Nerding Day: E.T. Digital Companion🌭

Do you ever wish you could be someone else? Someone different? Someone better? Maybe you wish you could be a kinder person, a more forgiving one. Maybe you wish you’d made different choices in your life. Why did you waste so much time in your teens and twenties alone in your room playing Sonic the Hedgehog games? You could have been somebody. Somebody who doesn’t see Sonic the Hedgehog’s bare feet every time they close their eyes.

Well, today I’m offering you the opportunity to go back and right what once went wrong. Afraid? You needn’t be. We have a companion on this journey. A digital companion.

Yes, it’s E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial. Admission: I feared and hated E.T. as a child. His odd proportions unsettled me and I was too young to really understand what was happening in the film, so I believed for a time that E.T. had given Elliott some kind of virulent space cancer. Would that I could say I would have been brave enough to beat E.T. to death with hammers. In truth, I would have fled from him, back to the safety of my room. And then I probably would have spent all weekend playing Sonic Adventure.

Those of you familiar with industry lore may know that the original E.T. game for the Atari 2600 is one of the most reviled titles in video game history. It was released in 1983 and allegedly contributed to the Video Game Crash of that decade. After that, it was some time before they were ready to try crafting interactive experiences about a potbellied space freak again — E.T.: Digital Companion didn’t come out on the Game Boy Color until 2001.

Now, it has to be said that E.T. isn’t an immediately obvious candidate for a video game adaptation. In today’s post-Life is Strange world, maybe. An emotional, slow-paced E.T. adventure game could do just fine. But back then? They botched multiple Back to the Future and RoboCop titles in the NES era. What hope did this stocky little turd have?

Sorry. That’s the old me talking. The bitter, cruel me. I can be better than that. I know I can. E.T. will help me. Let us begin.

E.T. wants to know our name. He has a number of helpful suggestions here to cut down on typing with the GameBoy Color’s d-pad. “Merritt” isn’t in there, but “M.K.” is, weirdly.

That’s fine, though. We’re shedding this identity. Becoming something new.

Omega. As in, “alpha and the,” not as in the Supernatural fanfiction sex thing. When our purification is complete, such knowledge will be scoured from our minds. The words “Foreverial Tiedup Delitized” will have no meaning to us. If they already don’t to you, I suggest you keep it that way.

Ok, a little personal, E.T. Why do you need to know this before we play your video game? But if you insist: my name is Omega Chadwick. Can we start yet?

No, not yet. We have to tell E.T. our nickname, our birthday, and our interests. E.T. craves knowledge of our human lives. He has so much to learn from us. Well, E.T., my favorite human pastime is “Feed Flopglopple.”

But E.T. is not yet sated.

I’m trying so hard, E.T. I’m trying so hard to be a kinder, more patient person. So few people get a second chance, and I would feel terrible about squandering such a gift. But I’ve got to be honest: I’m getting a little sick of your shit. Thankfully, and somewhat depressingly, the game has anticipated this outcome.

Nobody said rebirth would be easy. In Elden Ring I had to find and deliver an astral fetus to a kindly magical woman wearing an impractical hat to respec. Here, we must endure a boss rush of personal questions. It’s essentially a Mega Man game with more data entry.

Two things. First, this background has made me realize that E.T. been pasted into each of these prompt screens with a solid white box around him. Could the artist not have cut that out? Second, how did they make an E.T. game where he asks for your phone number and not include the character’s famous line about telephone calls? Steven Spielberg set up “E.T. phone home” in 1982 and nearly two decades later, these assholes made this skinny fat crime against the Abrahamic God say “we need your digits.” I’m beginning to think that this licensed game based on a decades-old movie for the Game Boy Color didn’t have a very large budget or a great deal of care poured into it.

Old habits die hard. Yesterday’s self rages against its dissolution. My instinct is to go mean, but we have to ask: what would Omega Chadwick do?

There we go.

Is it just me, or has E.T.’s expression taken on a leering quality? He’s a little too interested in the topic. Do his people have genitals or gender, anyway? His Wikipedia article says “male,” but mostly avoids pronouns. There was apparently a debate over the character’s gender on Twitter seven years ago, which feels like a lifetime ago now. We won’t use Twitter in our new life. We won’t ever have used Twitter. We will be pure and good.

“Addy?” the plantlike space goblin asks, in the lingo of a WhatsApp weed dealer on his way to bring you a strain called “Reese’s Pieces.” It’s pieces, ok? It was never “reesees peesees.” If you say “peesees,” reader, you can go to hell.

Ah, but despite my efforts, the old, familiar rage wells up in me. I’m sorry. It’s not you I’m mad at.

Mull that over in your rotten Venusian head, hated star creature. Omega Chadwick has nothing but love in his young, hopeful heart for his fellow humans. He mistrusts and loathes the interloper from beyond the stars.

Your questions tire me, alien. You dare to set broad, ungainly foot on Holy Terra, the cradle of humanity, and you pepper me ceaselessly with these inquiries. My patience wears thin. Thus: I live in Boulder, Colorado. My favorite color is blue, the hue of your foul, copper-tinged blood. My least favorite color is the dull brown of your hide. My favorite animal is bees. My best friend is named Mr. T. Not that one.

Oh, and my pet’s name?

It’s Bong. Thanks for asking!

Surely my trial is at an end. I have given so much, selected from so many suggested options, painstakingly typed in my responses using the on-screen keyboard when the possibilities presented were insufficiently funny.

And yet the beast hungers still. He will not be satisfied until he has taken all that I am. What is the name of your school? When is your first day of school? Do you know all of the emergency exits at your school? If E.T. arrived at your school one day with an automatic weapon and asked you if you believed in God, how would you answer?

If you asked me — the old me — in 2001, I probably would have said Linkin Park. But Omega Chadwick isn’t that person. Omega has no need for the soulful desperation of Chester Bennington or the edgy hip-hop stylings of Mike Shinoda. He is not alienated from humanity. Far from it. His soul resonates to a more primitive rhythm.

I began this process to become a better person. Is hatred sharpened into a burning spear pointed at the heart of an interstellar meddler better than a diffuse raging against oneself and the world? That was a rhetorical question. Here’s another real one.

And answered.

Is this the entire game? What possible reason could E.T. have for needing to know all of this? I will permit one final inquiry before I press the power switch on my Game Boy Color and go outside to enjoy being a healthy child with lots of friends.

Oh, E.T. Sweet, simple E.T. You must know by now. After all, you were the one who set me on the path.

I will see the stars, E.T. I will traverse the galaxy until I arrive at whatever stinking rock you crawled off of, and, well, we needn’t concern ourselves with what will come next.

At last. At last. We are reborn. Let us explore this new world together. And oh, I forgot that I went back and changed my name to Alpha at some point. Why be last when you can be first, am I right?

Hold on. What am I looking at here?

I have… e-mail? From Elliott? Addressed to a name I erased from the game? What manner of devilry is this?

More “e-mail.” It’s from E.T, and… is that a mushroom cloud in the background? “Be Good!… or else,” is that the idea? We’ll see about that.

To be clear, the Game Boy Color does not have any onboard internet-accessing capabilities. “Sending” a message with the E.T. Digital Companion would involve laboriously typing out a subject line (there is no actual body field) and then handing the device to the intended recipient. Here E.T. has made a fatal miscalculation. If I’m within GameBoy-passing range, I’m also well within hammer striking range.

Let’s see what else we’ve got here. You can put your to-do list and school schedule in here, in case you wanted to make things easier on bullies and/or kidnappers. But, what’s this? “Cool Stuff?”

The first “cool thing” is a slideshow. Let’s take a look at some iconic images from the film E.T. on a 160×144 screen in 56 glorious colors.

Fantastic. Next.

Or not. I guess if E.T. just gave you the pictures, you wouldn’t enjoy them so much. It’s the same way with today’s mobile games. Sure, you could look up JPEGs of anime girls on the internet, a human technology essentially created for the proliferation of such images, but it doesn’t hit the same as unlocking one after grinding out hundreds of hours of gameplay or spending thousands of dollars on a digital slot machine, you know?

Let’s try trivia.

“I know you liked it when they dressed me up as a lady. I liked it too.”

To hell with this.

No. Get me out of here.

Oh, I’ll try harder, alright. Try harder to remind you to stay in your hateful corner of the universe. It’s time to feed Flopglopple, which, as longtime readers of this article will recall, is my Fav Hobby.

Do you want the world’s worst virtual pet? E.T. Digital Companion has got you. Thrill as you force Flopglopple to devour apple after apple, waiting to see if it finally bursts. I am your God, Flopglopple. Your friend E.T. has no power here.

Ah, so your kind can know misery. Good. Do not forget this feeling. I control every aspect of your wretched existence. Your name is no longer Flopglopple. It is Felipe.

Now, let me check my to-do list.

Ignore the part about it being 1998. I skipped time ahead to force Felipe to experience years of neglect in an instant and E.T. Digital Companion began to groan in protest, slowing down and glitching out. There is, as the screen says, no time to waste. Alpha Chadwick has put off his Great Work long enough.

Let us, at last, play “Bicycle Race.”

Mission accomplished.

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