DregNog Video Advent Calendar: Day #11: E.T. ruins Christmas, innocence

Published Dec 24 2009, 03:00 PM by Shaula Clark

Hey, it's Christmas Eve, the perfect time to meditate on one of the most epic video-game bummers ever: 1982's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.

The release of the infamously wretched E.T. was a dark day in Atari 2600 history -- probably the darkest. This highly anticipated, magnificently botched game turned out to be so unsalvagably shitty, they had to bury the unsold copies in a mass grave in Alamagordo. (New Mexico is the king of alien coverups, after all.) This ad represents the few blissful months before Christmas when people were actually breathlessly awaiting the game's release, instead of angrily hurling the cartidges across the room. Since mere words cannot adeqautely capture its suckitude, check out this speed run. (WFMU offers strangely contrary bit of E.T. nostalgia here).

Exactly how much damage the E.T. game has wrought upon the collective human psyche is unclear, but we can still see ripple effects. Just this year, the Boston Underground Film Festival screened Prison_beta, by Lucas Dimwick. In this 8-bit short, "Catastrophic events are set in motion after millions of E.T. Atari video game cartridges become radioactive as a result of being buried near the Trinity nuclear bomb test site." Merry Christmas!

Filed Under: aliens, Roswell, DregNog09, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Atari 2600

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Filed Under: aliens, Roswell, DregNog09, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Atari 2600, Alamagordo, New Mexico, nuclear bombs, Boston Underground Film Festival, WFMU

Boston Phoenix
DregNog Video Advent Calendar: Day #11: E.T. ruins Christmas, innocence
Published 12/24/2009 by Shaula Clark
Hey, it's Christmas Eve, the perfect time to meditate on one of the most epic video-game bummers ever: 1982's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The release of...

Boston Phoenix
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Published 11/3/2009 by Carly Carioli
Excuse me, miss: Can I see your birth certificate?Like any good reporter on an election night, I stayed home and watched a remake of a...

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