Earthworld Worse Than ET?

[NovaXpress]

Leaving aside the criticism of the games (though I think Earthworld makes ET seem like Grand Theft Auto by comparison), we always see ET blamed for the downfall of Atari. I think that Earthworld did far more damage to Atari's reputation.

 

The hardcore gamers, kids like me who were lucky enough to be getting a few new games every month, were the ones who had the most interest in Earthworld. After the Pac-Man debacle, the 2600 was given a new lease on life by Imagic, who made the 2600 look cooler than anything else on the market. The Colecovision was right around the corner, but Atari still had the hearts and wallets of the hardcore gamers. Those of us who held out for the 2600 were jazzed about the Swordquest challenge. Improved versions of Adventure (remember that EW was originally titled Adventure I) with real treasure as a reward? Who needs a new system?

 

Then came that first game we played, when all we could say was "Why?" Why did they give me a boring, illogical puzzle instead of a game? Why is this no fun whatsoever? It was that first game that caused most of us to give up on the Swordquest challenge and look to systems other than our old Atari.

 

I had Earthworld the first day of its release. That was my last 2600 game I purchased for a long time. One month later, I had a Colecovision with Venture (and I expected Tunnels&Trolls and Dracula to be on the way as well, you Connecticut Leather-wearing bastards) and didn't look back to the 2600 until the crash hit and the games were being liquidated.

 

ET burned the mainstream fans, but by that point the hardcore gamers had already moved on to better bit-mapped pastures.

[liquid_sky]

I totally agree. It assume pretty much went like this in many households:

 

"Wow, a game with a comic and a contest to win a sword? KICK ASS!"

*Pops game in the Atari*

"Uhhh.. is this copy defective? Err.. you mean I have to sit thru 4 games of this just to win a sword? Fuck this man, I can go play Coleco and buy a pocketknive from Kmart"

[+DamonicFury]

I have to agree here... as much bad press as E.T. always gets, the Swordquest games are far, far worse! I can still enjoy a round or two of E.T. today, just as I did when it first came out. But those Swordquest titles are just unbearably tedious (just as they were when they first came out!)

 

There's no real way to tell which game scorched Atari's reputation the worst, but I'm sure we can all agree that a long history of overhyping games that were average to poor led to Atari's downfall. Had they had anything like Activision or Imagic's quality control, the history of video games would be quite different.

[Cootster]

Earthworld = highly ugly, even for the time.

ET = Relatively decent graphically, as good as any non-Neubauer Atari-brand game ever got.

 

Earthworld = Absolutely unplayable and completely pointless without the comic book.

ET = Very playable, perhaps with annoying bits, but still a very functional game.

 

Earthworld = Nothing more than a giant, really boring Easter Egg.

ET = Contains a really sweet egg.

 

So, yeah, why doesn't that series get the blame it deserves? Especially since it was never even finished and two of the prizes were never awarded . . . It may have been considered a less likely candidate for Stupidest Game Promotion Around A Bad Game Ever if Airworld, well, actually existed . . .

 

Charles ought to do a SwordQuest page at Duds . . . And hunt down the unawarded prizes . . .

[hepcat]

This is a tough one, but I'm gonna have to say that E.T. is a little better than Swordquest: Earthworld. "Better" in the sense that it's "better" to have a car run over your foot 100 times instead of 101.

 

--Jason

[Tempest]

I'm not sure if its fair to compare any game to the Swordquest series. They're unique in that they were created specificlly for use in a contest. They're really not normal games, they're a contest tool.

 

Tempest

[+Random Terrain]

The Swordquest games made me sick. E.T. had original gameplay. Even those who hate E.T. must be able to see the difference between an actual complete, original game and something that is just a collection of lame, unoriginal mini games that aren't even half as good as the originals. Here's a quote I agree with:

 

http://www.randomterrain.com/gamedesign/gameplay.html

I personally object to episodic games where you play one screen of Space Invaders and one screen of Breakout and one screen of Galaxian and one screen of this and one of that. To me, that's not a game. It's just taking five bad games, putting them together, and calling them one good game. I'm philosophically against that.

--Eugene Jarvis (Joystick Magazine, September 1982)

 

Although it's way better than the Swordquest games, I don't like Pitfall II either because I hate games where you have to go back to an earlier spot (like most Nintendo platform games) and I don't like enemies that just rhythmically go up and down, rhythmically walk back and forth, or fly by as they rhythmically go up and down. I like enemies that know you are there and come after you. Pitfall II is just an exercise in perfect timing, and to me, that's not fun. Do you limbo under or jump over? If you don't jump at exactly the right spot, you get sent back to an earlier position. I agree with this quote:

 

http://www.randomterrain.com/gamedesign/ra...randomness.html

One of my best tricks is to make every damn possible thing random. If something repeats (for example if your character looks left and right) don't make it ping-pong in perfect timing like a metronome. Always slip in randomness so that something that does repeat never looks the same twice. Nothing in your game should move to a "beat."

--Dave Perry (Next Generation Magazine, January 1997)

[NovaXpress]

Looks like we hit a nerve here. I have never in my entire life as a consumer felt as ripped off as I did when I played Earthworld. It probably changed my whole outlook on buying products. Because I learned that the packaging and the hype can blow your mind, but still hide a piece of garbage.

 

They're unique in that they were created specificlly for use in a contest. They're really not normal games, they're a contest tool.

That is the perfect review. And that's the very problem. Atari sold these as "games" alongside all their other games, they wanted us to think they would be fun. They had to have known how people would react when they got it home. No one at Atari recognized how awful this was?

 

I felt like Atari was saying "Ha, ha. Fuck you stupid kids." Even Pac-Man and ET at least show that an effort was made to be good. Earthworld proved that Atari did indeed think we all were suckers. Not a good way for them to kick off their next-generations system was it? It's no coincidence that Colecovision and the C-64 took off immediately afterwards.

[SteelerFan]

I hated all the "blah-world" titles....waste of time on my behalf

[Dino from Bula]

I remember trying to convince myself that some parts of that stupid game were like Frogger...so it was good...right? Wrong. Sucked, sucked, sucked.

 

I even hated the comic...of course, DC Comics sucked, too.

 

Oh, good lord, I truly hated EarthWorld. Truth be told, programming in BASIC on the C64 a blackjack game was more fun. Programming a TRS80 Model One was more fun.

 

I hadn't thought of this since you guys mentioned it, but the last games I bought were right after EarthWorld...Keystone Kapers and Spider Fighter. I hated those, too (alright, Spider Fighter was a decent slide shooter)...I started buying just for my C64 and Intellivision right after. For me, yes, SwordQuest killed it.

[moycon]

I wasn't near as dissappointed with Earthworld as I was with Fireworld.

EW had smooth, mini-games with pretty graphics. We stayed up til 4am the first night we had it, to try and solve the mystery and get those great prizes.

 

My only complaint was there was enough of the mini games. Thats why I was excited as hell about FW. I couldn't believe they had crammed so many mini games into this one, that is until I plugged it in the cart slot and turned the power on. Was this game even finished??? It seems buggy or something, enemies seem to apppear and disappear, get bigger and smaller at random, sometimes the mini-game ends and I have no clue why....did I get hit? Man what a complete and total turd of game. As boring as Laser Blast and as fun as Math Grand Prix.

 

ET on the other hand.... Is an awesome game. Great graphics, Decent sound, Action, Adventure, and a reason....nay a goal, a definate goal with an actual ending once completed. What more could you ask for??

 

WAHAHAHHAH!! But moycon, Those pits... I fall in them... I hate those pits!!! WAAHHH!!

 

Oh shut the hell up and take the 5 minutes it takes to master the pits my friend. You wont be sorry you did.

[NovaXpress]

EW had smooth, mini-games with pretty graphics. We stayed up til 4am the first night we had it, to try and solve the mystery and get those great prizes.

So after that first night how much time did you spend with it?

 

The pits in ET really do suck, especially for the little kids who wanted this game (most of the big kids were playing Zaxxon by this point). If HSWWSH had fixed the pit problem, this game wouldn't be so hated. You can mock those wth poor gaming skills, but these were the kids who turned off ET in frustration (I knew these kids and saw it happen) and damaged Atari's rep. ET was a bad move for different reasons, but not even in the same realm of disaster that the Swordquest games reside in.

[bjk7382]

My only complaint was there was enough of the mini games. Thats why I was excited as hell about FW. I couldn't believe they had crammed so many mini games into this one, that is until I plugged it in the cart slot and turned the power on. Was this game even finished??? It seems buggy or something, enemies seem to apppear and disappear, get bigger and smaller at random, sometimes the mini-game ends and I have no clue why....did I get hit? Man what a complete and total turd of game. As boring as Laser Blast and as fun as Math Grand Prix.  

 

I would blame FW's problems on Todd Frye. He was the least schooled programmer, much less than HSW and some others that had degrees. If you watch OUA you will find that out.

 

I think t he only two good games he did were the prototypes (save mary, and Xevious) And those were obviously his later titles. And in OUA he says when he came up with the idea on how to do xevious, he went home one night and smoked a joint with psylocybin, and cocaine and it "Came to him" on how to do it.

[Brad2600]

I have Both Earthworld and Fireworld but I have never turned them on ONCE to play them. Just not my cup of tea.

 

Hell, I was too young to know what was "cool" and what was not as my family first got Atari when I was 6 and my brother was 8.

 

However, we put more hours into E.T than any other 2600 game we had. Althought, Trick Shot and Commando Raid got a lot more playtime.

 

I've gone off the topic but hopefully I've made my point.

[NovaXpress]

I think t he only two good games he did were the prototypes (save mary, and Xevious) And those were obviously his later titles. And in OUA he says when he came up with the idea on how to do xevious, he went home one night and smoked a joint with psylocybin, and cocaine and it "Came to him" on how to do it.

 

So can we blame Pac-Man on heroin then?

 

I'm really not impressed by Warshaw's work either. He knew how to push the system, but often forgot to make it fun. I think Yars is simple and fun but way overrated. I can name fifty 2600 shooters I liked better. Raiders and ET were interesting but flawed as games and Saboteur is what it is.

[liquid_sky]

nah, pacman was a cocaine induced affair. Heroin programming would be something like "Configure a MAKEFILE for Unix systems without getting the shakes when entering important system information"

[NovaXpress]

The typical programmer drug seems to be Mountain Dew.

[candiru]

I have a new found respect for E.T. after finally reading up on how to actually play it and spending some time with it. I don't play it that often, but on the other hand, I can tell you exactly how many times I've played Earthworld and Fireworld.

[The Eidolon]

I think Earthworld was a worse game than ET, but it is quite possible

that ET did much more damage to Atari's future.

 

1) ET was a licensed product, and Atari paid an outrageous sum to

get the license. If the game flopped (which evidently it did) Atari could

suffer much more damage to it's fanancial status than the harm

Swordquest did

 

2) Probably more people (and more young kids) saw and were frustrated

by ET than by Swordquest. I have the feeling that Swordquest targeted

a slightly older audience than the "kid friendly" ET, and they are less

likely to be turned off an entire system by one stinker. If Atari had

turned out a great game for Fireworld, all would have been forgiven...

 

--The Eidolon

[NE146]

That the Swordquest's are worse than ET is a mantra I have repeated on these boards several times over the past couple of years.

 

DEATH TO SWORDQUEST!!!!!!!!!

 

That being said, I won't go on a E.T. lovefest because although it's decent, but it aint all that great either. There are plenty of 2600 games that anyone would rather have... But yeah, it is definitely better than Swordquest. But then again, Swordquest is better than Skeet Shoot.

[cimerians]

Swordquest wasis the worst game on the Atari that I played.

 

I had wayyyy more fun playing E.T. and I didn't like that game much either.

 

Swordquest was definitely the worst for me.

[Cootster]

But then again, Swordquest is better than Skeet Shoot.

 

Eh, at least Skeet Shoot has . . . an objective? Some reason to actually play it, even if only to see how bad it sucks? And the horrid controls on it are almost good with an ultra-sensitive PS2 pad on emu . . . SwordQuest is still bad . . .

 

And they got progressively worse, too . . . It's the WCW Champion David Arquette of Atari history . . . And, well, do they exist either?

[Kuddy]

I remember playing Fireworld for about 30 seconds when I first got it in the mail... and then spending the next five minutes kneeling in front of the toilet.