Sales of unearthed Atari games total more than $100,000

drlegendre . drlegendre at gmail.com
Sun Aug 30 20:09:21 CDT 2015


And speaking as one who played the game "back in the day", it +is+ as awful
as claimed. The gameplay draws essentially nothing from the film's story,
save a few obvious must-have elemetns such as a telephone and Reese's
Pieces (which look like single-pixel glitches). The player, playing as
E.T., is tasked with assembling parts of a "space-phone" - and the primary
obstacle in his path is...

THE TERRAIN

Yes, the terrain. The gameworld is full of pitfall, some visible, some not
quite so. When E.T. falls into a pit, which he does about every five
seconds, he must escape by performing this ridiculous "levitation boogie"
that consists of nothing more than a series of rapidfire L-R-L-R joystick
moves. Then it's onto the next pit.. and the next.. and the next.. again,
reminiscent of Superman 64 with it's endless "ride stages" of flying
rings.

Some amusement potential for kids under eight. Otherwise, frustrating,
boring and downright depressing piece of work.

On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 4:45 PM, TeoZ <teoz at neo.rr.com> wrote:

> Even the unsold copies ended up getting purchased at the Atari liquidation
> firesale and there are people still selling them NIB cheap. The ET cart can
> be had for $2 (one of the cheapest)
>
> http://www.atari2600.com/ccp7/ecom-prodshow/ET-The-Extra-Terrestrial-PROD375.html
>
>
>
> -----Original Message----- From: Johnny Billquist
> Sent: Sunday, August 30, 2015 4:29 PM
> To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
> Subject: Re: Sales of unearthed Atari games total more than $100,000
>
>
> On 2015-08-30 22:19, Ali wrote:
>
>> A quick search of eBay would correct your 'understanding'. There are
>>> dozens of copies for sale, many with boxes and manuals. They start at
>>> about $5.00.
>>>
>>
>> I stand corrected.
>>
>
> :-)
>
> The game is very common, and generally considered worthless. It's a
>>> joke, possibly the "worst video game ever made" - up there with
>>> Superman 64 for N64.
>>>
>>
>> I could have sworn that prior to the "dig" I read a number of articles
>> indicating that this was one of the reasons for the dig i.e. The game was
>> so horrible Atari tried to destroy any and all evidence of it by burying it
>> so only a few copies remained.
>>
>
> Yes. This was a reason for the dig.
>
> However, as the game is apparently readily available I would say both
>> editions are worthless or to be more precise of low monetary value. But as
>> the old saying goes "one man's junk..." :)
>>
>
> Records state that Atari manufactured 5 million copies, but "only" sold
> 1.5 million... So it was a big loss for the company, but that do not
> mean that it is uncommon.
> Even more spectacular was Pac-Mac, of which they manufactures 12 million
> copies (they had only sold 10 millions consoles).
> 7 million sold meant another 5 million unsold copies...
>
> Lots of fun.
>
> See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial for more.
>
> Johnny
>
> --
> Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
>                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
> email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
> pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
>
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