MovieChat Forums > Signal to Noise Discussion > I was one of the kids who got the ET gam...

I was one of the kids who got the ET game for Christmas....


Whose parents spent their hard earned money on that terrible game. Whose Christmas memory that year was atari ripping off my parents, disappointing me and my two little brothers. My parents never bought another atari game again after that mess.

Maybe some place in this ego fest bragging of the good ole days they should have shown some remorse for all those kids and parents. Maybe a sorry we were focused on dollar signs and not QA ?

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Good god man, it's been over 3o frikkin' years, time to let it go...my brother and I also got ET that Christmas, and guess what we did? Played it, thought wtf, and went back to the many other awesome games we already had, not to mention still looked forward to the others we [probably] bought (I can't remember the order in which they were all bought) and ET gathered dust. It didn't ruin our day, it didn't cause us to boycott Atari, it didn't cause us to go ranting on a message board all this time later in some weird flashback where we relive the pain and agony of those days. ET was an anomaly, the rest of the games were fine. I for one enjoyed watching this to get some backstory and seeing the actual people behind it.

I'm not saying you're wrong, Atari was a company out to make money, as they all are. They put out a crap product under pressure to cash in on a popular movie. It wasn't the first time that's been done and it won't be the last. I just find your passion after all this time uncomfortable to behold, that's all.



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"I just find your passion after all this time uncomfortable to behold, that's all."

I agree!

BE HAPPY YOU HAD AN ATARI! I was 'one of those kids' who never got an Atari. To this day, when ANYONE asks me what I want for Christmas, I always say an Atari 2600 in the box. I have great childhood memories playing Atari -at friends' houses. I still cherish those memories. Merry Christmas!

-I once complained I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no legs.

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So much this! I didn't get an Atari 2600 until 1984 after literally years of cajoling my parents. It had finally come down to a price that was in my family's price range and there were tons of cheap games available. It was a mixed blessing though because by 1985 it was already getting very hard to find cartridges.

I do remember that E.T. was one of the first games I got. I didn't love it, but I enjoyed it and eventually beat the game. Mind you by that point I was so hungry for video games and was willing to play anything I could get my hands on.

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What Obnoxiously-Adorable said! My brother and I got the game, and played it. We were scratching our heads that such an amazing movie had this bad of a video game. While we understood putting all the pieces together so E.T. could phone home, we never understood the pits especially since at no point in the film does he fall down a hole. So we took out the cartridge and played another game. We still loved our Atari and continued to play it. We were not mad and now like most Atari enthusiasts laugh at the Christmas Day experience.

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That's your only memory of that Christmas? All the games were crappy. Compared to some of the other games I had, home run, street racer, and night driver, I thought it was a pretty decent game.

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If your folks are still around, are they still butthurt over spending their hard earned money on a game 30 years ago? I bet they aren't. That's one of a million stupid things they probably felt was a waste of their money. It was probably all crap to them, this was just a piece of crap you stopped playing with faster than the previous piece of crap. As long as you had a smile on your face when you opened it Christmas morning, they were probably happy.

See you guys at the 10 year prison reunion - Ben Richards

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I finished the movie today while exercising. So, what did I just do? Bid on the E.T. game on eBay. LOL Now, I have to get a 2600. I used to have one. I believe I got it from ebgames. I may have traded it in for a nintendo 64. I traded in so much, I did not even have to pay for the 64. haha Oh, memories.

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