E.T.

by Mark Winn

from Sinclair User #13 (April 1983)



E.T. means, of course, Entirely Terrestrial. This game features a

peculiar, pot-bellied little creature - human, of course - and his

attempts to telephone his home - to Earth, of course. To make the call,

ET must find three pieces of red telephone and they, along with pieces

of blue candy and a flower, are hidden in 15 holes. If ET touches a

hole, he falls into it.



The controls are 1 for up, Q for down, N to go left, and M to waddle

right. The A key is a special fire button which has several functions

but is very costly on energy. If ET runs out of energy he will die.



To get out of a hole, you must press the fire button and then 1. The

screen has two hidden zones of nine squares each. In the candy zone,

signified by the appearance of the user-defined graphic J on the

scoreboard, any sweets you have retrieved can be exchanged for energy by

pressing fire. The flower gives instant extra energy.



If you have seven or more pieces of candy, they can be exchanged any-

where on the board. In the landing zone - UDG I - you must find by trial

and error the one position to enable you to call down ET's spacecraft,

again with the fire button. You can call home, however, only after you

have found all the pieces of the telephone.



The game suffers from being too dependent on chance; the only skill

required is in remembering which holes you have already visited. The

game is well presented, even featuring some strangely familiar little

tune. ET was sent by Mark Winn of Abergavenny, Gwent. (48K Spectrum)



Graphics notes:

45 - graphic G

70 - graphic I

75 - graphic J

1001 - graphic A

1060 - graphic B, graphic A, graphic D, graphic C

3030 - graphic E

3040 - graphic F

3075 - graphic E, graphic H, graphic F