"In Defense of E.T. on Atari." In our first article, we attempt to clear up the myriad misconceptions that surround the infamous 1982 release, and determine who is truly to blame for Atari's sad fate.

It’s a good game! It’s misunderstood!

Or so I remembered reading many years ago (almost ten, as it happens).

When trying to find this article, I couldn’t do it because search is incredibly broken now, but with a little help I found it. So here it is.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.socialEnglish
    12·
    2 days ago

    Well, the landfill isn’t just ET carts. The lack of quality was very much the problem, and yeah it extended across the entire ecosystem for Atari because they let shovelware run rampant when there wasn’t sufficient review platforms/magazines (at least in tbe US where the crash occurred).

    This is partly how Nintendo was able to rise so quickly: The Nintendo Seal of Approval and how to get licenced to make games for their system was a huge deal to QA at the time.