The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

Welcome to Nintendo 64 Forever. We hope you enjoy your visit.

You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.

Join our community!

If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

The man who made 'the worst video game in history'
Tweet Topic Started: Feb 22 2016, 08:50 AM (448 Views)
alxbly	Feb 22 2016, 08:50 AM Post #1
Ancient Posts: 9,922 Group: Staff (Ret.) Member #168 Joined: October 18, 2008	I thought this was an interesting article about the man who coded the infamous ET game for Atari: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35560458



bluedogrulez	Feb 22 2016, 09:47 AM Post #2
Racing for Fulcon Capital Posts: 9,322 Group: Admin Member #281 Joined: March 8, 2010	Cool story. You feel bad for someone who knocks themselves out trying to meet a goal and failing. But kinda makes my disdain for the game even more: Atari was so arrogant about us stupid consumers . . .
	Switch Friend Code: SW-0786-9287-1202 (bluedogBDR) MK8Deluxe Tourney: N64Forever.com 2332-7277-8283 Nintendo Network ID: BDR2010 / Twitter: @bluedogrulez


stinger9142	Feb 22 2016, 01:10 PM Post #3
Endure and survive... Posts: 6,726 Group: Admin Member #48 Joined: December 4, 2006	I watched a great documentary on Netflix about him and E.T. ordeal in general. It was really good and gave me a new perspective on the whole deal. Felt very bad for him.



Bamboozled	Feb 23 2016, 02:15 PM Post #4
veteran of the psychic wars Posts: 1,478 Group: Senior Members Member #2,653 Joined: March 25, 2015	Now I'm never gonna make an ET joke.



TofuJunky87	Mar 15 2016, 01:14 PM Post #5
Do you tofu? Posts: 384 Group: Senior Members Member #3,012 Joined: February 16, 2016	Not gonna lie, I was expecting this topic to be about Superman 64. Lol but ET works too I guess.
	Current 64 Collection: Grey, Jungle, Fire, Ice, Smoke, Watermelon, Grape, Gold, JP Blue/Clear, Daiei Hawks Current Game Count: 324 Current Controller Count: 32 4ever


Bamboozled	Mar 15 2016, 01:32 PM Post #6
veteran of the psychic wars Posts: 1,478 Group: Senior Members Member #2,653 Joined: March 25, 2015	I'm not gonna lie. I actually enjoy Superman 64.



The Red Shadow	Mar 15 2016, 04:34 PM Post #7
The Seeker Posts: 6,189 Group: Staff (Ret.) Member #120 Joined: February 4, 2008	I'm not gonna lie. I always enjoyed E.T. and would buy a copy if I ever desired to pick up an Atari 2600 again.



ItalianBaptist	Oct 12 2017, 12:31 PM Post #8
Senior Member Posts: 649 Group: Senior Members Member #1,837 Joined: October 7, 2013	I'm Wii U friends with the guy that made that Meme Run game
	It must be exciting to never have played a Zelda game before - No64DD


Kerr Avon	Nov 16 2017, 12:54 PM Post #9
Senior Member Posts: 560 Group: Senior Members Member #52 Joined: December 13, 2006	There's an interesting page about how to fix some of the game's flaws. Even if you have no interest in ever playing the game (like me, I doubt I'd every try it) it's still an interesting read. The game was apparently fairly original in that it pioneered some features that later became common in games, according to the article, and the bug/flaw fixes are interesting to read about. http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/ And programming the Atari 2600 sounds really difficult. It didn't even have video RAM, instead you had to directly write to the screen by writing the correct colour at exact time that the screen update was occurring at the place where the hypothetical pixel would have been. And the CPU was so slow that you'd really have to work to time your program's 'video writes' at the correct time whilst still doing the necessary CPU work for the rest of the game. All that, plus the game cartridges were mainly limited to 4kb or even 2kb! Though later games did break the 8kb barrier, and apparently at least one 32kb game was released for the 2600. And it only had 128 bytes of RAM, so you couldn't even use comprehensive compression on the data in the cartridge and extract it to the RAM and run it uncompressed from there.



windydoom	Dec 24 2017, 03:55 AM Post #10
Newbie Posts: 11 Group: Members Member #3,514 Joined: July 10, 2017	i love watching horrible video games lol

Create a free forum in seconds. Learn More · Sign-up Now
« Previous Topic · Other Video Games · Next Topic »