E.T. and Pac-Man

[Gabriel]

Over in the hacks forum, I noticed how Pac Munchkin had hacked Pac-Man into an E.T. game. I thought this was interesting, since allegedly Steven Spielberg wanted the game to be like Pac-Man but Warshaw told him that Pac-Man was too complicated and the ET game being proposed was one he could actually program in 6 weeks (the deadline).

 

So, what do you think? What if the existing Atari Pac-Man game had switched out the graphics of Pac-Man for E.T. and the ghosts for alien catching soldiers? Each of the dashes would become packages of Reeses Pieces. Would it be an acceptable game with this change? Would it be an improvement over the existing ET cartridge?

[bowser724]

There's no way you can improve the existing E.T. cartridge other than removing it from all existence.

[jaybird3rd]

I'd much prefer to see someone correct some of the flaws of E.T. that HSW didn't have time to remedy, such as the placement of the holes. Contrary to popular belief, E.T. isn't anywhere near the worst game for the 2600 (anyone who says that has never played Froggo Karate or Raquetball or Lost Luggage or any number of other REAL stinkers), but it could be made a lot better with some bugfixes.

[Gabriel]

Well, I didn't start this thread with the intention of crying "E.T. iz teh suxxorz N sew iz Pac-M4hn!"

 

E.T. is far from the worst game ever. I'd easily rank any of the Swordquest games as worse. In fact, I got my old E.T. cart after exchanging Swordquest Earthworld. After 1 hour of Earthworld, I was damn happy to get a game as good as E.T.

 

Likewise, despite what IGN and the gaming press at large says, Pac-Man is not the most horrible game ever either. Not too long ago, there was a long discussion about it here. The general consensus was that it was disappointing for an official Pac-Man adaptation. But, if it had been named "Muncher Man" and had not been an official arcade port, then it wouldn't be so widely reviled.

 

Then there's the fact that both E.T. and Pac-Man were programmed in extremely short timespans. As I already mentioned in this thread, E.T. became the game it was solely because it was the kind of game that could be programmed easily in 6 weeks.

 

Spielberg allegedly wanted E.T. to be a game like Pac-Man. Atari's Pac-Man was also programmed under serious time constraints. What if the title of E.T. were on a very slightly modified Pac-Man cart? Would the game have been well regarded in that case? After all, Pac-Man isn't that bad, it's just not really Pac-Man except in the most general sense.

 

And, from what I've read, things like this happened all the time. Programmers would be working on games and then a license would be acquired. Then the game would be slightly retooled to take advantage of the license. I believe that was what was going to happen to Solaris and Star Raiders II (both were intended to be Last Starfighter games).

[jaybird3rd]

Well, I didn't start this thread with the intention of crying "E.T. iz teh suxxorz N sew iz Pac-M4hn!"

 

E.T. is far from the worst game ever. I'd easily rank any of the Swordquest games as worse. In fact, I got my old E.T. cart after exchanging Swordquest Earthworld. After 1 hour of Earthworld, I was damn happy to get a game as good as E.T.

 

Likewise, despite what IGN and the gaming press at large says, Pac-Man is not the most horrible game ever either. Not too long ago, there was a long discussion about it here. The general consensus was that it was disappointing for an official Pac-Man adaptation. But, if it had been named "Muncher Man" and had not been an official arcade port, then it wouldn't be so widely reviled.

Agreed. Pac-Man and E.T. are mistakenly called the worst games on the 2600 (over and over and over again by mindless Internet parrots), but as I've said before, they should really be considered among the most disappointing games. That disappointment had even more to do with overhyped marketing and unrealistic consumer expectations than it did with the flaws in their implementation. Most of the problems with both games can be fixed with only a little bit of tweaking and a few subtle changes, but since it's a lot easier to criticize them and their authors, that's all anyone seems to do.

 

Regarding the original question, I think it would be difficult to use E.T. graphics in Atari Pac-Man because the E.T. game used single-line resolution while Pac-Man did not (which accounts for its blockiness). It could be done, of course, but the sprites would have to be redrawn and they might not look enough like the originals to be effective. It might be more interesting to substitute the graphics in 20th Century Fox's "Alien" game, which was originally programmed by Doug Neubauer as a Pac-Man clone before it had the Alien license (inappropriately) applied to it.

[cbmeeks]

Maybe it's just me....my cousin bought me E.T. (when we were kids) brand new for $0.50. For less than a dollar, I enjoyed the game. :-)

[sukotsu9]

No, I'm glad HSW went with the hunt & seek formula for E.T. There weren't many adventure games for the 2600, and though the pits are a bit troublesome, I never criticized the game. It wasn't until 20 years later on the Internet that I see E.T. was supposed to be so bad. I've loved it since I got it (my family are big E.T. fans).

 

And since E.T. wasn't far ahead of the Crash, why would Speilberg have wanted another Pac-Man clone? Moreover, in light of Atari's moderate Pac-Man programming success.

[nester]

Well, I know it's really famous and everything, but E.T. truly is one of the wost games ever. At least the Swordquest games have the illusion of depth and a variety of puzzles. E.T. has some of the most frustrating gameplay in the history of video games. Any other game would have you avoiding the holes. Only in E.T. would the point be to fall right in. If you're lucky, you'll find a lump inside. Either way, it's going to take you about 20 tries to safely get out and walk three inches to the next hole. I just don't really see what is defensible about this game. By 1983, Atari really should have known better.

[moycon]

Either way, it's going to take you about 20 tries to safely get out and walk three inches to the next hole.

 

Or one try if you take the 5 minutes to "master" the pits.

[Godzilla]

How to tell how good you are at video games (*)

 

(1) Whoops WAAAH! I fall in pits all the time! (X) Lame at Games!

(2) I have learned to occassionally dodge around pits! (X) Ok at Games!

(3) I can sometimes escape the pits... (X) Good at Games!

(4) I run across pits like Jesus on water (X) Great at Games!

(5) This game doesn't have enough pits (X) Hardcore Master of Games!

 

Now, depending on how much skill you lack, you can apply that to how much you will blame E.T. for your sucktitude.

 

(*) or my response to the never ending 'i fell in a pit' posts about e.t.

 

E.T. isn't perfect, but it is a very good game and far from the travesty that sucky players want us to think it is.

 

(^ please read with toungue firmly in cheek. tho I do like ET, im not actually dissing you, it's all for humours effect. ^)

[nester]

Well the thing about E.T. is that you're SUPPOSED to fall in the holes. You have to explore them to find the phone parts. I don't know why anyone thought that this would be a fun scenario for a video game. It's not really a thing that should require a whole lot of skill, but it really takes a long time to get used to it. I can't even count how many times I've risen out of the pit only to fall right back down again. There are probably worse games than E.T. out there, but I can't think of many.

[supercat]

Or one try if you take the 5 minutes to "master" the pits.

 

A bigger complaint for me than the pits is the way that one has to wander around to find the various magic "zones". When I was younger, I thought it was sorta neat that the 2600 could know where everything was even though it couldn't see it, but wandering around zone-hunting really isn't much fun.

[Student Driver]

Well the thing about E.T. is that you're SUPPOSED to fall in the holes. You have to explore them to find the phone parts. I don't know why anyone thought that this would be a fun scenario for a video game. It's not really a thing that should require a whole lot of skill, but it really takes a long time to get used to it. I can't even count how many times I've risen out of the pit only to fall right back down again. There are probably worse games than E.T. out there, but I can't think of many.

 

You're don't have to "explore" the pits. That's why there's a spot on every screen that allows you to see if any parts are contained in the pits before diving in. I'm never gonna understand the "it's way too difficult to get out of the pits" complaint, either. Practice makes perfect in any game, ET included, and in this case it doesn't take much practice.

 

If ET isn't one's cup of tea as a game, cool, but picking on "control" issues that can be resolved by reading the manual is a bad way to substantiate the opinion.

[AussieAtari]

One of the journos from the new Retro Gamer lists ET as his favourite game of all time.

[NovaXpress]

Then there's the fact that both E.T. and Pac-Man were programmed in extremely short timespans. As I already mentioned in this thread, E.T. became the game it was solely because it was the kind of game that could be programmed easily in 6 weeks.

think that HSWWSH was bullshitting everyone. Was it really easier to re-tool ROTLA than it was to hack Pac-Man? Warshaw just became full of himself. He felt like a superstar after Yars' Revenge (he was the first programmer to ever receive credit on an Atari package) and Raiders. Like most superstars, he decided that he was smarter than his bosses so he created the crapfest we call ET. I'm sure it was very fascinating for him to twist expectations by creating an adventure game rather than the action which ET's juvenile fans expected. He was an idiot. Now that he's villified and his reputation besmirched, he comes up with the "I only had six weeks" story.

 

ET is a boring game, regardless of the pits. And with the money at stake, Atari could not afford to release a boring game. In my view, the names Warshaw and Frye belong on a list with Tramiel and Bruno.

[keilbaca]

How to tell how good you are at video games (*)

 

(1) Whoops WAAAH! I fall in pits all the time! (X) Lame at Games!

(2) I have learned to occassionally dodge around pits! (X) Ok at Games!

(3) I can sometimes escape the pits... (X) Good at Games!

(4) I run across pits like Jesus on water (X) Great at Games!

(5) This game doesn't have enough pits (X) Hardcore Master of Games!

 

Now, depending on how much skill you lack, you can apply that to how much you will blame E.T. for your sucktitude.

 

(*) or my response to the never ending 'i fell in a pit' posts about e.t.

 

E.T. isn't perfect, but it is a very good game and far from the travesty that sucky players want us to think it is.

 

(^ please read with toungue firmly in cheek. tho I do like ET, im not actually dissing you, it's all for humours effect. ^)

 

I hafta agree with you there. I'm rated a 4, I still get fraustrated every once in a while, but I did bring ET home several times on the HSC

 

I never liked the game till I gave it a serious look. There is a LOT to it, and I like the difficulty. I think introducing the zones was a very good idea, and all in all, a really good game. You just gotta know how to play it, and knowing is half the battle

[NovaXpress]

I know how to play it. I've gotten the easter eggs. I know how to handle the pits.

 

It still bores the hell out of me.

[Big Player]

When E.T. was released, I had always thought of it as a game for young children. (I was 12 at the time.) The only one of my friends and neighbors who had the game was an eight-year-old. As far as I remember, he didn't have trouble playing it.

 

I didn't know it was supposed to be that bad, but I knew there were too many other good games that I wanted for me to ever consider getting the game. I don't think I played the game back then, I just watched and knew that it didn't interest me at all.

 

E.T. was an overrated movie anyway. Sure it was popular but the merchadising certainly didn't begin to approach Star Wars in value. There were a lot fewer kids clamoring for E.T. toys. Mostly because it wasn't a story that you could play around with in your imagination like Star Wars. But it also didn't help that the movie lacked replay value. Once you saw it, you didn't need to see it again. I've seen it twice, both in theaters in 1982. None of the magic of the first viewing remained for me. I don't know that any E.T. game would have been as successful as they all hoped.

[jaybird3rd]

Now that he's villified and his reputation besmirched, he comes up with the "I only had six weeks" story.

There have been too many people (inside and outside of Atari) who have confirmed the six-week timeframe over the years for it to have been a made-up story by HSW. The Activision group and the Blue Sky Rangers at Mattel, for example, have said that they were aware of the rushed development of E.T. at the time it was happening.

[NovaXpress]

Yes, he had six weeks. But I'm saying that he had a LOT of options within those six weeks. Is a complex object-locating game really easier to whip out than an action-packed maze game? Seems like it would actually take longer. He could have hacked up Pac-Man or Berzerk or whatever instead of reconfiguring Raiders.

[jaybird3rd]

Yes, he had six weeks. But I'm saying that he had a LOT of options within those six weeks. Is a complex object-locating game really easier to whip out than an action-packed maze game? Seems like it would actually take longer. He could have hacked up Pac-Man or Berzerk or whatever instead of reconfiguring Raiders.

Was Berzerk even a finished product at that time (it and E.T. both have 1982 copyright dates)? Pac-Man had come out the previous year and Atari had already been criticized for it, and I can't imagine that anyone would have wanted to see a copy of one of Atari's most disappointing games with E.T. graphics. Come to think of it, a graphics/sound hack of any existing game would have been at least as poorly-received as the final E.T. game was; if HSW had gone that route, we might all be sitting here today complaining that E.T. was a quick hack instead of something original like everyone wanted.

 

HSW was in a tough situation, and I think I can understand his reasoning. The tight deadline meant that he had to borrow a lot of code from another game; there wasn't time to develop and debug a whole new game from scratch. Starting with someone else's game would have meant becoming familiar with someone else's code (assuming he even had access to it) and all of its limitations and bugs and quirks, and then finding a way to change it into something different, and there might not have been enough time for that either. So he had to use one of his own games, and of the two he had done, Raiders was the most appropriate one for retasking with the E.T. license (and was a game that Spielberg had already seen and liked and signed off on). It must have been the most logical choice at the time, and as I've said, it almost worked: with a little more tweaking and playtesting, E.T. would have been a much better game (if not everyone's cup of tea).

 

I'm starting to think that E.T. and Pac-Man deserve their own subforum(s).

[NovaXpress]

Was Berzerk even a finished product at that time (it and E.T. both have 1982 copyright dates)? Pac-Man had come out the previous year

Let's get the release dates correct:

March 82: Pac-Man

May 82: Yars Revenge

August 82: Berzerk

October 82: Raiders of the Lost Ark

December 82: ET

 

Who is to blame for ET? Warshaw or marketing? Of course it would have been nice to spend six months on the game, but the Atari bosses made the deal and needed a hit game produced for Xmas. That sucks, but Warshaw had a lot of options. He totally ignored the fact that an ET game is targeted at small children. He needed something simple and pretty. Instead, he got too high on his own riffs and decided to create something unexpected and complex with no care whatsoever for the fans' expectations(the Tim Burton syndrome). Atari was on a tight deadline, so they had to accept any turd that the programmer gave them (the Tod Frye syndrome).

 

Many programmers could have done better in six weeks time. Warshaw deserves the blame for ET just like Frye deserves the blame for Pac-Man. And Atari should be blamed as well for allowing a couple of renegade programmers to fuck up their system.

[Student Driver]

I know how to play it. I've gotten the easter eggs. I know how to handle the pits.

 

It still bores the hell out of me.

 

This is an opinion of the game I can respect; you've explored the game, given it a chance, learned the control techniques that apparently elude so many others, then decided it wasn't fun for you.

 

I think it falls pretty much in the middle of the pack as far as the basic 2600 adventure games go; better than Fireworld and Earthworld, about on a par with ROTLA and Haunted House, not as good as Adventure and Superman. I like it, but it's rarely a game that I anticipate playing.

[jaybird3rd]

March 82: Pac-Man

Hmmm ... didn't realize it had come out that late. The Pac-Man cartridge has a 1981 copyright date on it, so I figured that was the year it was released. Guess I should have looked that up.

[NovaXpress]

Copyright dates can be misleading. Most people assume that Pac-Man was released for Xmas 81.

 

Now this brings up a new outlook:

Since Pac-Man missed the Xmas season anyway, why was Atari in such a rush to get the code from Frye? Why not take some extra time and release it in the fall? Wouldn't a good Pac-Man have been the perfect competition for Donkey Kong? And if Atari let a surefire hit like Pac-Man slip past Xmas, why not do the same for ET and give the programmer some time?

 

I'll never understand the logic (and lack thereof) displayed by Atari. Under any ownership.