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The 50 Worst Videogame Names of All Time 220

Posted by Zonk from the avoid-the-noid-indeed dept.
Game Revolution has a great feature looking at fifty of the worst-named games ever to require a controller. They dig deep here, unearthing gems like 'Yo! Noid!', 'Awesome Possum Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt!', and 'Huygen's Disclosure'. From the article: "From Dick Butkus to Hootie and the Blowfish to Lake Titicaca, bad names have been with us forever. But thanks to the inevitable collision of reclusive nerds, bizarre artists and painfully unhip marketing execs, the video game industry enjoys some of the worst names of all. The following list was compiled after hours of lively debate, pages of exhausting science and one actual geek fistfight."
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The 50 Worst Videogame Names of All Time More

The 50 Worst Videogame Names of All Time

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  • If I go through my B-Movie collection, one thing's for sure: They could have redone it all with essentially the same crap setup and added "IN 3D"

    No wait, MS just did with XP and Vista...
    • Few people remember the first US game for the Nintendo: "Vomit Magnet Blind Date". Microsoft responded immediately with "Microsoft's Steven Balmer Dance Dance Revolution Monkey Boy" for Windows 3.1. ... Wait... Wait...You know, sometimes I'm so sorry I took acid during the 60's.
  • ..."Dominion: Storm over Gift 3" by Ion Storm.

    {{ Ummm.... }} {{ English }} {{ Do you have it? }}

  • So that's the ticket (Score:5, Funny)

    by packetmon ( 977047 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @12:43PM (#15637182) Homepage
    Wild Woody [mobygames.com] huh... Could've been worse, they could have had a sequel. "Wild Woody meets Mad Pussy" or something

    • Re:So that's the ticket (Score:4, Informative)

      by neonprimetime ( 528653 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @02:57PM (#15638306)
      To satisfy the typical /.er's inner urge for sexual innuendo's ... here are the better ones
      Use your imagination with caution ...
      • #45 - Wild Woody
      • #38 - Spanky's Quest
      • #35 - Sticky Balls
      • #26 - Iggy's Reckin' Balls
      • #18 - Tongue of the Fatman
      • #17 - Tactics Ogre: Let us Cling Together
      • #14 - Wargasm
      • #7 - Nuts & Milk
      • #1 - Irritating Stick

  • Awesome Possum (Score:3, Funny)

    by Pantero Blanco ( 792776 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @12:48PM (#15637218)
    Awesome Possum was pretty cool. I remember playing it when I was six or seven...and annoying the hell out of whomever was in the room with me by turning "motor mouth" on.

  • What a rip! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Psykechan ( 255694 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @12:57PM (#15637290)
    This list of 50 badly named games doesn't even have XPlay's "worst named game" Tube Slider [gamespot.com] or even my perennial favorite Spawn In The Demon's Hand [gamespot.com]. Not even a mention of Capcom's "Street Fighter" sequelitis with "Super Street Fighter II Turbo" or "Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha".

    Speaking of sequels, there are games like "Mega Man X" (right after MM6) and "Wizards and Warriors X" (sequel to W&W2, I believe) that just confuse people as to what game they are playing. Hey, what's all this "Super Castlevania IV" about? Is it better than regular old "Castlevania IV"?

    Gah, now I need to make my own list.

    • Street Fighter (Score:5, Funny)

      by Otis2222222 ( 581406 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @01:34PM (#15637615) Homepage
      I was going to make a mention of "Street Fighter 2 EX Alpha 2 Turbo Hyper Fighting Zero edition 3 limited" or whatever the name of that game was. Seriously, they had some ridiculously long titles in that series.

      Oh, and who could forget the classic Street Fighter:The Movie:The Game? I mean, it was a game about a movie that was based on a game. Has that ever been done before? Movies based on arcade games almost universally suck. And video games based on movies also suck. But a video game based on a movie based on an arcade game? That approaches a level of suckitude that almost cannot be measured. Oh, and getting back on topic: The name sucked too.

    • There is MM7, 8 and 9, they just didn't happen to come to the US. I believe the Japanese nameis Rockman, not Megaman, but still.

      You can see the same thing with Final Fantasy: 1, 2, 3, 7. WTF? Well there really were 6 before 7. 1 was a dual release, 2 and 3 were NES games, never came to the US. 4 was released in the US but numbered 2 here (and we only got the easy version). 5 wasn't released, 6 was released as 3. Finally Square decided to dispense with the bullshit and release the games as the orignal number
      • Yes, but that's irrelevant. Mega Man X is a separate branch of similar games. X was released between 6 and 7. Yes, it's interesting that there were 9 standard Mega Man games, but the "X" in Mega Man X is an X, not a ten.

        And also, 7 and 8 were released in the US. 9 (Rockman and Forte/Mega Man & Bass) was eventually ported to the GBA.
      • As for Super Castelvania, simple naming convention of the time. Many launch titles for the Super Nintendo were prefixed with Super. This was done both as a marketing gimmick, but also as to help people avoid confusion. CV4 was a sequel, but not for the NES as the first 3 had been.

        The SNES game Super Castlevania IV is more of a retelling of the events of the first Castlevania NES game than a true, chronological sequel. But then, Castlevania III took place two generations prior to the events of Castlevanias
    • [...] there are games like "Mega Man X" (right after MM6) and "Wizards and Warriors X" (sequel to W&W2, I believe) that just confuse people as to what game they are playing.
      Research says that shows with "X" in the name get higher ratings. [tv.com]

  • Obligatory Animaniacs Reference (Score:3, Funny)

    by Kelson ( 129150 ) * on Friday June 30, 2006 @01:01PM (#15637321) Homepage Journal
    Lake Titicaca! Lake Titicaca!
    Why do we sing of its fame?
    Lake Titicaca! Lake Titicaca!
    'Cause we really like saying its name!

  • Skidmarks (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tx ( 96709 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @01:06PM (#15637366) Journal
    How is Skidmarks (plan-view racer on the Amiga) not on there? That's got to be /the/ worst videogame name of all time, bar none!

  • Linkle Liver Story (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30, 2006 @01:10PM (#15637401)
    Yes, the game was actually called Linkle Liver Story.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkle_Liver_Story [wikipedia.org]
  • Floppy missed the list... come on, that definitely is a suggestive name for a game. Of course, Irritating Stick's cover art is classic! That just hurts to even look at.

  • King and Balloon (Score:3, Funny)

    by soft_guy ( 534437 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @01:19PM (#15637475)
    I'm partial to the video game "King and Balloon" because of the juxtaposition of two such unrelated nouns.

  • Spaceship Warlock (Score:3, Insightful)

    by macz ( 797860 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @01:24PM (#15637528)
    Though I am not sure it can be called a "game"

  • Irritating Stick (Score:5, Funny)

    by spun ( 1352 ) <loverevolutionary&yahoo,com> on Friday June 30, 2006 @01:25PM (#15637533) Journal
    The number one worst named game on the list is based on a real Japanes gameshow where contestants carry a metal rod through a maze with electrified walls, where the walls are only slightly wider than the stick.

    I love the Japanese!

  • Worst anime names (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @01:27PM (#15637561) Homepage
    Sometimes, it's just the result of translation from Japanese. Some anime and game names with similar problems:

  • Zzyzzyxx not on list? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hal2814 ( 725639 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @02:06PM (#15637858)
    How is Zzyzzyxx not on the list but Bad Dudes vs. Drangon Ninja is? Bad Dudes was a sweet name on an awesome (at the time) game. Zzyzzyxx wasn't even pronounceable. How were you supposed to talk to your friends about it (not that it was worth talking about).

    I'm BAD! This list, however, is not.
  • Why is this on the list... it made perfect sense (Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere [tripod.com]) if you remember the ton of flesh-colored little figures you could collect. I think I had a few of them myself.

    • Re:M.U.S.C.L.E. ? #36? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Valdrax ( 32670 )
      I had them too, but the question is why they chose that horrible acronym. The original source material is a Japanese character named Kinnikuman (or "Muscle Man"), a goofy series about wrestling and giant monster (parodying Ultraman in the beginning). The little M.U.S.C.L.E. toys were little figures sold in plastic capsules from vending machines in Japan that they decided to bring over to the US without the original backstory.

      The decision to the call them "Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everyw

    • I can only assume that whomever is responsible for "M.U.S.C.L.E." being on the list must not be familiar with the pink plastic figurines of the same name from the mid-1980s. Giving a video game the same name as the toy line the characters were licensed from can't really be considered a bad name (though it's quite likely that it'll be a bad game, especially if Acclaim or LJN were involved).

      As for bad names that didn't make the list: Herzog Zwei. Inexplicably left untranslated from its German title (though
  • I have to say, Seaman is a really bad game name!

  • Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fdiskne1 ( 219834 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @02:27PM (#15638040)
    Okay, I played the original Ogre pocket game. It was pretty cool. One player plays the part of one very large, very powerful battle tank. The other player plays a swarm of small, fast-moving, easily swatable mini-battlebots. The object is to destroy the other guy. Neat tactical war game.

    But where in the !@#$ did they come up with "Let Us Cling Together"? I'm guessing it is where the minibots can cling together to create one large bot. Defeats the whole point of the original and is an incredibly stupid name (hence its place in this list). Had to have been a marketing droid that came up with this one.

  • My #1 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CrazyJim1 ( 809850 ) on Friday June 30, 2006 @02:48PM (#15638223) Journal
    Atari 2600: Name this Game. Like they couldn't figure out a name, so you're supposed to name it yourself. Or maybe it was a note from the programmers to the marketing team: Name this Game. So instead of naming it, they just used what the programmers penciled in.
    • Like they couldn't figure out a name... So instead of naming it, they just used what the programmers penciled in.

      Flashback many years ago, back in 6th grade playing D&D with my friends and rolling up a new character:

      Dungeon Master: (looking over my preliminary character sheet) "Ok, half elf mage" ...he goes over stat bonuses yada yada yada... "You didn't fill in a name. What's your character's name?"
      Me: "I don't know yet. I'll see. Hand me the Player's Handbook and I'll fill in the spell info."

      ...la

  • The article says this about the 1994 game Awesome Possum:

    Fun fact: This is one of the first games to actually use digitized voice.

    Um, no it's not. I believe Berzerk was one of (if not the) first games to use digitized voice...and that was fourteen years before Awesome Possum. Why does does it seem that so many online video game reviewers/reporters/etc. think video games were invented in the mid-nineties?

    • On the home computer front, I assume Ghostbusters [wikipedia.org] was one of the first games to use digitized voice, at least on Commodore 64. It was released on somewhere on 1984. And at least regarding the music and the speech, it was pretty impressive back then. Of course, digitized speech became not-so-rare on C-64 and especially on the Amiga soon after that.
    • On the home computer front, I assume Ghostbusters [wikipedia.org] was one of the first games to use digitized voice, at least on Commodore 64. It was released on somewhere on 1984. And at least regarding the music and the speech, it was pretty impressive back then. Of course, digitized speech became not-so-rare on C-64 and especially on the Amiga soon after that.
      • Huh, I knew number 2 had voice, but I never knew (or remembered) that number 1 did... way, way before their mentioned game indeed.

        Also, you'd think it'd be easier to find out what game really was the first via this wonderful interweb... but nope, can't find it anywhere!
  • But where's Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge (now with free scoring pencil!)? My Dinner With Andre? SimReich? Angus Pogordny's Caber Toss? Razor Fight II: The Slashening? And so on... [snpp.com]

  • ...but I always thought most videogame consoles had lousy names. I mean, to start with. Did anybody else here think "GameCube" was a dumb name for a console? At least compared to its codename, Dolphin. Xbox? PlayStation - sounds like a pre-school toy. SNES? MegaDrive? Game Boy? Just think about them for a while. Tell me I'm not the only one who thinks this.

    Of course, the fact of the matter is that console names grow on you after a short while. Like a joke getting old quickly. Nobody would dream of laughing

  • I would say most of those fall under the title of weirdest names, not worst names.

    I would say "Worst Names" are names of games that fall under not living up to the games thaey are associated with, such as "Final Fantasy" (which is now up to 'Final' number 12?)

    Anything that is 'ultimate' would also apply. As mentioned "Microsoft Works" gets a lot of such ribbing for general purpose apps. I guess also for a name to be the worst also would be an offenseive in some way or other, which had lead to the sbys

  • Clearly, the author has never heard of this gem from Japan. You drive an ambulance around hitting zombies.

    FUN! [1up.com]
  • Most of the games on the list are quite old. They come off as being silly/stupid but still amusing. 'Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom'? Sounds like a game I tried to write on my old C-64. But with modern media blasting us with ad-driven content, we get to see new lows in game-naming space. Here's a fairly recent entry that should have made the list:

    Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie

    Make fun of Ninja Hamster and Cacoma Knight in Bizyland all you want, but at least those game titles don
  • There's an RPG that came out not too long ago called "Drag-On Dragoon". I had to read the name a few times to believe it, myself. So, what is the game about? Knights that drag giant fire-breathing lizards behind them?
  • HalfLife 2: Episode 1.

    Half-Life
    Half-Life 2
    Half-Life 2: Episode 1

  • FTFA : "Hey! You got your nuts in my milk! Hey! You got your milk on my nuts! Mmmmm."

    Am I the only one surprised that they didn't come up with : "Hey! I got milk in my nuts!" instead?

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