There Are No Games So Bad They're Funny

Clive Thompson examines an artifact unique to the medium of videogames: the hatred of 'B' games. Unlike in television, movies, or even books, there doesn't seem to be room in gaming for appreciation of offerings so bad they're good. "Gamers never sit around and fondly recall games that were so ludicrous they circled back and arrived at greatness. There is no game analog to, say, Sid and Marty Kroft children's show, or Plan Nine From Outer Space. When a game is bad, it's just ... bad. I think this tells us a lot about the nature of play. B games don't exist because a game isn't something you watch; it's something you do. It's impossible to distance yourself from the badness. It's not like chuckling while watching an actor screw things up; it's like being forced to screw up yourself. Or think of it this way: A bad game is like being stuck in traffic. You've got goals, you've got places you're trying to get to, but the system won't let you. So you just sit there grinding your teeth. Lousy art can sometimes cause joy; lousy games can only cause stress."

Zero Wing

[doombringerltx]

'nuff said

"Stealth" for the NES

[FraudulentTom]

I disagree with this assertion. As a counterexample, I offer the game simply titled "Stealth" for the NES. This is a game where your stealth fighter attacked a group of enemy fighters whose numbers increased by 2 per mission. It started at 4 and went, as far as I can tell, into infinity. The so-bad-it's-good-ness came from the mechanics of flight. Your fighter managed to fly just as effectively straight up into the air, straight down, upside down, etc as it did in any other position. But the best part was the combat; all you had to do to avoid enemy fire was turn around. Much like actual dogfighting, your enemies could only damage you if you could see them.

Completely off the mark!

[Sciros]

There are *numerous* games my brother and I have played over the years that are so bad they're hilarious. "Awesomely bad," I believe is the term.

Sure, games can't hope to achieve the level of greatness in this regard that films like Commando and Showdown in Little Tokyo or American Ninja 4: The Annihilation have reached, but there's definitely some gems that stood out over the years.

Exhibit 1: Captain America and the Avengers for SNES
This game has some of the most horrible dialogue and "voices" I've ever had to endure, but it's so bad it's memorable. The combat, and some boss fights (Juggernaut for example), is an atrocity because of the poor collision detection and lazy animations. And, it's impossible to beat. But hey you get to play as Captain America and Iron Man!!!
But really this game crossed from "bad" to "awesome" when I showed it to a friend, touting it as "one of the worst games I own." That day, it glitched like never again -- all the normal enemies had 10x the hit points they usually do, and all the bosses had only 1 hit point. But just as the 3rd boss arrived, "chopping" a tree down with his arm-scythe even though it was just a sprite temporarily hovering over a tree stump and the trunk/stump were different colors, the game froze :-(

Exhibit 2: Rise of the Robots for SNES
AMAZING graphics, AMAZING music. And the sort of gameplay that you can make jokes about to this day. It's a fighting game, but Player 1 can only use 1 character! This lame cyborg who has awesome moves like "punch," "crouch and punch," "kick," and "jump kick." I swear the Turtles from TMNT III: The Manhattan Project (awesome game) had more moves. Player 2, on the other hand, could use any of the "evil" robots from the single-player mode. They also had like 5 moves, but at least they looked cool and.. there was more than one of them. Player 1 *could* use any of those robots, but only if one entered a cheat code. Yes you had to cheat to use more than 1 character in a fighting game!! That game was awesome... we'd have matches where we'd say "ok you can only use 2 moves this time to fight" and so we'd use jump-kicks and crouch-kicks only or something. Oh yes, and the final boss had a move that took off 1/2 your life, and a move that recovered 100% of .. "her" health.

Exhibit 3: Amagon for NES
Nobody has actually beaten this game except for a friend of mine and I on emulator. It is right up there with The Adventures of Bayou Billy when it comes to ATROCIOUS game design. There's a million cheap deaths, the lamest enemies (and main character) I have EVER seen in a game by a huge margin, and typos in level descriptions because nobody has gotten to most of those levels anyway. The music is pure arse, and the ending? You get a big black cock in your hand. Or is it the handle of a ship steering wheel... hard to tell with the way they cropped the image. Given the rest of the game, it's probably a cock.

So yes, those games are so bad they're funny, and when I think of them I don't think "omg worst experience ever" I think "hahahhahaha." And that somewhat redeems them.

Michael Jackson's Moonwalker

[mrchaotica]

Maybe it's not as "bad" as Zero Wing in terms of insufficient development, but considering more recent events concerning the main character, the premise(rescuing little girls) is hilariously wrong! I figured that it deserves amention here.

Re:Zero Wing

[doombringerltx]

Oh! That reminds me of another great one. I got a copy of "Touch Typing of the Dead" out of the bargin bin for a dollar. It was basicly House of the Dead but with the guns replaced with touch typing. My friend and I got a case and sat up getting wasted and playing that all night.

Re:Flawed premise

[Mathonwy]

Oh man.

I'm SO glad I'm not the only one with a social group that likes to shout "Want some RYE? Coursh ya do!" at inopportune times.