4 ms·
Fixing E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 (2013)
- esotericsean 2y agoAs a game dev who's been learning ASM recently this was very fun to read through. Wish there was a compiled ROM I could try, but I guess I have to do it myself!
- jnsie 2y agoI'm not really into this space but he lists some bin files in the Downloads section. Is this not the compiled ROM you're seeking?
- appel 2y agoFor what it's worth, I was able to simply rename the ET_Fixed_Final.bin file to ET_Fixed_Final.a26 (which might not even be necessary) and drop it into the ROM folder of my Atari 2600 emulator (running via https://knulli.org/ https://knulli.org/ on my Anbernic RG40XXV). It booted up just fine.
- aidenn0 2y ago(2013)
- dang 2y agoAdded above. Thanks!
- dang 2y agoRelated. Others? Fixing E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23199521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23199521 - May 2020 (11 comments) Fixing E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9668734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9668734 - June 2015 (20 comments) Fixing E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994180 - Jan 2014 (12 comments) Edit: Also related. Also others? The making of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the “worst” video game - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21828725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21828725 - Dec 2019 (49 comments) An anthropological dispatch from the landfill dig to unearth Atari’s E.T. (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17870402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17870402 - Aug 2018 (2 comments) The man who made 'the worst video game in history' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11148093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11148093 - Feb 2016 (209 comments) E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) Atari 2600 Source Code - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7679503 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7679503 - May 2014 (2 comments) Long-Buried E.T. Cartridges Unearthed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654240 - April 2014 (1 comment) E.T. cartridges found in infamous Atari landfill - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7652473 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7652473 - April 2014 (46 comments) Landfill search for 'E.T.' Atari video game is halted - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7444644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7444644 - March 2014 (6 comments) Hacking E.T. for the Atari 2600 using a hex editor - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5502356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5502356 - April 2013 (1 comment) Hacking E.T. for the Atari 2600 to make it better - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5470446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5470446 - March 2013 (1 comment) What is considered to be the worst video game ever? This one is. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=528256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=528256 - March 2009 (3 comments)
- irrational 2y ago> With a few simple changes For certain values of simple.
- mrandish 2y agoWow. Bravo! This is such an impressive effort. As one of the very first home consoles, the venerable Atari 2600 is brutally difficult to program. Everything from ROM to RAM to CPU cycles is in painfully short supply and the requirement to continually keep 'racing the beam' is a harsh master. My first computer, the Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer, came out only a couple years later but even with only 4K of RAM and a sub-1 Mhz CPU, was still much more civilized to program in assembler than a 2600.
- xer0x 2y agoThe author doesn't mention it, but many people who never played E.T. read articles in videogame magazines about this game was amongst the things that killed the videogame industry in the 80s. (Oh, see dang's post for tons of related links)
- Narishma 2y agoIt only killed a small part of the video game industry (consoles) in a specific country (USA) and only for a couple of years. IMO this crash is given way too much importance for what it actually is.
- aaroninsf 2y agoI suppose it's expected since the article was 2013, but is there a video available comparing original to patched? EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23qeQa0exe0&ab_channel=RetroCheats https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23qeQa0exe0&ab_channel=Retro...
- flippyhead 2y agoCraziness. Strong work!
- rufus_foreman 2y agoNow do Pac-Man.
- brianpaul 2y agoGoogle for atari 2600 pacman 4k
- JetSetIlly 2y agoThere's a couple of really good versions of pac-man. My favourite is this one. It's an 8k game, unlike the original, but it's worth it for the sound. https://forums.atariage.com/topic/229152-new-pacman-for-atari-2600/page/62/#findComment-5152052 https://forums.atariage.com/topic/229152-new-pacman-for-atar...
- wslh 2y agoI spent hours playing E.T. with friends as a kid. We noticed something unusual about the game compared to other Atari 2600 titles—it came with a relatively large manual [1]. We were used to simply turning on a game and immediately moving or shooting, relying on pure reflex rather than needing instructions. I remember the falling problem as an annoying thing but not the most annoying: trying to understand the game at first. It is critical to highlight that E.T., the movie, was a huge success, and there were many products related to that. It is important to highlight that there was a lot of pressure to put this game in the market [2]. [1] https://archive.org/details/E.T._The_Extra-Terrestrial_1982_Atari/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/E.T._The_Extra-Terrestrial_1982_... [2] https://www.npr.org/2017/05/31/530235165/total-failure-the-worlds-worst-video-game https://www.npr.org/2017/05/31/530235165/total-failure-the-w...
- sumtechguy 2y agoOn top of that Atari had a very rushed schedule from concept to shipping out the door for cartridge was usually 4 weeks. Longer if it was really special.
- unclebucknasty 2y agoLikewise, I played for hours and actually enjoyed it. I also really loved Adventure, Superman and similar. That second linked article (npr.org) is a really interesting read about E.T.'s programmer and his experience during and after making the game, although the story ends a bit abruptly. TLDR; he loved being a rockstar programmer for Atari and was paid millions, but had to move on and find a career/life afterwards. Spoiler alert: he went on to become a SV therapist, helping others with similar experiences. Somehow, the whole thing feels prescient for a lot of current-day devs on the eve of "The Great AI dev takeover". On his perspective around the game itself, a couple of quotes of particular interest: "There's a difference between frustration and disorientation," he says. "Video games are all about frustration. It's OK to frustrate a user. In fact, it's important to frustrate a user. But you don't want to disorient the user." Also, this resonates: "Spielberg looks at me and he goes, 'Couldn't you just do something like Pac-Man?'" I remember playing the game with an older family member looking on. As was apparently the case with Spielberg, his eyes absolutely glazed over. But, he got a real kick out of watching me play Space Invaders and laughed out loud as the aliens sped up. So, the gameplay itself was the biggest complaint about the game. There's a YT video that gets more into the gameplay issues, with matching visuals. [0] In any case, it's insane that he went from concept to finished game in only 5 weeks. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj7iICS64iI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj7iICS64iI
- dylan604 2y agoDidn't the Indiana Jones game have similar quirks? Maybe I'm just misremembering my lack of skills playing the game as a kid, but I have vague memories of Indy being blamed for similar things. Maybe not to the point of burying the games in a dump bad.
- hbn 2y agoAs far as I understand, the "ET for Atari was so bad it killed the games industry" is kind of an exaggeration/misrepresentation. Which should probably be assumed from how simple the explanation is despite all the questions it brings - you can find plenty of people who had the game as a kid but not many that will recall it being so bad they never wanted to touch their Atari again. Someone can find some real sources, but I read an article a while back explaining that - from what I recall - what really killed the industry was supply issue that got out of hand. When the Atari started to take off, they didn't have the production capacity to keep up with orders stores were putting in. Stores were being sent about x% of the size of order they requested, so the stores started putting in much bigger order requests to get the amount of stock to actually fulfill demand for their store. Because of this, Atari figured there was way more demand than there was in reality, so once they finally scaled up production they were suddenly able to fulfill the giant order requests stores were putting in, which was way more than they could actually sell. Suddenly stores were overloaded with Atari cartridges, and putting them into bargain bins just to get rid of stock. From there, it seemed like the home console thing was just a fad that came and went. ET just happened to be the big game Atari was pumping out units of because of their overestimation of demand.
- dylan604 2y ago> From there, it seemed like the home console thing was just a fad that came and went lol. boy, is that an idea that didn't age well. I was too young to know about all of the business side of Atari, but I do know that me and everyone else like me never touched their 2600 after getting an NES. In my house, we went with the NES instead of the Atart 5200. We did get an Atari 7800 instead of the SNES, but I'm pretty sure that my dad decided on the 7800 because of the 2600 compatibility where the 5200 was not.
- oniony 2y agoI had no idea the Atari 2600 was a 6502 (actually 6507) machine until I saw the A9 (load accumulator) instructions in the machine code snippets on this article, despite having an Atari 2600 as a kid. A9 is burned into my head from sixth form electronics, where we would have to manually convert assembly to hex and key it into the boards we used.
- tumnus 2y ago"E.T. is not green. I'm really surprised that this isn't a common complaint. We'll fix that as well." ET isn't green in the movie. Why would this be a common complaint?
- tombert 2y agoI think the complaint is that he is green in the game, where he should be brown. I think I might know the "why" to the question, which is that I think they might have been worried that a small percentage of people would be using a black and white TV and brown might not be enough of a contrast.
- nsxwolf 2y agoThe B&W switch on the 2600 sets a register that can be read at runtime allowing for color changes that better support black and white TVs. Howard Scott Warshaw famously had only 5 weeks to complete the entire game, so supporting that feature probably didn't make the cut.
- RiverCrochet 2y agoNTSC color artifacts may be a factor too, but not sure. I know green and red aren't too happy next to each other. Making ET an actual brown shade may have gotten too close to that red-green conflict.
- lIl-IIIl 2y agoThis reminds me of those bug reports that say "Button is green" and you're not sure if "Button is green" is the desired or undesired behavior.