alright I may have (probably needlessly) defended the ET game as something that gets way too much criticisms than it rightfully deserves, but even I'm struggling to think of what exactly can be defended over this port of Pac-Man.
I'll have to read more into its development but from a quick read, despite having a six-month period, it still faced issues cause Tod Frye didn't get any sort of specification about the arcade classic, and so had to spend 80 hours a week over the course of previously stated six months, not helping was having the 4KB cart being chosen for manufacturing reasons, meaning an already watered-down port was getting more bitten off cause of the limitations of the 2600's CPU and RAM. I'll admit, it's still exactly hard to call it a "bad" game considering the circumstances once again, but even still I kind of wonder how much could've been avoided and how much was unfortunate circumstances. Granted, I am theorizing early 80s development and design philosophies with my modern upbringings as well as my inexperience with the console and its full history, so the truth may be deeper than I think.
Now as for the game itself... I mean it's just a shoddy port of Pac-Man. Controls are sluggish and laggy, the AI is random rather than easy to figure out, it's even more repetitive due to the stage layout staying the same each time, and visually it's just boring and, cause of the constant flickering from the ghosts (which in fairness, was probably done so you'd figure out where they are exactly), a bit nauseating. Again, probably not one of the worst games ever cause even as borked as it is, it's still the arcade classic at the heart, but I will say I understand the claim concerning this game more than I ever will for ET.
I'll have to read more into its development but from a quick read, despite having a six-month period, it still faced issues cause Tod Frye didn't get any sort of specification about the arcade classic, and so had to spend 80 hours a week over the course of previously stated six months, not helping was having the 4KB cart being chosen for manufacturing reasons, meaning an already watered-down port was getting more bitten off cause of the limitations of the 2600's CPU and RAM. I'll admit, it's still exactly hard to call it a "bad" game considering the circumstances once again, but even still I kind of wonder how much could've been avoided and how much was unfortunate circumstances. Granted, I am theorizing early 80s development and design philosophies with my modern upbringings as well as my inexperience with the console and its full history, so the truth may be deeper than I think.
Now as for the game itself... I mean it's just a shoddy port of Pac-Man. Controls are sluggish and laggy, the AI is random rather than easy to figure out, it's even more repetitive due to the stage layout staying the same each time, and visually it's just boring and, cause of the constant flickering from the ghosts (which in fairness, was probably done so you'd figure out where they are exactly), a bit nauseating. Again, probably not one of the worst games ever cause even as borked as it is, it's still the arcade classic at the heart, but I will say I understand the claim concerning this game more than I ever will for ET.