Fixing E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 (2013)
18 comments
·January 31, 2025oniony
I 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.
dylan604
Didn'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.
xer0x
The 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)
esotericsean
As 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
I'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?
wslh
I 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_...
[2] https://www.npr.org/2017/05/31/530235165/total-failure-the-w...
sumtechguy
On 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
Likewise, 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.
flippyhead
Craziness. Strong work!
irrational
> With a few simple changes
For certain values of simple.
aaroninsf
I 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=Retro...
dang
Related. Others?
Fixing E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 (2013) - 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 - June 2015 (20 comments)
Fixing E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 - 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 - 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 - Aug 2018 (2 comments)
The man who made 'the worst video game in history' - 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 - May 2014 (2 comments)
Long-Buried E.T. Cartridges Unearthed - 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 - April 2014 (46 comments)
Landfill search for 'E.T.' Atari video game is halted - 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 - April 2013 (1 comment)
Hacking E.T. for the Atari 2600 to make it better - 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 - March 2009 (3 comments)
rufus_foreman
Now do Pac-Man.
JetSetIlly
There'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-atar...
brianpaul
Google for atari 2600 pacman 4k
Wow. 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.