Can’t remember any particular performance problems with ET - it’s no more flickery than any other 2600 game, sound plays fine, screen changes when you fall in a hole are prompt, all that kind of thing. Now, utterly bizarre and unintuitive gameplay, yes; it has that in spades. Also quite unfinished, but Howard Scott Warshaw only got five weeks to develop it so I’m prepared to point the blame at Atari for that.
Now?
The first video game I ever l played was Pong.
Dodgy performance on release has always been the case. Would like to hear the tale of the Atari ET game?
Being able to remotely update games after release definitely lowered the bar for release considerably.
Im not saying there were no bugs before that, definitely not.
Can’t remember any particular performance problems with ET - it’s no more flickery than any other 2600 game, sound plays fine, screen changes when you fall in a hole are prompt, all that kind of thing. Now, utterly bizarre and unintuitive gameplay, yes; it has that in spades. Also quite unfinished, but Howard Scott Warshaw only got five weeks to develop it so I’m prepared to point the blame at Atari for that.
Like any good train wreck there are always many reasons why they happen.