E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600)

It has a picture on the title screen, plus it's making a decent effort at playing the movie theme. So far so good.

E.T. is dropped off by a little purple spaceship, which then flies off without him, stranding him on this forest pattern. I haven't got a clue what he's here for, but I guess he'll know it when he finds it.

I'm just grateful the theme tune has stopped. I was worried for a second there that it might continue playing for the entire game.

Hey look, a dot! That seems pretty awesome, I'm gonna go grab that.

That number on the blue strip ticks down with every step I take. I'm not sure whether it's my score or my health, but I'd be much happier if it ticked up instead to be honest.

Excellent, my dot count has gone up to one, and I've located another one. That guy in the brown seems a bit shifty though, I think I'll come back to this screen later when he's gone.

There's no scrolling in this, the game flicks to another screen when I walk to the edge. Maybe when I when I move to the previous area this one will reset.

What the hell? He's following me and he's not being subtle about it.

Well it turns out that the dark patches are huge pits in the ground. This whole area is covered with them, it's weird.

Falling down here seems to have reset my dot count, and although E.T. can jump, he can't jump up the sides to get out.

So I guess I'm stuck down here now, with only a pink squiggle to keep me company.

Hey, I turned the squiggle into a flower. That's... fantastic. A real help.

Oh hang on, this is new. It seems that when I make E.T. extend his neck he can fly. Though it burns through my number pretty fast.

Crap, the asshole grabbed me! I just want to collect dots, why can't they leave me in peace?

Imprisoned.

No doubt they want to perform experiments on me now. Interrogate me. Find out why I came here in a one man purple spaceship, then sent it off to leave without me.

But they must NEVER know. If only there was some way I could squeeze through the huge gap between these bars...

Yeah, it seems I can just walk out of the cell, to the despair of the agent who caught me.

So long you human bastard, I've figured out how to run, so now you'll never catch me again!

Well, fuck. There really are a lot of holes around.


LATER.

I've gotten 7 dots but it hasn't gotten me anything so far and my number's almost up.

Maybe I'm supposed to be flowing the arrow at the top of the screen, I don't know. I seem to be finding dots just fine without it but maybe it points to something else.

E.T. finally runs out of numbers and collapses in the field he originally landed at, 9999 ago.

A strange kid I've never seen before creeps up to steal his wallet. But somehow this re-energises E.T. and he gets back up with 1500 on the clock to resume dot hunting.

1500 doesn't really last that long though, and I feel a bit guilty dragging this poor kid out to resuscitate me every time I'm out for the count, so I'm going to stop playing here. Forever.


Yeah I didn't really like this one much to be honest. Next game.