E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial

Dun dun duuun.

Atari 2600 time! And what better way to go than to pick one of the supposedly worst Atari 2600 games out there - E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, released in 1982 by Atari. This one almost killed an industry, in the process making sure the likes of Quaker Oats never strayed from making breakfast cereal again. But is it really as mind-bogglingly terrible as they say?

Zaxxon (Atari 2600)

Zaxxon is a bad game. Sure it looks nice for a 1982, but to me the constant struggle to negotiate the scenery and adjust the height of your ship makes the game almost unplayable. Despite this, it was brought to almost every system imaginable in the 1980s (I've briefly mentioned the DOS version in the past).

Of course the fun thing about that sentence is that some early 1980s consoles and computers were extremely basic in nature. Unable to render isometric graphics this Atari 2600 port has the player face forwards. Is it an impovement?

Halo 2600

I thought it was a Flash game, turns out I'm wrong!

Halo, perhaps the most memorable first person shooter of the last decade, has been brought to the Atari 2600, the most memorable console of the early 1980s.

The frightening thing is... it's actually quite good.