Not sure if your going to or not in , but don't forget to mention in late 1986 that the federal government abolished the nation wide 55 mph max speed limit ... Now that's worth celebrating
Exactly I watch that Atari game over documentary Warshaw was rushed into making the ET game he wanted to do it within four to six months, Atari told him can he do it in six weeks because they were kissing Steven Spielberg's ass. Also the merger with Time Warner didn't help either
ET was part of it. So was the upcoming 8 bit computer boom. Another part I believe is that individual artists were not credited for their work, which is why the best developers left and formed Activision. The devs that stayed on with Atari weren't the kind that rocked the boat. Whatever Atari's leadership told them to do, they simply just did. The end result was crap product.
I'm so used to video game companies doing this now, I've been conditioned to accept it. I will never buy a game on release out of hype. Now I wait a few months for the bugs to get worked out and for QA to do their job.
Also I felt it was unfair to Howard Scott Warshaw, the man was rushed into making this game he mentioned that it would take four to six months and he wanted to design it differently.
@@stargazer007 It wasn't Atari producing bad games. It was other companies Atari couldn't control making bad games. Everyone thought they could get rich making and selling a cartridge for the 2600. Of course, that also meant software competition for Atari. That's why Nintendo put a lockout chip in their game consoles. That lasted for a while at least.
@@theannoyedmrfloyd3998 Very true. I owned an Atari 2600 when I was a kid. However, I can be a lazy researcher . . . so I generally put out comments to bait those more knowledgeable than myself just so I can learn something new. 😁
Actually ET was more the first casualty of Atari's collapse than the actual cause. According to be book "Replay: The History of Video Games" (a great read by the way). The actual collapse of Atari began 18 days before ET was released when Atari slashed their quarterly earnings forecast from 50% to 15%, due to increased competition from 3rd party game developers. The investors that had been pumping billions into the video game industry (and expecting huge returns) panicked and started pulling out their investments. Atari's stock price dropped by 66%, stores immediately began cancelling orders in droves. Atari had produced millions of ET cartridges expecting huge Christmas orders from retail stores. Suddenly they were sitting on millions of cartridges they couldn't give away (literally so many were produced they couldn't even pay anybody to take them) so they sent them to the dump.
Let's also not forget their terrible port of Pac-man! They actually produced more cartridges than there were total systems sold, falsely believing that it would increase demand for the system to the point that they needed that many copies of Pac-man.
It was really hard. You had to find pieces of a telephone, assemble them and "phone home". I think my mom managed once. My 10 year old self got bored and frustrated from falling in so many holes.
@@Chuked I don't know brother, my gaming started with the arcade video games. The ones you would put in a quarter and played a 16bit game or what ever those arcade games were to going to 8bit crap. I had an Atari game system and it was crap.
I played it as a kid it sucked. Too hard, no storyline. Kinda fitting that the cartridges ended up in a hole, just like the player did when playing the game
ET was indeed a bad game, but there's more to Atari's downfall than one game. They played the short game instead of the long game. Think quick cash grab and then get out.
They knew the Atari VCS/Sears Video Arcade/2600 wasn't meant to last for more than a few years. But because Space Invaders put them on the map and gave them 70% market share in 1980, they couldn't help themselves keeping that old thing going. Maybe if they released the 5200 in 1981, or just focused on Atari computers and retired it? Then if you wanted to play Pac-Man you had to buy the new system. Instead Pac-Man sold like 2-5 million more 2600 consoles for a running total of 15 million sold. And their competitors were mostly brain dead too. Mattel's Intellivision was D.O.A. after Atari got Space Invaders, and Coleco sold 2 million ColecoVisions on the strength of Donkey Kong (though they sold 4 million Donkey Kong carts to the 2600). But then they failed with the Adam computer, girls stopped buying Cabbage Patch kids, and they decided to sell their own version of the 2600, first with an adapter then as the Gemini.
7:50 - Just FYI, in 1982 dollars that $30 E.T. cartridge was selling for $80.55. Eighty f*cking dollars. Can you imagine an $80 kids movie spinoff game today? A Dad reading that single page of newspaper ad could get his son a football (with a tee), his wife a 6-quart pressure cooker and his daughter a blouse for the cost of a single 8-color Atari game. I think I understand why so many 80s parents were so anti-videogames. In those terms, it really does seem like a conspiracy to exploit parents via their children.
New technology is usually expensive at first. Those same parents had no problem dropping $800 on a VCR to they could record TV. That’s $2150 today. Plus like $50 each for blank tapes.
@@rogerszmodis VCRs only got popular after the 1984 Supreme Court ruling against Sony that said it was legal for citizens to record broadcasts off their own TVs. The huge initial price investment was only tolerable because for the first time ever people could record any TV program they wanted and keep the copy forever. The $50 blanks were no big deal because you could erase and re-record over them. Thus it created new assets as it went along and had years of re-use potential. Videogame consoles created nothing; if you wanted something new, you paid $60 for a new cartridge from a store. Didn't like it? Too bad. Console gets replaced? Too bad, buy a newer one.
@@harveywallbanger3123 VCRs were already very popular, that just helped. Universal didn't start that lawsuit in anticipation of people wanting to record TV.
It definitely sucked. You couldn’t figure the path to the goal of the game. Its like being stuck at the beginning of a book. No heightened drama, no challenge, no climax, no end....lol!
I played Adventure for the first time yeara back and its so primitive its not much more than an oddity but there are clear goals, items, and an endgame.
Some people said as little kids they couldn't figure out Adventure without instructions. I don't know whether to take their word for it, as game number one seems obvious and easy to me.
@@gerRule Except, you can't avoid them. You HAVE to fall into them to look for the phone parts. It was difficult to play. You can fall into the potholes by touching them anywhere, but you can only get out from the bottom and one of the sides. Can't get out from the top. And you had different kinds of powers, but you could only use them based on your location in the screen. An icon on the top center part of the screen changed depending on the current power you could use. Kind of a mess to control and to make sense of it. Still we had the time back then and we didn't know any better. I think it was too ambitious for the time. Kind of awkward to play, but I had fun with it.
My Dad brought home a Pong game in 1972. We had hooked it up to the TV set and would play that thing for hours! It was way popular at Thanksgiving and Christmas of that year. We had ourselves a time. Yessiree!
It was a sandbox game like Grand theft auto but on Atari 2600. With the 2600's limitations of course. It had the alien E.T., Reese's pieces and helping him phone then get home.
@Fern the plant I doubt anyone can really claim their generation had the "best" anything! We all have to struggle growing up with the mess our elders left us with. I seriously hope that I do not become so fearful ov change that I bad-mouth youths for bringing about new technology and ideas because that is why & how our species has come so far in such a limited timeframe. I find it amazing! Knowing that my gran had to wash her clothes in a river with rocks & sand but we can use machines. Not to mention vaccines saving babies! I am excited to see what comes in another 50 years (if I make it that far, our food has a little bit more plastic than is probably safe lol)
I actually played that game a lot. The holes were irritating but after a while you got used to them. You could reach a point to where you’d catch yourself in the middle of the fall and get out before you hit the bottom. I found the game really easy to win.
Disappointment is a b----, and little kids couldn't play it and got frustrated, so their parents returned it. I didn't buy it but played it at a friend's house and could win it at age 12. Later on, I learned to get past the stuck-in-the-hole frustration and could win multiple rounds. Raiders of the Lost Ark was worse that I couldn't figure out anything on my own that wasn't explained to me in the manual and later online (some kids called Atari to get the complete walkthrough) and even then it was rigged so you couldn't get full points. When I got Swordquest: Earthworld and Fireworld on the cheap years later, those games were worse: unplayable. Atari put out 15 games in 1982 and 6 were hits selling over 1 million (Pac-Man, Defender, E.T., Berzerk, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Yars' Revenge), then released 33(!) games in 1983 and two sold over 1 million (Ms. Pac-Man and Centipede).
I moved to Alamogordo NM in 2003 and the ET game "urban myth' was one of the first I had heard... second was the "down winders" from the Trinity site. I was pretty stoked to see them confirm the legend. It was a weird town though, so I wasn't surprised 🤣
Makes me wonder if there were other landfills we don't know about, since they said they dumped less than a million at that one. Still, if it cost a couple bucks to make the chips, carts and packaging, that means they lost over a million dollars.
They ought to have made the game about the flying bicycle - that was an iconic part of the movie. I don't remember anything whatsoever about ET falling into holes.
Ok, if you call staying in business for another 14 years being ended by one game that didn't live up to its expectations... E.T. was FAR from the worst game Atari made, and much farther from the worst games other companies were putting out. I enjoyed it, the pits were kinda hard until you figured out the trick to get out. I had a hard time with getting abducted by the professor and taken to the laboratory. But when you finally beat the game, NOTHING was better than hearing that tune when you helped E.T. get home.
Agree. There were much worse games on the 2600 than this one.The biggest problem was the collision detection with the pits. You'd get out, and then accidentally fall back in just trying to walk away. Like you said, once you got the hang of it, not a terrible game. Too bad Atari rushed it out. A few tweaks, and it could've been a really great game.
Little kids couldn't play it so their parents took it back. Maybe if it had been a bicycle chase game? I think going all-in for another year of the Atari 2600, instead of saying give it to your little brother and get a better system gave them short-term profits for long-term losses, as they figured out how to manufacture the 2600 cheaper too. Warner would unload the Atari console and computer divisions in 1984, but kept the coin-op Atari. No 2600 games by Atari came out in 1985, so regardless of who owned it through 1989, it was pretty much done.
I had hoped Atari Archive would confirm that, as I suspect they made 10 million (one for every console sold) and sold 8 million, the number one seller. I suspect they unloaded another 2 million by bundling them with consoles in 1983. They didn't put out any new catalogs in 1982 after Pac-Man, and I suspect they were taking them out of unsold boxes and putting them in every other cart from late 1982-1983. Pac-Man was still number 4 on Billboard's list by the beginning of 1983 behind Pitfall! and Donkey Kong (months after it was released) whereas E.T. had fallen out of the top 10.
ET wasn't a great game, but anyone who lived during that era like me could probably name dozens of games that were as bad or worse. ET was just a particularly high profile failure. The Atari 2600 port of Pac Man, of which gameplay footage was included in this very video, was also considered a high profile failure. It only barely resembled the arcade version and was derided for how terrible it was. Yet nobody talks much about that. (The 2600 port of Ms. Pac Man was actually very good though) As to ET, it offered examples of randomized gameplay and nonlinear objectives. Which may not sound like much in 2020 but at the time that was at least something. Most games then were sidescrollers or other things that were "on rails" in a way that ET was not. I'm not offering a full-throated defense of ET. It wasn't great. But it did innovate in a few ways and was nowhere near "worst ever".
Couldn't agree with your comment more. Many of those commenting weren't born yet when the game came out, and when compared to modern games, I can see how it is easy for younger people to jump on the "worst game" bandwagon. You are right, "wasn't great" but it was innovative in some aspects. If it hadn't been rushed to the market, a few tweaks could have made it great.
I think it's because A. it was a first-party title so a bit of quality was expected and B. it was a licensed game based on a very high-profile movie. Plus Atari spent $20 million on just acquiring the license. It tells you what to do in the manual, btw. A bit ironic given that some gamers want manuals to make a return... when they never bothered reading manuals in the first place lol. It was ambitious, but a bit overambitious, especially when the guy had only 5 weeks to program it. The fact the game even functions is definitely a feat worthy of respect. Seriously there were games that were in development for longer and they're worse, such as Karate on the same system.
Everybody talks about Atari Pac-Man (except in this video). But Pac-Man fever was such that kids would play anything, including Coleco's terrible handheld version. But if it were designed better it might have sold another 2 million copies or more as they might have anticipated. Of course, the best deal was if they had released the 5200 for Christmas 1981 bundled with Pac-Man. They might have sold 5 million of those instead of 5 million 2600s.
okay honestly this video was kind of half-assed ET was only one part of the reason why the video game industry crash not the entire reason/also the video game Crash really only affected America Europe and Japan was basically unaffected
@@CmdrTomalak you clearly did not even watch the full video because he did say that caused the gaming crash also even if he did not say that he would still be wrong because that's not the only thing that ended Atari there were other factors too so how about you get your facts straight before you say something that makes you look like a moron
E.T is my favorite movie. It always will be. But I was so scared of E.T when I was younger. Now I’m older and not scared of E.T but I still don’t watch it at night.
We had an Atari console, but never that game. I was really young, (about 5 years old) at the time. My brothers and sister, were way older, so I was interested in what they were doing back then, and joined in playing games and watching movies, along with them.
I did when I was just a child of about 9 or 10 (1980-something), I think I was just home sick from school or something, and I was just playing games, I didn't expect to beat E.T. (it wasn't the coolest, I just beat it and got some kind of score at the top of the screen.)
After I figured out how to get out of the pits (most of the time), the game again gets frustrating when an enemy shows up on the screen when the spaceship is about to rescue you, making you have to cancel, and phone home another time.
The New Mexico burial had more to do with Atari's overall bankruptcy and less to do with the specific failure of the E.T. video game. Atari was making room in thier factory at El Paso, because they were renovating it to become a sort of community center. They needed to do something with all of that unused, unsold inventory, so they buried it all in the desert, including several copies of E.T. Atari had likely had another burial where they buried unsold E.T. games from the store shelves, but that would likely be near thier headquarters in California.
I guess they didn't want to drop prices. Maybe people would have bought more copies of Centipede if they were cheaper. But they also over-produced as the chip shortage had ended and every retailer wanted to sell Atari carts after Asteroids, Missile Command, and Warlords sold so well in 1981.
It is funny how all these people that weren't even born yet when that game came out jump on the "worst game" bandwagon. It certainly isn't a great game, but I remember me and my friends playing it as kids when it first came out and the falling in holes thing was annoying, but it certainly wasn't universally hated at the time. Was it great? No. Worst ever,? Definitely not.
Chase the Chuckwagon was probably the worst. For Atari, Earthworld and Fireworld were two of its worst (and Slot Machine). And if you did win Fireworld and sent in the correct answer, you had to write an essay saying how the game was the greatest of all time to get invited to the contest.
You know, whenever I hear people complain about today's graphics, as if they are experts, and they pick on the most ridiculous things, I just think back to that era. Hmm, you think the water isnt reflective enough, or the wings on the butterfly don't look exactly the way you think they should? Well I used to play games where I was a rectangle! No arms, no legs, no head, no voice. Just a rectangle. Then, along came one of my favorite games on the Atari: Adventure! I believe that's what it was called. You were a square. You moved a square around the screen, and that represented you. And I was excited to do it. Younger people today, don't have the respect they should for these game developers. Games today look amazing compared to back then in the late 70s, early 80s. When someone is talking about a modern game, and says, "this game has the worst graphics ever!" I just laugh and think, you have no idea what you are talking about. I was a square, and didn't think twice about it.
@@wishmakr we got the original NES when I was like 4 or 5, maybe younger I’m not sure. But I agree, in my opinion graphics can’t get much better besides looking exactly like a movie. And I feel like those old games are way more playable today than a lot of new games
In the right hands an E.T. video game reboot might be a success. With all the advances in video game technology, I'm surprised that a developer with feelings of nostalgia hasn't attempted to bring back Elliott's best bud.
I had Atari and ColecoVision. I had ET but just like the movie, I don't remember much about it. I spent all my time playing the same 5 games: Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Burger Time, Pitfall, and Kool-Aid Man.
Yes ... it was BAD. I was barely 5 or 6yrs old at the time. I think it's my first memory of feeling EXTREME frustration. Your ET got stuck in a hole, and you always did, and good luck getting out. You were eternally stuck. And if, by some miracle, you got out? The dude that was always after you pushed you right back in. The game was a never-ending struggle to get out of the hole. From what I recall, there was just no point to the game. I never thought back to that disaster until the internet reminded me of this god-forsaken game.
Our Atari still works if you can find a tv old enough to hook it up to. We have ET. I was too young to really appreciate how bad it was at the time. I wasn't very good at it. I was only like 4yo or something.
Never played E.T. I kind of soured on Atari after Pac-Man. The Atari Pac-Man had none of the charm of the arcade Pac-Man. Best game from Atari at that time was Adventure.
I remember this story first hand. That was a was crazy time in consoles and computers. I had an Atari 800 XL computer after the consoles kind of died out before getting an IBM clone computer, as they were called back then. It was a fancy one too with a Hercules graphics card. I do remember getting a Playstation console and the short-lived Dreamcast. I really liked the Dreamcast but it hardly had any games and didn't last long if I remember right. I was active in the BBS world but I had joined a system called Delphi in the early '90s because they offered access to this new national network that had linked all these different universities and other organizations together in something called the internet. Been on ever since. I even had an AOL subscription. :) I really miss the BBS world though. It took a while before the internet reached the capabilities of the dial-in BBS but it was never really the same. It was a text- based world but it was amazing what you could do with text. The door games were fun and they were all multiplayer, sort of, and interesting. I remember putting hours into Trade Wars. Interesting times.
Yeppers my brother Chris and I had that for our 2600 and man it was so bad, I'm surprised that it didn't effect even Steven Spielberg or anything or there won't have been other great films like jurissic park, back to the future trilogy and so forth. Great video
4:34 - Originally, "Combat" was supposed to be built into the main console, while still allowing for a system to determine whether or not a cartridge is inserted. The 2600 has the memory for the game; you can take the combat cart out while it's playing, and STILL be able to play it.
One of my cousins actually had E.T. on the original Atari way back when; I was there when my uncle gave it to him for his birthday, he was the living picture of excitement. Of course we were really young children, so we weren't aware of the monstrosity it really was, so we booted it up and... stopped playing about 5 minutes later. Uncle got really mad when we said we didn't want to play it because it was really bad. Weird History, you should consider doing a piece on the quarter shortage caused by Space Invaders; not many people are aware of that particular piece of gaming history.
LOL. I guess that's why so many parents returned it! I didn't know I was allowed to return games, or I might have returned Canyon Bomber and/or Star Raiders! There were video game magazines that had reviews, but how many people read them, or tried games before buying? I played Space Invaders and Dodge 'Em before my parents bought them at age 10. Don't remember trying out any others. I played 3rd-party Activision and Imagic games at other kids' homes, but didn't buy any of those, though I liked some.
I remember all the games on discount from 10 cents to a dollar, all piled into huge bins. I must have been 5 years old at the time. Plaque attack, asteroids and Yar's revenge were my favorites.
Here's a couple videos ideas: The Murder of Dimebag Darrell The death of River Phoenix Something about Pro Wrestling How Jaws became the first Blockbuster Summer movie
I was six in the early 80's when I played ET, and I literally thought I was just plain bad at it... but I feel reassured about the after seeing this video, lol
Wow! Did you do ANY research on this, or just write down what 'Some guy heard happened'? PONG was first placed in Andy Capp's Tavern... and it wasn't their first game. E.T. sold 1.5 million copies, hardly a failure. E.T. wasn't the 'worst video game of all time. Apparently you've never heard of games like The Cheetahmen, action 52, or Hong Kong 97. (Or some would say, Sonic 06) Activision was the first 3rd party developer, they did NOT subcontract for Atari. Far from it. Atari didn't just decide to dump millions of copies of ET in the desert... it was 700000 various cartridges, many being overstock or returns and other hardware and stuff from an Atari factory that was closing down. That's just off the top of my head. I'd have to re-watch it to see what else is wrong, but I don't want to give this the extra hits. If you do THIS bad a job of research on a recent page in history, just what other misinformation are you giving us in the other videos?
Joseph Torres, Thanks for correcting these goofballs. I suppose this thing coulda been worse, but it’s riddled with idiotic mistakes. Worst games? Not only the ones you mention , but 2600 Ssssnake and almost anything by Panda.
The claim of Activision as subcontractor made me skeptical of the rest of this “history”. Some more details about Activision here: www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1537/the_history_of_activision.php
The landfill thing was reported in 1983 by The NY Times and other outlets. It was NEVER a myth or mystery. The “mystery” of ET in the landfill was manufactured hype. Those of us who were paying attention in the early 80s knew for fact that those games were buried there.
I had the game as a kid. All my friends had it as well. I was able to win it. It's not impossible but it's not that great of an adventure game. If he didn't die simply from walking, it'd be a lot better
That's a good point as the energy system was also a drag. I was able to finish it multiple times a few years ago before running out of energy, but I could see that being a pain for kids. So it wasn't just falling in the hole repeatedly, it was the energy costs to get out each time!
I really enjoy and appreciate the Timeline series. I drove by Alamogordo shortly before Covid, and I knew these cartridges were buried there. What I'd like you to do a video on is the UNDERGROUND TUNNELS OF TULSA, OKLAHOMA, built by Phillips 66 oil tycoon Waite Phillips, benefactor of the Boy Scouts, because of the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping-murder ordeal, afraid to walk down a public street. The tunnels are still accessible today. I also think Weird History and Atlas Obscura should collaborate. Thank you for your excellent work. 27
I did indeed own this game, after my parents acquiesced to my years of begging and got me an Atari right before the death of the company. My father helped pick games, and decided himself that E.T. would be a great game. Of course, I was simply excited and agreed to it. I was a kid, and I knew E.T. Surely I would love it. I played it for hours on end, and even made it to the finish line. I don't remember what happens at the end, but I remember it was anticlimactic and disappointing. The game would come out now and then over the years, but I never completed it after that first time. Playing it was just too frustrating, because it wasn't just the pain of playing it... it seemed to change direction depending on the mood. I ended up quitting and just popping in some Midnight Magic. Now that was a satisfying game.
Yes, I played it on a friend's console and it was exactly what you saw. Pacman sucked too on Atari, the flashing and bad controls made it unplayable for me, it was fine on the Colecovision.
I received the game that year for Christmas. Still have my console that still works. Despite the bad reviews, I actually like the game and beat it the following year. I was in fourth grade at the time.
I remember getting it for Christmas. That year it was E.T. everything for Christmas. But I was 7 years old and the only thing I remember about playing was that I couldn't figure out how to play. I think I got bored with it and quickly forgot about it. I got an electronic hand-held football game that Christmas too. That game was infinitely more fun.
ET was truly an awful game and that's saying a LOT when all Atari games were a blob of squares moving around. Beyond Asteroids, Tennis, Pong, and similar games, they were all pretty much a waste but they led the way for advancements. Now look at the games and their graphics. Insane reality!
to be honest, here in the UK we didn't have a video game crash, in the early 80's gaming was incredibly strong here and systems like the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Atari 800, Amstrad CPC and BBC model b ruled over consoles. (possibly the golden era of gaming)
I'd like to know more. Possibly you were a year behind, and only the good games that sold in North America went to Europe? I think there were a couple games for other systems that were only released in Europe (and Brazil) for PAL but not North America.
I remember my brother playing pitfall:) I was only 3 or 4 and so I couldn't play until he got the next gaming system. I liked Gouls and Ghosts from Sega I think it was🙈
The rumor is they buried all the ET games in the land fill, but it was all the Atari games not just ET. There were Yars revenge in there, pacman centipede. Atari folded, and buried all it's left over cartridges. Really, they just threw them out, and the landfill buried them.
Lots of criticism regarding this video in the comments. Still overall pretty good though, many complained that E.T. was NOT the reason for Atari's demise, but even this video admits it was just one of the reasons. Other details included in this video are also inaccurate, for example, Atari did NOT contract with Activision to make 3rd party games. Activision was started by 4 disgruntled Atari programmers who were upset that they were not getting credit for their creations, so they formed their own company. Atari sued Activision and lost, which opened the floodgates for 3rd party game development... which happened to be another big reason for the downfall of Atari- a flood of low quality titles turned people off to the system. Still this video does give the gist of what happened in a concise manner. This is consistent with the style of "Weird History" it is not meant to be comprehensive. For those who want the depth of the story of the "video game crash" it would require a much longer video on the order of 30 minutes or more... of which there are several already on YT. This is a good brief summary of the story for people that are not that into video game history, albeit with a few inaccuracies, still entertaining and well put together.
Atari kinda started to lose it when they repackaged games with the red and silver boxes for cartridges. The graphics on Chopper Command set a new standard that was followed up by a disappointing Pac Man, Ms Pac Man was better but it was too late- Intelivision and Colecovision set new marks and the Atari 5200 was too late.
One problem was Warner was expecting to sell more consoles into a market already saturated. The Atari 2600 was as popular as any other computer system to come (hundreds of thousand units, about the same as the C64 in units) Yes the 2600 depended on a 6502 variant, therefore a computing device. Warner thought it could manage Atari their way. Bad decision In 1979 Atari offered their 400/800 computer consoles, they were expensive at about $500/$1100 dollars, but were built like a tank. I own both units with accessories like disk Drives and printers. That system helped garner me a promotion!
It was also Atari's _Pac-Man_ conversion, not just the _E.T._ Atari 2600 VCS only. And they didn't crash Atari, they crashed the home console-gaming industry/market. Atari went on, business as usual (and business was good!) in their arcade coin-op games, and a line of 8-bit microcomputers, and games for them (such as AtariSoft, the computer-games division of Atari, Inc.).
Heyyo, actually yes! As a child I do remember playing ET on my uncle's 2600 and he didn't have a manual (and I was 4, so I probably couldn't read it easily if I tried heh) and I remember it was frustrating as I had no idea what to do lol... For some reason, I always thought that first pit you fall in at the start was a magic pot... Instead of connecting it to the movie where it's a pit. Silly child me
