Bad Games You Have to Play

[ThePixelatedGenocide]

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (GBA). It looks like a suicide note written by the 32x, as seen through Youtube's lowest resolution.

And then played at half speed.

And challenge? If you figure out where the shortcuts are, it's almost impossible to lose. Really, this is bad by every single measure except "the standard 3D racing experience on the GBA."

But as a stress free meditative experience, there are few racing games that can compete. It teaches patience, without being too frustrating; and the steady unlocks hit that sweet spot of being slight, but dramatic, improvements over what you had before. It's the closest thing to a zen garden, action gaming has ever provided.

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Runner-up: The A-Team (C6664)

It's not so much a game, as a game enhancement device. Once you've witnessed it's terrifying beauty, you'll understand the appeal of every other licensed title ever made.

Dishonorable mention:

Every single type-in game from the 80's, with mistakes in the code. Great for teaching programmers how to write their own, but a cruel and unusual torture device for everyone else.

[Alucard1191]

Alright... I have 3 to add to this list from my own collection:


1) Batman Forever (Snes): One of the worst games ever made, as the critics review can attest too. The controls are really bad, the difficulty is insane, (in part because of the controls) it is REALLY tough to know where to go next, I remember in the first or second level you just go around shooting your grappling hook in random places trying to figure out how to get to the next floor. The graphics are actually not bad for the SNES, and that was clearly where ALL the effort of the game went. I had to look up how to use the tools, almost all of them have individual inputs, but you PICK weapons before you go on missions. I used the 'sticky goo' trying to play this last, and the input was rather complicated. The first clown thug took 50% of my life before I managed to pull off the goo so I could smash his face in.

Then there is the fact that it is a CARTRIDGE game with load times. "Please Wait" constantly. Not just inbetween levels but inbetween screens on levels. (Like going up a floor in the aforementioned grappling level.) This is the embodiment of slapping a franchise tag on something and putting out a horrible, horrible product.

2+3) From my Saturn Collection: Battle Monsters + Robotica: The critic has reviewed both of these as well, and I need to echo his sentiments. Games like this are what give video games a bad name. Battle Monsters is a super ugly 2d fighter that if released on SNES or Genesis would have been received a LITTLE better than it was on the 32-bit systems. The game looks worse than SFII or any Neo-Geo style fighter, the controls are really bad, and everything about it screams "Programmed in an afternoon by a jaded employee on a time limit."

Robotica is another exercise in being generic. A robot based doom clone with a vague story, enough to sort of make you interested, (space station has gone dark kind of deal) and the game doesn't look too bad for the time, (certainly better than battle monsters.) but the game goes absolutely nowhere. I played all the way through it as a teen, and man... there aren't even real boss fights to break up the monotony. By the time you've gone 10 floors down, (And there are A LOT of floors...) you've seen almost every single enemy type that they made. I figured there would at least be an ending that made it somewhat worth putting up with all that crap, but nope. Every aspect about this game screams "use someone else's work, alter it very very slightly, and make some money."

I could honestly think of a few more, but it's work time!

[Atarifever]

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

This one is definitely a lot better than people think. Reading the manual and keeping the time period in mind helps. Yes, some QA would have made the pits a little harder to fall into, but the rest of the problems leveled at this one are just a complete disregard for how to play. Saying things like "you have to fall in all the pits to find the phone pieces" and "the game is too hard" is just, exactly, like saying:

"I hate Halo. I set it to Legendary and then tried to play the whole thing, as intended, using only melee kills and no vehicles. Worst. Game. Ever."

Set the game to 3 (easy) until you know how to play. Read the instructions to learn what the powers do (especially the one that shows you what pits have pieces in them). Understand that the map is not confusing at all. It is a cube. 1 top (the woods). 1 bottom (Washington). 4 sides (pit screens).

And, remembering the time period, with way more QA and development time, would it really have been possible on the 2600 to do a better job of a movie game about an alien assembling a phone, eating candy, using psychic powers, being helped by a little boy, fleeing the government and scientist, and escaping in a spaceship? I don't think so. It's, frankly, amazing how closely the game managed to fit the source material.

[Sut]

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (GBA). It looks like a suicide note written by the 32x, as seen through Youtube's lowest resolution.

And then played at half speed.

That is one of the wittiest analogies I've ever read.

[twilighthotel]

For the NES, I think having a gamer play Deadly Towers, Athena, Urban Champion or Hydlide will at least inform them as to what high-profile games are considered among the worst in the NES library according to the general public. Keeping in mind that these were games found on every store shelf as I chose not to include the "bad" unlicensed games that weren't in every Toys R Us and are thus less accessible.

For the 2600, I'd suggest someone play Pac Man (instead of E.T.) just to show what happened back then when an arcade conversion went wrong.

[Alucard1191]

For the NES, I think having a gamer play Deadly Towers, Athena, Urban Champion or Hydlide will at least inform them as to what high-profile games are considered among the worst in the NES library according to the general public. Keeping in mind that these were games found on every store shelf as I chose not to include the "bad" unlicensed games that weren't in every Toys R Us and are thus less accessible.

For the 2600, I'd suggest someone play Pac Man (instead of E.T.) just to show what happened back then when an arcade conversion went wrong.

My wife is not a gamer. (She likes some old sims games.) Butshe loves short bouts of urban champion. We'll play for 5-10 minutes at a time, and it's pretty fun. Stupid, and genuinely not fun for longer than 10 minutes, (kind of like wii sports for me, which she likes as well.) but it is a fun stupid game. (First time a flower pot fell on me I laughed pretty loud.)

[rockofhysteria]

I own two copies each of ET and Pacman for the 2600 one is open for each the others are still in the box and they are so bad it's awesome lol.


For the NES I recommend Power Punch 2 which is basically Mike Tyson Boxing Aliens lol. Mario is Missing, Any Wayne's World Game for any Platform.

John Elway Football for the NES I 2nd Urban Champion that game is hilariously bad. Friday The 13th is a all time classic bad game as well.

Superman 64 is a good shout out. If I think of more bad games I'll post them later.

[Stalvern]

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (GBA).

Nah. It's not great, but it's an incredible technical achievement (you knock it for its resolution and framerate, but while they're low, they're perfectly playable - and this is fully textured 3D on the GBA, so that really means something), and while it's obviously nothing next to the PC and console versions, the developers did a heck of a job of scaling it down. Even if the actual racing is weak, it's obvious that a lot of effort was put into the game.

You want a bad game, have a look at the DS version. GARBAGE. Look at this crap! Laugh at the Battlezone-grade "handling model" and the "collision" that happens 16 seconds into the video. Marvel that, despite the much higher framerate, the cars themselves somehow travel half as fast as the ones on the GBA. Even the camera angle is tackily rigid. This would barely cut it as a branded browser game, and it got a friggin' commercial release as an official Need for Speed title!

[CharlieR]

For a sports game fan, I'd say Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball. The thing that is annoying is that one button is used for both passing and shooting. It's still fun to play every once in a while

[twilighthotel]

For the NES, I think having a gamer play Deadly Towers, Athena, Urban Champion or Hydlide will at least inform them as to what high-profile games are considered among the worst in the NES library according to the general public. Keeping in mind that these were games found on every store shelf as I chose not to include the "bad" unlicensed games that weren't in every Toys R Us and are thus less accessible.

For the 2600, I'd suggest someone play Pac Man (instead of E.T.) just to show what happened back then when an arcade conversion went wrong.

My wife is not a gamer. (She likes some old sims games.) Butshe loves short bouts of urban champion. We'll play for 5-10 minutes at a time, and it's pretty fun. Stupid, and genuinely not fun for longer than 10 minutes, (kind of like wii sports for me, which she likes as well.) but it is a fun stupid game. (First time a flower pot fell on me I laughed pretty loud.)

''

Funny enough I enjoy all four games I mentioned, including Urban Champion. Those 4 and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde used to be available for rent at our local movie store in town so everyone in my school complained about them growing up. "Oh all the good games were gone and the only ones left to rent were......."