I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.~Jay Gould

To That Degree You Love E.T.

by: hhex65

Mon Nov 10, 2008 at 01:02:31 AM MST

I was thinking today during the football: "Shouldn't I own Playstation3?" I'm anticipating some years of boredom. This happened to remind me of a "local legend" in New Mexico:

In the infamous video game crash of 1983, Atari posted losses that totaled more than $500 million. Warner's stock price slid from $60 to $20. Failed Atari 2600 games, such as the video game version of the hit movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial helped accelerate the downfall. Atari had paid $25 million for the rights to produce the game.

In September 1983, in Alamogordo, New Mexico, twenty truckloads of Atari boxes, cartridges, and systems from an Atari storehouse in El Paso were crushed and buried at a landfill. Millions of unsold copies of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial ultimately ended up in this landfill, crushed and encased in cement.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is generally considered to be one of the biggest commercial failures in video gaming history, as well as the worst video game ever made-- especially among people who spend time considering this kind of thing.

But of course, with a little digging-- of course I find the counter-backlash E.T movement alive and well at the site called To What Degree Do You Love E.T.?

It's a well argued site, full of video examples, walkthroughs and articulation which I found very convincing and made me hope there could be an equally tedious vintage version available for Playstation3 if I so choose to purchase one.

No, this is not a joke. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 is a much better game than most people think. I didn't even know most people supposedly hated the game until I got Internet access in 1999 and since there is an abundance of anti-E.T. pages and articles out there, including ones that encourage you to destroy E.T. cartridges, I thought it was about time that someone who liked the game spoke up.