E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600) Walkthrough and Easter Eggs
'Atari's tendency to port arcade games for its home console had led to some of its most commercially successful games, including the port of its own coin-op Asteroids, and the licensed versions of Taito's Space Invaders and Namco's Pac-Man. But Atari faced great difficulty as a result of its video game adaptation of the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The game, also titled E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, was a result of a deal between Warner Communications and the film's director Steven Spielberg. The objective of the game was to guide the eponymous character through various screens to collect three pieces of an interplanetary telephone that will allow him to contact his home planet.
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'The concept of a video game based on a film, instead of porting an arcade coin-op or building on an established franchise, was unheard of at the time. It was later reported that Warner had paid $20–25 million for the rights, which was at the time quite a high figure for video game licensing. The problem was, rights were acquired in August 1982, leaving designer Howard Scott Warshaw with only five weeks to get E.T. ready for the holiday season.
Top Ten "Atari 2600" Commercials
'Atari manufactured 5 million cartridges for the game; however, upon its release in December 1982, only 1.5 million copies were sold, leaving Atari still holding onto far more than half of the game cartridges. The game was critically panned, and is now seen as one of the worst ever made. Tina Amini, deputy editor at gaming website Kotaku, says the game tanked because "it was practically broken." A recurring flaw, she said, was that the character of the game, the beloved extraterrestrial, would fall into traps that were almost impossible to escape and would appear constantly and unpredictably.
Ma vieille console Atari 2600
'Kevin Bowen of GameSpy's Classic Gaming called the gameplay "convoluted and insane", also criticizing its story for departing from the serious tone of the film. Author Steven Kent described the game as "infamous" within the industry, citing "primitive" graphics, "dull" gameplay, and a "disappointing story". Emru Townsend of PC World discussed the game with a group, and found a universal dislike for the pits that E.T. falls into, describing it as "monotonous". Reiley ranked it number one in a list of the 20 worst games of all time in Electronic Gaming Monthly. Michael Dolan, deputy editor of FHM magazine, has also listed the game as his pick for the worst video game of all time.
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'The game is considered to be one of the causes of the video game industry crisis of 1983. By the end of 1982, Atari had begun to lose dominance as more competitors entered the market. Poor critical reception and lack of a profitable marketing strategy made this game one of many cited decisions that led Atari to report a $536 million loss in 1983 and led to the company being divided and sold in 1984. GameSpy's Classic Gaming called E.T. Atari's biggest mistake, as well as the second largest financial failure in the history of the industry. The game's poor quality was responsible for ending the product life of the Atari 2600.
The E.T. pit problem
'In September 1983, the Alamogordo Daily News of Alamogordo, New Mexico reported in a series of articles, that between 10 and 20 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. It was Atari's first dealings with the landfill, which was chosen because no scavenging was allowed and its garbage was crushed and buried nightly. Starting on September 29, 1983, a layer of concrete was poured on top of the crushed materials, a rare occurrence in waste disposal. An anonymous workman's stated reason for the concrete was: "There are dead animals down there. We wouldn't want any children to get hurt digging in the dump."
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'The cartridge dump was a monstrous fiasco for Atari, at least from the perspective of a small desert town. The company, he says, brought truckloads from El Paso, where at the time scavenging was allowed in the city's landfills. "Here, they didn't allow scavenging. It was a small landfill, it had a guard." The guard, however, was either away or unable to stop scores of teenagers from rummaging through the Atari waste and showing up in town trying to sell the discarded products and equipment from the backs of pickup trucks, Lewandowski, said. Eventually, the city began to protest the large amount of dumping Atari was doing. The local manager ordered the dumping to be ended shortly afterwards.
The ET Burial Theory
'All of these factors have led to wide speculation that most of the 3.5 million unsold copies of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial ultimately wound up in this landfill, crushed and encased in concrete. The conflicting information surrounding the burial has led to the claim of it being an "E.T. Dump" being referred to as an urban legend, which in turn has led to a degree of skepticism and doubt over the veracity of the dumping story itself, and the relevance of conflating the event with the later industry downturn.
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'As recently as October 2004, Howard Scott Warshaw, the programmer responsible for the E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial game expressed doubts that the destruction of millions of copies of the game ever took place. Writing for the Pacific Historical Review, John Wills has also described the burial as an urban legend, calling it "widely acknowledged but rarely substantiated". Wills believed that the location's place in the public psyche—its proximity to the sites of both the Trinity nuclear test and Roswell UFO incident—has aided the popularity of the story.
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'The search for the trove of discarded cartridges has taken on a sort of mythical importance for some gaming fans, who see the mystery of what became of millions of consoles as an explained event in digital culture. It's part of a broader field some call "archaeogaming" that, as you might guess, combines elements of archaeology with the study of video games. And then there's the simple nostalgia for the 1980s in general. A comment by gamer Kascha Klaussen sums up those sentiments nicely: "I wish that the second they pulled the first shovel full of dirt out of the ground over this pit, the entire Earth would be pulled inside out centered entirely on this spot and when it came right side up again? It would be 1982 again and I could be in the arcade with my girlfriends trying to impress boys and waiting to go see Tron with them while Love Plus One plays over the loudspeakers."
Project moving forward
'On May 28, 2013, the Alamogordo City Commission granted Fuel Industries, a Canadian entertainment company, six months of access to the landfill to film a documentary about the burial and to excavate the dump site. Xbox Entertainment Studios plans to air this documentary series as an exclusive to the Xbox One and Xbox 360 in 2014. Though the excavation was momentarily stalled due to a complaint by the New Mexico Environmental Protection Division Solid Waste Bureau citing potential hazards, the issues were resolved in April 2014 to allow the excavation to proceed. Excavation started on April 26, 2014 as an open event to the public. E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial designer Howard Scott Warshaw and director Zak Penn attended the event as part of a documentary about the burial.
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'About 200 of residents and game enthusiasts gathered to watch backhoes and bulldozers dig through the concrete-covered landfill. But strong winds that kicked up massive clouds of dust mingled with garbage led some to leave the Alamogordo site. Among the watchers was Armando Ortega, a city official who back in 1983 got a tip from a landfill employee about the massive dump of games. "It was pitch dark here that night, but we came with our flashlights and found dozens of games," he said. They braved the darkness, coyotes and snakes of the desert landfill and had to sneak past the security guard. But it paid off. He says that so far they've found hundreds of crushed cartridges, a dozen of which they took home and were still playable in their game consoles.
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'Assuming the initial trove of hundreds of unearthed E.T. games is just the tip of the iceberg and millions of the games turn up, one of the gaming world's greatest mysteries and legends will be solved, but what to do with the game itself, which remains a shitty disaster to play? Neocomputer.org is here to help. They have created a fix for the game that requires only a basic understanding of hex editor's basic functions. Some of the many fixes include making the game less incredibly hard to play, removing the problem that causes E.T. to fall into the dreaded pits every time any part go his body visually overlaps them, changing E.T.'s inexplicable yellow color into his natural green. To turn E.T. into a playable and possibly even fun game, you need only open your NTSC E.T. ROM in a hex editor and make the following changes.'-- collaged
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- E.T. is Not Green
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17FA: FE FC F8 F8 F8
1DE8: 04
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- Difficulty Fix (Walk, Run, Hover)
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0707: A4 F8
071B: A4 F8
0685: A4 F8
0FEF: AD 82 02 29 08 4C 4E BB
0B4D: 60 4A 4A 4A 49 01 85 F8
04F0: A5 81 29 1E
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- Falling Fix
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002A: 4C F6 BB
0BF6: A5 9C 69 07 85 F6 4C AB BC
1013: 05 D9 65 E3 65 F6 85 8B 4C 4B F0
101E: 08 E4 8B D0 06 24 13 70 02 85 2C E4 9E 08 E8
102D: A4 86 8A
1034: 85 02 84 1C
1060: A5 87 85 1B A5 88 85 06 8A A8 B1 BA 85 0E B1 BC
1070: 85 0F E4 9F 4C 1E F0
18F3: 2E F0
0B40: A9 EF
07ED: E9 04
0BA5: 22
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- BUG FIXES
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- Don't Fall Leaving Forest on Right
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0D54: 4A
0D6C: 01
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- Ship Shouldn't Crush Elliott
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07BD: 4C D9 BA
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- FIX SCORING TO MATCH MANUAL
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058E: 85 F4 A5 DD 85 F5 65 F4 85 DD 69 10 EA EA
1382: 4C 9D F3
1395: A9 99 85 D3 85 D4 D0 09 A5 F8 D0 02 AA A8
13BD: A9 01 05 DE 85 DE A2 07 A0 70 20 41 F3 EA
1341: A5 D2 C9 0A F0 08 E9 10 85 D2 A2 04 A0 90 A5 DD
1351: F8 4C E9 F7
17E9: C9 1F 90 0A 8A 09 10 AA A5 D3 E9 07 85 D3 D8 60
13FD: A9 99 85 D3 85 D4 A9 00 85 F4 85 E3
147A: A9 00 85 DD 85 D9 85 94 A5 29 C5 DC B0 02 A5 DC
148A: 4C A5 F4
Note: If you don't include the difficulty fix, make
the following change to the scoring fix:
139D: EA EA EA EA EA EA
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- Easter Egg - Ninja E.T.
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148A: A5 F4 C5 F5 D0 0C C9 03 D0 08 A9 AA 85 D2 85 D3
149A: 85 D4 4C A5 F4 EA EA EA
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- Add Extra Game Option - Scientist Only
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0471: E0 05
02ED: 29 01 F0 09
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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Yes, Ronet did a lot of films in his quite shortish life, most of them seemingly lost to time, or lost to youtube at least. Sad about Bob Hoskins. My favorite role of his is in the imperfect but very interesting, hardly ever mentioned Christopher Hampton film 'The Secret Agent', which also features a very rare, very good, creepy performance by Robin Williams, of all people. ** Empty Frame, Hey, man! How're you doing? Sorry about Blogger getting all fancy and elitist on you. Wtf?! No, I don't think I know that Richard Wilson piece, but I'll google it straight away. Huh, that's really interesting about the stage production of 'The Notebook'. Yes, the Agota Kristof novel trilogy which includes 'The Notebook', is one of my very favorite all-time literary works. Kristof was a really well-known playwright as well, and I wonder if the theater version is an adaption by her or by someone else? I'll check. That might be an occasion for a London visit for sure. Thanks, buddy. Really good to see you, man! ** Torn porter, Hey, T. Well, I think Bardot's evolution into a National Front sympathizer and seeming racist also has something to do with the qualified at best acknowledgment of her animal rights work. She's a complicated person. Oh, yeah, I was thinking you were offline in general, and that gave me the utopian attribution idea, I guess. Yuppies in Paris makes me sad for some reason. Well, I guess the reason is obvious. Cool, yeah, I would say gauge the mood of the URM guy when you go in there. You can usually tell pretty fast if he's in a warm, congenial state or not. Yeah, maybe later in the weekend would be cool for a meet up. I'm film work-eaten up until then. Let's email or text or something and sort it. Cool. ** Tosh Berman, I think Un Regard Moderne is also my pick for greatest bookstore in the world. Ronet's eyes are crazy intense. I thought that quote about him at the top of the post -- he had 'eyes for looking into chasms' -- was a beautiful way to describe them. Thanks, T! ** Steevee, Hi. True about most of Ronet's later films, but he's really good in one of his last films, 'Beau Pere', which isn't a bad film at all. Looking forward to your review. Everyone, here's Steevee aka Steve Erickson's review of Richard Ayoade’s new, kind of buzzed about, Gilliam-y and Lynch-y film 'The Double'. Check it out. Glad to hear that the CT seems to have gone very well. ** Thomas Moronic, Yeah, I didn't think he'd be your thing. He was quite a huge twink porn superstar for a couple of years, which makes his evolution into a slave -- if, that is, it's not just a matter of stolen photos -- kind of interesting. Yes, those were very mastered haikus in my book. Beauties. Not an easy form to ace at all, as I'm sure you know. Yeah, I knew Dean in/from the LA art scene back in the 90s mostly. Wow, you found 'Slave Sonnets'. Wow, they're online! I had no idea. I think that, rather than linking to them, I'll do a post about them or something. Cool. Cheers to you, pal! ** Kier, A cabin the countryside sounds so nice. Were you around here when Zac and I did our Scandinavian theme park investigation/road trip last year? Man, Norway is so crazy beautiful. Really enjoy your time there, and I hope you gets tons of drawings done for all kinds of reasons include purely selfish ones on my part, and I look forward to seeing you when you get back! Lots love to you, K! ** Schoolboyerrors, Hi, man. 'Black Swan', yuck. I've never liked an Aronofsky film. Our partly ballet-themed film will be a lot better no matter what happens. Promise. We probably won't start actually making the film until early next year, but we might be building at least a maquette of the 'haunted house' sculpture in the fall, so pix of that are highly possible. Oh, no, no plans to kill the blog. That was just a passing acknowledgment that nothing lasts forever, but blog foreverness is still an operating plan. Kimball, yeah, good, for sure. I still haven't read his most recent book. I have to do that. Sure hope you get that lecturing job. By mainstream stuff, what does that mean? Like Eugenides and Franzen and all that kind of sales- and critic-friendly 'literary fiction' blah? Weird to think that Nicholson Baker isn't at least a mainstream encroacher, but, yeah, I guess he isn't. My yesterday? It was heavily film-work-oriented. Uh, Zac and I successfully finished the revision on the script of the scene we're shooting in a few weeks. The revision will hopefully make the scene possible to be performed by a few guys we really want to have in one of the two roles but who were wary of certain aspects that we have hopefully changed. We sent it to the guys and hope we can audition them early next week. We met with one of performers we really, really want to play probably the toughest role in our film, and he signed on, so that was great. We met up with Michael 'Kiddiepunk' Salerno and Bene/'Oscar'. Michael is the cameraman for our film and will assist Zac with the art direction. We caught him up on stuff. The four of us had too much dinner at Hard Rock Cafe. Other than that, a bit of novel work and a bunch of project-related emails and phone calls, basically. It was a good day. Your day? What do you need a sleeping bag for, for instance? ** Misanthrope, G., sir, hello. Busy, I hear you, I feel you. Bonkers, me? That's interesting. I'm kind of famous for never going bonkers, but maybe my explosions of bonkerness are textual. That would make sense. The early Cormack McCarthy is the best, for sure. But he's a heck of prose writer, so it's all relative maybe or something. Pretend it's twink hair. Twink porn star hair. Surely there's a twink porn star with longish blond hair whom you wouldn't mind fibbing that you did it with or something. Obviously really glad that LPS ended up okay. Oh, yes, our meeting day. Okay, hit me up. We'll need to figure that out because, at the moment anyway, Zac and I will be shooting one of the scenes our film around the end of May, so we'll want to get around that 'cos I'll be 99% occupied for the few days that we do that. Anyway, yeah, let me know your possible dates when you know them, and I should know our shooting dates pretty soon, and we'll sort it. No, I never use a travel agency. Zac and I just figure out our trips via the new-fashioned online way. ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris! Oh, yeah, those recordings. I heard that someone youtubed those. In the early '80s, this guy Harvey Kubernick, who's this kind of longstanding LA music world fixture/ author/ producer/ etc., supervised and produced a trilogy of albums featuring spoken word pieces by a combo of LA poets and punk band members who wrote poetry. I was featured on the first two, 'Voices of the Angels' and 'English as Second Language'. The records definitely graph out the energy and excitement of the poetry scene in LA at that time in a way, and they partly represent and partly romanticize the connection between the young LA poetry scene and the LA punk music scene. They did merge, and there was crossover, but maybe not as much as the records make it seem. I think those records are valuable for documenting that kind of amazing time, and they actually sound a lot better now than they did back then. At the time, a bunch of the poets, including me, were not into how he grafted music and sound effects onto our readings, but now there's something charming about that. It's kind of funny for me because two of the three pieces he featured by me are poems I never used anywhere else and that I forgot I even wrote for a long time. Anyway, yeah, those records are nice, and I can see that they could seem inspiring. That's cool. If you want to know more about them or about that project, I can tell you. Just let me know. Things are really good with me, thanks, man. And with you too, I sure hope. ** Postitbreakup, Hi, Josh! Oh, that's okay. Random coming and going here is part of the way this place works or something. Well, with that added info about the guy, I hope you don't mind me saying that it sounds like you might be a lot better off without him, but I don't know. You try to have a good day too, 'cos I'll try, and, that's like us making a deal or something maybe. ** Kyler, Hi. Your sister sounds like quite a can of worms. Freudian analyst sounds intense. Hell, yeah, mention your nephew, and if sticking to his first name isn't enough of a compromise, fuck her, although that's easy for know-nothing me to say. The only trouble with my work re: my family, if you want to call it trouble, is their utter indifference and disinterest in my writing and everything to do with it. Apart from my cool nephew, who's a very good writer, and who reads/likes my books, and my dad, who would at least acknowledge that I'm a writer on occasion. Take care, K. ** Rewritedept, Oh, man, I'm so very sorry. That's just ... there are no words. Heroin has destroyed and really fucked up and killed a bunch of people I've loved. I don't think there's anything in the world I hate more than heroin. I'm so sorry, Chris. Just do your best to process what's happened and honor your friend as best you can. Warmest hugs to you man. Love, me. ** Okay. Well, ugh. Um, yeah, I put together this post just before the news about the Atari dumpsite went viral, so it's possibly old news, but I tried to cover as many bases in the post as I could, so maybe it'll be interesting, who knows? See you tomorrow.