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I once pondered making a remake/clone of E.T. as a Dragonball game. Think about it, it fits (collect all 7 dragonballs) and might give good justification for fixing some of the issues with the game (these guys can jump, like leap out of a pit in a single bound).
If you read the instructions they explain how to find the pieces of the phone without having to "randomly fall in wells". As E.T. walks around the screens an icon will appear at the top of the screen when he enters a zone. The zones will allow him to: 1 teleport to another screen 2 Send the humans back to their origin 3 Call Elliott 4 Check for phone pieces 5 Call the ship 6 Be picked up by the ship If you press the button while you're in zone 4, marked by a "?", if there's a piece a dot will flash in the pit in which it is hidden. There's very little luck to it.
This is a trauma for the dev. I don t renember his name but he was super successful at the time and he had to finish it in 3 weeks nearly without eating and sleeping. They even got babysitters for him when he was in his 20s. Obviously the game sucked, no one hired him again, he fell down to the bottom right after his prime. He became a psychologist or something like that, helping other game creators since he s the only person gone through that mess.
I don't think it is entirely the fault of the developer considering it was a single man doing this. I believe this was written in something like assembly code which is most low level language to use and will require lot of lines of code to make it way it is. The source code for it is on github and it is over 6000 lines of code.
The reason it was so bad is that the programmers had to have it done in only a few weeks. Great big story did an interview with him. Some of his other Atari games sold very well. Some games like Pokémon red took years to develop and computers had improved
In fact E.T. is one of the best selling games ever made for the system. I believe it's somewhere in the top 5. (Just checked: It's at number 8 with 2.7 million sold! The terrible Atari 2600 Pac-Man is number one at 8.1 million sold). Yars Revenge (one of Howard's other games) is number 20 at about 1 million. His other game, Raiders of the Lost Ark (also his) is at number 25 with about 1 million.
I owned ET back when I was 7 years old. I can tell you that I really liked the game because it had great replay value. The phone pieces were in different places each time you played along with the symbols. This game was actually one of my favorites along with raiders of the lost ark and haunted house. Haunted house is due for a remake. You should do that one! And is this ET version available to play anywhere?
I remember trying to play ET when I was a kid, and i wouldn't say it was "worst game ever", to be more accurate, i'd say it's more like it was just incomplete or unfinished. Which when you look at most games these days that's just expected now. But back then the problem, of course, is that they couldn't update it to fix that. You could see what they were going for and compared to a lot of Atari games, it was fairly ambitious. The devs back then were forced to rush things, in order to release this game alongside the movie. There's definitely been some very, very bad games that have been made since. And Superman 64 is actually another one that gets called "worst ever". But similarly, it was originally meant to be different. The story behind it really explains what went wrong. It was supposed to a much more ambitious game that could have been good. There's a reason it turned out the way it did. The devs didn't intend to make it... what we got. And I'm not saying that this makes these games 'good'. I just mean that when it comes to being the worst game ever made, there's better examples than these, which don't have an excuse.
As much as I love your videos and your very unique video ideas! I AM very worried about your posture, sitting on the couch like that gamedevin for hours all hunched over... XD Very cool vid and idea resurrecting an oldie like this mate.
I was thinking about doing a video very similar to this for around a year now and I'm really glad someone else made it lol Haven't watched it yet but I can't wait
@@TylerGreen oops.. took me 3 days to reply and yes I do game dev I have been for almost 2 years now and I love it I've entered 3 Game Jams and had a blast in all of them The video was great also btw! Well edited and straight to the point Good job! I have a alternate youtube account that I watch game dev on so I'll make sure to subscribe on that
Not bad, but I do have two issues "The phone pieces were randomly placed it was luck based to find them," Yes the locations were randomized, designed to make it so you had to hunt down the pieces instead of knowing where each piece was (your video implies that the pieces are all in the same spot each game) your kept "levitate" ability while in the original's overworld map caused ET to call out, if any well had a piece a dot would flash over it revealing that well had one (I will agree there were annoying to get out of though) For the second one I direct you, loyal viewer to 3:38 where he implies that there are no indicators to tell you where to use the completed phone, watch the top of the screen as he says this and moves in conjunction with the arrows, funny how he is able to call the ship in the spot where the indicator turns in to a square split in fourths, almost like that was an indicator or something Either way the game looks neat and I will certainly be trying it. Edit (after playing): Okay, your video implied wrong, well done on the randomization of the phone piece locations. I would suggest maybe a arrow while ET is levitating to indicate the direction as I did get lost some times trying to figure out general direction (your indication only gives distance and your mini map only worked if the piece was in a 15M range), and MAYBE a bit of programming so that they can't spawn so close to each other (one run I actually found 2 touching each other) but well done. Had issues with some of the trees as I got caught on a twig (indicating barely touched the tree and the game was like "Where do you think you are going?") but the SWAT guy would touch the same part with no problems. Also, idea, I understand the levitate power needs to be used smartly but it depletes as you are heading for the ship, on one run had to use some of it to avoid the SWAT guy during the run to the ship zone and when I saw the level I was at, I got worried I would not have enough to make it to the ship, maybe make it so ET either A) fully refills when he enters the ship zone or B) ET does not use the gauge when levitating in the zone Also had one issue, with the start screen, maybe add a quit button or make it so it opens in windowed mode, had to use the task manager to shut the game down. All and all high 6 low 7 out of ten, not bad for what you had to work with.
Insane how far you've come since the 'GTA in real life' video from years ago, this is mad haha, and i mean that in a positive sense hope you're well mate
Thanks a lot :) I thought you were talking about my GTA in 1 Week vid which I made in Jan then realized you meant my old channel and I recognized your name! How’s it going?? Long time no talk!
@@TylerGreen I'd been wondering what everyone from Leeds is upto nowadays and coincidentally (or maybe with the way social media works, probably not so coincidentally) I saw your name pop up on my Facebook yesterday, think it was on the FB messenger pane or something. And then I remembered your old RU-vid channel from back in the day and I thought I'd try googling that name or your actual name and see if you'd still been uploading anything, and then i saw this and it was a pleasant surprise to say the least!
@@TylerGreen I'm good, based in London nowadays for work, although that's not where I actually am at the moment haha, I'm back home on the other side of the world for the time being with the travel restrictions And to my extreme surprise, I actually have been doing some here and there on this job, never thought I'd do it again but it turns out all those classes in Leeds were actually super helpful hahaha how about yourself mate?
Let me get this straight....you took the world's worst game and turned it into an actual interesting, playable, beautiful game that I want to play? You're a beast
I have a Spectrum ROM clone version of the Atari 2600 version of ET called E.T.X. The Spectrum one is pretty much the same but has Speech. I also noticed the call zone and pick up are on same screen compared to the Atari version. Should call it E.T.R (R means remake or remaster).
Haha I know it’s a joke but honestly an interesting idea. And glad you liked the video! I really like your devlogs so that means a lot coming from you!
The idea of your video was good but you should of kept the 8-bit graphics as the graphics weren't bad for the time and just made the game itself better. Because it wasn't the worlds worst game. It was at least a game once you figured out how to play it. If you look at any game on the atari, they all looked like that back then. The problem with the game is that the rules were not clear at all and atari was putting out a ton of rushed crap. E.T. was HUGE and when a big name game came out being so unclear it was unplayable people had enough.
I owned the game back in the day. I never knew it was deemed the worst game ever, and kind of feel it gets a bad rap. Same could be said of the 2600 Ghostbusters. If ET wasn't rushed, it probably could have been better. The concept of the game was fine, and probably would have played better if it had the time to work out some glitches.
@@TylerGreen - of course back then, you couldn't release the game and a few weeks or months later release patches and fixes over Steam, so you either figure out a workaround, or take the game back and get something else. But I kept mine until letting my cousin borrow it. Think it all got pawned off. ☹️
Congratulations, you found all the issues and improved them! Now all you need to do, is... . . . . . . . ... I dunno, maybe port your remake to some console
Getting out of the "wells" or pits is easy! In the well, you push up on the joystick to rase E.T.'s neck and rise up. AS SOON as you're out of the well and on the overhead screen, STOP pressing up and press in ANY OTHER direction to move off of the well opening.
I didn't play it, of course, but it would've been better with the pits. I know it was one of the flaws in the original version, it just works the levitation better than just flying in the air just to get away from the government agents. Elliot's house wasn't in it either. At least you got the forest, Reese's pieces, and the phone pieces correct. You did your best. That's all that matters.
The reason why the original game had the phone pieces in random locations was to make the game replayable since the pieces would not always be in the same place. I do however like your idea that there is a map to tell you where the pieces are.
I disagree with et being the worst game ever made. One the theme of the movie and the movie itself doesn't really have a clear way to make that into a game especially on Atari . Also the game was rushed and made by one guy so he couldn't really give a lot of thought on it and take the time to code and fix bugs. Also coding was extremely hard to do alone back then. I'm not saying that its a good game but not deserving of the worst there are a lot of games that are worse like big rigs where u couldn't even beat the first level
The developer was basically one guy, and they pressured him to have it out by christmas, so one man, by himself, had to use the technology of the era to create a game from scratch and have it polished and playable in less than a year.
Actually you made the game easier which made it much more playable for today's standards. Did you know that when you're waiting for the ship to arrive, there mustn't be any of the guys in the same room; I mean E.T. HAS TO be alone for the ship to arrive. That makes the game even more difficult..
There’s actually 2 tree models but one is more dominant than the other lol. It wasn’t a huge priority for me but you’re right - ideally I’d have more variety with the trees
The Atari 2600 version of E.T. has the reputation of being the worst game of all time, but that's not true. It's not even the worst game for that system. It's not even the worst game for that system in that year! The main reason people poo-poo on it so much is because of those &%^&@# pits! Once you learn the correct way to get out of them* it's not so bad. Considering Howard Scott Warshaw only had 5 or 6 weeks to program it to make the upcoming holiday season (most games for the 2600 took 3 to 6 months to develop), I'd say he did a pretty good job. He also did Yars Revenge, which is considered one of the best original games for the system, so we know he can do quite good when given time to do so. * One trick is to hold the button and push up as soon as you start to fall in. This way you can avoid going all the way to the bottom and save yourself some time. In any case, don't let go of the button until you are totally clear of the pit!
If you know to play, and know how to use the glitches Easter eggs and “keep people away” mechanic, and always try to enter wells from the bottom to avoid the pixel overlap that makes falling into wells over and over again not occur this game isn’t that bad at all. Congo bongo is imo the worst game ever
what a great idea... but i would love a game developer try to remake to game but using the limits of atari coding. Reason the game was so bad was because the maker had to rush to make the xmas deadline. I wonder if someone could make a better e.t. arari game that didn't have to rush. In other words.... 'what if...it had been different'
I'm actually quite surprised the game looks quite good. I mean it's no masterpiece game of the year but for what it is it looks enjoyable, way better than the original version that is for sure.
