12. E.T.: The Extraterrestrial

E.T.: The Extraterrestrial
Atari 2600
1982

Oh boy.

This is not the worst video game ever. It ain’t as awful as Barnstorming, for instance. But it sure is a big piece of shit. 

You play as E.T., an extraterrestrial. E.T. came to Earth, apparently to fall into holes. Randomly. Repeatedly. On occasion you will find piece of a telephone in one of the holes. Immediately after finding this piece, Dick Tracy will steal that piece from you, hiding it in some other fucking hole. Presumably, this is because Dick Tracy hates phones. 

That is normally the point in which I scream with frustration and rip this worthless goddamn game from my Atari, swearing to never play the game again. But today was different. Today, I was a man on a mission. I was going to beat this stupid freaking game, no matter how many damn holes I had to fall into. 



The first step of making this fantasy a reality was to read the manual. This actually did a lot to explain the non-intuitive control scheme the game used. What I had always thought was a broken radar system at the top of the screen, turns out to actually be a key to using E.T.’s magic powers. I didn’t even know E.T. had magic powers.

Armed with magic powers, and schooled in how to not immediately fall back into the hole E.T. just climbed out of, I returned to the game confident that I could spank the hell out of Dick Tracy and phone my Extraterrestrial ass home.

Obviously, I’m kind of stupid.

Three hours later, I have managed to build a phone, I have actually phoned home, but just when my spaceship is about to show up, Dick Tracy blunders into the forest, scaring them off. Then Dick Tracy takes part of my phone. This game is bullshit.