The amusing thing is there was an ET game on the atari 800 home computer that was actually quite a good game. No pit mechanic, all the parts were in the open to find.
Would be more accurate to describe the A’tarry blighting the land with its overfarming of disgusting crops that led to starvation and deaths of countless tribes. The Nintendo settlers survived and caused the land to recover only with a sacrifice to their god using a wickerman resembling a ROB.
CRN
5 years ago
Somehow, due to actually understanding the reference I always think “I was there Gandalf, 3000 years ago when E.T. hit stores”.
Well, actually he could do something with the resurgence of Atari in the year 7800, or the XEGS tribe, or the Masters of Mark III… but yeah, SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive is probably next on the horizon historically.
I’m surprised he didn’t reach back in time and have the A’tarry show them the ruins of the Ancients who came before, the deserted city of Odyssey from the Magnavox tribe. (Though, that’s the first home console from ’72. If you played that, you’re REALLY old-school.)
Full disclosure, I did own one. Along with an IBM 5100, an Osborn 1, a Vic20, a Comodore 64, and many others. We’ve come a long way from vacuum tubes, cardboard punch cards, and vector displays.
What a difference 50 years has made. Imagine where we’ll be in another 50…
I can’t wait till the horrible deformities from the Virtual Boy Pandemic to start. It really hurt the Nintendo nation during the 4th Console war between the Nintendo Ubermensch and the Sega Master System. I believe that the 4th console war was also the first real war to involve commando units with the Gameboys on the nintendo side and Game Gears fighting for the Sega nation.
As someone who lived through the console wars and was an active partisan, I can assure you we are decades away from the rise of the PlayStation nation. If Tim is going back to the beginning, I just hope he doesn’t gloss over the doomed rise and fall of my beloved NeoGeo. We fought hard, it was just not meant to be with the perfidious Nintendodites with their Super formula and the Sega fools with their Genesis and then the CD and 32x abominations.
I’m glad that the NeoGeo nation was able to survive in Arcadia though. Their ability to use multiple munitions at the same time helped keep them alive and defend the other Arcadian people. I know its much further into the future than whats here, but I’m surprised that NeoGeo survived the N-Gage controversy.
I know it’s just a comic, but I wanted to mention something that may be interesting for some people. At least, that’s how I’ve come to understand things and, if someone has a better knowledge, I’d be more than willing to learn. When the Europeans arrived on the American continent, they did not in fact know how to survive the winter. In fact, that’s why the first expeditions were a failure – everything was fine during the summer and fall, but they could not manage to get everything going for them by winter. It was difficult – you had to… Read more »
Still it is relevant to point out that the success of their arrival in the comic is not by any means linked to real history but to the fact that the NES itselft was a success. So yeah, while I thank for the knowledge you share that knowledge being known or not would most likely not change anything in this particular case.
The reason I showed the NES looking to learn from the Atari people upon arrival is because Nintendo did in fact examine Atari’s practices, to see what worked and what didn’t work, before bringing the NES to America.
So they’re not responsible for success the same way the native Americans helped the pilgrims, but Atari did play a marginal role in Nintendo’s business strategy for North America.
Erik Marques Schroeder
5 years ago
The only thing I think was a lost oportunity was to show the “people back home” as Famicons instread of NESes still. Awesome new series.
MajorWeirdo
5 years ago
Genius!! “Sour fruit, called ‘eetee” Just cheer genius 🙂
Will they go and bury it in a dark hole as well ?
Eldest Gruff
5 years ago
This was probably the best way to fit the NES/Atari into the English settling the Americas, but I’m a little sad that some of the history had to be whitewashed. ET hit in 1982, being the gigantic friggin’ straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of terrible Atari games. Nintendo really had an uphill battle in the States to be considered after the video game crash. That’s why ROB even exists. They had to market the NES as a toy, not as a game console. That’s why Nintendo’s iron fist under Kimishima did so well in the 80s and… Read more »
No point nitpicking, I guess, but the best analogy might be that the eetee fruit not only tasted horrible itself, but that the crop pulled all nutrients from the soil it grew in and even all around it and rendered it barren so that growing anything would be extremely tough.
Leon
5 years ago
This whole 1985 thing hasn’t been that funny. Go back to ‘whore’-frost…….
I’m guessing this is not funny because you are still a teenager and can’t relate to the old systems. I think the majority of folk who grew up in the era of Nintendo taking North America by storm probably find this more entertaining than you do.
It’s just a guess, mind you. I’ve been wrong before.
Also, Tim writes a comic and puts it on the internet for free. I don’t think he is beholden to pump out exactly and only what you want.
Cheers, hope you find a comic this Monday that suits your taste better!
I tend to assume such attitudes come from people lacking sufficient age to have acquired some maturity and sensitivity. It may not be true, but it’s a charitable assumption that dovetails nicely with your own point on valuable missed historical context.
30 years old as of today would put your birth year as 1990 (maybe late 1989), at/near the end of the console generation being parodied here. Since most people don’t have a lot of clear memories of early childhood, I suspect the bulk of your early video game experience (assuming you had that interest) would have been the later SNES/Sega era or early PS1/N64 (yes, I know I’m leaving some steps out). The point still stands that the NES era (let alone Atari) probably isn’t something you’re going to have a lot of nostalgia for. And that’s assuming you’re being… Read more »
As a 33 yr’old gamer girl, I have to say, you’re not doing our generation any favours with these comments. I don’t remember the original Atari very well, although I did, sadly, get to play the school computer variant of E.T. – mainly because it was there, while at home we were told to stay away from the evil epilepsy machines. Somehow this didn’t kill my nascent love for gaming stone dead and when I finally cajoled the ‘rents into getting the Master System and then PlayStation it took off admirably. Despite that lack of context I’m able to enjoy… Read more »
Or the random assortment of other small market consoles (intellivision is one that graced our living room in the way back) or independent early computers like Tandy’s
I could see a collection of lost tribes being found only by their trace remains, and a huge archeological controversy over whether the Xerox “fossil” is real or a fake from a desperate new researcher.
Marquar
5 years ago
I guess we are going to skip over the tribal split after the shaman of the A’tarry had an A’cti vision?
JustMrMartin
5 years ago
I have always loved when you work in the console wars from time to time, and this look back is just brilliant. You certainly brought a huge smile to the face of this old old school gamer. I would have loved to see old bones in the ground of the Calecovision, Intellivision, and Odyssey.
Luc
5 years ago
I actually had a Coleco-vision growing up. My grandparents had an Atari at their farm, but I never much cared for that. I wonder if the Coleco will make an appearance? Haha, I kinda doubt it, but I guess they would just fit in as some other generic tribe on this new continent.
Tony
5 years ago
Watch out for the Commodores and the rogue TRS-80s
Enclave
5 years ago
Ooo, is that the Master System on the horizon sailing in? Twas the superior system, only reason it didn’t crush the NES was Nintendo’s pretty anti consumer practices with publishers, developers and even retail locations.
Even with Nintendo doing that, the Master System still did fairly well and even was the dominant console in some places.
NES may have been the winning system in the USA, but in england/UK, the master system absolutely crushed the NES due to the more reasonable game prices, being roughly half that of the NES, plus poor product placement in UK shops.
It has to be; that foreshadowed comment about “living peacefully” can’t be leading to anything else, surely. And the Master System defiantly beat out Nintendo in the UK, polarising kids’ experiences between Sonic and Mario.
KBABZ
5 years ago
I was about to correct the use of 1985 as the Famicom launched in 1983… but this is a metaphor for the NES’s launch in the US, SOOOOOOOOOO
Alex
5 years ago
Lol i was born that year, how come nobody on my school talks about this in history?
A Halo Tryhard
5 years ago
ET Game phone home…
ET GAME HAS NO HOME, IT MUST DIE
xtra
5 years ago
i would like to know, why are videogames so many things?! in this one they’re food, in some they’re ammo, in a couple they’re weapons! ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Uh… because video games literally ARE everything to video game consoles?
I mean, what is a console without a games?
Bernie Margolis
5 years ago
For what it’s worth, I rather enjoyed the ET game as a kid. Granted,it doesn’t hold a candle to what became available when the NES hit, but I thought the game was OK when it was first released. I understand some of the hate for the game, but it’s always seemed exaggerated to me.
I’ve never played it myself, but I always suspected it was at least partially affected by unrealistic expectations given the source material.
E.T. the movie? That’s Spielberg at or near the top of his game. By putting the name of a very popular movie on the cartridge, they set the standard high right out of the gate; granted I don’t know from experience, but I have to assume that was already going to be a handicap.
Marcus Assarlind
5 years ago
“Constance”? Didn’t get that.
Ichiyama22
5 years ago
I thought the coloNESts didn’t arrive until after the A’tarry had wiped themselves out entirely with inedible crops.
Tonkin
5 years ago
I was mildly disappointed that their muskets werent the duckhunt guns tho…
buffyfan
4 years ago
And the ancients we once worshiped named the P’ong
24
Very nice reference to one of the greatest videogame failures ever 🙂
can’t talk about Atari without talking about ET lol
I actually owned that game… It was, really annoying.
The amusing thing is there was an ET game on the atari 800 home computer that was actually quite a good game. No pit mechanic, all the parts were in the open to find.
Atar-ET
Would be more accurate to describe the A’tarry blighting the land with its overfarming of disgusting crops that led to starvation and deaths of countless tribes. The Nintendo settlers survived and caused the land to recover only with a sacrifice to their god using a wickerman resembling a ROB.
Somehow, due to actually understanding the reference I always think “I was there Gandalf, 3000 years ago when E.T. hit stores”.
I, too, was there. And remember the very dark days of that time.
But everything changed when the Playstation nation attacked!
Tell me you know that’s not what happens next, chronologically speaking.
Gotta get SEGA in there first
Well, actually he could do something with the resurgence of Atari in the year 7800, or the XEGS tribe, or the Masters of Mark III… but yeah, SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive is probably next on the horizon historically.
I’m surprised he didn’t reach back in time and have the A’tarry show them the ruins of the Ancients who came before, the deserted city of Odyssey from the Magnavox tribe. (Though, that’s the first home console from ’72. If you played that, you’re REALLY old-school.)
I may have owned that console…
Full disclosure, I did own one. Along with an IBM 5100, an Osborn 1, a Vic20, a Comodore 64, and many others. We’ve come a long way from vacuum tubes, cardboard punch cards, and vector displays.
What a difference 50 years has made. Imagine where we’ll be in another 50…
The Master System has to be covered before we get to the Genesis/Mega Drive.
Tell me you dont love the aliteration of Playstation Nation though
I feel there should be SOME form of mention of the failed attempt at the 3d headset Nintendo tried, the one where everything was made of red lines.
Ah, the Virtual Boy. A friend had that thing. It was awful.
Next they began skirmished with the Inteli and Coleco tribes from the Vision mountains
Obviously it’s the CDi, we all know our history. Nothing will ever be quite as successful as the CDi, except maybe the Virtual Boy.
I know, it just slipped my mind when making the post lol.
Obviously that’s a Sega armada on the horizon.
I don’t know, could be new colonists with the POWER GLOVE 🙂
I’m pretty sure the guy on the right in the first panel already has one of those on.
I can’t wait till the horrible deformities from the Virtual Boy Pandemic to start. It really hurt the Nintendo nation during the 4th Console war between the Nintendo Ubermensch and the Sega Master System. I believe that the 4th console war was also the first real war to involve commando units with the Gameboys on the nintendo side and Game Gears fighting for the Sega nation.
Don’t forget the elite, super soldier Nomad commandos. Those things sucked down batteries like Barney sucks down Duff.
Nope, look at the sails, it’s more NES’s.
As someone who lived through the console wars and was an active partisan, I can assure you we are decades away from the rise of the PlayStation nation. If Tim is going back to the beginning, I just hope he doesn’t gloss over the doomed rise and fall of my beloved NeoGeo. We fought hard, it was just not meant to be with the perfidious Nintendodites with their Super formula and the Sega fools with their Genesis and then the CD and 32x abominations.
I’m glad that the NeoGeo nation was able to survive in Arcadia though. Their ability to use multiple munitions at the same time helped keep them alive and defend the other Arcadian people. I know its much further into the future than whats here, but I’m surprised that NeoGeo survived the N-Gage controversy.
Can’t forget about the Jaguar warriors too!
I also wanna see the TurboGraphix 16 and its CD add on. Loved that system (Ys!).
Random cameo from Phillips 3DO! xD
I know it’s just a comic, but I wanted to mention something that may be interesting for some people. At least, that’s how I’ve come to understand things and, if someone has a better knowledge, I’d be more than willing to learn. When the Europeans arrived on the American continent, they did not in fact know how to survive the winter. In fact, that’s why the first expeditions were a failure – everything was fine during the summer and fall, but they could not manage to get everything going for them by winter. It was difficult – you had to… Read more »
Just like on Rimworld, the first winter is always the hardest
Eh, when I play, I usually have either *all* winter or *no* winter.
Still it is relevant to point out that the success of their arrival in the comic is not by any means linked to real history but to the fact that the NES itselft was a success. So yeah, while I thank for the knowledge you share that knowledge being known or not would most likely not change anything in this particular case.
The reason I showed the NES looking to learn from the Atari people upon arrival is because Nintendo did in fact examine Atari’s practices, to see what worked and what didn’t work, before bringing the NES to America.
So they’re not responsible for success the same way the native Americans helped the pilgrims, but Atari did play a marginal role in Nintendo’s business strategy for North America.
The only thing I think was a lost oportunity was to show the “people back home” as Famicons instread of NESes still. Awesome new series.
Genius!! “Sour fruit, called ‘eetee” Just cheer genius 🙂
Will they go and bury it in a dark hole as well ?
This was probably the best way to fit the NES/Atari into the English settling the Americas, but I’m a little sad that some of the history had to be whitewashed. ET hit in 1982, being the gigantic friggin’ straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of terrible Atari games. Nintendo really had an uphill battle in the States to be considered after the video game crash. That’s why ROB even exists. They had to market the NES as a toy, not as a game console. That’s why Nintendo’s iron fist under Kimishima did so well in the 80s and… Read more »
No point nitpicking, I guess, but the best analogy might be that the eetee fruit not only tasted horrible itself, but that the crop pulled all nutrients from the soil it grew in and even all around it and rendered it barren so that growing anything would be extremely tough.
This whole 1985 thing hasn’t been that funny. Go back to ‘whore’-frost…….
I’m guessing this is not funny because you are still a teenager and can’t relate to the old systems. I think the majority of folk who grew up in the era of Nintendo taking North America by storm probably find this more entertaining than you do.
It’s just a guess, mind you. I’ve been wrong before.
Also, Tim writes a comic and puts it on the internet for free. I don’t think he is beholden to pump out exactly and only what you want.
Cheers, hope you find a comic this Monday that suits your taste better!
I tend to assume such attitudes come from people lacking sufficient age to have acquired some maturity and sensitivity. It may not be true, but it’s a charitable assumption that dovetails nicely with your own point on valuable missed historical context.
Actually, I’m 30
So still too young for the original Nintendo.
30 years old as of today would put your birth year as 1990 (maybe late 1989), at/near the end of the console generation being parodied here. Since most people don’t have a lot of clear memories of early childhood, I suspect the bulk of your early video game experience (assuming you had that interest) would have been the later SNES/Sega era or early PS1/N64 (yes, I know I’m leaving some steps out). The point still stands that the NES era (let alone Atari) probably isn’t something you’re going to have a lot of nostalgia for. And that’s assuming you’re being… Read more »
You don’t like my comments? Go suck a duck
As a 33 yr’old gamer girl, I have to say, you’re not doing our generation any favours with these comments. I don’t remember the original Atari very well, although I did, sadly, get to play the school computer variant of E.T. – mainly because it was there, while at home we were told to stay away from the evil epilepsy machines. Somehow this didn’t kill my nascent love for gaming stone dead and when I finally cajoled the ‘rents into getting the Master System and then PlayStation it took off admirably. Despite that lack of context I’m able to enjoy… Read more »
You would do well heading your own advice then… “Don’t like the comics Tim puts out…. ?” Well, you already said it. >_>
You people realize that, by arguing with me, you’re playing right into my hands? >:)
you’re just a well feed troll but it’s not an achievement, you know?
lol’ed at “I’m 30” (-21 rep)
And now I’m bored again
The “fruit” in the second panel, is that meant to be wads cash (growing on trees as you will), or is the fruit meant to be the ET game?
I think its meant to be the Atari cartridge of ET, because lets face it, their carts were kinda small
This fruit is an Atari cartridge, not cash. Yes, the name eetee is in reference to E.T. the game.
I wonder if Commodores would be mentioned… after all, they were in dominance of the PC market before the IBM PC evolved to what it is today.
Or the random assortment of other small market consoles (intellivision is one that graced our living room in the way back) or independent early computers like Tandy’s
I could see a collection of lost tribes being found only by their trace remains, and a huge archeological controversy over whether the Xerox “fossil” is real or a fake from a desperate new researcher.
I guess we are going to skip over the tribal split after the shaman of the A’tarry had an A’cti vision?
I have always loved when you work in the console wars from time to time, and this look back is just brilliant. You certainly brought a huge smile to the face of this old old school gamer. I would have loved to see old bones in the ground of the Calecovision, Intellivision, and Odyssey.
I actually had a Coleco-vision growing up. My grandparents had an Atari at their farm, but I never much cared for that. I wonder if the Coleco will make an appearance? Haha, I kinda doubt it, but I guess they would just fit in as some other generic tribe on this new continent.
Watch out for the Commodores and the rogue TRS-80s
Ooo, is that the Master System on the horizon sailing in? Twas the superior system, only reason it didn’t crush the NES was Nintendo’s pretty anti consumer practices with publishers, developers and even retail locations.
Even with Nintendo doing that, the Master System still did fairly well and even was the dominant console in some places.
NES may have been the winning system in the USA, but in england/UK, the master system absolutely crushed the NES due to the more reasonable game prices, being roughly half that of the NES, plus poor product placement in UK shops.
It has to be; that foreshadowed comment about “living peacefully” can’t be leading to anything else, surely. And the Master System defiantly beat out Nintendo in the UK, polarising kids’ experiences between Sonic and Mario.
I was about to correct the use of 1985 as the Famicom launched in 1983… but this is a metaphor for the NES’s launch in the US, SOOOOOOOOOO
Lol i was born that year, how come nobody on my school talks about this in history?
ET Game phone home…
ET GAME HAS NO HOME, IT MUST DIE
i would like to know, why are videogames so many things?! in this one they’re food, in some they’re ammo, in a couple they’re weapons! ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Uh… because video games literally ARE everything to video game consoles?
I mean, what is a console without a games?
For what it’s worth, I rather enjoyed the ET game as a kid. Granted,it doesn’t hold a candle to what became available when the NES hit, but I thought the game was OK when it was first released. I understand some of the hate for the game, but it’s always seemed exaggerated to me.
I’ve never played it myself, but I always suspected it was at least partially affected by unrealistic expectations given the source material.
E.T. the movie? That’s Spielberg at or near the top of his game. By putting the name of a very popular movie on the cartridge, they set the standard high right out of the gate; granted I don’t know from experience, but I have to assume that was already going to be a handicap.
“Constance”? Didn’t get that.
I thought the coloNESts didn’t arrive until after the A’tarry had wiped themselves out entirely with inedible crops.
I was mildly disappointed that their muskets werent the duckhunt guns tho…
And the ancients we once worshiped named the P’ong