Bad Games You Have to Play

General and high profile video game topics.
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VideoGameCritic
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Bad Games You Have to Play

Postby VideoGameCritic » November 24th, 2016, 9:42 am

I saw a commercial recently with talking raccoons going through trash cans and one says to the other "this tastes horrible - try it!"

I think there are certain bad video games that I would recommend people try at least once so they could experience the badness for themselves.

During the holidays one that comes to mind is the disastrous Sonic the Hedgehog (Xbox 360, 2006). I personally feel like I need to revisit it to see if it's really as bad as I remembered, or if it was a bad dream.

ET (Atari 2600, 1982) is another. Everybody talks about this, but you really need to try it first-hand to form a real opinion.

Your ideas for bad games people should play?

DaHeckIzDat
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Re: Bad Games You Have to Play

Postby DaHeckIzDat » November 24th, 2016, 10:46 am

I haven't played it, but how about that Aquaman game? Also, Superman 64.

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Stalvern
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Re: Bad Games You Have to Play

Postby Stalvern » November 24th, 2016, 2:00 pm

Awesome Possum, on the Genesis. Not since the '80s crash had a console game shown such abject contempt for the consumer; to experience that in a 1993 release is genuinely special. Plus, it basically plays itself if you just hold right and A, which is "fun" to see firsthand.

Mo Hawk and Headphone Jack, on the SNES. Maybe the worst use of Mode 7 in the system's entire library. Definitely the most uncomfortable game I've ever played. There are videos on YouTube, but nothing can really capture the bizarre awkwardness of actually trying to play it.

Bubsy 3D, on the PlayStation. When I discovered that it was originally intended for the 32X, I was almost sympathetic. Then I played it again, and nope, it's just incompetent. What makes it worth playing is how weirdly it does everything wrong. What's stuck to Bubsy's feet to make him control so badly? Why is the sky so bleakly dim? Why does Bubsy's somersault have three chunky frames instead of just rotating the model? And what the HELL is that music?!

lynchie137
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Re: Bad Games You Have to Play

Postby lynchie137 » November 24th, 2016, 6:55 pm

Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde for the NES. Reviews on the game don't do it justice in telling how bad it really is. You really have to play it and see for yourself.

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Re: Bad Games You Have to Play

Postby eneuman96 » November 24th, 2016, 9:45 pm

I second Sonic '06. That game is a trainwreck on so many levels, yet its (many, many, MANY) glitches tend to be extremely entertaining to watch.

Due to the intense surge of popularity for Let's Plays in recent years, certain games appear to have been designed to be INTENTIONALLY bad-yet-entertaining. For example, Goat Simulator barely even qualifies as a game, but it's just so insanely goofy and fun to mess around with that you can't help but keep finding out new ways to cause it to glitch out.

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Stalvern
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Re: Bad Games You Have to Play

Postby Stalvern » November 25th, 2016, 2:12 am

One bad game that I haven't played but would absolutely love to is Jurassic Park: Trespasser. It has the most sophisticated physics engine of 1998, a huge open-world environment of unprecedented detail, and, uh, a floating arm that you wave around to manipulate everything by directly grabbing, pushing, and pulling. Including the guns - you hold one in your hand, point your arm somewhere in the direction of a target, and miss. Not that it really matters, because the dinosaurs' AI is broken anyway. I don't think that another game has tried so hard to be realistic according to priorities so useless.

twilighthotel
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Re: Bad Games You Have to Play

Postby twilighthotel » November 25th, 2016, 9:39 am

Stalvern wrote:Bubsy 3D, on the PlayStation. When I discovered that it was originally intended for the 32X, I was almost sympathetic. Then I played it again, and nope, it's just incompetent. What makes it worth playing is how weirdly it does everything wrong. What's stuck to Bubsy's feet to make him control so badly? Why is the sky so bleakly dim? Why does Bubsy's somersault have three chunky frames instead of just rotating the model? And what the HELL is that music?!


From what I've read online, the Bubsy 3D game was well underway when the developers realized how good Mario 64 looked. They wanted to scrap what they had and go back to square one because Bubsy looked like manure next to Mario. However, they were told they still had to meet the deadline and there was no more money or time to work with.

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Re: Bad Games You Have to Play

Postby goldenband » November 25th, 2016, 10:26 am

A few that come to mind:

Plumbers Don't Wear Ties (3DO) - This isn't even really a game -- more of a visual novel. But horrible though it may be in objective terms, it's an absolute treat to play (especially with someone else), at least if you enjoy experiences like watching a hilariously awful Z-grade movie.

Andre Agassi Tennis (Genesis) - It's amazing how many of the fundamentals of "how to make a tennis game" got screwed up here. From the rotoscoped animation that makes all your inputs lag by as much as a full second, to the bizarre bass-ackwards gameplay that means many points are won by hitting your opponent with the ball, to the complete lack of passwords (!) or even tiebreaks (!!), this game is a trainwreck. Anyone who likes tennis games needs to play it at least once.

Shadow: War of Succession (3DO) - This horrible fighting game is the 3DO at its worst, i.e. a platform for the worst sort of trashy mid-1990s cheese, with gameplay and assets that look like they were ripped out of a Flash game from a few years later. Spamming the same projectile attack endlessly is all it takes to win (Fist of the North Star on Game Boy is similar). The devs couldn't figure out how to get the fatalities to work without crashing, so they simply disabled them -- but left in the "FINISH HIM!" message, thus completely confusing players for years to come!

Super Boy I (Sega Master System) - Imagine a nuclear holocaust in which all known copies of Super Mario Bros. are destroyed, but one of the survivors in South Korea sets up a power generator, busts out some computer equipment, and decides to try to reconstruct SMB...

...but he'd only played it once, and all he has to work with is a MSX, a map of Worlds 1 through 4, and a guy who sort of remembers the music. That's what Super Boy I is like. It looks more or less like SMB, but just about every parameter of the gameplay is messed up, and it ends abruptly after World 4-4, with the message "TO BE CONTINUED".

What's especially funny is that, at the end of Worlds 1 through 3, instead of "THANK YOU MARIO! BUT OUR PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE!", the game informs us:

"SORRY NOTHING"

The first time I saw that I completely cracked up. It's a trip.

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Re: Bad Games You Have to Play

Postby VideoGameCritic » November 25th, 2016, 11:42 am

I went back and played Sonic the Hedgehog (Xbox 360) this morning and it was even bit as awful as I remember. The camera in of itself earns the game an F - you never know what's going on. Add in inconsequential dialog, tedious quests, touchy controls, and embarrassing cut-scenes, and you have one of the worst games ever (it'll be on my upcoming list no doubt).

"Take THAT!"

"It's NO USE!!"

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Rev
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Re: Bad Games You Have to Play

Postby Rev » November 26th, 2016, 9:08 am

Dragon's lair for the nes. Terrible game but I love trying to beat the crappy controls with my memorization skills.


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