divVerent<p>I now actually tried to play the <a href="https://misskey.de/tags/ET" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#ET</a> <a href="https://misskey.de/tags/game" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#game</a> for the <a href="https://misskey.de/tags/Atari2600" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Atari2600</a><span> myself. I did need a "guide" for it (which BTW turned out to be a typed-off copy of the original manual), but when knowing how the game works, I only have few complaints:<br><br>- Not discoverable. One really NEEDS the manual. Unlike like every single other Atari 2600 game.<br>- Leaving a hole is somewhat unintuitive. I don't see why it requires button+up, as button alone does nothing useful while in a hole - either button alone or up alone would be valid options (button alone likely better due to interaction with the map screen).<br>- Slightly broken hitboxes for holes. When one moves out of a hole sideways, E.T. can appear slightly above the hole and the moving-out-of-hole mode ends - however E.T. is then still in the hole's </span><a href="https://misskey.de/tags/hitbox" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#hitbox</a><span> and falls down immediately. The manual says to just try again then - the REAL workaround is to leave the hole only on the bottom half (and one can also use the downwards button).<br>- No real music. Kinda excusable on this P.O.S. of a console that can't even play the standard note frequencies.<br>- On some screen transitions one instantly drops into a hole. Just fix that dumb </span><a href="https://misskey.de/tags/gamedesign" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#gamedesign</a><span> there, just don't have holes on player spawns.<br>- A bit too much </span><a href="https://misskey.de/tags/RNG" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#RNG</a><span> for my taste. Maybe at least mitigate by having the badguys spawn offscreen, and not fully onscreen, so you have at least some time to dodge them when you're near a screen edge. Top/bottom offscreen spawning is trivial on the 2600, left/right not sure, however they're much higher than they're wide, so for left/right it'd be less of a problem anyway - or one could just mask away a border to be able to draw partial sprites.<br><br>So, I wouldn't call it a </span><i>great</i> game, but I guess it actually was at least OK. It simply was way too much for that console, leading to the need for players to actually read the manual. Only one serious bug, which <i>could</i> have been mitigated by describing the better workaround in the manual. If it had been a <a href="https://misskey.de/tags/NES" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#NES</a> or <a href="https://misskey.de/tags/Famicom" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Famicom</a><span> game, it could easily indicate "zones" already visited instead of the player having to remember that, it could have had actual music, and it could even have useful self explaining sprites for the zones (and could even show the name of the zone in a status bar when in it). And well, occasional text boxes of course (when E.T. is captured, and when taking a phone piece).<br><br>Of course, then it'd be underwhelming for a NES game, given it'd do way less than Legend of </span><a href="https://misskey.de/tags/Zelda" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Zelda</a><span> (which has its own nasty game design problems).<br><br>So basically, that game would have needed a console generation between the 2600 and the NES. Maybe the </span><a href="https://misskey.de/tags/Atari7800" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#Atari7800</a> would have worked for it...</p>