This game is infamous the gamer world over. It is THE reason almost all movie based games are doomed to failure. Mr. Spielberg set impossible requirements - the game had to be made within 6 weeks, and they had to make 5 million copies (there were not 5 million Ataris in existence at the time). People bought this game expecting something as god as the movie, and what they got, was THIS.

The goal of the game is to obtain 3 pieces of the phone and "phone home" so the other aliens can pick you (ET) up. You control ET and attempt to find the pieces of the phone. The game is played in an overhead view, and you can progress by moving to the edge of the screen. There are a few issues with this - you'd have to have a map to tell most of the screens from each other. But that's the least of your problems in this game.

As you move through the screens searching for pieces of the phone, you find these holes in the ground. If you fall into them, you have to float out, using some of your power. If your power meter runs down all the way, you lose a life. 3 lives and you're dead - classic video game law. It's also tricky to get out of the hole, you have to be careful to move away from the hole, and that's hard to do with the game's stiff controls. So knowing all this, you want to stay away from the holes... right?

Well you explore all the corners of the map and possibly run across a few enemies (more on them in a moment) and you're not able to find anything. You then mistakenly fall into a hole for the 5th time (again, stiff controls) and realize that yes, that is a piece of the phone, in the hole. To find the pieces of the phone, you need to fall down random holes and hope to find them. It's sheer luck, because every wrong answer costs you energy. Enough wrong guesses and ET ain't phoning home today.

There is one way you can get the game to tell you where a piece is, but that's by pressing the button (there's only one, it's Atari) when the icon at the top of the screen randomly shows a question mark. Even then, a piece of the phone must be on the screen you're on, or it won't work. So, if you're lucky enough, you won't have to be lucky enough to search holes randomly.

Ah, but you'd better avoid the enemies. There are two - the FBI agent and the Scientist. The FBI agent doesn't seem to do anything to ET... at first. But later, if he touches you while you have a piece of the phone, he takes a piece away! So how do you get it back from him? SEARCH MORE RANDOM HOLES?!!??!?!!!?!?!?!?!?!??! That's right, you'd assume he'd lock it up in some government room, but he must just toss it in a hole just to annoy ET. But you've also got another enemies to avoid - the Scientist. If she touches you, she'll drag you to the laboratory square, far away from anything else useful, wasting your precious time.

If (that's a big if) you manage to gather all three pieces of the phone, then you need to return to the starting square of the map (you'd better remember where it is) and then the timer for the UFO to pick up ET will start. So all you need to do is sit there and you wi... wait, no, NOT THE SCIENTIST!!!!!!!!!!

The game does look and sound relatively decent (for Atari standards, of course) but it is nowhere near enough to even begin to make up for the garbage that is the game play.

Vizzed itself knows this game is worthless.

Toad 004 : Wow, I tried the game and this is a great description, But is it THAT bad?