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Salvaging E.T. In Software, Instead of New Mexico

Posted by timothy on from the dust-to-dust dept.

Yesterday, we mentioned a just-approved effort to uncover the remains of goods dumped by Atari in New Mexico decades ago. New submitter Essellion writes "Among the games that legend has it are there is the Atari 2600 E.T. game, infamous for how bad it was. However, an excavator of another kind has cast doubts on how bad it was by exploring in depth the E.T. ROM, how it played and why, and designing some bug fixes for it."

3 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Re:My friend had that game. by BitterOak · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It sucked. With or without any bugs that I have forgotten in the mists of time, the gameplay was horrible, the field of play was idiotic, and it lacked any immersion into the movie storyline. It sucked.

    I think you hit onto its key problem, which was immersion into the movie storyline, or any storyline for that matter. Contrast that game to Adventure for the Atari 2600. I really felt I was wandering mazes and entering castles with that one. (Okay, not like a modern first person RPG, obviously, but this was a 2600, after all.)

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  2. It's relative by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There are millions of people who have spent as much time watching TV game shows. YMMV.

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  3. 6502 still around, huge by iggymanz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    the CMOS version of the 6502, the 65C02 and the static core version (clock can be slowed down or stopped without data loss) are still made and still used for embedded applications. We're talking annual volume in the hundreds of millions of units!
    http://www.westerndesigncenter.com/wdc/