This character is built in similar fashion, with sensors placed all over his
body such as the head, hands, his chest, plus he also has a glowing finger and
heart and as you play with him he'll move his neck, eyes and mouth, talking
to you with more than 400 words and 800 phrases.
The idea with him is to teach him about his new surroundings on earth and
progress through the four programmed stages of his development. The manual
tells you how to do this and examples follow :
E.T.'s Secrets: Certain combinations of actions will cause E.T. to either
put him into a deep sleep, have a laughing attack, or give him a burping
and hiccuping frenzy.
The environment: E.T. will react to light, darkness, loud noises such
as clapping and being relaxed by being turned upside-down.
"Phone home": Although E.T. likes living on Earth, his does miss his
original abode. Squeezing his right hand twice, patting his head, then covering
his light sensor will cause him to say "Phone home", but make sure you
put his number on your 'Friends & Family' list if you don't want a
£6m phone bill.
Games: E.T. has a couple of these up his sleeve. Follow is a
version of Simon Says (and like
Interactive Yoda's
"Yoda Says"), he will instruct you to press parts of his body in a certain,
increasing, order. Hide and Seek will allow a friend to place him
in another part of the house and, once set up correctly, you will have just
a few minutes to find him before he starts calling out to you.
Story: You and E.T. can make up stories together, taking it in turns
to say your piece.
Jokes: E.T. will tell you jokes and riddles, but will first tell you
all but the punchline. You can then guess this before pressing his hand to
continue and see if you'd guessed it correctly.
Finally, Interactive E.T. can also converse with another E.T., Furby,
Furby Babies and Gizmo, but I don't know whether it'll be an intelligible
conversation or a chat with John Prescott.
Overall, Interactive E.T. will certainly provide plenty of entertainment for
its target age group so if you couldn't get your child a PS2 for Xmas, this
is certainly worth a look.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
