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Games Entertainment

Games They'd Like Us To Forget 134

Posted by Zonk from the from-the-depths-of-the-past dept.
Games Radar has a short piece up talking about some games that otherwise very accomplished developers would probably like us to forget. They call them "Secret Shame" games, and run the gamut from cheesy cash grabs (Shaq Fu and Justice League: Task Force) to notable flops (the Miyamoto-produced Stunt Race FX). From their discussion of Justice League: "Originally, this game was to be published by Sunsoft, but was picked up by Acclaim after Sunsoft went under bankruptcy reorganization. We'd almost say they should have known better than to put this out, but this is notorious sh**-peddler Acclaim we're talking about. Thankfully, the game was rightfully ignored, and due to its relative obscurity, Blizzard is almost never subject to mockery for it. Up until now, at least."
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Games They'd Like Us To Forget More

Games They'd Like Us To Forget

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  • 18 Wheeler (Score:3, Informative)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @01:08AM (#19561229) Homepage Journal
    As the article mentions, 18 Wheeler wasn't that bad of a game in the arcade. It was more or less a novelty
    "truck-driving simulator". Which I personally think it didn't do too bad at. The only real problem there was that it was ported to home consoles. I mean, I know Sega was desparate for Dreamcast games, but seriously! Novelty games don't translate. Period.

    Even Hydro Thunder (which *wasn't* a novelty game) lost a LOT in its transition to the Dreamcast. The final game was very similar to the arcade, but felt lame without the engine rumble and bass feedback. All the rush of the arcade was lost through that, and Sega made very little attempt to find a replacement for that feedback.

    • If anyone remembers this game, it is by far the worst that I've ever played. I think I got it free with a sound card. Basically, you race semis. Only thing is, your opponent never leaves the finish line, and you go right through bridges and other things you're supposed to race over.

      I couldn't believe how much it felt like an alpha build so I went online thinking it was just my PC. Unfortunately, I found out everyone else experienced the same stuff :)

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by sirnuke ( 866453 )
        I think you are referring to Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing [wikipedia.org].
        • Ah yes, thankyou! that's the game.
        • Perhaps, but suggesting that's anywhere near Alpha standard is exaggerating*. They released an early mock-up version as a game. Gamespot's video review [gamespot.com] shows that about the only thing that works is object/ground collision and graphics rendering.

          *Okay, the GP probably just underestimates the quality of Alpha. Generally Alpha standard implies that we have a fully working playable game with fairly noticable defects but no showstoppers.
      • I think I played this on Xbox?? Seemed fine to me - you had to carry loads from one place to another and win money to buy new stuff etc etc..
      • Actually, the first one wasn't that bad, as long as it wasn't the crappy Nintendo DS version. If you ever were a fan of "Stock Trader" on the Apple II, Big Mutha Truckers does have decent replay value with the right audience. Anyone playing it specifically for the brief "larry the cable guy"-style humor will get fed up with the repetativeness pretty quickly.
        • I thought it was a decent game to spend a couple of hours with on a Sunday afternoon. After that, it became too repetitive. But then, that describes most of my gaming experiences - a couple of hours and then on to the next to see if it grabs my attention.
      • Speaking of games that came free with sound cards... years and years ago Creative Labs mailed me a game for registering my Sound Blaster Pro.

        It was called Freakin' Funky Fuzzballs.

        If anyone else here has played the game, I don't need to tell you how bad it was. If you haven't played it, well.. it was kind of the video game equivalent of Vogon poetry. It was -that- bad.
    • Presumably, Gabe picked up the Dreamcast version: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/05/25 [penny-arcade.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 )
      I ran an arcade when that was out, and it was pretty well-received by employees and customers alike. I liked it, too.

      "18 Wheeler" ran on Sega's Naomi hardware. The Dreamcast was essentially a console version of the same hardware, which meant Sega could instantly port their Naomi-based arcade library to DC with minimal effort. Unfortunately, the minimal effort was evident in this case, as the experience didn't translate well at all to DC owners who spent $50 on the same 15 minutes of fun that cost 50 cen

    • s the article mentions, 18 Wheeler wasn't that bad of a game in the arcade. It was more or less a novelty "truck-driving simulator". Which I personally think it didn't do too bad at. The only real problem there was that it was ported to home consoles. I mean, I know Sega was desparate for Dreamcast games, but seriously! Novelty games don't translate. Period.

      Actually, I thought 18 Wheeler was a pretty fun DC game. No real replay value, though that doesn't set it apart from, say, Record of Lodoss War.

      Even H

  • Hrmm... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by einstienbc ( 825770 )
    No Daikatana?

    • Re:Hrmm... (Score:5, Funny)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @01:11AM (#19561247) Homepage Journal
      Too easy.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Ai Olor-Wile ( 997427 )
      Ah, but Romero wants you to remember Daikatana. Really. http://rome.ro/games_daikatana.htm [rome.ro]
      • That's a pretty funny domain he's got there. Could he really not have found a better quality image of the Daikatana logo though? That shit's got more artifacts than the future site of a Mexican Walmart.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I remember all the stupid hype about the game, and then the inevitable press and gamers turning on the game, and then the game becoming a legendary joke title.

      I waited for about a year after people stopped talking about the game and had a system that could run the game very well. I was kind of excited to sit down to play it, after all it had to be pretty decent to have so much time and effort into its development. All the hate had to be due to the fact that it simply wasn't the the end all of pc games.

      It su

    • Ah, don't take it too seriously (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Moraelin ( 679338 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @05:56AM (#19562725) Journal
      Ah, don't take it too seriously. These days everyone has to throw together some smack talking "top X worst Y", just to show that they're hip and irreverent like that, and you better believe them that when, by contrast, they give 95% to EA's latest game they really mean it.

      There are a ton of games who were worse, or did worse for other reasons. Daikatana, ET, etc.

      The reasoning starts to get dubious right on the first page linked from the summary. So a console fighting game is bad because by the 90's everyone was sick and tired of fighting game clones? Well, gee, I guess they never heard that fighting games _still_ sell on consoles, a decade later.

      Second page... from what I understand, so that game was bad because it was a button-mashing Diablo clone. Well, gee, someone tell that to the people _still_ selling button-mashing Diablo clones.

      Etc.

      As I was saying, just another "top X worst Y", and not even well thought out at that.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by MeanderingMind ( 884641 ) *
        They specifically drew from otherwise well reputed and even legendary developers. It's no shocker when some random, never-before heard of developer makes a game that tanks. There's no surprise when some lesser known, hit or miss team screws up. When a legend like Shigeru Miyamoto creates a tanker there's a moment of disbelief.

        In my opinion, this was one of the best "top x worst y" lists in a long time. They actually did some work and found games from companies and people whose typical quality breaks the bou
        • Yes, but John Romero was, prior to Daikatana, a "well reputed and even legendary developer". He was famous for his hand in Doom, Doom II, and Quake, and everyone thought (at first) that Daikatana would be great.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Khaed ( 544779 )
            hey hey hey, don't forget Wolfenstein 3D. ;) That game still stands as one of the more revolutionary games of all time, despite not being as popular as Doom.
    • It was suppose to be a RPG made with the Descent engine...but was just a terrible, bug-filled game that was released WAY too early. It was 3D before 3D cards became popular, so the engine was software based.

      It was just horrible.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by KlomDark ( 6370 )
        Still have that turd on a shelf in my basement. Keep it near the litter box so it covers the smell.

  • Strange.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tangent3 ( 449222 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @01:10AM (#19561233)
    No mention of Atari's ET?

    • Re:Strange.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @01:28AM (#19561373) Homepage Journal
      I know it's the game that everyone loves to hate, but E.T. wasn't *that* bad. If it had had more playtesting (primarily to expose the issues with constantly falling in holes you didn't want to fall into), we wouldn't be having this conversation today. But in Atari's infinite wisdom, they only gave HSW five weeks of development time in order to meet the Christmas holiday.

      What's even more amazing is that some exec in Atari changed the order size for the game to an incredible 4 million units! They were so sure that it was going to be an instant hit that they effectively bet the farm on a game done in only 5 weeks.

      Brilliant, wasn't it?

      The coup de grace came from Intellivision with these commercials starring Henry Thomas:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsmIma0ZQtQ [youtube.com]
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3xqu4VrwsU [youtube.com]
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mPERZhkboc [youtube.com]
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOOvMi7Wzqo [youtube.com]

      Of course, Intellivision didn't realize that assisting in Atari's demise was assisting in their own demise. Whoops.

      "WE'RE CLOSED NOW!"

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kabdib ( 81955 )
        The story I heard about ET cartridges is that

        (1) there were (say) 14 million VCS consoles sold, including the ones in closets;
        (2) Atari built 16-18 million ET carts

        Might not be wholly true. But I certainly believe that Atari management was capable of stupidity of that order. And they did stuff a lot of them into a landfill.

        • Maybe Atari thought that the name E.T. would make people buy a console just to play that game. It might even have worked, if the game hadn't been such an incredible lemon.

          I hang my head in shame but ... yes, I have it. I bought it. I was young, naive, and ... I was a kid! It was my prerogative to make mistakes and fall for marketing! I was about 12 or so back then, and yes, it was incredibly stupid. Unplayable. Frustrating. But ... but it was E.T.! And the bad guys still had guns!

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) *

          Atari built 16-18 million ET carts

          That's just an urban legend. There were 4 million cartridges made (which was a LOT of cartridges) but only 1.5 million sold. The legend stems from the previous Pacman game which had 12 million cartridges made when there were only 10 million Atari 2600s on the market. Atari obviously expected that demand for Pacman would sell a great deal more 2600s.

          Instead, Atari sold about 7 million Pacmans and wrote off the other 5 million as a loss. Kind of stupid when you consider that

          • If 2600 Pacman was closer to the arcade original, it might have been a console-drawing purchase. The mazes are different on the 2600, and the graphics are not as good as in the arcade. It's not a system issue, because Ms. Pacman was much truer to the arcade.

            Yes, my wife and I still have two working Sears VCSes (the store branded 2600, made by Atari for Sears) and a spare new and unplayed 2600 in the box in case our two VCS units ever fail. We also have a Colecovision, and Intellevision, a C64, two Genesis s
            • Ok, admit it. You made that post just to show off, didn't you?

              (Not that there's anything wrong with that. I like to expound on my own collection every so often. ;))

      • Shoulda, woulda, coulda... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by aztektum ( 170569 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @03:23AM (#19562063)
        Excuses, excuses. It wasn't THAT bad? Bad is bad. E.T. was crap. Compare it to other games of its day. I feel game reviews are usually shit but this thing would get maybe 2 stars, 30-40%... unless it's IGN, they who perpetuate sympathy points.

        You can say "If they'd just done..." till you're blue in the face for all I care. All that jabbering and the game is still shit.

        If I'm a little ranty, sorry, but I get tired of sympathy votes.

        • Compare it to other games of its day.

          As it so happens, I have compared it to other games of its day. In fact, I have a light sixer 2600 and a 7800 to play E.T. on. I played it not all that long ago, and it's nowhere near as bad as people remember it being. In fact, it was amazingly advanced for its time. (Especially given the five week development cycle!)

          The problem is that everyone is remembering the game through the goggles of time rather than an objective evaluation. Objectively, it was nowhere near the

          • Just take a look at Pacman or Defender for a much better example of a cruddy game.

            Whoa WHOA WHOAAAA! Defender was a great game. I'd go so far as to say it was the best "port" on the 2600, although jungle hunt and kangaroo were both pretty good.

            Pac-Man was pretty horrible in terms of graphics, but it had great gameplay, which is why we remember it with enjoyment. Sure, it's no match for the arcade version. But it's decent.

            Your ship may have disappeared when you fired, but the 2600 was an enormously limit

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) *

              Whoa WHOA WHOAAAA! Defender was a great game. I'd go so far as to say it was the best "port" on the 2600,

              Survey says? No. You may be thinking of Stargate [atariage.com] (aka Defender II), not Defender [atariage.com]. Unless you really thought that having your spaceship disappear every time you fired to save the nameless city (WTF?) from UFOs was a good port of the arcade.

              Pac-Man was pretty horrible in terms of graphics, but it had great gameplay, which is why we remember it with enjoyment. Sure, it's no match for the arcade version. But

          • These [classicgaming.com] sites [atariprotos.com] have a lot of good information on why E.T. was considered bad.

            Objectively, the biggest problem with E.T. was its tedious and confusing gameplay. The graphics weren't bad by the standards of the day, but then again neither were Defender's or Pac Man's (unless you were comparing them to the arcades).

            • These sites have a lot of good information on why E.T. was considered bad.

              And these [randomterrain.com] sites [classicgaming.com] have a lot of good information on why it wasn't bad. ;)

              Objectively, the biggest problem with E.T. was its tedious and confusing gameplay.

              I do agree with this. While Atari had previously released Raiders of the Lost Ark to great success (one of the few Adventure games for the 2600), the majority of gamers were looking for arcade/action titles. E.T. threw them for a loop. The poor state of the manual (also rushed) didn't

      • What's even more amazing is that some exec in Atari changed the order size for the game to an incredible 4 million units!

        Too bad they forgot that there weren't that many Atari game consoles in existence...
      • Well, but it would fit nicely into the "Grab a hit movie title and shove a game with the name slapped to it out the door".

        But then again, if ET was in there, the list would be endless, when you look at the amount of "games after movies" titles of the 80s. If there was one thing you could be sure of, it was that a game made after a movie sucked.
        • I had a third party one of The Empire Strikes back. You had to whizz round in a snow speeder or something - whatever, it was more or less square anyway - and zap AT-ATs. You could land and get repaired and there was smart bombs and stuff. It didn't totally suck.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jandrese ( 485 )
            I played the heck out of the Empire Strikes Back. It was one of those games where your loss was inevitable (just like in the movie!), but you could hold them off for awhile. The game did have some interesting quirks. Because it took about a thousand shots from your speeder to take out a single walker (and they were all lined up slowly marching towards your base), you really had no hope of stopping them, however occasionally one of the pixels on the walker (in one of four hard to shoot spots) would flash
      • So basically, if I understand it right, it could have been a great game if only:

        1. it had been better tested, _and_

        2. they had fixed the bugs and gameplay problems, _and_

        3. they had judged their market better, _and_

        4. had better marketting.

        I'm sorry, but, by the same token, any game ever could have been great if only they did those 4 steps. Daikatana would have been a great hit if it did all 4 of those.

        Heck, especially #4 was what created the massive anti-Daikatana backlash. ("John Romero will make you his

      • I know it's the game that everyone loves to hate, but E.T. wasn't *that* bad. If it had had more playtesting (primarily to expose the issues with constantly falling in holes you didn't want to fall into)

        I agree with you, except that I didn't have issues with falling into holes I didn't want to fall into. I was highly successful at skirting them.

        Personally I think that it's about a million times better than Raiders of the Lost Ark. That game fucking pissed me off. The tsetse files were basically unavoidabl

        • Personally I think that it's about a million times better than Raiders of the Lost Ark. The tsetse files were basically unavoidable - sometimes they flew past you, sometimes they hit you, didn't much matter what you did.

          You got farther than I ever did. It took me a half hour just to figure out why that squiggly thing kept hurting me. I suppose I should have read the manual a bit sooner, eh? :P

          I actually got stuck trying to figure out how to get past the cliffs. It didn't occur to me that I could blow up a w

      • I know it's the game that everyone loves to hate, but E.T. wasn't *that* bad.

        I don't believe you've played it for more than three minutes. That game has the highest return rate of any 2600 game, and considering some of the other stinkers on that platform (remember, this is the platform with games so bad that despite almost no significant competition they temporarily killed the entire industry,) that's saying a hell of a lot.

        If all you can complain about is jumping out of holes, then I suspect your exposure

        • I don't believe you've played it for more than three minutes.

          And I don't believe you've ever played it. There, I win the baseless speculation card. ;)

          I played the game long enough to beat it on easy. i.e. Right switch on B. (Finding the "call ship" zone hidden in the grass was a bit of a PITA.) On hard, i.e. the right switch to A, I kept getting caught by the FBI agent and taken to the science center for study. It didn't take too many instances of accidentally dropping into a hole while trying to evade the

      • Brilliant, wasn't it?
        Don't you mean: Brillant [worsethanfailure.com]?
    • I could never figure out that game when I was a pre-teen. However, my younger cousin loved it and could beat it every time. I couldn't make it past one screen. The controls seemed to be only somewhat associated with the game play. Goofy game that I could have written in BASIC in a couple weeks.
    • I must be the only one that loved that game, never had any issues with game play, you just learned to be careful coming out of the ponds.
      • I guess that makes two of us, three if you count my sister. We grew up with an Atari VCS that had the ET cartridge in heavy rotation.

  • Bah (Score:2)

    by Perseid ( 660451 )
    Stretch Panic wasn't that bad. It had issues, yes, but at least it was different, which is more than I can say for a lot of games out there.

    ShaqFu had nothing to do with Delphine's demise. They made Fade to Black(which I remember as being pretty successful) well after that and Wikipedia says they didn't actually die until 2004, officially anyway.

    • I call shenanigans... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gmezero ( 4448 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @02:06AM (#19561615) Homepage
      4 of these games are nothing to be ashamed of. Ninety-Nine Nights and Stretch Panic were pretty good games, granted they both had a few play control issues but no show stoppers. 18 Wheeler did very good in the arcade, so no shame there, it just never translated to the home market. The inclusion of Stunt Race FX really blows me away. This game sold very well, and was a damn good game, it had a great sense of speed. Great play control. A really well done game. If there was one thing I would say bad about it, is the graphics have not held up with age and now it's a very difficult game to try and watch. If I was trying to play it now on the Wii for the first time, I might slam it. But having played it when it was released originally on the SNES, that game was hot shit at the time, and put to shame Virtual Racing on the Genesis (it's competition at the time).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Cutriss ( 262920 )
        Agreed 100%. Stunt Race FX was a great game for its time. Ninety-Nine Nights was no gem, to be sure, but it wasn't horribly bad either. I wouldn't have finished Inphyy's campaign if it was that bad - I'd have just returned it. I think perhaps the gaming world just overhyped it because it came from Tetsuya Mizuguchi. Instead of being an "average" Dynasty Warriors clone, it was obviously horrible because it came with such high expectations.

      • and put to shame Virtual Racing on the Genesis
        I think it's the other way around. Not saying Stunt Race FX was bad, but I recall that Virtua Racing had a smoother framerate and a better feel of speed.

  • "Trespasser", the Jurassic Park game produced by DreamWorks. Now there was an embarrassment. Big budget, great franchise, years of development (1995-1998), botched physics engine. Seamus Blackley tried to write a rigid body physics engine and totally underestimated the problem. Reviews had comments like "worst game I ever played". The disaster was so great that DreamWorks sold the remains of their interactive division to EA.

    • As a tech demo the game was pretty groundbreaking. The physics engine had everyone oohing and aahing (as is the case with all of Blackley's work) - stacking boxes with that unwieldy hovering arm was clunky but extremely novel. The game used a form of texture warping that made the dinosaurs' skin appear to stretch and hang from their bones, and this technique is still used today. Also, it was very refreshing to be able to look down and see your own body in a first person shooter. To my knowledge Trespass

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GeckoX ( 259575 )
      Ehh, they really just bit off way more than they could chew for the time, and WAY overshot the target hardware specs. Thus it really turned into just a physics sandbox that wouldn't run worth crap on anyones machine at the time. Playing it since on hardware that could actually handle it was much less painful, and kind of fun to play with the physics in the world.

      Way better than Daikatana anyways ;)
  • I'll admit that I picked it up mostly out of good memories from other Treasure titles, as well as for the fact that it sounded and looked quirky and interestingly odd - and, in my own defense, I think I got it for $5-10 used, if I remember correctly - but I don't know that I'd toss it up there with the other terrible titles listed. I _do_ recall thinking at some point that it felt more like a tech demo than a game, one that got bundled and marketed when it was really just an interesting experiment. As suc
  • Played that game to death it was a worthy Miyamoto Game

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Chyeld ( 713439 )
      Agreed, the only disappointment that game had for me was that it gave the impression that there was "more" hidden away, which of course wasn't actually there.

      My brother and I used to play that game over and over again just looking for easter eggs, sure that the detail that was put into the environments was hiding something. But there wasn't anything actually there.

      Other than that, it was a fairly nice racer for people who don't need to feel like they are moving at warp speed all the time.

  • Stunt Race FX (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SynapseLapse ( 644398 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @02:14AM (#19561667)
    That was a fun game. A little bit awkward to play, but the bouncy mechanics made it a lot of fun. If you compare it racing games of today, Burnout and so on, Stunt Race fx comes off feeling really slow. If you compare it to the racing games of the mid 90s when it came out, 4d Stunts, Mario Kart, maybe not f-zero, it was pretty normal. The motorcycle was pretty fast too. :)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Yoozer ( 1055188 )
      I still love the artwork of the game, and I wouldn't mind a souped-up, smoother version with the same cartoony, colorful atmosphere.
    • Thank God it felt "slow" at first. If it felt any faster when you were starting out you'd quit playing because you ran off the course or smashed yourself into bits at every turn.
      I think they did it perfectly and rewarded you with the fastest, hardest to control(and most fun IMHO) as a reward for completing the whole game.
      I plugged it in not two months ago and had fun for a few hours setting new records. Still fun for me. I just wish it was two player. I'd love an update in the same spirit for the Wii.
  • ...am I the only person that liked that game? I mean sure, it was no Street Fighter, but I found it pretty fun, and there were plenty of hidden bits to keep you going...

  • what? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by joe 155 ( 937621 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @04:25AM (#19562333) Journal
    no custer's revenge?
    • Well, they gotta pick 7. The list of completely "What the hell were they on when they had the IDEA for that game, not to mention what did they smoke while coding it, and could I have some of that shi.?" games would easily keep them busy for the rest of their existance.

      Think of all those shoddy movie-games that were conceived AFTER the movie was a hit and had to hit the street before everyone forgot about the movie again (i.e. within a month). Think of all those Street-Fighter clones. Of all the Super Mario
  • Star Control 4 should really get a prize for being the most disappointing sequel/continuation ever made. Additionally, because it did so poorly, the real developers never got a chance to make a worthy successor to the incredible game that Star Control 2 was. If you haven played it yet, and dont mind the only slightly outdated graphics, SC2 was released under the name The Ur-Quan Masters [sourceforge.net] under the GPL.
    • Star Control 4 should really get a prize for being the most disappointing sequel/continuation ever made.

      There was a 4? My god and I missed it... I know it's a typo.

  • what about "DUKE NUKEM FOREVER"? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by apodyopsis ( 1048476 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @06:37AM (#19562893)
    I'm sure they'd like us to forget they once promised us this title.

  • Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Digital Vomit ( 891734 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2007 @07:12AM (#19563009) Homepage Journal
    Stunt Race FX was a great game. It does not belong anywhere near the garbage on that list.
  • Worst. Game. EVER. If you've played it, you'd agree. I can't believe I was given that as a present when I was a kid, and that I actually spent HOURS trying to play it.
    • Did you mean: shitty towers?

      I got this on the original NES, and it was pretty fun. The dungeons were a bit monotonous, but once you mapped them and figured out what every item did you were well on your way. The "hidden zones" were very intrieguing, I thought I'd found some easter egg secret part of the game. And once cheat books/videos came out with the E/F code to skip to the end, I actually reached the final boss on several occassions.

      Whole game needed to be smaller, though. Or at least not require
      • What? If this is the same game I bought for the NES (late 80's), it took me a whopping five hours to complete the game. I was pissed. I spent 50 of my own bucks for something that provided five hours of gameplay.

        I seem to remember a royal pain-in-the-butt control system and having to do something to seven towers. I bought the game, got home in the early afternoon, and had finished it that night. Store would not take it back.
        • Yes, the controls sucked the proverbial ass. Of course, the game did offer diagonal movement, but the "physics" were screwy and the collision detection was horrid.

          Oh yeah, and having to slash a low level blob 50 times with a sword to kill it isn't a good time.

    • Hydlide was horrible. I wanted to tear my eyes out; there didn't seem to be any story, the play control was odd, the screen was fairly static and the scrolling was sub-par for the time...
  • Outpost for one. It was superhyped up Sierra title, it came out as a horribly buggy, mangled mess. Mad Dog McCree, came out on PCCD and 3DO, it was the poster child for bad FMV titles, along with Night Trap. Pretty much anything from the mid-90's FMV boom belongs on a worst games of all time list. With the sole exception of Phantasmagoria, which possibly manages to rise to the heights of mediocrity.
    • Outpost, IMHO, never was a game in the first place. It was someone NASA engineer's wet dream about how f'ing hard it is to actually accomplish a remote colony.

      It was interesting (after version 1.5) to the people who like that kind of insane detail and pain in a simulation.

      And who can forget the Panic Button?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Omestes ( 471991 )
        "Moral is terrible"

        I still have that uber-calm chicks voice in my head. Seriously, though, I loved that game back in the day, it was HARD, and somewhat arbitrary. I loved the fact that no matter what your doing some random lava flow is going to open up someplace, and the rest of the level is you sitting there watching it slowly inch towards your base, trying to get to tier 1000 technology while some woman keeps telling you that moral is terrible, and wishing that your damn colonists would just BREED! If
  • ...without mention of Kokuto Chojin, the fighter from Microsoft for the original Xbox that was meant to revolutionize fighting games with characters who looked like they were covered in some type of lube, sounds that seemed to have been modified versions of various pillows hitting each other, combat that took the broken and painful system from Mortal Kombat and removed what little it did right (FATALITY!), and managed to have a soundtrack that was offensive to Muslims (they used verses from the Koran in one
    • And there was Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus as well. Another terrible, early Xbox fighter. This is the one that really tried to borrow from Mortal Kombat, which makes sense, since one of the creators of Mortal Kombat (John Tobias) was in charge of it.

      Unfortunately for Tobias, when Ed Boon makes a terrible fighting game, people actually BUY it.

  • Doom 3 (Score:2)

    by rlp ( 11898 )
    Bought a new video card so that I could enjoy the fantastic graphic experience of Doom 3. Which I'm sure would have been truly fantastic if any of the levels actually had lighting. And don't get me started on futuristic flashlight tech.
    • Sweet zombie jesus, am I the ONLY ONE with a CRT? Doom 3 was an amazing horror game if you had a high-quality monitor to play it on. Some dim flat-panel just doesn't work.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DeeDob ( 966086 )
      Nah...
      Doom 3 really wasn't that bad.

      Am i the only one who thinks that the flashlight that was independant from the gun actually improved the atmosphere of the game?

      Sure, it made next to no sense that you couldn't have a flashlight at the same time as your gun. But gameplay-wise, it meant that you either were *almost* in the dark with your guns, when ennemies could surprise you at any turn, or actually see them before they jumped on you, but being defenseless for a few seconds while taking out your gun.

      I fin
  • The article claims that cargo truck driving has never been done justice in a game, so I think the author must have missed Truckin' [intellivisionlives.com] on the Intellivision. You had to manage your loadouts, gas, and the routes you took (which included many of the major U.S. interstates), and you could carry multiple loads simultaneously, even if they were slated for different destinations. And the best part -- split-screen 2-player competitive mode, where you raced to make the most money in the least amount of time. You'd

  • Missing the point .. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Udderdude ( 257795 )
    Seems alot of people here are missing the point of the article. It's not about bad games in general, it's about bad games made by some of the more well respected development teams out there.

    I was surprised to see some games on the list .. made by companies I never thought could produce such crap.
  • Or is that something they have already forgotten, and want us to as well?

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