The 20 Worst Games Ever

EGM's Seanbaby has a 'director's cut' of a list of the top 20 worst videogames, a list published in the 150th issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly earlier this year. While some top lists may claim authority, this one is the real deal: these games are utter crap. From the article: "#10: Revolution X (SNES) This game is biblically horrific. You're overthrowing an oppressive world order. With Aerosmith. And music is your weapon. That scream of terror you just heard was probably you. Using your weapon, music, you'll fight a massive army of soldiers sent by the government to keep you from rocking. And since the artists were lazy, the army is made up entirely of a man in a yellow jacket and his several thousand identical twins."

Plumbers don't wear ties?

What about the infamous 'Plumbers don't wear ties?'. I remeber this scoring 4% in PC Format (UK) about 10 years ago and holding the title of 'Worst Rating' for many a year, it may even still do so. ..

Re:Plumbers don't wear ties?

There's also "J-Space for Windows". The only instance I heard about it was in a small book listing cheats for ~101 PC games in circulation at the time.

The tip for that game was don't buy it, since it got 4% -- PC Format's lowest ever rating. Other than that single comment, it seems as if the game disappeared from the face of the Earth. I have no idea why it was bad, since that comment didn't really cite when it was reviewed.

Re:Plumbers don't wear ties?

I used to be a part time reviewer, and I got sent a game that was so appalling I've never seen anything so bad since - it had jerky 2d motion and after I basically gave up on it found out that there was no quit - the only way to exit the game was to pull the power switch!

Damned if I can remember its name.. I've blocked it out. Gave it a negative percentage at the time...

Re:Plumbers don't wear ties?

OTOH, my nomination "most awesome game ever" goes to Desert Bus [wikipedia.org] from Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors game package (it never made it big, surprisingly). The game was an answer to the Jack Thompson-types. Quoting from various sources [gamesetwatch.com]:

'Desert Bus' was a game we thought would really appeal to people who didn't like unrealistic games, and didn't like violence in their games. It was just like real, loving life.

The objective of the game is to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time at a maximum speed of 45mph, a feat that would take the player 8 hours of continuous play to complete, as the game cannot be paused.

The bus contains no passengers, and there is no scenery or other cars on the road. The bus veers to the right slightly; as a result, it's impossible to tape down a button to go do something else and have the game end properly. If the bus veers off the road it will stall and be towed back to Tucson, also in real time. If the player makes it to Las Vegas, they will score exactly one point: the counter - which was five zeros - went to 1.

It's available as a torrent [waxy.org]; feel free to wallow in its awesomeness!

Re:Plumbers don't wear ties?

Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors game package (it never made it big, surprisingly).

That's probably because it was never released commercially.

Rob

Extreme PaintBrawl

Another possible missing game is Extreme PaintBrawl [ign.com]; as far as I know, it got the lowest rating [ign.com] ever on IGN in 1998 (0.7 out of 10) and since then has never been topped (uhm, "topped" doesn't seem the right word for such games...).

Re:Extreme PaintBrawl

A friend of mine was a developer on that title. He said they just ran out of time and money and no one wanted to finish it. No one works for free I guess, and it's not the kind of title you'd be so proud of you'd be willing to make some sacrifices.

Re:Extreme PaintBrawl

PC Gamer gave it a single-digit rating, which led to the lead programmer writing them a letter and begging them to re-review it after the patch that added AI to the game was released.

You're Winner!

#1 has to be Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing [wikipedia.org].

Also, check out #9, Custer's Revenge [seanbaby.com], for some hot pr0n. Wow, were they ahead of their time or what?

Re:You're Winner!

"check out #9, Custer's Revenge, for some hot pr0n."

WHOA! Ook now that's going to far, Custer's Revenge actually was a good game, if only for the hot indian princess sex action reward!

Can anyone think of any console game where you get to have sex with a Indian Princess after rescuing her? Anyone? How about getting to have sex with any hot girl after rescuing her?

You have no idea how disappointing super mario brothers was after seeing Custer's Revenge. Race across one screen in Custer's Revenge and you get laid, play 9 levels in SMB and you still don't get any princess sex!

Girlfriend walks in while i'm reading the review and says "Custer's Revenge. I've played that, you get to rape indian women and shit. That's a f**ked up little game." I couldn't have said it better myself ;-)

yay for old news

this might have been interesting if i hadn't read this, oh i dunno, 6 or 7 years ago when this article was published.

Old/10

I think I still have this issue of EGM, from, oh, 2003 or so? How is this on the front page?

Ultima 9: Ascension

Finally, an article on /. about a list of worst games, instead of the usual rehash of the "Top 5/10/20 best games of all time, etc ad nauseum" lists.

Hmmm. Nobody seemed to mention Ultima IX, a terribly bug-ridden game. From the README file alone: "Be certain you empty your Recycle Bin before installing the game." Or : "We recommend that you not save the game while you're poisoned; this has been somewhat problematic in the current version."

Wow, why didn't anyone mention that?

(Another game worth mentioning: Conquest Earth. Its not buggy but... hey, might as well have been.)

Re:Ultima 9: Ascension

To show you just how old this new story is, it was originally published on Seanbaby's site [seanbaby.com] before Ultima 9 came out, hence why it's not on the list.

Does it even qualify as news if it's that old?

Re:Ultima 9: Ascension

I hear that U9 is quite a bit more playable now than it was when it came out, especially if you include the fanmade patches.

Rob

Battlecruiser 3000AD

How about Battlecruiser 3000AD? As to ET, there are actually worse 2600 games than this. Maybe not with the same historical significance, okay...

OLD

I propose we give Sunday on Slashdot a new name. Something like "We've run out of things to post, so here's some old stuff" day.

Jesus christ, if you don't have anything remotely new or interesting to post, don't post anything.

Re:OLD

Jesus christ, if you don't have anything remotely new or interesting to post, don't post anything.

This quote applies double to the people whining about Slashdot.

Big Rigs

I'm surprised Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing [gamespot.com] didn't make it to the list... :)

Big Rigs: YOU'RE WINNER!

At least according to a race sim maniac like me, "Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing" would be a good candidate for a more up to date version of the worst games ever list. Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] has some nice words about this quite extraordinary game.

Bible Adventures!

While I definitely played worse games (and better ones), I found it kind of pointless that he chooses to just rant about the Bible and his religious views instead of discussing the game.

Re:Bible Adventures!

Especially because it really wasn't a bad game by NES standards. I played that game a lot as a kid, and it was a lot of fun. We weren't even Christian growing up -- I got it as a gift from a Christian uncle. I didn't play the David & Goliath mini-game as much as the Noah's Ark one... but it was fairly challenging, had a whole bunch of levels, and decent replay value. Oh well. If you read the rest of his "reviews" (see the CDI Zelda one), you'll see this was just some idiot 16 year old.

This list is awful

This list is one the worst I've read. The author just lists games out of his ass, and he is not even coherent with his previous list about "Worst 20 NES videogames", so you find that some NES videogames that scored less on that list scored more on this, and the supposedly worst (Deadly Towers) is missing on this list. What the...?

Suggestion: Avoid reading. Leave game trashing to professionals.

Digging up E.T.

The funniset thing in that article was the sentence "So if you ever lose your mind and want a copy of E.T., or maybe five million, grab a shovel and drive out to the desert. They're free."

It's funny because you can't actually do it - Wikipedia: "Starting on September 27, 1983, a layer of concrete was poured on top of the crushed materials".

Crushed, buried, sealed in concrete. Now that is one bad video game.

Re:Digging up E.T.

Wintergreen made a video about the whole E.T. disposal debacle. It has nice touches like the 2600 E.T. running around the desert where his carts are buried. Funny stuff.

http://keithschofield.com/et/ [keithschofield.com]

This info is rather stale (like the 2600)

This list has been rather arbitrary, however the "official" list [wikipedia.org] can be found and edited on Wikipedia.

I agree on #1 though. I cannot forget how much ET sucked (and I was a little tyke around this time). I had JUST gotten exposed to the 2600 and the crappy Pac-Mac clone released for it when the console abruptly was shoved into the closet never to see the light of day again.

I did enjoy the Atari 400 my mother had bought for my older sibling. We would both play Zaxxon for hours on it, which required starting a rather chunky and heavy cassette tape machine which you connected to the 400. There was some cheesy elevator music with some marketing propoganda (you had to turn the volumn down to ignore it). After going to get a soda and cigarettes at the store for my brother, the game would be completely loaded into RAM and we'd spend a good part of the afternoon trying to top scores.

ET however managed to suck the life out of Atari and it destroyed the company. Had it not done that, NES would have had no void to fill.

In fact, the Atari caused so much damage to the video game market (and all the other cheap video game systems), that Nintendo had to market the first 8-bit consoles by showing only the Nintendo R.O.B. (remember that thing?) The ROB had a major suck factor, but it was such a cool gimmick that the "seperate console" it needed to play the game managed to suck in enough kids that eventually the ROB was discarded (within about 6 months after it released).

The ROB gimmick was quickly removed from the marketplace and the only boxes you could find where the standard console and the one with the Duck Hunt gun. The original issue had everything--the NES, the ROB and the gun with all those games! What a steal!

Re:This info is rather stale (like the 2600)

I agree on #1 though. I cannot forget how much ET sucked (and I was a little tyke around this time). I had JUST gotten exposed to the 2600 and the crappy Pac-Mac clone released for it when the console abruptly was shoved into the closet never to see the light of day again.

I don't know why everyone hates E.T. much. I still dig it out from time to time to have ET put the transmitter together and phone home. People hate the pits... Here's a pointer for you, stay away from them! It's not like ET has any control issues, just keep him away from the pits.

E.T. follows the movie pretty well given the limitations of the 2600. You have ET, you have Elliot, and you have the bad guys trying to get ET.

Plus you get to revive a flower.

Revolution X

Is it just me or does Revolution X sound like it could have been a good idea for a game if you replaced aerosmith with spinal tap?

Re:Revolution X

it's just you.

Worst Website?

I nominate this for a pretty high ranking in the Worst Websites Outside Of Myspace list. Seriously, I had to turn off the CSS to avoid eyebleed and my system is already blocking GIFs and Flash, I don't even want to know what this would look like to some poor IE user.

Airport Tycoon

The worst game I ever purchased was "Airport Tycoon". Talk about abysmal. The concept had so much promise, but the result was so buggy and unfinsihed and ugly and unplayable, that it's the only game I ever uninstalled completely after less than one day, and then shredded and destroyed rather than taking it back for a refund. The only pleasure I got was destroying that piece of crap game.

Examples of what was wrong: all the graphical colors were muddy earth tones, just ugly. Placing buildings was buggy as hell (many times a building, road, or runway would refuse to be placed, for no apparent reason). Placing things inside the terminal (like ticket counters and security) was pointless... you could pile everything up on top of each other so people couldn't possible reach them, and it didn't matter. All that mattered is that you placed them somewhere. Also, what happened on the screen showed ZERO relationship with what was going on in the game. The game would say that the runway was too crowded, but the display would show an empty runway.

Just horrible all around. There wasn't a single redeeming value.

Was pretty funny until it got homophobic

I was enjoying this article until I got to the review of Zelda: Wand of Gamelon [seanbaby.com]. At first, I thought he was committing the sin of just being a jackass and using "gay" as a term to mean lame, but not actually connecting it with homosexuality, then I read "Now do the math on this: experts in ass ramming estimate that about 10% of the world is homosexual, and if you consider that only 5 people actually wanted a CDI machine, that means that this game was made specifically for a target audience of one half a person."

"Experts in ass ramming" eh?

Sounds like this guy has got a problem, oh I figured it out, he's a fucking idiot.

Re:Was pretty funny until it got homophobic

Except that it's not funny to anybody with more than two braincells.

Hold the button

Don't know if this would rate as the worse game, but it's good for a laugh anyways:
http://www.holdthebutton.com/ [holdthebutton.com]

This guy works for EGM?

This is the most pathetic article I have ever read. Other than being horribly offended by the language of the article, it read mostly like it was written by some teenage kid on his blog. While I must agree with his game picks, I feel that he was overly harsh in many areas, especially graphics. The Kriss Kross game and the Zelda game made early use of video compression capabilities, and especially with the Kriss Kross game, the idea that you are mixing videos, real-time, on the fly, on hardware the likes of the Sega CD, limited to 64 colors being able to be displayed at one time, was quite a technological marvel. Several of the games he mentioned had sucky graphics not because of poor design, but because of limitations of the NES and the Gameboy color. Actually, from the screenshots he posted of stuff like Bubsy, Kriss Kross, Barensteen Bears, Total Recal, and so forth, the graphics were on par with other games of the same genera on the same platform. Shoot, even ET, with as AWFUL as that game was, had graphics that were on par with other Atari 2600 titles.

While I must admit that all of these games sucked, the reasons given in the article were not good. It looks like games were picked at random, I mean, with the exception of ET, I can think of many other games that should be on this list instead. I would much rather be forced to play Bubsy than that horrible Home Alone game for the SNES, Galaga 13 and Michael Jackson's Moonwalker could be put in the same category as Total Recal, and I cannot believe that not a single Barbie game made the list. And what about those games that were released that were so buggy that they could not be played? Three Dirty Drarfs for the Sega Saturn actually CRASHED on me every time I get to a certain point of the game, which, I have not played it in years, so cannot remember if its the first or second level, but made the game practically worthless. I have played racing games where physics seemed to be a concept the game designers left out, making it perfectly alright to drive through solid objects. How in the world did Aquaman not get on this list?

Once again, I must admit that all these games suck, but if you are going to work for EGM, stop acting like a 14 year old who is having a tempertantherum because he just got grounded.

Zero Wing

Can't believe nobody's brought up this classic.

The game itself is, meh, average, but the fact that the introduction was so hilariously bad as to spark an Internet phaenomenon....well, all your bad game are belong to us.

Worst Game Ever

I don't know how they missed Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.

Wikipedia has a pretty good list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_c onsidered_the_worst_ever [wikipedia.org]

Heroes of the Lance?

Heroes of the Lance was bad enough to be on the list? It wasn't great, but it wasn't that bad either. Oh, I just read the article, and he's talking about the NES version. The PC version was decent at least. The NES version looks like crap compared to the PC version (EGA baby!).

Re:The list

You retard, The whole point of the article is not to produce a definitive list, but to entertain.

You have failed.

Re:The list

Well in my case, it provided a lot of closure. I always felt like a retard when I tried to play that ET game. I'd sit awake in my room at night figuring, "OK" I just need to be smarter or pay more attention. I can't believe a video game on the atari would be wrong or bad, so it must be me!!"

When I saw the article title, I thought, "Oh please God, let it be on the list. Anywhere on the list!" Number One... There is a God.

Re:The list

Bypass the link:

20: Extreme Sports With the Berenstein Bears
19: Bible Adventures
18: Kriss Kross: Make My Video
17: Bubsy 3D ...


Good way to get some karma, but the point of the article is that it's funny to read. The list is totally not interesing, as the games were chosen and ordered apparently randomly (you could say they're just 20 terrible games of probably a thousand terrible games).

Re:The list

You forgot Happy Fun Time Cheesegrater Testicle Assault, from Namco for the Atari, voted the most painful game of all time.

For obvious reasons, I believe no one ever got to the final level, which involved Mexican hot peppers and flesh-eating wolverines. Ahh, let's not go there after all. Those wacky Japanese game geniuses.

Re:The list

You sir, must never has scratched your balls after slicing jalapenos.

Re:The list

"Sir"? The word you're looking for is "Mistress"!

Re:The list

Never played any of them and never will.

I have have always said that a good game to some may be a crap game to another and vice versa. To really rate games you need to stick to groups (ie. FPS, RPG, platformer, adventure .... etc) and if the game is for the PC and/or console and not try to lump them all into one heap. Of course you end up with a book instead of a few pages and even then some people will disagree with you.

Like it or not sales can help better than someones comments, however when you are first or near first to market (I think "Night Trap" falls into this) then people will buy it even though they find out later it stinks and the company cries all the way to the bank. When this game came out the Internet was young and not many people had access to it so the only ratings for a game was to ask the retailer and you can imagine what they would say or wait till the monthly gaming magazine came out (assuming it rated the game). This does not happen as much now although for any purchase it still is "Caveat Emptor" (Latin for "Buyer Beware").

Still the article was light reading and was fairly humorous in its descriptions (condemnations) of the games.

Re:The list

15: Total Recall

For those of you at work today, you might want to skip this one. Unless, of course, you don't mind your boss seeing the triple-breasted martian prostitute. Hell, it might make for interesting conversation during your annual review.