. Also the market started to crash just as Coleco started delivering arcade-quality visuals to the home, which is something just about everyone wanted.

 

I find all those explanations lacking. The real problem was not oversupply, but lack of demand. Demand simply dried up. It was an influx of what we now call casuals between 80 and 82-- they are enamored by the latest things, but don't have the attention span to stick with it. Same thing happened to Wii- all the rage in 2006, few cared by 2009.

Good points. All I know is that in my little world kids were still enthusiastic about video games in 1984-85. The video game press of the time made a marked turn towards computer game coverage, indicating that appetite for video games hadn't changed -- just the platform. Consider the success of the Commodore 64 around the same time.

 

I should also point out regional variability as well. I think it took a while for video games to catch on where I lived up in the boonies of Northern Alberta, Canada. I don't even remember seeing a commercial for a video game until 1982. By 1984, when I got my 2600, demand was such that popular titles like Ms. Pac-Man were still selling for $40, which was a hefty sum in 1984 dollars. I think the bust caught up with us in '85 though because by that time games were getting harder to find. That could also be due to hardly any games being produced -- blowback from the U.S. based crash.

Edited August 9, 2017 by AtariWarlord

[AtariWarlord]

Don't want to overstay my welcome on this topic, but another idea occurred to me. There may have been a slight generational "blip" between the first generation of video gamers and the second. By 1983-84 that first gen were becoming teenagers or were already into their teenage years. Back then there was a significant "nerd" stigma to video games and being a "nerd" at the time was considered a bad thing. As a result, a lot of kids likely abandoned video games. The industry just needed a new generation of kids to sell to, and they got it with the NES/Sega generation. The difference is those kids stuck to their guns and most of them are still playing video games to this day.