Many of you would be aware that a game titled “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” was released for the Atari 2600 in 1982. It is often (unfairly) claimed that it caused the great video game crash of 1983.
The Problems with E.T.
While not a great game, there are far worse games in existence. It was rushed in development and the result was a game that was buggy and very difficult to play. For example, E.T. was green in colour (anyone who has seen the movie knows he is brown), and you could fall into a pit just by touching one with the tip of your head (so much of the game was you trying to get out of pits).
Fixing the Problems
Back in 2013 (31 years later), David Richardson (known as @recompile on the Atari Age forums) went to extraordinary lengths to fix the game. You can read about his amazing efforts in this post on his own website. Member @froggeret went further and made some other fixes. So there are two “fixed” versions of E.T. out there, both are amazing, and the game is far more playable and enjoyable. If you are looking for ROMs, check out this post.
Manual and Cover Art
I am fairly anal in my collecting of retro games, and given the amount of work that was put into fixing this game I felt it was worth having an updated manual to reflect the changes in colours and the fixes in the game itself (new settings and so on). So attached is an updated manual I created for this fixed version. I also updated the cover art, for those putting these games on emulators, and I attach the updated art below.
The game is best enjoyed by reading the manual first, as it won’t make much sense without it (one of the reasons people say the game is bad; RTFM).
Have fun!
