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Games Entertainment

Top Ten Shameful Games 465

Posted by michael from the cowboyneal's-revenge dept.
Ant writes "Not necessarily the worst, but the most wrong -- here are 10 of the most seriously flawed titles of all time according to GameSpy."
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Top Ten Shameful Games More

Top Ten Shameful Games

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  • Lots of these lately (Score:3, Interesting)

    by colmore ( 56499 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @09:12PM (#4979003) Journal
    I know it's new years, so people are apt to make lists and such. But why all the "worst games" lists? I know I've seen 3 or 4 in the past week.
    • I know I've seen 3 or 4 in the past week.

      And none mention Daikatana. I guess Romero's been putting that money he got by selling his Ferarri to good use.

      • Re:Lots of these lately (Score:3, Insightful)

        by dougmc ( 70836 )
        Yes, Daikatana sucked.

        But it's not even in the same league as the games listed.

        Actually, what made Daikatana suck so hard is the incredible hype that preceded it. Even Deus Ex or System Shock 2 (two *excellent* first person single player shooters) couldn't have quite lived up to all the hype.

        Had we never heard of Daikatana before, and then it suddenly appeared out of the blue (especially in the bargain game aisle), nobody would be calling it the worst game ever.

    • Hunt the Wumpus for the TI-99/4 and TI-99/4A (Score:5, Funny)

      by BigBlockMopar ( 191202 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @01:04AM (#4979875) Homepage

      But why all the "worst games" lists?

      The usual hype. But I was surprised by the lack of one hugely important game:

      Hunt the Wumpus.

      Hunt the Wumpus was apparently an old Unix text-based RPG, which Texas Instruments brought to life on their under-rated but massively overbuilt TI-99/4A home computer [glowingplate.com] in 1980 or so.

      The TI-99/4A (and its rare older brother, the TI-99/4) had a 16 bit TMS9900 processor chip (in 1979 and 1981, boys and girls!), a kick-butt video chip (the TMS9918) which had 32 sprites and a video overlay feature. But Texas Instruments, a company which is/was making more chips than Frito-Lay, hobbled the machine by using the video chip's RAM as the console's main memory, bottlenecking the expanded memory down to 8 bits, and creating the single slowest BASIC interpreter ever designed by having it interpreted TWICE (from BASIC to GPL - "Graphics Programming Language" - then to machine language).

      With this nasty kludge, they released a graphical version of Hunt The Wumpus. Horrible sound effects, and game play which made you feel like you were drunk and on LSD. Oh, and attempting to add graphics to an old text-only game is doomed to fail [wanadoo.fr], don't even attempt it.

      • Re:Hunt the Wumpus for the TI-99/4 and TI-99/4A (Score:5, Funny)

        by dandelion_wine ( 625330 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @02:13AM (#4980029) Journal
        Omg. OMG. Hunt the Wumpus.

        My mind is actually reeling. HOW THE FUCK COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME??! You know how long it's taken me to forget that? And -- uhhh -- the sound it makes when you incorrectly guess the direction of the fat little fucker? I think I'm going to be sick.

        It's ok. It's ok. (rocking back and forth) Think pleasant thoughts. The new agey music and colours underwater in DK Country. Ok, your sanity is slipping just a little, like that marble in Marble Madness. You're having trouble grasping the controls, like that little fuck Q*bert. But it's ok. I'm almost back to my Prague sanctuary in Vampire, Masquerade Redemption. See how I keep my faith objects though they're useless to me? Think weird, alternate universe, in Super Mario II. Happy little running mushrooms. I'm selling Tandelovian Happy Juice to the Teeelveee in Starflight 2, Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula (system 125, 95). And I'm getting a REALLY GOOD price. Nice Teeelveee. See, everything is JUST FINE. :D :D :D :D :D

  • This has been done before (Score:5, Informative)

    by dlc915 ( 229191 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @09:14PM (#4979011)
    This has already been done here [seanbaby.com].
    The two lists seem to be very similar...

  • That's it? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Pig Hogger ( 10379 ) <pig.hogger@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Sunday December 29, 2002 @09:15PM (#4979015) Journal
    They didn't mention the "Lunar Lander" game on a HP-65 pocket calculator??? There was a lame game if there ever was one...
  • ...i've only played one or two from the list, this sense of the past is anything but nostalgic

  • Too bad GameSpy isn't a game... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @09:16PM (#4979024) Journal

    ... otherwise they'd be the number one most shameful game. Taking bets at which community they will buy out and kill next.

  • You can tell... (Score:5, Funny)

    by RobertTaylor ( 444958 ) <roberttaylor1234 AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday December 29, 2002 @09:18PM (#4979035) Homepage Journal
    You can tell its the xmas / new year break as 'news' becomes 'reporters top ten ...'

    There must be *something* going on somewhere?

  • Obviously, this tester never played... (Score:5, Informative)

    by vasqzr ( 619165 ) <`vasqzr' `at' `netscape.net'> on Sunday December 29, 2002 @09:21PM (#4979048)

    50% of the games which have been created for PC

    Something Awful [somethingawful.com] has:

    Game reviews [somethingawful.com]

    and

    The ROM Pit [somethingawful.com]

    Don't say I didn't warn you.

  • I owned one of 'em, and liked it! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by analog_line ( 465182 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @09:22PM (#4979053)
    It was Donkey Kong for the Intellivision. Yeah, I'm sure it was worse than the other versions, but hey, I didn't know any better. I played the hell out of that thing. Play control was fine enough for me.

    As for Action 52, as the story hints at, there is a pretty funny and interesting story that goes along with the game. Here's a link [somethingawful.com] to the Something Awful Rompit Review of Action 52, and go here [gamefaqs.com]
    for the Gamefaqs.com reviews page for Action 52. I've rarely laughed as hard as I did reading this stuff.

    On a side-note, if you are at all into video games, browsing Gamefaqs for the reviews of really bad games can be a laugh riot sometimes. There are a few people who seem to make it their mission to completely eviscerate the worst offenders of the old cartridge console games. Some of the crappy PSX games get some hilarious reviews, too. For when you've got some surfing time, at least.
    • Same to Pac-Man for Atari 2600. I owned both version of Pac-Man for Atari 2600 and Atari 400, and the latter is almost exactly like the one we found in acade shop. My family and my relatives liked the 2600 version for its simplicity. The sound was not that awful as described, at least it's not as noisy. Most people at time found the original Pacman difficult to play, thus made this 'simplified' version of Pacman popular. There are countless titles of games in 2600 were actually simplified versions of those in acade for that huge market of family home video games. Of course, technological limitation in 2600 is also a major factor. :)

      • 2600 Pacman & Space Invaders could've been bet (Score:4, Interesting)

        by dmaxwell ( 43234 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @11:32PM (#4979568)

        Some 2600 Roms have been hacked by people who I suppose wanted to expunge some bad memories. Ms. Pacman for the 2600 wasn't at all bad and somebody hacked it into a fairly arcade-faithful Pacman. Since Ms. Pacman was decent to start with, the hacker limited it to one maze that is a good approximation of arcade Pacman's maze. The prizes were fixed in place below the ghosthouse and edited to match arcade Pacman's prizes. Go to Atari Age and check it out. [atariage.com]

        Several credible jobs were done on reforming space invaders. There is no reason why 2600 Space Invaders couldn't have been more accurate as this proves. [atariage.com]

        Oh well, anyone who played games in the early eighties knew that crap was rushed out the door. Most of us bought it anyway. Me too. Suckers....

  • What gives? (Score:5, Funny)

    by jkabbe ( 631234 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @09:22PM (#4979060)
    They should have called this article "Top Ten Shameful Games on Consoles No One Under 20 Has Ever Heard Of".

    Any shameful game list just HAS to include the disaster called Outpost that was released for the PC in the early 90's. It had a great guide (sold separately) that made the game look great. Too bad most of those features didn't actually make it into the game. What a stinker.

    • *Sigh* Thanks kid... thanks for for making me feel even older than I am... sheesh.

      I owned a couple of these, and while I must admit to some initial diappointment with the Atari 2600 Pacman, I did grow to like it. The thing I hated most (this is going to seem trivial) was the fact that the Pacman icon did not change directions when you made a corner, like on the arcade version. Yeah, yeah... I know, minor point, but it really grew to irritate me.

      If you want to talk about modern games, then no "worst" list would be complete without Ultima IX... that game almost drove me to drink.
      • I unfortunately spent many hours in 1st and 2nd grade playing Atari pacman. The thing I hated most was that all of the fruits (cherry, pretzel, key) were replaced by an unknown rectangle (actually two concentric rectangles of different shades of brown).

        My friends and I used to joke around that it was a Bonker (remember Bonkers candy? "Bonker's Bonks you Out!" was kind of like that, two concentric candy flavors).

    • Re:What gives? (Score:5, Funny)

      by DeadMoose ( 518744 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @10:31PM (#4979333)

      They should have called this article "Top Ten Shameful Games on Consoles No One Under 20 Has Ever Heard Of".

      Hey! I keep my old 2600 & ET cartridge around just so I can scare young children.

      "HAHA! You fell into the pit again!"

      Trust me, there are people under 20 who've heard of that one...and it haunts their nightmares.

    • It was alright. Not the best game ever, but decent. The biggest flaw of the game for me was that after your colony got big and stable turns took forever to process.

      Tim

  • Old old old (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tinrobot ( 314936 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @09:23PM (#4979066)
    Atari 2600? NES? Coleco? Seems like most of these games are ancient by industry standards. I think that it's kind of beating a dead horse. The industry was in it's infancy, people really were still defining what a video game was - of course there would be some spectacular duds. Goes with the territory.

    What about recent titles that were 'shameful'? Would someone from Jerry Falwell's congregation like to chime in?

    • Agreed in several cases. However, a game that can't be finished at all (on one platform) and nearly any game produced in 5 weeks certainly qualify no matter how young the industry is.

    • I kind of agree with you, even though I enjoyed playing these systems as a kid.

      However, the #1 most shameful game in the list, Custer's Revenge, would be shameful no matter when it was made, and it doesn't matter much to me that it was made 20 years ago.

      In fact, I can't think of any commercial videogame that I've ever heard of that is more shameful! (OK, there are some homebrew flash games that are somewhat shameful, but even there, they often have a redeeming political or social message.)

      So my point: If we want video games to be considered an art form alongside movies and novels, we can't give them a pass because of the passage of time.

    • Recent bad games:

      BMX XXX - Boobs in a kid's game while biking just doesn't work
      Dr. Muto - Medicore concept, poor game play
      Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions - Just a bad port
      Virtua Striker 2002 - Sega ussually makes great soccer games but this one is just bad. Bad control with medicore graphics.
      Universal Studios Park Adventure - What the heck is this game about? To many poorly strung together bad minigames.
      Tetris Worlds - Lets rehash a licence that a million or so parents will buy so that they can have Tetris on thier kid's new gaming system.
      Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly - Bad use of a franchise with a story that doesn't standup to the slightest bit of logic. Example: Super smart dragonflys that can't follow a simple path back home so you have to go out and save them.

    • Re:Old old old (Score:5, Funny)

      by Alan Holman ( 607935 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @11:21PM (#4979528) Journal
      You're absolutely right! Rating these first games IS beating a dead horse; however, it's a horse I'd like to beat BECAUSE I've got lots of fond memories of playing the original videogames. Lots of us do. Lots of us remember watching our older brother, and his jerk friend Lance, play new games for their Atari, and their NES, waiting eagerly for our turn which never came. I was the little brother who was sent to my older brother's friend's house against my will because it was convenient for both sets of parental units. (Okay, now I'm venting.) My first fascination about video games came from waiting, and waiting, to play Atari or NES. Asking through burning tears, "When's my turn?" My brother's friend Lance replies, "Never. Why are you here anyway?" And then I cry, "I DIDN'T WANNA COME HERE!!!" And then the closest I get to playing a video game is getting hit in the nose by a football... Hmm... Maybe this has something to do with why I hoard classic video games now, and maybe this has something to do with why I love beating the dead horse of those old games by reading articles about them. And maybe those old games aren't so old to people like me who enjoy reading those lists of the worst ones. They're not so old to me because I didn't get to play them when they originally were released because my brother's friend kept me away from them! So now I ramble on and on about how I hoard these games, and cherish info about them now, because I didn't get to play them back then! Okay, sorry for the venting rant, but maybe someone'll sympathise and give me a score of 5 in the mod, eh?

    • Re:Old old old (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sentry21 ( 8183 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @01:33AM (#4979942) Journal
      Would someone from Jerry Falwell's congregation like to chime in?

      This reminds me of some customers I had at work. They were trying to find a game for their son, and somehow had stumbled across Diablo. The two were obviously religious from their reaction to a game featuring demons, the undead, and of course, Diablo himself. After looking at the box for a while, asking my coworker some questions, and saying 'oh my' or what have you, they asked their final question, which it seems no religious advocates seem to consider.

      'So... you're supposed to kill Diablo?'
      'Yep, that's the whole point of the game.'
      'That doesn't sound too bad then. We'll take it.'

      These parents seem to realize what most religious groups don't: namely, that games like Diablo, that feature unholy evil, are not necessarily bad. Why? Because you're KILLING THE EVIL. You can be a Paladin, a holy warrior of God. How is this bad?

      --Dan

      • Re:Old old old (Score:3, Informative)

        by GuavaBerry ( 50743 )
        You can be a Paladin, a holy warrior of God. How is this bad?

        Anyone who's actually played through all of Diablo will be able to answer that. You don't actually succeed in killing Diablo. Your failure is the basic lead-in to the sequel, Diablo II. :)

  • LOL (Score:5, Funny)

    by robbyjo ( 315601 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @09:24PM (#4979069) Homepage

    This list is simply hillarious. For the worst of the worst games (i.e. Custer's Revenge) I was thinking that the screenshot shows a cowboy shooting to the left an Indian to the right. But... the explanation is about pr0n. LOL....

    Go straight to this game's explanation [gamespy.com].

    • What they don't tell you... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Nindalf ( 526257 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @11:15PM (#4979508)
      It's not just offensive, it's unplayably bad.

      The entire gameplay is on that one screen, moving toward the woman while dodging arrows. The arrows fall in a random, unpredictable, unlearnable pattern. They often appear in volleys that cover too much area for it to be possible to avoid them.

      All in all, the perfect choice for the worst game ever.
      • The entire gameplay is on that one screen, moving toward the woman while dodging arrows. The arrows fall in a random, unpredictable, unlearnable pattern.

        OK, OK, OK. . .

        Can anyone think of anything more seriously uncool than admitting you've played that game long enough to work that out?

    • Re:LOL (Score:5, Informative)

      by Snaller ( 147050 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @03:11AM (#4980167) Journal
      . For the worst of the worst games (i.e. Custer's Revenge) I was thinking that the screenshot shows a cowboy shooting to the left an Indian to the right. But... the explanation is about pr0n. LOL....

      Wanna try [classicgaming.com] it?

  • ask slashot: (Score:3, Funny)

    by SHEENmaster ( 581283 ) <travis@uUUUtk.edu minus threevowels> on Sunday December 29, 2002 @09:26PM (#4979078) Homepage Journal
    If I submit my geek snowboarding game with Tux and Ellen Feiss [dnsart.com] to one of these "shame" lists, will it get /.ed?

    If I replace the ENIAC boss with a "beat the living hell out of whoever submits top 10 lists to /." level will it get even more traffic!?

    If I make my own top 10 list [dnsart.com], will it get on slashdot? Will anyone bother to RTFA?

    Too bad that TRS-80 dungeon game that tried to be realtime but couldn't keep up with my typing as a 10 year old isn't on the list. These lists are made to "suck up" to the average reader, not the average supergeek.
    • Too bad that TRS-80 dungeon game that tried to be realtime but couldn't keep up with my typing as a 10 year old isn't on the list.

      Surely you don't mean one of the greatest games of all time, Dungeons of Dagorath [tripod.com] do you? Incredible sound effects (for the era, of course), inventive gameplay (having to actually figure out how to use falsks and rings?!?), probably one of the first good FPS ever made! Interesting factoid: DoD was only about 8KB in size!

      • Did DoD let the computer keep swinging at your over and over while the letters you typed 30 seconds ago appear one by one on the screen?

        k
        (several animations of you getting hit)
        ki
        (several animations of you getting hit)
        kil
        (several animations of you getting hit)
        kill
        (several animations of you getting hit)
        you swing (several animations of you getting hit)
        you miss

  • IMNSHO (amiga games, mostly) (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    10. Pac-World: wiggle joystick to death with a vague pacman theme - trying to be Mario bros.

    9. Mutant League Hockey: following the glorious Mutant League Football.

    8. DreamWeb (the first R18 game?). Birds eye view shooting, sex, and gameplay.

    7. Second Samarai. Boringly competant.

    6. Snaparazzi (game sponsored by a newspaper)

    5. Microcosm by Psygnosis.

    4. Humans (lemmings ripoff)

    3. Epic by Ocean

    2. James Pond/Robocod's Aquatic Games

    1. Dangerous Streets CD32 edition.

  • what, no cheap shot? (Score:5, Funny)

    by banky ( 9941 ) <gregg@neur[ ]shing.com ['oba' in gap]> on Sunday December 29, 2002 @09:29PM (#4979089) Homepage Journal
    I figured the indian rape fantasy game would be #2, with Daikatana as #1. I mean, who can resist yet another shot at that game?

    OK, maybe the indian rape thing was worse.
  • In modern games, I would class Tribes 2 as one of the most shamefull game. Its my favorite game and I play it often, but it is shamefull because it crashes so often (Unexecpected Exception occur too often). Sierra released many patches, but did not seam to have been able to correct the problem...

    Great game, great design, bad implementation. Any other games out which crash often?
    • It does crash too often, but for me the gameplay more than makes up for that. One nice thing I've found about T2 is that it works nearly as well on 56k as it does on a LAN connected to a T1.
    • Sierra did indeed neglect the game almost to its death and just recently "re-released" it. In my experience and the experience of friends, the Linux version [lokigames.com] worked better than the Win32 version! You're right, there were a lot of updates. In addition to Tribes 2's bugs, my Win32-using friends all had horrible problems with Sierra's update utility crashing. Imagine how insulting that would be--You have problems with an app and try to patch it only to find that you're having more difficulty applying the patch than coping with the original problems.

  • Ghostbusters for NES (Score:5, Funny)

    by mediocratese ( 637297 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @09:31PM (#4979105)

    Does anyone remember this digital trainwreck? Your character is 2 pixels worth of ghostbusting hero and the climax of the game involves you repeatedly pressing a "climb" button to go up 30+ floors to the top of a building to fight StayPuff Marshellow Man. I actually beat the game once, and the win screen was a simple typed message thanking you for playing "this truly awesome game!!!"
    After playing this piece of shit I no longer wanted my eyes.

    • Hey, I remeber that game! Took me hours to get a damn proton pack!

      Man that was awfull...the Roger Rabbit game was almost as bad...

      • Was the roger rabbit game even beatable? I think I tried for 8 or 9 days, just to beat that piece of shit, and no matter what, you could never get that final weapon (was it paint thinner?) once you punched out the bozo.

        Oh well.
        • Sorry, I dunno, I gave up after 2 days...

        • I don't remember what I had to do, but I finally beat it one day. I remember having to wind up Dick Tracy's punch by pressing the A&B buttons once the judge was on his ass. If you don't press them super fast, he'll get up and nail you first, and it's game over, and you have to start again.

          Well, I whipped out my NES advantage after doing it manually, and I couldn't even get the same rapid fire effect with it. I had actually managed to press the buttons faster by hand.

          Not to mention the continue option counted down from 30 while displaying a 90 char password that you needed to continue the game. I remember becoming extremely frustrated trying to write the password down in time.

          Why the hell did I bother?

  • This article skirted entirely over the world of PCs.. so post your 'worst PC game' nomination below, and make the subject the name of the game. I'd just love to see what people think sucks. I can imagine that Daikatana will be a popular choice.

    My nomination is Street Fighter 2 from the early 90s. SF2 was excellent on the arcades and good on the SNES, but the PC port was dire. It was unresponsive, the graphics blew, and it was riddled with bugs. I also nominate any of those 'ultra realistic graphics, but extremely crappy physics/gameplay/sound/handling' driving games of the mid 90s too.

    (P.S. That Custer's Revenge game is hilarious.)

  • Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sevensharpnine ( 231974 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @09:33PM (#4979109)
    Does anyone really care what Gamespy thinks? I can't help but laugh when I see these articles. Their website has become nothing more than a playground for hive-minded children looking to find this weeks new "cool" words and get fed advertisement driven "content" on the game industry. Their webmasters have a collective gaming experience on par with what you could find at and local Wal-Mart's nintendo kiosks. Check the insightful gameplay guides/tips of any planet site. PlanetQuake and PlanetWarcraft are prime examples; they're both full of laughable advice.

    Furthermore, their bullying and underhanded tactics towards the entire industry is damaging everyone (try to use a game finding tool other than Gamespy -- the alternatives don't support as many games, thanks to "exclusive content"). Their entire site, as defined by virtually every hardcore gamer I know, is a complete joke. There are many interesting websites out there dealing with games. Please quit linking to the worst one.
    • > There are many interesting websites out there dealing with games. Please quit linking to the worst one.

      Which ones do you recommend? I'm tired of GameSpy and GameSpot (now that it's mostly pay) as well...

      • Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Informative)

        by sevensharpnine ( 231974 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @11:40PM (#4979607)
        If you're looking for general interest sites, a few to check out would be: Shacknews -- www.shacknews.com [shacknews.com] and Blue's News -- www.bluesnews.com [bluesnews.com] and maybe even the Adrenaline Vault -- www.avault.com [avault.com] and Thresh's FiringSquad -- www.firingsquad.com [firingsquad.com]. While these sites aren't perfect, they aren't nearly as bad as Gamespy and Gamespot.

        Better yet are actual fan sites for games you're interested in. A good way to find some is to check the game's official page for a list of fan sites or simply talk to other players. To show you what happens when real gamers put together web sites...

        Warcraft III: (Excellent replays)
        www.theinclan.com [theinclan.com]

        Counter-Strike: (Replays and configs)
        www.sogamed.com [sogamed.com]

        Quake: (News)
        www.quake3stuff.com [quake3stuff.com]

    • Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Gutboy_Barrelhouse ( 260624 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @11:38PM (#4979596)
      Their website has become nothing more than a playground for hive-minded children...

      And you're ranting about this on Slashdot?

    • Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Informative)

      by macrom ( 537566 )
      try to use a game finding tool other than Gamespy -- the alternatives don't support as many games, thanks to "exclusive content"

      Try The All-Seeing Eye [udpsoft.com]. It's a great way to see all of the servers out there, assuming that the game you want to play has a master server that enumerates all of the hosts. Windows-only, as far as I know.
  • Many of their lists, while nostalgic, is always the "Top 10 Games Released Before the Invention of the Light Bulb".

    There's plenty of miserable games in recent years - Daikatana, anyone?
  • How about Code Name Viper? This game was absolutely unplayable, due to difficulty. Imagine Contra, except every time you get shot, you have to start the level over. And you can't do the trick with 30 lives.

    I could never even get past the first few screens, and i'm pretty good at stuff. Even after i used the Game Genie to become invincible, it was still an extremely difficult game.
  • Are we going to have a new story every time Gamespy comes out with a new top 10 list? They have one every week. Let's give it a rest.
  • I thought this article was going to be about shameful "names" of video games. That's what the description led me to believe. I immediately thought of "Pucman". "Pucman" was "Pacman"s original title. Some clever American exec's figured out that it would be too easy for vandal's to scribble out part of the "P" for hilarious results. That would'a been the most shameful video game title of all time.

  • 2600 Pac Man (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wideBlueSkies ( 618979 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @09:38PM (#4979129) Journal
    Every kid I knew in the 7th and 8th grade was excited about the prospect of playing Pac Man at home. No more trips to the arcade. No more standing in line. No more scrounging for quarters. Everything was going to be right with the world.

    On the day of the game's release, there were lines at the electronics stores, lines at Sears, lines at K-Mart, lines everywhere that sold 2600 stuff. Some places had given out lottery bracelets (like they do at ticketmasters). But there were lines anyway. All these people were waiting to bring the magic of Pac Man home with them.

    Then the game came home. What a horrible, horrible dissapointment it was. Ugh. I think that was the beginning of the end for Atari. They pissed off a lot of kids (and parents) with that piece of crap.

    This was also about the time that the TRaSh 80 was out, along with the Commodore and Vic machines (I think). Anyway, some of us started getting interested in computer based games after the Pac man debacle. Shortly after that, a number of us left our 2600's behind for the promise of real computers.

    Personally, I haven't had a new game console since the 2600. Not because of the Pac Man mess though. I don't see the point of having a dedicated, fixed hardware game platform. A PC does so much more, and the games are generally better than those available on a console.

    • Re:2600 Pac Man (Score:2, Interesting)

      by wideBlueSkies ( 618979 )
      One more thing. I can still hear that boing sound that Pac Man made in my head.

      The first time I played the game, I expected to hear CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP Instead I heard that BOING BOING BOING.

      The sound was part of what killed that game for me. I understood that the graphics wouldn't be 'exactly' the same as the arcade because of the screen format and the 4k memory limit.

      Don't get me wrong, after about 30 seconds the true suck factor of the graphics became apparent. Combined with the lousy sounds, I immediately labeled the game a loser.

      I didn't get past the first level. I swapped in Adventure, and went looking for Warren's magic dot.

    • Re:2600 Pac Man (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ClosedSource ( 238333 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @01:35AM (#4979950)
      There were technical reasons why the graphics were so bad. If you want to have a game like Pac Man look good on the 2600, you have to insure that only one ghost appears in the same horizontal scan lines as the Pac Man. That's because there are only 2 "high resolution" players (objects) available in a single scan line.

      In order to preserve the Pac Man gameplay, Atari didn't follow that rule and had to multiplex the players. Thus the anoying blinking.

      One of the reasons that games from Activision had much better graphics, was because their games were designed around the limitations of the 2600.
  • It was this Robotech type FPS for PSX, where you play the role of Ivan. All I remember are barren hills with occasional enemies. What makes Ivan so crazy, you ask? Well, every now and then, he (you) goes "crazy," and all the controls are reversed!
  • I am not trying to flame here, but I used to work for a video game publisher, European produced games were the buggiest POS's ever. This is not because the programmers sucked, but rather the will put any game on to the shelf without the most cursory QA.

    I asked the QA lead for one such title how long it would be for release, because the game looked pretty cool and I wanted to play it. He told me 4 months, it took 6 months before the game was bug free enough to release. This is after it had been on the shelf in the UK.

    Of course Sony Europe is not much better. Sony USA will not let you release any PS2 title unless you are a Squaresoft, EA, or your new game is better than the previous best game out there. We had a great racing title finnished (4 months after Sony Europe had approved it with it's myriad of bugs) and Sony USA wold not let us publish it because it was not as good as GT3. All was not lost however Microsoft will let anything out for XBox.
  • The list was interesting.

    Though I am wondering why they could not have a special mention slot for "Extreme PaintBrawl". The damn thing just didn't work, the printed cover was pretty though.

    I had a Apple II version of that Pitfall game, it was called "Montazuma's Revenge" but the graphics were the same. We loved the levels and my dad thought the title was just hilarious. (Slang term for having "the runs".)
  • The problem is, some of the most shameful and horrible games ever made were never released widely, much less heard of by the unwashed masses. In the days when shareware was common and copying was the best available method of distribution, and when programming was a hobby and not strictly a profession for most gamemakers, countless horrors and abominations were spawned which have since been deleted and/or forgotten completely, save for in that special, wonderful, (actually is) floppy disk which they no longer have a drive to read it with underneath the creator's paper stack somewhere near his computer, which he stares at nostalgically when he's depressed. That is where the real shameful games come in.
  • If the game's called Impossible Mission, it better damn well be impossible! It's like the gag game of pong I made a few years ago and sent to my relitives. The computer ALWAYS can move faster than the ball, and it accelerates, so it seems like you can beat it, but it's rigged so you can't. I thought it was funny.
  • Really, just because a game sucked or was a bad idea didn't make it flawed. Now, the Elder Scrolls games (not the most recent one, it was only slightly buggy, and then only in the "usual" ways) were *seriously* flawed. I decided not to buy ES2 when I fired up the Elder Scrolls II demo, and immediately fell through the floor into a dark place where I could not move.

    Custer's Revenge might have been a very bad idea, but it played exactly how its creators intended.
  • gameplay consisted mainly of E.T. falling into an endless series of pits, and the game was much too frustrating for the young kids for whom it was intended

    Really, this game wasn't so bad! Honestly, this isn't sarcasm here. I actually enjoyed this game. With Difficulty setting B it was bastardly hard to grab all 3 pieces, find the call zone and get the hell outta there before the FBI showed up.

    So exactly what's so hard about looking inside every hole for a piece of the puzzle?
  • The Donkey Kong and Pacman games weren't flawed in any meaningful sense of the word, they just weren't precise clones of the arcade originals. What in God's name was the reviewer expecting? Does he think that the 2600 and Intellivision had some secret chip that the developers could invoke when the world was in peril from dodgy arcade conversions? Considering the disparity between arcade and console hardware, I thought both titles were "good enough".

  • I saw something similar to this (Score:5, Informative)

    by staticdaze ( 597246 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @10:12PM (#4979261)
    Seanbaby.com - EGM's Crapstravaganza: The 20 Worst Games of All Time [seanbaby.com] He has a few of the same titles (ET, Superman 64, and Custer's revenge), and, in my opinion, has much funnier reviews. I really enjoyed it, this is just for if anybody else cares for a second list like this.

  • A worse version of Super Pitfall exists! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vistic ( 556838 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @10:16PM (#4979277)
    I noticed that the NES version of Super Pitfall is on the list way up at number two. Yet a worse version exists, sadly....

    And that would be the version that was released for the Tandy Color Computer 3. I never played the NES version but I do own still the CoCo version. I imagine it has all the bad gameplay of the NES version. But I can't imagine the NES version playing as sluggishly as the CoCo version. I mean this game runs slooooooooooow.

    (I liked 2600 PacMan)
    • Has anybody actually WON the super pitfall for NES? It seemed like a game designed by somebody on a bad acid trip, it was really bizarre and random, without much of a semblence to 'order' that alot of other games had.

      There were too many unknown weirdness factors with this game that luckily I didn't spend TOO much time with it...

  • My dad brought me back Pac-man for the 2600 when he went on a business trip back in the 80's.

    I admit I was a bit disappointed because it didn't look exactly like the arcade game, but you know what? I still liked that game a lot. I was like 10, but even then I knew that the 2600 wasn't supposed to be exactly like the arcade, and it was good enough for me. I mean, come on... I played games like Combat and Starship, and that was fun enough back then. There are plenty of other games that were much worse than that.

    ET (as was mentioned) and Raiders of the Lost Ark was much much worse.

    The worse game of all time: Swordquest Earthworld. From the advertisements in the comic books, it looked awesome! The graphics looked great. Only, once I got it, I had no friggin' idea of how to play the game. The original cartridge came with a comic book that was more interesting than the game.

    I never figured out what the point of the game was, and it was so annoying. Being a kid, I kept trying to figure it out, burning hours and hours on that thing. Once, only once did I ever get to level 2, and I had no idea what I did to get to level 2. It sure as hell wasn't from completing all those "tasks" in those rooms.

    • Hey, does anyone have a walkthrough for Swordquest: Earthworld? Basically you had to experiment by carrying different items into different coloured rooms and hope you stumbled onto the right combination (there were about 100,000 possible combinations IIRC). Thinking back to that game, it would be cool to finally finish it almost 20 years later - the most clues I ever found was 2 out of (I believe) 12.

      Yes this was a brutal game, but I kind of liked the challenege that was like Frogger where you had to jump on logs to get to the top of the screen
    • I actually finished Swordquest Earthworld, through painstakingly walking around and charting every item I carried anywhere. What an incredible waste of time. I gave it to my sister as a birthday present (so I could play it -- smart, right?). Oh, but karma works in mysterious and horrifically tortuous ways.

  • A pretty arbitrary list (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tc ( 93768 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @10:28PM (#4979322)
    Does seem to be a somewhat arbitrary list, with a puzzling bias for games on very old systems. Sure, Custer's Revenge is clearly a shameful heap of junk, but some of the other choices seem arbitrary. Impossible Mission on the 2600 is not the only game to have shipped that was inadvertently impossible to beat, and as the article notes, it was otherwise a decent product.

    Plus, how can anyone leave Trespasser off the list of worst gaming travesties? Not only was the game monumentally awful, but it was also accompanied by such stomach churningly over-the-top hype from Seamus "Media Whore" Blackley, that the resulting derision meant that he later felt compelled to 'redeem' himself by attempting to take credit for the Xbox.

  • Slot machine games (Score:4, Funny)

    by angle_slam ( 623817 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @10:36PM (#4979362)
    I can't believe they didn't include any slot machine "simulators." In a real casino, the only joy you get from slot machines is the chance to actually win money. Yet the computerized version gets rid of that, so you are stuck hitting the "spin reels" button over and over again, while occassionally "winning" credits. What a pointless waste of time!

  • now my artical (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by Vodak ( 119225 )
    I found this article the dumbest thing ever written to create web content. The people who came up with the article should be beaten with canes. Sure the games they complained about were bad, but damn their arguments for the thing sounded like they came from a 13 year old. By placing a controller into the list of worst games made any merit to the article null and void. I believe that I am now a dumber human being by reading this.

  • Donkey Kong Engrish (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rigmort ( 584960 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @10:53PM (#4979423)
    In The First Quarter, a history of video games, Steven L. Kent claims that the Japanese version translated to "Stubborn Gorilla"; for lack of a better word for stubborn, the word Donkey was used.

    Thes rest, as they say, is history...

    • Re:Donkey Kong Engrish (Score:5, Informative)

      by rigmort ( 584960 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @01:09AM (#4979881)
      I just dug out my copy of The First Quarter. As Steven Kent puts it:

      "Because of his desire to penetrate the American market, [Shigeru] Yamauchi wanted the game to have an English name. Since Miyamoto spoke only a little English, he used a Japanese-English dictionary to find the correct words for the title. He wanted to name the game after the ape -- "Stubborn Gorilla." Looking throught the dictionary, Miyamoto selected the word Donkey as a synonym for stubborn and the word Kong for gorilla."

      Another interesting tidbit from the book:

      "Before Namco showed Pac-Man to Midway, one change was made to the game. Pac-Man was originally named Puck-Man, a reference to the puck-like shape of the main character. [Masaya] Nakamura worried about American vandals changing the "P" to an "F." To prevent any such occurence, he changed the name of the game."

      "So when you're there in class, learning `his story' Learn a little of your story, the real story" -- Boogie Down Productions, "Part Time Sucker"

  • I never managed to install this game (not cracked, the original CD) on any of my PCs (3 so far), and I have heard of people running it who told me it was the buggiest thing ever done, though the game was (supposed to be) really nice.

    Ultima IX really ought to figure on the list.

  • They left out the arcade one (Score:4, Funny)

    by TerryAtWork ( 598364 ) <research@aceretail.com> on Sunday December 29, 2002 @11:06PM (#4979473)
    I think called Jungle Lad where he gets captured by 8 bit block jungle natives who are, to give no offence to anyone, GREEN.

    I remember thinking 'He's been captured by the Booger Tribe..."

  • F-15 Strike Eagle? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonvmous Coward ( 589068 ) on Sunday December 29, 2002 @11:30PM (#4979560)
    Anybody remember F-15 Strike Eagle for the Atari 800 series? Not only did it have an embarrasingly slow frame-rate, but you could land your plane upside-down!

  • What about games released for Timex/Sinclair 1000? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by alchemist68 ( 550641 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @12:25AM (#4979756)
    They didn't mention Frogger and Flight Simulator for the Timex/Sinclair 1000 / Sinclair ZX81! Unngh! Man oh man did I hate loading in those games from cassette, hoping the input level wasn't too low or too high, otherwise I wasted 15 minutes attempting to load the programs. Then there was that aweful monocolor BLACK and WHITE ONLY graphics, the membrane keyboard that was SMALLER than my hand, the 4 Megehurts Zilog Z80A. And you couldn't pound on the keyboard too hard during game play, you'd dislodge the 16K RAM Pack from the back expansion port, killing your game, and wasting another 15 minutes loading it back in from cassette. Ah...the good'ol glory days of computing I will tell to my grandchildren.

  • 5200 Joysticks (Score:3, Informative)

    by BadBlood ( 134525 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @01:34AM (#4979946)
    I was an owner of the Atari 5200 when it came out and loved it, mainly for the reason that most of the arcade titles were so much more accurately represented (Pac-Man, etc.)

    However, the joysticks kept breaking on me. It wasn't so much that they weren't self-centering, but that the primary red buttons on the sides failed to always respond when pressed.

    My fondest memory was of the baseball game that came out for it. It had a 3D physics model that seemed pretty realistic. Long drives bounced off the outfield walls, curve balls dipped down which affected the grounder/flyball outcomes. Playing the game on hard difficultly often yielded 2-1 games where runs had to be manufactured by bunting/stealing. It was great, but I couldn't play it do to the joysticks always breaking. Much sadness ensued.

  • A bit unfair with Atari 2600 Pacman (Score:5, Informative)

    by FyRE666 ( 263011 ) on Monday December 30, 2002 @03:57AM (#4980277) Homepage
    Ok, so it looked far worse than the original, but personally I was amazed they managed it at all, given the miserable hardware the 2600 had! The machine was designed to display 2 player sprites, 2 missile sprites, a ball and a playfield which was basically a vertical line, unless the video chip was preloaded each X scanlines. Remember, the machine had 128 BYTES of work RAM and NO graphics RAM, so the entire background and sprites had to be redrawn by the program every frame.

    It's no wonder the ghosts flickered, it must have been impossible for the little 8 bit CPU to manage to keep everything on screen all the time at 25pfs...

    There's an old article about programming the 2600 here [kuro5hin.org] which may open a few eyes!

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