6 ms·

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

138 points by tujv 13y ago

Theodores 13y ago
Did anyone have difficulty recognising 'E.T.' in any of the screenshots, particularly the first one? Or was it just me?
jpace121 13y ago
Stuff like this is personally really cool, and is one of the reasons I learned to program in the first place/ still play with programming.
brickcap 13y ago
If you manage to complete it send it to angry video game nerd. His faith will be restored :)
Pitarou 13y ago
Makes me proud to be a nerd. :)
kken 13y ago
This is insane in a good way :)
nitrogen 13y ago
I love reading reverse engineering and ancient game modding stories because it's like an extreme form of inheriting a messy, undocumented codebase.
tujv 13y ago
Also recommended is "Racing the Beam" from MIT Press [1]. It is a terrific tour of Atari 2600 software development by examining several different games, including another Howard Scott Warshaw cart, Yar's Revenge. [1] http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/racing-beam http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/racing-beam
JoeAltmaier 13y ago
ET was green in the game, I'm guessing, because Howard wrote it (completed it!) before the movie was released. The whole thing was on a punishing deadline, which is why it may seem rough and strange to lots of folks. Howard was tremendously proud of finishing a whole Atari 2600 game in just a few weeks; not a single other Atari programmer was willing to take on the challenge. In fact, Howard had to do it against management's wishes.
- anon4 13y ago
  All this time I thought management had forced Howard to do it under an unreasonable deadline, leading to a poor game, but this comment made me rethink things. I'm starting to think Howard had the idea for an exploration game more or less thought out long before E.T. came to be and just saw an opportunity to fit his vision in the game. Too bad he didn't have enough time for testing (I presume), the fact you're punished for exploring in a game that requires lots of exploring is really unexcusable.
mambodog 13y ago
If you want to compare the original and the 'fixed' version, here they are running in the browser: Original: https://archive.org/stream/atari_2600_e.t._-_the_extra-terrestrial_1982_atari_jerome_domurat_howard_scott_wa/atari_2600_e.t._-_the_extra-terrestrial_1982_atari_jerome_domurat_howard_scott_wa.bin?module=atari2600&scale=2 https://archive.org/stream/atari_2600_e.t._-_the_extra-terre... Fixed: http://jamesfriend.com.au/et2600/ http://jamesfriend.com.au/et2600/
__m 13y ago
Well, it still sucks.
millerm 13y ago
Nice job. It's fun to seem some creative hacking. You could flame bait the title by renaming it to "Why I stopped using E.T. and started using E.T." :-)

138 points by tujv 13y ago

Did anyone have difficulty recognising 'E.T.' in any of the screenshots, particularly the first one? Or was it just me?

Stuff like this is personally really cool, and is one of the reasons I learned to program in the first place/ still play with programming.

brickcap 13y ago

If you manage to complete it send it to angry video game nerd. His faith will be restored :)

Pitarou 13y ago

Makes me proud to be a nerd. :)

kken 13y ago

This is insane in a good way :)

nitrogen 13y ago

I love reading reverse engineering and ancient game modding stories because it's like an extreme form of inheriting a messy, undocumented codebase.

tujv 13y ago

Also recommended is "Racing the Beam" from MIT Press [1]. It is a terrific tour of Atari 2600 software development by examining several different games, including another Howard Scott Warshaw cart, Yar's Revenge. [1] http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/racing-beam http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/racing-beam

JoeAltmaier 13y ago

ET was green in the game, I'm guessing, because Howard wrote it (completed it!) before the movie was released. The whole thing was on a punishing deadline, which is why it may seem rough and strange to lots of folks. Howard was tremendously proud of finishing a whole Atari 2600 game in just a few weeks; not a single other Atari programmer was willing to take on the challenge. In fact, Howard had to do it against management's wishes.

anon4 13y ago
All this time I thought management had forced Howard to do it under an unreasonable deadline, leading to a poor game, but this comment made me rethink things. I'm starting to think Howard had the idea for an exploration game more or less thought out long before E.T. came to be and just saw an opportunity to fit his vision in the game. Too bad he didn't have enough time for testing (I presume), the fact you're punished for exploring in a game that requires lots of exploring is really unexcusable.

mambodog 13y ago

If you want to compare the original and the 'fixed' version, here they are running in the browser: Original: https://archive.org/stream/atari_2600_e.t._-_the_extra-terrestrial_1982_atari_jerome_domurat_howard_scott_wa/atari_2600_e.t._-_the_extra-terrestrial_1982_atari_jerome_domurat_howard_scott_wa.bin?module=atari2600&scale=2 https://archive.org/stream/atari_2600_e.t._-_the_extra-terre... Fixed: http://jamesfriend.com.au/et2600/ http://jamesfriend.com.au/et2600/

__m 13y ago

Well, it still sucks.

millerm 13y ago

Nice job. It's fun to seem some creative hacking. You could flame bait the title by renaming it to "Why I stopped using E.T. and started using E.T." :-)