ET was green in the game, I'm guessing, because Howard wrote it (completed it!) before the movie was released. The whole thing was on a punishing deadline, which is why it may seem rough and strange to lots of folks. Howard was tremendously proud of finishing a whole Atari 2600 game in just a few weeks; not a single other Atari programmer was willing to take on the challenge. In fact, Howard had to do it against management's wishes.
All this time I thought management had forced Howard to do it under an unreasonable deadline, leading to a poor game, but this comment made me rethink things. I'm starting to think Howard had the idea for an exploration game more or less thought out long before E.T. came to be and just saw an opportunity to fit his vision in the game.
Too bad he didn't have enough time for testing (I presume), the fact you're punished for exploring in a game that requires lots of exploring is really unexcusable.
Also recommended is "Racing the Beam" from MIT Press [1]. It is a terrific tour of Atari 2600 software development by examining several different games, including another Howard Scott Warshaw cart, Yar's Revenge.
Nice job. It's fun to seem some creative hacking. You could flame bait the title by renaming it to "Why I stopped using E.T. and started using E.T." :-)
