I'm showing my age by revealing this but it is actually true and I was, just like everyone else that got duped with the marketing, genuinely excited to play this very heavily advertised game. It is considered on many lists to be the worst game ever made but we have to keep in mind that this list is weighted depending on whether or not the game was made by a major studio. At the time it was released Atari was basically the ONLY big game manufacturer in existence, and they are held responsible for the near collapse of the home video game industry with many people citing ET as being the beginning of the end.
Had it not been for Nintendo rising to the forefront in the mid-80's, I think most people would have lost interest in video games entirely.
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I'm going to take you back to a time when televisions weighed 500 lbs and nobody had remote controls. I was the remote control in my household is the running joke, but honestly, for those of us that were around 5-10 years old during that time, it was absolutely true. In order to play the Atari 2600 you had to flip a manual switch on the back of your TV that was likely attached to it with screws and of course there was always the risk of minor electric shock in the process. What can i say? we had many dangers in those times.
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When I opened my Christmas gift under the tree and ET was inside I, like everyone else in the masses at the time, was very excited. I couldn't wait for the unwrapping of presents to be over so I could go and plug it in. I was imagining the greatest game ever invented and man oh man was I ever let down. I was taken from absolute elation to devastation in just an hour or so as I, like everyone else that ever played the game had some pretty rapid WTF? moments.
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The graphics are terrible of course because all the graphics were terrible on the Atari 2600. ET was in a world of its own though because not only were the graphics blocky as expected, but it was extremely unclear as to what the hell you are actually supposed to do. I am sure this was a frustrating Christmas for my father, who quickly got roped into trying to help me figure out what is going on here. Even with a packed in instruction manual, it was still mind-boggling what the objective actually was.
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For most people, they probably ran around a bit and just repeatedly fell into holes while being chased by some dude in a yellow rainjacket. Once in the hole, which I don't recall that ever happening in the film, you would raise your neck in order to levitate, which also never happened in the film. You were racing against the clock that would count down with each step that you took and I had to watch a video years later to figure out what on earth the objective, and eventually the endgame, actually was in that title. Keep in mind that we had no internet at that time so its not like we could just pull up YouTube to get some hints on how to work this game out.
Whoever made the above video puts on a display regarding how you can actually win this game and because I presume they had a lot of help and practice they are able to do it in less than 3 minutes. Let me tell you, I put several hours into this game in the hopes that I would find some sort of "fun" level that was hidden in it but that 3 minutes, that's the ENTIRE GAME.
ET spelled the beginning of the end for Atari and it was their own arrogance that lead to this game ever being released. They knew this game was garbage but raced it out for sales knowing that everyone was going to ride the wave of fame that the film put into all of us and we would unknowingly purchase something that was known to be an unfinished and garbage product. Despite the absence of internet, the sales shut down after the Christmas rush. Everyone knew very quickly that this game was pure trash and the opinion towards Atari changed a lot after that. Atari was a very arrogant company though and this didn't stop them from continuing to release garbage title after garbage title. I suppose in a way I could understand their arrogance because they had literally ZERO realistic competition at the time. Sure, there was a couple of other systems but systems were so bloody expensive at the time that I only knew a single family that had anything other than the Atari.
We would all basically drop off our interest in video-games at this point in time and we all went and played outside for a few years until the NES was released. It is amazing to me that Atari had the gall to not only turn down Nintendo in a partnership deal, but also to think that they would crush them in sales. Precisely the opposite happened and Atari basically disappeared from the scene in late 1985. Atari still had more arrogance up their sleeves though and would attempt to re-enter the market in the 90's with the dreaded Atari Jaguar.... and we all know what happened with that.
I'm happy that I received a copy of ET for Christmas because it is forever ingrained in my mind as the worst Christmas of my childhood. Imagine being so excited to receive something only to have it hold your attention for about 10 minutes before you were about to break out in tears from the disappointment? Well that was me, in 1982.