[HN Gopher] Fixing E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600...
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Fixing E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 (2013)
Author : CharlesW
Score : 86 points
Date : 2025-01-31 16:36 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.neocomputer.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.neocomputer.org)
| esotericsean wrote:
| As a game dev who's been learning ASM recently this was very fun
| to read through. Wish there was a compiled ROM I could try, but I
| guess I have to do it myself!
| jnsie wrote:
| I'm not really into this space but he lists some bin files in
| the Downloads section. Is this not the compiled ROM you're
| seeking?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| (2013)
| dang wrote:
| Added above. Thanks!
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Fixing E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 (2013)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23199521 - May 2020 (11
| comments)
|
| _Fixing E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 (2013)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9668734 - June 2015 (20
| comments)
|
| _Fixing E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994180 - Jan 2014 (12
| comments)
|
| Edit: Also related. Also others?
|
| _The making of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the "worst" video
| game_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21828725 - Dec 2019
| (49 comments)
|
| _An anthropological dispatch from the landfill dig to unearth
| Atari's E.T. (2014)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17870402 - Aug 2018 (2
| comments)
|
| _The man who made 'the worst video game in history'_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11148093 - Feb 2016 (209
| comments)
|
| _E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) Atari 2600 Source Code_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7679503 - May 2014 (2
| comments)
|
| _Long-Buried E.T. Cartridges Unearthed_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654240 - April 2014 (1
| comment)
|
| _E.T. cartridges found in infamous Atari landfill_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7652473 - April 2014 (46
| comments)
|
| _Landfill search for 'E.T.' Atari video game is halted_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7444644 - March 2014 (6
| comments)
|
| _Hacking E.T. for the Atari 2600 using a hex editor_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5502356 - April 2013 (1
| comment)
|
| _Hacking E.T. for the Atari 2600 to make it better_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5470446 - March 2013 (1
| comment)
|
| _What is considered to be the worst video game ever? This one
| is._ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=528256 - March 2009
| (3 comments)
| irrational wrote:
| > With a few simple changes
|
| For certain values of simple.
| mrandish wrote:
| Wow. Bravo! This is such an impressive effort. As one of the very
| first home consoles, the venerable Atari 2600 is brutally
| difficult to program. Everything from ROM to RAM to CPU cycles is
| in painfully short supply and the requirement to continually keep
| 'racing the beam' is a harsh master.
|
| My first computer, the Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer, came
| out only a couple years later but even with only 4K of RAM and a
| sub-1 Mhz CPU, was still _much_ more civilized to program in
| assembler than a 2600.
| xer0x wrote:
| The author doesn't mention it, but many people who never played
| E.T. read articles in videogame magazines about this game was
| amongst the things that killed the videogame industry in the 80s.
| (Oh, see dang's post for tons of related links)
| aaroninsf wrote:
| I suppose it's expected since the article was 2013,
|
| but is there a video available comparing original to patched?
|
| EDIT:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23qeQa0exe0&ab_channel=Retro...
| flippyhead wrote:
| Craziness. Strong work!
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Now do Pac-Man.
| brianpaul wrote:
| Google for atari 2600 pacman 4k
| JetSetIlly wrote:
| There's a couple of really good versions of pac-man. My
| favourite is this one. It's an 8k game, unlike the original,
| but it's worth it for the sound.
|
| https://forums.atariage.com/topic/229152-new-pacman-for-atar...
| wslh wrote:
| I spent hours playing E.T. with friends as a kid. We noticed
| something unusual about the game compared to other Atari 2600
| titles--it came with a relatively large manual [1]. We were used
| to simply turning on a game and immediately moving or shooting,
| relying on pure reflex rather than needing instructions. I
| remember the falling problem as an annoying thing but not the
| most annoying: trying to understand the game at first. It is
| critical to highlight that E.T., the movie, was a huge success,
| and there were many products related to that. It is important to
| highlight that there was a lot of pressure to put this game in
| the market [2].
|
| [1] https://archive.org/details/E.T._The_Extra-
| Terrestrial_1982_...
|
| [2] https://www.npr.org/2017/05/31/530235165/total-failure-
| the-w...
| sumtechguy wrote:
| On top of that Atari had a very rushed schedule from concept to
| shipping out the door for cartridge was usually 4 weeks. Longer
| if it was really special.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| Likewise, I played for hours and actually enjoyed it. I also
| really loved Adventure, Superman and similar.
|
| That second linked article (npr.org) is a really interesting
| read about E.T.'s programmer and his experience during and
| after making the game, although the story ends a bit abruptly.
| TLDR; he loved being a rockstar programmer for Atari and was
| paid millions, but had to move on and find a career/life
| afterwards. Spoiler alert: he went on to become a SV therapist,
| helping others with similar experiences. Somehow, the whole
| thing feels prescient for a lot of current-day devs on the eve
| of "The Great AI dev takeover".
|
| On his perspective around the game itself, a couple of quotes
| of particular interest:
|
| _" There's a difference between frustration and
| disorientation," he says. "Video games are all about
| frustration. It's OK to frustrate a user. In fact, it's
| important to frustrate a user. But you don't want to disorient
| the user."_
|
| Also, this resonates:
|
| _" Spielberg looks at me and he goes, 'Couldn't you just do
| something like Pac-Man?'"_
|
| I remember playing the game with an older family member looking
| on. As was apparently the case with Spielberg, his eyes
| absolutely glazed over. But, he got a real kick out of watching
| me play Space Invaders and laughed out loud as the aliens sped
| up.
|
| So, the gameplay itself was the biggest complaint about the
| game. There's a YT video that gets more into the gameplay
| issues, with matching visuals. [0]
|
| In any case, it's insane that he went from concept to finished
| game in only 5 weeks.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj7iICS64iI
| da_chicken wrote:
| I remember the hard part being trying to remember what all the
| symbols did. They were hard to remember.
|
| The game was pretty fun once you figured it out, though. And it
| was brutally difficult on the highest levels. I don't know if I
| ever beat it with both the FBI and scientist on.
|
| The pits were annoying and definitely a fatal flaw, but really
| the problem was just that the game was more complicated than an
| Atari 2600 could really pull off.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Didn't the Indiana Jones game have similar quirks? Maybe I'm just
| misremembering my lack of skills playing the game as a kid, but I
| have vague memories of Indy being blamed for similar things.
| Maybe not to the point of burying the games in a dump bad.
| hbn wrote:
| As far as I understand, the "ET for Atari was so bad it killed
| the games industry" is kind of an
| exaggeration/misrepresentation. Which should probably be
| assumed from how simple the explanation is despite all the
| questions it brings - you can find plenty of people who had the
| game as a kid but not many that will recall it being so bad
| they never wanted to touch their Atari again.
|
| Someone can find some real sources, but I read an article a
| while back explaining that - from what I recall - what really
| killed the industry was supply issue that got out of hand. When
| the Atari started to take off, they didn't have the production
| capacity to keep up with orders stores were putting in. Stores
| were being sent about x% of the size of order they requested,
| so the stores started putting in much bigger order requests to
| get the amount of stock to actually fulfill demand for their
| store. Because of this, Atari figured there was way more demand
| than there was in reality, so once they finally scaled up
| production they were suddenly able to fulfill the giant order
| requests stores were putting in, which was way more than they
| could actually sell. Suddenly stores were overloaded with Atari
| cartridges, and putting them into bargain bins just to get rid
| of stock. From there, it seemed like the home console thing was
| just a fad that came and went. ET just happened to be the big
| game Atari was pumping out units of because of their
| overestimation of demand.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > From there, it seemed like the home console thing was just
| a fad that came and went
|
| lol. boy, is that an idea that didn't age well. I was too
| young to know about all of the business side of Atari, but I
| do know that me and everyone else like me never touched their
| 2600 after getting an NES. In my house, we went with the NES
| instead of the Atart 5200. We did get an Atari 7800 instead
| of the SNES, but I'm pretty sure that my dad decided on the
| 7800 because of the 2600 compatibility where the 5200 was
| not.
| buescher wrote:
| The rumor had it they thought the movie tie-in would be such
| a hit that they produced more ET cartridges than there were
| 2600 consoles in existence.
|
| Supply chain whiplash sounds credible too though.
|
| My vague recollection is that coin-op was never quite the
| same after the crash, and you also stopped seeing as many
| coin-op machines in unlikely places. There was a fad element.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > they produced more ET cartridges than there were 2600
| consoles in existence.
|
| in this manner, you only have to manufacture the game one
| time instead of having to order a second manufacturing run
| later since it was assumed Atari was going to keep making
| more consoles. it was quite the "cunning plan". the rest of
| the world was just not on the same page of their play book.
| i'm guessing MBAs were involved
| bluGill wrote:
| There were a lot of bad games for the 2600. ET because it was
| pushed hard became the poster, but there were a lot of other
| bad games at the time. Many were another variation of the
| theme with nothing else going for them once you have played
| one pac man clone you have played them all.
|
| ET did get a bad rap because of the bugs and it really wasn't
| fun. However the idea itself was sound and if they had spent
| another year in development (which would have been too late
| for many reasons, see above and other discussion) it probably
| would have been a fun game everyone remembers as a classic
| for how good it was - instead of one everyone remembers it
| for the bugs.
| caspper69 wrote:
| So many bad games that they (Atari) buried approximately
| 700,000 cartidges in the desert:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial
| JetSetIlly wrote:
| There's a recent homebrew for the 2600 called "Burying
| ET" about this very thing. Amusing.
| https://florentdeloison.itch.io/burying-et
| oniony wrote:
| I had no idea the Atari 2600 was a 6502 (actually 6507) machine
| until I saw the A9 (load accumulator) instructions in the machine
| code snippets on this article, despite having an Atari 2600 as a
| kid. A9 is burned into my head from sixth form electronics, where
| we would have to manually convert assembly to hex and key it into
| the boards we used.
| dekhn wrote:
| me too, A9 is burned into my head (wrote some machine language
| on 6502 w/o an assembler).
| kernal wrote:
| Looking at the hex reminded me of Cypher looking at the glyphs.
| tumnus wrote:
| "E.T. is not green. I'm really surprised that this isn't a common
| complaint. We'll fix that as well."
|
| ET isn't green in the movie. Why would this be a common
| complaint?
| tombert wrote:
| I think the complaint is that he _is_ green in the game, where
| he should be brown.
|
| I think I might know the "why" to the question, which is that I
| think they might have been worried that a small percentage of
| people would be using a black and white TV and brown might not
| be enough of a contrast.
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(page generated 2025-01-31 23:00 UTC)