Why was ET bad?

>>3237749
>it looks just like an other Atari game.
That's exactly why

>In the second half of 1982 the number of cartridges grew from 100 in June to more than 400 in December. Experts predicted a glut in 1983, with 10% of games producing 75% of sales. BYTE stated in December that "in 1982 few games broke new ground in either design or format ... If the public really likes an idea, it is milked for all it's worth, and numerous clones of a different color soon crowd the shelves. That is, until the public stops buying or something better comes along. Companies who believe that microcomputer games are the hula hoop of the 1980s only want to play Quick Profit."

>>3237801
Top selling does not mean good. With shit games like pacman and ET coming out people didnt want to fuck with consoles anymore. In fact having high sales probably made it worse. Everyone gets all hype and buys the game only to find out they just paid good money for overhyped garbage.

>>3237819
>With shit games like pacman
Keep them eceleb opinions going.
Even though PacMan came out like a year before the crash.

>>3237819
When they dug up the New Mexico landfill a few years back, not only did they find a shit ton of ET games, they found a shit ton of other games as well. There were too many games and too many systems with too many Pong and Pac Man and Donkey Kong clones. The bubble burst. Blaming one video game that wasn't actually all that bad to begin with for the video game crash is not only implausible, it has been proven false several times over. Keep spouting memes though.

>>3237836
>When they dug up the New Mexico landfill a few years back, not only did they find a shit ton of ET games, they found a shit ton of other games as well.
Everybody who did any kind of reading about it already knew that shit before they dug it up.

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>>3237819

Pacman is not shit. Your opinion can go in the trash.

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>>3237969
Pacman isn't shit but the Atari 2600 port is.

Kids who hate every atari game need to get off my damn lawn

>>3237749
>programmed in 5 weeks at best with executives constantly bitching
>this lead to sloppy and bug ridden code
>but it was still advertised as the best thing ever

Yet it was also too much ahead of its time. A cool plot-themed spin to Adventure with tons of replay value. Bad rep is mostly through word of mouth and people playing it and expecting to know the fuck they're supposed to do, which they don't and the bugs only make things worse. Fortunately a patch was made to fix most issues and made the game a lot better.

>>3237749
I remember as a kid that the game seemed to be a floating out of pits simulator. Like, I couldn't figure out what to do at all. And let's face it, children were the target audience back then. A better instruction book, a little more hand holding, and it could have been a success. I get tempted to try it out again every once in awhile, but with so may other classics in my backlog, I think it'll probably just remain a tainted memory of my youth.

>>3238136
>but it was still advertised as the best thing ever
You mean the best thing on earth?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VakiwDmJ-lI

>>3238102
they never even tried to recreate the original maze.

>>3237801
My post got deleted when OP is blatantly parroting youtube videos?

>>3237827
>>3237969

It's really a rushed and awful port. The 2600 even with all of its limitations was capable of a better put together port, as evidenced by pac clones like Hack'em.

The crash didn't happen overnight, and commercial failures that had been highly anticipated like Pacman and ET certainly colored public opinion and cemented the industry's fate.

>>3238301
>as evidenced by pac clones like Hack'em.
A game like 25 years after the original and is like 3 times the size of a normal cart.

How about being realistic. The 2600 PacMan is amazing for what it is and it wasn't possible to better with the limitation.

You linking some hack that would be impossible to fit on a real Atari cartridge of the day doesn't change that.

>>3238342
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAYuBcuvIww
This homebrew has the same rom size as the original port.

>>3238491
I don't know what the guy did to know if it was possible back then or not. Judging from the music in that game I'd go with no.

>>3238342
>The 2600 PacMan is amazing for what it is and it wasn't possible to better with the limitation.

None the less, consumers were very disappointed with the port. No amount of talk about technical limitations will change that fact.

>>3238537
Sales show otherwise. Wasn't like PacMan sales just died. They kept up till the crash.
Why there is like 3-4 (maybe more?) versions of the box and cart.

>>3238557
>Wasn't like PacMan sales just died.
Kinda did, I mean half of the sales were pre orders. It sold incredibly well for a short period, the the sales just died.

>>3238576
Most every game has almost all of its sales in the first 6 months.

>>3238580
>Most every game has almost all of its sales in the first 6 months.

Yeah, but this game had half of its sales as pre orders. Do you understand the difference?

>>3238595
Do you mean orders from companies? Because pre orders weren't a thing then.

>>3238603
>Do you mean orders from companies?
No, he means preorders, even though he's wrong. Obviously someone who only heard of the game from that one documentary.

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>>3238126
Leave them alone. They'll never experience the joys of Gravitar, that's bad enough already.

>>3238603
Sure they were. Check out some Atari Age magazines.

>>3238342
>The 2600 PacMan is amazing for what it is

No it isn't, it's trash.

If you can't do it; don't.

>>3238527
Enthusiasts understand the console today better than many devs back in the day. You can do some amazing shit without breaking the limits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNXTJUfZNBY

>used to do part-time work at a pawn shop
>bought an Atari 2600 and a box of ~50 games
>"Oh no I guess we'll have to test them all before putting them out for sale"
>get paid to sit and play Atari with my coworker for 5 hours straight
>a copy of E.T. is in the box
>heard about how shitty it was, but I was a SNES-era kid so I'd never played it
>older coworker insists it's retarded
>we play it for a total of five minutes
>nothing but falling in holes over and over again
>sloooooowly getting back out
>falling back in
>totally unclear what we're supposed to be doing
>totally unclear why we keep falling in holes
>throw the cartridge across the room and go back to playing Space Invaders

tl;dr the game is slow, unclear, pointless, punishes you for unknown failures, and is just fucking boring

>>3244072
>totally unclear what we're supposed to be doing
Did you read the manual?

>>3244072
I like to imagine that hipster kids that "ironically" like E.T. and never saw the movie think it involves E.T. falling in holes for two hours.

The 2600 was my first console, and it had a lot of great games. E.T. and Pac-man are not on that list. Pac-man is a good game, but the 2600 port isn't worth playing since it has no challenge. My grandmother used to sit and play until she got bored since there was no chance of losing. Much like Indy 500 single-player. Not that Indy 500 was fun with friends either, but single-player was pointless.