E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Ah, poor E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Developed in December 1982 this game is widely blamed for the death of Atari and a major contributor to the great videogame crash of 1983.  Atari reportedly payed an enormous amount to develop E.T. including a huge sum for licensing.  Add to that an extremely tight development deadline of 5 months and you had a recipe for disaster.  Ultimately, the game didn't live up to expectations and the company took a huge loss.

Playing through it again I have to say that I don't think it's all that bad.  You play as E.T. and have to collect 3 items with which to build a device to "phone home." Standing in your way are an FBI man who will steal your items and a doctor who will capture you and take you back to the lab.  It's not that bad though because you can just walk right back out.

What most people hate about this game are the pits.  Each device piece is hidden within one of the pits on 4 of the screens.  First of all, it's very easy to accidentally fall into a hole, either changing screens or just walking around.  Secondly, once you levitate your way back out of the pit, it's very easy to accidentally fall back in.  Since both falling in and levitating back out cost energy, it can get very frustrating.  There are 3 difficulty levels in the game:  Level 3 only has E.T. and Elliot (who will help you with your quest), Level 2 adds the FBI man who will frustrate you to no end, Level 1 adds the doctor as well and is the hardest version of the game.  I decided that "completing" the game would entail one win at Level 3, two at level 2 and three at level 1.

E.T. the Title Screen

AHHH! The doctor's gonna get me!

Eventually, I did manage to accomplish the goals I set for myself.  Near the end I started creating maps of each screen and finding the locations of all 3 items and the "phone home" location before actually grabbing any of them.  In this way, I would have an extended "exploration" phase at first where the FBI man didn't have anything to take from me and the doctor was a minor nuisance.  Once I knew where everything was, I would dash from screen to screen grabbing what I needed, dash to the "phone home" spot, call the mother ship and head to the landing spot.  About half the time, I would fail anyway.  The game doesn't really let you fail completely as Elliot will come by if you die and give you another 1500 energy, but I was considering it a failure and restarting if I died.

Flower easter egg :)

End screen with Elliot

It still only took me a day to "complete" the game but all games of this era are rather short (if they end at all).  I enjoyed myself while playing it, but was getting pretty frustrated by the end of it, trying to beat the hardest level.  It's a pretty simple game, with only six screens, 4 characters and 4 items.  It's worth trying out but it's not likely to be anybody's favorite game.