E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600

Gameplay: 2/5
Graphics: 2/5 (It's an Atari 2600, not an Xbox, but still)
Replay Value: 1/5 (just to finish it)
Challenge: 3/5

Pros:
- It's E.T. the Extra Terrestrial.
- It's on the Atari 2600, one of the longest living consoles in the history of gaming.
- Simple control scheme

Cons
- The pits. Oh dear GOD the pits. (Every joke you could make with THIS IS ET/SPARTA/CRAPPY/any other variation of that joke will get old.)
- Clunky controls (RUN E.T. RUN!!! NO NOT STRETCH YOUR F*CKING NECK!!! RUN!!!!! FLOAT!!! GET OUT OF THE F*CKING PIT!!!!!!!!)
- Annoying enemies
- Life dwindling away with EVERY MOVE YOU MAKE!! (every bond you break, every step you take - I'll be watching you. Had to make a joke here)
- You can be resurrected 3 times after death. Normally, that's a good thing, but here...

The Review/Some Backstory
E.T. the Extra Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 was one of the first games based on a blockbuster film (the other I knew about was Raiders of the Lost Ark). However, the developers were only given 6 weeks to complete this game, as a normal Atari 2600 game took 3-4 months to develop and program. Scheduling was so bad, it took them the entire last week of the project to develop the title screen. THE TITLE SCREEN. And furthermore, there were more copies of the game made than there were Atari consoles to play it on.

Critically, E.T. on the Atari was a major failure. Sales were so bad, almost all of the copies they made were sent back to Atari. They couldn't sell their massive amounts of overstocked Atari games (nearly 4 million plus E.T. cartridges, several million Pac-Man cartridges, broken consoles, etc) in their warehouse in El Paso so they got a contract with a landfill, and crushed several million copies of E.T. and other games, encased them in concrete, and buried them in the middle of the New Mexico desert. (http://www.snopes.com/business/market/atari.asp)

Lovely. Now, I played this game on a web-based emulator (http://www.2600online.com/et.html), and the controls are simple, yet clunky and God-awful. The pits are a bigger nuisance than a cockroach infestation, yet you have to fall into the pits to find the 3 radio bits to help E.T. phone home. All the while, you have to face off against an FBI agent who apparently tries to make E.T. miserable because he TAKES YOUR RADIO BITS AND YOUR REESES PIECES!!!!!! Also, you have to face the scientist who drags you away to a building you can just walk out of. Did I mention you're dying slowly? Not just you personally, but E.T. himself is dying with every action you do. And when you get dragged away by the scientist, you lose health. And once you get to phone home, the scientist can still kidnap you before your ship picks you up, so you have to go and recollect the radio bits ('cause the FBI guy probably stole them). However, I didn't get that far, because I didn't even get two radio bits. Oh, and the whole "you can't die" thing? Once your life reaches 0, Elliot (the kid) comes and resurrects you for 1500 health. Okay, once you die three times, that's it.

I found myself bottling back some rage when I first played this, and I realize I shouldn't have 'cause I spent the next few hours raging about it. But this game is truly a test in torture. If you find a copy, and you're not a collector like I am, don't buy it. Don't even consider it.

Overall Verdict: 1/5. Deplorable. The very game that single-handedly killed the Atari 2600, according to Seanbaby, and I agree with him.