6 ms·

ET wasn’t the worst game ever. I think it’s largely an influence issue. People told other people it was terrible, so those people walk into it expecting it to b

ET wasn’t the worst game ever. I think it’s largely an influence issue. People told other people it was terrible, so those people walk into it expecting it to be terrible. The myth persists. The game has its challenges, but the reputation is enforced by decades of games with better graphics, better hit boxes, and storylines told onscreen instead of in the instruction booklet. Incidental to this, I remember when I realized that World -1 in Super Mario Bros. wasn’t some trick or secret, but just a pointer bug that was surprisingly playable. Turns out programmers are people too.

cheschire 4y ago
I saw “worst” in quotes in the thread title and thought for sure this would be about Daikatana.
- AnotherGoodName 4y ago
  Which even then was a fun playable game to anyone that played it. It was just over-hyped was all.
  - f38zf5vdt 4y ago
    Yeah, this title should really be reserved for games like Superman 64 which are totally incoherent and so buggy that they're unplayable.
ehnto 4y ago
You see this all the time with new games. First impressions and PR are monumentally impactful in the gaming community. The community is also widly inconsistent in its application of criticism. So my advice, if it looks like your kind of game, give it a go anyway.
guidedlight 4y ago
I agree. My understanding is that ET relied too heavily on the instruction manual. Which was made worse by the hard difficulty being the default option, with no obvious onscreen indication that the hard difficulty was selected.
vlunkr 4y ago
Agreed. If you stack it against the rest of the 2600 library, it’s fine. It’s a console with a disgusting color palette, very limited sprites, and a controller with one button. ET is at least most ambitious than most games on the platform, even if it’s not that good.
CSMastermind 4y ago
I encountered this recently with The Simpsons. There's a meme about "zombie Simpsons" and the show being a shell of its former self which gets repeated ad nauseum on the internet. But when I sat down and watched every Simpsons episode, I discovered that meme to be out of date by 6+ years. Some of the new Simpsons episodes are surprisingly good and rank among my favorites in the series. Yet even though the show has really returned to form for half a decade now there are still people online commenting about how bad it is relative to some imagined older era of the Simpsons they might not have even watched. It's a weird groupthink meme that's hard to get past.
- probably_wrong 4y ago
  First of all, I am not here to tell you what you should or shouldn't like. If the last seasons of the Simpsons are some of your favorites, I am genuinely glad. Having said that, I don't think your personal outlook matches the opinion of the average Simpsons viewer. I took a quick look at the ratings over the years up to season 31 (which is all that was available in this dataset [1]), and the average IMDB rating for seasons 29 to 31 are 6.61, 6.04 and 6.37. For context, season 15 was the first season to get an average rating under 7 and seasons 2-8 are all above 8. But more generally, I wouldn't call a "groupthink meme" something that, even with an optimistic point of view, has been true for 17 years and allegedly less true for 6. I would rather call it "a strong prior". [1] https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/hod101s/simpsons-imdb-ratings https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/hod101s/simpsons-imdb-rating...
  - lordgrenville 4y ago
    The problem with using priors in aesthetic judgment is that because it's inherently subjective, the prior actually influences your measurement. So it can be self-reinforcing.
    - Tarsul 4y ago
      yeah but still the simpsons today are something else entirely than the simpsons 20 years ago. It's not that they had 10 bad years and now, suddenly, are good and similar like before. It's simply not true. And it wouldn't even make sense (what would have to happen for that to become true?).
jimt1234 4y ago
The game was destined to fail because of all the hype. I remember; I was a tween at the time. The movie was huge; it's all anyone was talking about. And we kept hearing about a pending video game. But when we all got to play the actual game, it was hype meeting reality. And that's why the game was branded such an epic failure.
- Mezzie 4y ago
  Was ET the first really pre-hyped video game that you remember?
HeckFeck 4y ago
There is a book by one Stuart Ashen called 'Terrible Old Games You've Probably Never Heard Of' and a quick leaf through that will dethrone ET very quickly.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
It was also plagued by some very annoying bugs, which have since been fixed: http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/ http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/
dwringer 4y ago
Eh, I played 2600 ET a good bit as a little kid*. And I knew immediately what game this headline was talking about based mostly on that personal experience. *Sort of. I would wander back and forth until falling into a hole, try in vain to levitate out of it, and then go play Laser Blast instead. But several times!
- cptnapalm 4y ago
  Falling in the hole is the only thing I remember about ET. I have no recollection of any other aspect of it.

cheschire 4y ago

I saw “worst” in quotes in the thread title and thought for sure this would be about Daikatana.

AnotherGoodName 4y ago
Which even then was a fun playable game to anyone that played it. It was just over-hyped was all.
- f38zf5vdt 4y ago
  Yeah, this title should really be reserved for games like Superman 64 which are totally incoherent and so buggy that they're unplayable.

ehnto 4y ago

You see this all the time with new games. First impressions and PR are monumentally impactful in the gaming community. The community is also widly inconsistent in its application of criticism. So my advice, if it looks like your kind of game, give it a go anyway.

guidedlight 4y ago

I agree. My understanding is that ET relied too heavily on the instruction manual. Which was made worse by the hard difficulty being the default option, with no obvious onscreen indication that the hard difficulty was selected.

vlunkr 4y ago

Agreed. If you stack it against the rest of the 2600 library, it’s fine. It’s a console with a disgusting color palette, very limited sprites, and a controller with one button. ET is at least most ambitious than most games on the platform, even if it’s not that good.

CSMastermind 4y ago

I encountered this recently with The Simpsons. There's a meme about "zombie Simpsons" and the show being a shell of its former self which gets repeated ad nauseum on the internet. But when I sat down and watched every Simpsons episode, I discovered that meme to be out of date by 6+ years. Some of the new Simpsons episodes are surprisingly good and rank among my favorites in the series. Yet even though the show has really returned to form for half a decade now there are still people online commenting about how bad it is relative to some imagined older era of the Simpsons they might not have even watched. It's a weird groupthink meme that's hard to get past.

probably_wrong 4y ago
First of all, I am not here to tell you what you should or shouldn't like. If the last seasons of the Simpsons are some of your favorites, I am genuinely glad. Having said that, I don't think your personal outlook matches the opinion of the average Simpsons viewer. I took a quick look at the ratings over the years up to season 31 (which is all that was available in this dataset [1]), and the average IMDB rating for seasons 29 to 31 are 6.61, 6.04 and 6.37. For context, season 15 was the first season to get an average rating under 7 and seasons 2-8 are all above 8. But more generally, I wouldn't call a "groupthink meme" something that, even with an optimistic point of view, has been true for 17 years and allegedly less true for 6. I would rather call it "a strong prior". [1] https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/hod101s/simpsons-imdb-ratings https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/hod101s/simpsons-imdb-rating...
- lordgrenville 4y ago
  The problem with using priors in aesthetic judgment is that because it's inherently subjective, the prior actually influences your measurement. So it can be self-reinforcing.
  - Tarsul 4y ago
    yeah but still the simpsons today are something else entirely than the simpsons 20 years ago. It's not that they had 10 bad years and now, suddenly, are good and similar like before. It's simply not true. And it wouldn't even make sense (what would have to happen for that to become true?).

jimt1234 4y ago

The game was destined to fail because of all the hype. I remember; I was a tween at the time. The movie was huge; it's all anyone was talking about. And we kept hearing about a pending video game. But when we all got to play the actual game, it was hype meeting reality. And that's why the game was branded such an epic failure.

Mezzie 4y ago
Was ET the first really pre-hyped video game that you remember?

HeckFeck 4y ago

There is a book by one Stuart Ashen called 'Terrible Old Games You've Probably Never Heard Of' and a quick leaf through that will dethrone ET very quickly.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago

It was also plagued by some very annoying bugs, which have since been fixed: http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/ http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/

dwringer 4y ago

Eh, I played 2600 ET a good bit as a little kid*. And I knew immediately what game this headline was talking about based mostly on that personal experience. *Sort of. I would wander back and forth until falling into a hole, try in vain to levitate out of it, and then go play Laser Blast instead. But several times!

cptnapalm 4y ago
Falling in the hole is the only thing I remember about ET. I have no recollection of any other aspect of it.