But it’s not fair to put that entirely on E.T.! E.T. The massive losses plunged Atari into a nosedive and the console industry in the west crashed shortly thereafter. But eventually the project was scaled back to just digging the landfill and forgetting about it. It was then proposed that the remainder be buried in a New Mexico landfill, where they would congeal together into a vast life form called Atarilla, that they could harness with a saddle of bone and leather and use to avenge themselves upon an uncaring world. And out of 4 million cartridges pridefully manufactured by Atari after they closed their eyes and stuck their fingers in their ears, about 3.5 million came back unsold or returned. So under that kind of pressure those mewling little shits on Christmas morning should have been grateful that the result didn’t melt the console into hot slag and set fire to the tree. And even for a game that would take up less memory than a plain text document of every positive thing anyone would ever say about it, this was a bit on the tight side. Furthermore, Atari wanted the game done by September 1st, to be ready for the ever-lucrative Christmas sales, but development only began at the end of July. Atari had to license the movie rights for a start, and was so confident the game would be a hit that they threw $20 mill at that alone, most of which was later used to mop up Steven Spielberg’s tears. Honestly though, the game itself is virtually irrelevant in the face of what was going on around it it did not cost 125 million fucking dollars to make pixels fart at a green wall. So it’s at least equally as fun as rhythmically banging your head on a wall. When you are running away from an enemy, the combined footstep sound effects can be used to create a funky boom box beat. Your health is constantly ticking down, like you contracted pit rabies, until you die, at which point a small child runs in and kicks you in the stomach till you wake up, ensuring there is no escape from AstroTurf hell. Well, if it was at all possible to make something approximating a good game on such a console, you probably didn’t do it with the adventures of an incomplete rotary telephone farting around a meadow, constantly falling into pits because he stepped on a darkened section of floor, or stepped vaguely near a darkened section of floor, or climbed out of a pit and spawned on top of a darkened section of floor, or because a baby cried somewhere on Planet Earth. Naughty Yahtzee! I was intrigued to know what the hell kind of game would be considered to be “particularly bad” for a wood-paneled console that had more joystick ports than on-screen pixel capacity and sounded like a vuvuzela attached to an elephant dying of flatulence. because they didn’t make controllers small enough to be held by the tail of a newly created sperm. for the Atari 2600 remains the worst game ever.”īut as I considered this video, I realized I’d never personally played E.T. Personally I dislike the phrase, because my first response is always: “Really? Did it cause the crash of the entire western games industry? No? Well, then E.T. Zero Punctuation’s occasional guide to retarded special moments in gaming history īeing self-evidently a patron of internet video reviewers, you are probably used to hearing the words “worst game ever”. Let's all laugh at an industry that never learns anything, tee, hee, hee. I needed a better long-term solution than padding the weeks out with retro and indie games, so I’d like to announce a new occasional series, in which we look back over major events from gaming history and consider the important lessons of those events that absolutely nobody fucking learned. You just keep putting in more of that shiny graphics you like, I’ll just sit here eating my own skin. Has the dry period gotten longer and more obnoxious this year, or is it just me, getting longer and more obnoxious? No fucking hurry, publishers.
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