Talk:E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (video game)

Statement

in fact, nearly all who purchased the game sent them back to the company.

This statement couldn't possibly be true. Tens of thousands of game purchasers spontaneously mailed the game back to Atari? ElTakko

I assume the game purchasers returned them to the retailer, and the retailer returned them to Atari. Quote from Ray Kassar: "We made five million and practically all of them came back." See p.238, "The Ultimate History of Video Games", Steven Kent. Pfalstad 03:55, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

According to Video_game_crash_of_1983, retailers returned unsold games to the publishers for credit for allocations of other games. Would Atari really allow consumers to return their games just because they didn't like them? (I don't think so.) Someone else can answer this.

Well the retailer decides whether to accept returns from consumers. Back then, you could easily return games without giving a reason, like any other return, because cartridges couldn't be copied. Pfalstad 10:32, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

The game is also known, oddly, for a wilted flower found on one screen: E.T. could be made to urinate on the flower, causing it to grow healthy. If E.T. revives the flower, E.T. is allowed one additional rescue from Elliot.

Actually, I can't find any reference of this now. Certainly at the time of its release, urinating on a flower was the height of humor for the game's audience, typically in middle school. People who knew of the game and had actually gotten past its suckitude to play it a bit liked to comment about the flower. Oh well. Koyaanis Qatsi

Sorry, KQ, I didn't look at the page history; I thought some joker had added the 'urinate' bit. But like so many others, I had the game as well. And from the times I played it, I don't ever remember a part about E.T. urinating on the flower. He raised his neck and caused the flower to come to life; I never saw anything that resembled urinating. E.T. may have been famous for Drew Barrymore saying "penis breath," but Spielberg didn't stoop to toilet humor -- and at least in this case, neither did Atari. --Modemac 01:17 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Interesting. I distinctly remember it, but hell, there have been studies done showing that people can be caused to "remember" seeing Bugs Bunny at Disney Land, which would never happen (he's a WB character, not Disney). That makes me want to look for a working 2600 and E.T. cartridge. LOL. Koyaanis Qatsi

Reportedly, there is a 2600 emulator available on the Web called "Stella." Literally hundreds of ROMs from the original 2600 games are also available online, though of course it would be a copyright infringement to actually download the E.T. game and play it with "Stella." <cough, cough>  :) --Modemac 11:59 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'm inclined to believe you, that what I remembered didn't happen. I'll look into the emulator once I, uh, get a 2600 and an E.T. cartridge, so I don't violate any copyrights. Interestingly enough, I wonder if those forward-thinking souls who wrote the DMCA thought about format obsolescence: what would they do to get the information off a copy-protected item with an obsolete format? Koyaanis Qatsi 15:00 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I have never seen a serious legal analysis of the use of emulators and classic games. Fortunately, the copyright holders don't seem to care for the 2600 and for MAME, but there's no guarantee that won't change in the future. I fear the day may be coming soon when there isn't easy access to emulators and classic game images. The practical matter is that if a copyright holder decided to go after indivudals, the individual would probably be better off settling rather than risking their life savings.

---

From another version of this page, now redirected here:

E.T was seen by some as a notorious video game flop, released by Atari in 1982, often cited as a factor in bringing upon the video game crash of 1984.

The background follows as this: In 1982, Atari's parent company, Warner Communications, acquired the license to produce a video game adaption of the popular film E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and promised Steven Spielberg that the game would be released in time for the 1982 holiday buying season. Designer Howard Scott Warshaw, who had already seen success on his games Yar's Revenge and the game adaptation of Raiders of the Lost Ark, was chosen to design and program the game. However, due to the time-frame of the contract, Warshaw was only given six weeks to go from concept to finished product.

Amazingly, he was able to finish the game in that time. However, when it was released, it was received negatively by the public for its confusing and frustrating gameplay. Nearly all five million cartridges printed by Atari were returned, and were ultimately shipped to a landfill in Alamagordo, New Mexico, where the cartridges were crushed by a steamroller, buried, and covered in concrete.

By the end of 1983, Atari posted a $536 million dollar loss, most in part to the E.T. debacle. As the market began to slip, Atari was in poor shape to survive intact, and was divided and sold as the American video game industry nearly collapsed in 1984.

Years afterwords, the story of the returned cartridges being buried in a landfill was first believed to be an urban legend. However, research soon proved that the account was indeed true.

I didn't think it was that bad...

"Worst game ever?" Sure, a royal pain, but I found it less annoying than Adventure to be quite honest - I was going to change the wording to something more NPOV but the evidence in support of the comment is too great for me to do so...oh well, whatever. :) StopTheFiling 20:34, July 18, 2005 (UTC)

I loved the game too. I am surprised to read how the game was a huge failure. It taught you to be efficient in searching. I think I'm gonna fire up my non-cable ready TV and play the game! Royalbroil ^T : C 16:18, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Why bad gameplay?

Maybe someone can explain why E.T. is such a bad game? --Abdull 10:45, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Let me count the ways... I played the game a lot as a kid. First off you only start with a very limited amount of energy. Doing anything even walking depletes it at an alarming pace. Run, which you'll need...Oh you want me to explain in the 'article', okay..Jarwulf 21:43, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

This Wikipedia entry is about an opinion, it should be corrected.

I agree with the guy that says this game is better than Adventure. I thought E.T. was one of the greatest games for Atari 2600 until I got Internet access! No, just kidding, I still think it's great.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.124.124.254 (talk • contribs)

Where were the cartridges buried?

the snopes article [1], says New Mexico, and has sources. I didn't see the x-play thing. It wasn't just a joke? Did they find anything there? Pfalstad 14:47, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Edge "making of" article

There's a feature on the making of this game in the latest issue of Edge. It contains lots of things that would be useful for this article - for example, the programmer disputes the rumour that the unsold cartridges were buried in the desert, stating that given Atari's financial situation at the time, it would have cost far more to transport all the cartridges out there and bury them than it would to simply have them recycled.--Nick R^Talk 16:28, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Should I stick this in as a reference?

An old Time article states this: "1983 E.T. becomes a video game --and flops" That's all it says on the subject, but it does mention it. Should I add it as a reference or not? I only bring it up because of the lack of printed material we can find. I never do know what to do with references that I look into that don't actually add any actual information... [2] I'll keep looking into back issues to see if there's anything better. --SeizureDog 21:57, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Good article nomination SORT OF useless

The page is already A-class. on the assessment scale, that is better than GA. This is just to make a point. KdogDS 20:56, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I know. But the whole A-class thing is stupid for being stuck right between two ranks that require a formal system. --SeizureDog 18:30, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Minor sentence change in Intro paragraph

This article looks great since I took at it last year! To the point, I'm changing this sentence in the introductory paragraph:

The game's great failure became a major contributing factor of the video game crash of 1983.

It sounds as if E.T. was one of the major reasons for the crash. More acurately, it is an example of a major reason for crash(a flood of bad games). So I'm replacing it with:

The game's failure is often epitomized as a major contributing factor of the video game crash of 1983.

--Mitaphane 00:45, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I suppose that works better. It was more of a major reason for Atari's crash than the entire industry's I guess. Though once Atari went down everyone else sort of followed. --SeizureDog 00:59, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

New info, some revision

I've found some new print sources from 1982-84 and have attempted to work them into the development/sales section. I didn't mean to wind up deconstructing the prose so much, I just had difficulty making some of this fit. In any case, this is a first attempt on this section. I also have a bit of new info I want to add to critical response section and the atarai landfill section soon. Let me know what you think. -- (Lee)Bailey^(talk) 01:12, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Lookin' good. Additionally, be sure to add those sources under the Books and Newspaper articles sections. What's Sales and Marketing Management? Might need a new subsection to find that. How were you able to find these articles anyways? On a final note, don't forget the thing about not having a space between the period and the footnotes. --SeizureDog 06:38, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi again. Sorry about some of the messy footnotes; formatting wound up being the thing I did last on the section, and by then I was a bit tired. I also didn't format Zap correctly with dates and publisher and edition -- that was pure laziness, and I'll fix it now. :) Sales and Marketing Management is an uncreatively titled trade journal, which ran a little piece on an Atari exec who was around during the ET fiasco. Most of these were located via Proquest (a subscription-based online database of old newspapers and magazines that is accessible from many libraries for free). I recommend Proquest to all Wikipedians, it's extremely handy. -- (Lee)Bailey^(talk) 19:07, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I've now gone ahead with a very rough attempt to re-write the landfill section so it's less speculative and more verifiable. Feel free to revert, reintroduce info, etc -- this is just a first try. -- (Lee)Bailey^(talk) 01:03, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

High importance

If this game is considered to be one of the catalysts of the video game crash and it's only of "mid" importance, I'd like to see what the criteria is for "high" importance. Hbdragon88 09:33, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

The way I usually hear it from non-biased sources is that E.T. was not really a cause of the overall video game crash, but merely the most high-profile symptom: game companies rushing substandard games onto market, and assuming they'd sell just because video games were the "in" thing. Because of the movie license, and because it was Atari itself (who really should have known better) rather than some unknown third-party company, it was one of the most visible symptoms of this syndrome (along with the equally high-profile flop Pac-Man), and therefore it's the one that usually gets the blame for the crash. It did spell financial doom for Atari, but it was the glut of crap for all consoles that killed the whole console industry for a few years. - 67.191.254.83 22:34, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

True enough, Atari had a slew of problems. But E.T. was basically the straw that broke the camel's back. And it was one big straw.--SeizureDog 20:27, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Esperanto version says different

The esperanto version of this article states the "common desinformation" about cartridge copies being produced more than actual machines.Martin Kuštek 17:10, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Retail cost?

Hi all. I'm wondering what this video game retailed for when it was released. Anyone know? -Quasipalm 04:54, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

That's a good point that I missed. I'm assuming around $50. Atari games were expensive and had a high profit margin. Of course, that's before everyone realized it sucked. Could find it in dollar bins not too much later. I'm not sure if I've got a source anywhere that says though... But yeah, video games have traditionally had about the same price throughout their history. Hard to imagine paying so much for those old games now, eh? --SeizureDog 04:50, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Wow, $50 -- no kidding! According to this calculator that's $99.68 in today's dollars. I'll keep googling around for a source because I think it'd be an interesting addition to the article. -Quasipalm 18:32, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, maybe I mispoke. This site says that 2600 games usually sold for between $12 and $35. I guess it was more in the NES era that games got stuck around $50. Or $200 if you were a chump.--SeizureDog 20:11, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Urban Legend or not?

(my bolding in both quotes) "Today the story is often misrepresented as an urban legend, despite considerable documentation of Atari's dumping on record in the city of Alamogordo. As recently as October of 2004, Warshaw himself expressed doubts that the destruction of millions of copies of E.T. ever took place, citing his belief that Atari would have recycled the parts instead in order to save money.[28]"

Then we have 3 paragraphs down:

"The indie rock band Wintergreen released a music video for their song "When I Wake Up" that retells the urban legend of the mass burial of E.T. cartridges. All the cartridges were actually fake. The music video is an idealistic imagination of the Atari landfill story, with the cartridges being simply buried in the middle of the desert in relatively pristine condition.[2]"

Is it an Urban Legend or not? Alexj2002 00:48, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

It is something that actually happened, and the urban legend surrounding it is almost entirely correct. Wintergreen retells the legend in an untrue format.--SeizureDog 05:50, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

"As recently as October of 2004, Warshaw himself expressed doubts that the destruction of millions of copies of E.T. ever took place, citing his belief that Atari would have recycled the parts instead in order to save money."

He's said it more recently than that - an Edge "Making Of" interview from either late 2005/early 2006 repeated his statement that he thinks it more likely that the cartridges were recycled rather than expensively buried. I can check out the exact issue and page number, if you want. --Nick R^Talk 11:51, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, please do.--SeizureDog 07:38, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

"Best videogame ever"

This entire section is wrong and ficticious. Although, when I read it I laughed pretty hard. I'm not going to remove it because it's too damn funny.192.133.12.101 17:50, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Billion / Million

"The game did not do well commercially, and Atari lost over $750 billion worldwide dollars" Errrrrr... What ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.138.211.248 (talk) 14:39, 12 May 2007 (UTC).

Code Monkeys

They made a pretty funny episode of 'Code Monkeys', explaining (in parody) why this game sucked so bad. This could be added as a note. JimmmyThePiep 22:18, 11 August 2007 (UTC)