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

are scattered throughout the world and are represented by black dots. E.T. is an adventure game in which players control the alien E.T. from a top-down perspective. The objective is to collect three pieces of an interplanetary telephone. The pieces are found scattered randomly throughout various pits (also referred to as wells). There is no overall time limit. The player is provided with an on-screen energy bar, which decreases when E.T. performs any actions (including moving, teleporting, or falling into a pit, as well as levitating back to the top). To prevent this, E.T. can collect Reese's Pieces, which are used to restore his energy or, when nine are collected, E.T. can call Elliott to obtain a piece of the telephone, or the player can save the candy pieces for bonus points at the end. After the three phone pieces have been collected, the player must guide E.T. to an area where he can use the phone, which allows him to call his home planet. Once the call is made, a clock appears at the top right of the screen; E.T. has to arrive at the landing zone before it reaches zero. Once E.T. gets to the forest where his ship abandoned him and stands and waits in the designated area for the ship to come, the ship will appear on-screen and take him back to his home planet. Then the game starts over, with the same difficulty level, while changing the location of the telephone pieces. The score obtained during the round is carried over to the next iteration. E.T. has three lives and if he dies within those three lives Elliott will come in and revive him. E.T. can get a fourth life if the player finds a geranium in one of the wells. According to the manual, a game can end "when E.T. runs out of energy or when you decide to quit playing". An icon at the top of each screen represents the current area, each area enabling the player to perform different actions. Antagonists include a scientist who takes E.T. for observation and an FBI agent who chases the alien to confiscate one of the collected telephone pieces or candy. The game offers diverse difficulty settings that affect the number and speed of humans present and the conditions needed to accomplish the objective. == Development ==

Following the commercial success of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in June 1982, Steve Ross, CEO of Atari's parent company Warner Communications, began negotiations with the film's director Steven Spielberg and its distributor Universal Pictures to acquire a license to produce a video game based on the film. Later that month, Warner announced its exclusive worldwide rights to market coin-operated and console games based on E.T. Although the exact details of the transaction were not disclosed in the announcement, it was later reported that Atari had paid ( when adjusted for inflation to ) for the rights, a high figure for video game licensing at the time. When asked by Ross what he thought about making an E.T.-based video game, Atari CEO Ray Kassar replied: "I think it's a dumb idea. We've never really made an action game out of a movie." On July 27, 1982, after negotiations were completed, Kassar called Howard Scott Warshaw to commission him as developer of the video game adaptation. Kassar informed him that Spielberg asked for Warshaw specifically and that development had to be completed by September 1 to meet a production schedule for the Christmas holiday season. Although Warshaw had spent over a year working on consecutive development schedules for games (seven months working on ''Yars' Revenge and six months on Raiders of the Lost Ark''), he accepted the offer based on the challenge of completing a game in a short time frame and at Spielberg's request. Kassar reportedly offered Warshaw and an all-expenses-paid vacation to Hawaii in compensation. Warshaw considered obstacles as an element that would determine the success of a game, and experienced difficulties when taking into account the time constraints and technical limitations of the console. Inspired by the film, adults were implemented as antagonists that would chase the alien. Pits were devised as an element to hide the pieces of the phone as well as expand the game world. Believing the concept too derivative of a common game design, Warshaw proceeded with his concept, which he believed would capture the sentimentality he saw in the original film Emanual Gerard, then part of the Office of the President of Warner, later suggested that the company had fallen into a false sense of security by the success of its previous releases, particularly its console version of Pac-Man, which was commercially successful despite poor critical reaction. == Reception ==

Anticipation for the E.T. video game was high, and Atari hoped it would be a sought-after Christmas gift. At first, retailers ordered more supplies than what was expected to be sold, but Atari received an increasing number of order cancellations as new competitors entered the market, which they had not anticipated. John Hubner and William Kistner of InfoWorld have attributed the cancellations to changes Atari initiated in its relationship to distributors. On November 1, 1982, Atari informed them that their contracts were canceled and that exclusive deals would be established with select distributors. Hubner and Kistner believed the action prompted retailers to cancel orders, which Atari had not properly tracked. The game sold over copies by the end of 1982. However, at least 669,000 copies were later returned in 1983. One retailer said that "mostly grandmothers" bought the game; because of word-of-mouth, children preferred the best-selling Pitfall! Even though the game was a bestseller during the holiday season, retailers still stated that its sales figures did not meet expectations. Warner Communications also expressed disappointment at the number of sales. Despite sales figures, the quantity of unsold merchandise, coupled with the expensive film license and the large number of returns, made E.T. a major financial failure for Atari. Critical response Upon release, the game was criticized by reviewers, with the gameplay and visuals both areas of concern. New York magazine's Nicholas Pileggi described it as a loser compared to other games Atari could have released during the time period, such as Donkey Kong and Frogger, In 1984, the game was named by readers of Softline as the second-worst Atari program of 1983, after Congo Bongo. Nevertheless, the game received some positive contemporary reviews. An editor for The Miami Herald described it as difficult to learn to play, but believed that doing so was worth it. For Vidiots Kevin Christopher, "about the only flaw with an otherwise A-1 game" was that E.T. repeatedly falls back into holes. Arcade Express scored it six out of ten in December 1982. Len Albin of TV Guide wrote that "after seeing the motion picture E.T. 14 times, there's no more suspense left—unless you bring home this one-player cartridge", adding that "it's certain that your patience won't run out—if you're a kid. (Adults may prefer to wait for a game based on My Dinner with Andre.)" Later reviews were comparably negative. Kevin Bowen of GameSpy's Classic Gaming called the gameplay "convoluted and inane", also criticizing its story for departing from the serious tone of the film, Modern critics have also bemoaned the repeated need to fall down pits. Classic Gaming argued that despite the negative reception, the game can be enjoyable after the player has learned to navigate the pits. Interviewed for the PBS documentary The Video Game Revolution, Michael Dolan, deputy editor of FHM magazine, gave E.T. a similar ranking. Townsend placed E.T. at the top of his list of the worst video games, and said that "about a third of the people I quizzed came up with this title almost instantly, and it's not hard to see why." GameTrailers ranked it second worst on their "Top Ten Best and Worst Games of All Time" list. Critics often attribute the poor quality to the short development time. Warshaw does not express regret for his part in E.T., and believes he created a good game given the time available to him. == Impact ==

E.T. is often cited as one of the most important video games. GamePro, GameTrailers and Bowen cite the game as the first poor quality-film–video-game tie-in. Patrick O'Luanaigh of SCi Games called it the most famous disaster story among film-inspired video games as well as within the industry. GamePro publication named it second-worst movie game ever, citing it as an example of how poor gameplay can bring negative reception to strong licenses. Billboard magazine's Earl Paige reported that the large number of unsold E.T. games, along with an increase in competition, prompted retailers to demand official return programs from video game manufacturers. However, even before E.T was released, the industry was in an overall economic downturn from multiple factors, and E.T itself did not contribute greatly to the collapse, outside of Atari, by mid-1983. The release timing led to the game gaining the reputation of being responsible for the 1983 crash. Reiley commented that the game's poor quality was responsible for ending the product life of the Atari 2600. Buchanan also cited the game as a factor in Atari and the industry's crash. He stated that the large amount of unsold merchandise was a financial burden to Atari, which pushed the company into debt. ==Legacy==

Atari video game burial '' and other Atari materials uncovered during the excavation In September 1983, the Alamogordo Daily News of Alamogordo, New Mexico, reported in a series of articles that between ten and twenty semi-trailer truckloads of Atari boxes, cartridges, and systems from an Atari storehouse in El Paso, Texas, were crushed and buried at the landfill within the city, which was covered with concrete. It was the first time Atari dealt with the landfill, which was chosen because no scavenging was allowed and its garbage was crushed and buried nightly. Atari officials and others gave differing reports of what was buried, but it has been speculated that most unsold copies of E.T. are buried in this landfill, crushed and encased in cement. The story of the buried cartridges was erroneously regarded by some as an urban legend, with skeptics—including Warshaw—disregarding the official accounts. The burial of the E.T. cartridges is also the basis for the independent 2014 science fiction comedy Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie, based on the webseries of the same name, and features Warshaw. In December 2014, the Smithsonian Institution added an excavated cartridge of E.T. to their collection. In 2015, The Henry Ford museum added to their collection several excavated cartridges and a video touchpad, a sample of landfill dirt taken from the site of the burial, and items of clothing worn by the excavation team. A selection of these items are on permanent display. The Centre for Computing History in Cambridge, England, also received some artefacts from the desert, which are on permanent display in the museum gallery. Attempts to improve the game In 2006, Dennis Debro disassembled E.T., added comments to the generated source code, and released it to the public. In January 2013, programmer David Richardson released several unofficial fixes for the game. Patches included the removal of pixel-perfect collision detection, which caused E.T. to fall into a pit every time his sprite touched a pit entry. == See also ==