The 20 Worst Games Ever

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

yay for old news

[floatingtrem]

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

Old/10

[Kyokugenryu]

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

Big Rigs: YOU'RE WINNER!

[Poro]

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

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

[gozar]

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

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

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

Plus you get to revive a flower.

Amen :)

[Anonymous Coward]

My bro and I played that game back in the day. It wasn't that bad. Sure, there were a few bugs here and there, but it was definitely playable. Noah's Ark was the best, imo. I've seen far worse games. This one is probably on the list for religious reasons.

Re:yay for old news

[Anonymous Coward]

Link to wikipedia worst games ever http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_c onsidered_the_worst_ever [wikipedia.org]

Re:Plumbers don't wear ties?

[Pluvius]

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

That's probably because it was never released commercially.

Rob

Re:Ultima 9: Ascension

[Pluvius]

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

Rob

Re:The real fun is reading the reviews.

[Flyboy Connor]

and not since Syberia in 2002 has there been a rating over 9.

And, having played Syberia, I can honestly say that as an adventure game it sucks donkeyballs. All puzzles are incredibly easy, except for one which is completely undoable. In itself this is not enough to invalidate the game, but the puzzles are virtually all ridiculously illogical. I mean, at one point in the game the main character cannot climb a certain ladder because there are birds sitting in front of it, and "she is afraid of birds". Now, instead of just stomping right through the birds, or throwing something at them, or making a loud noise, or just waiting until they fly away (which are all impossible), you have to go on a long, boring quest which goes all over the map, to get some birdseed or something so you can lure them away. The game is also dead slow, and the main character is unsympathetic and presented as being quite stupid. The only good thing about the game is that it looks absolutely stunning. Which is probably why Gamespot gave it such a high ranking. Visuals, you know.

Was pretty funny until it got homophobic

[twjordan]

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

"Experts in ass ramming" eh?

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

Re:Battlecruiser 3000AD

[skwang]

I have to admit I never really managed to play it.

You're in luck. Derek Smart (the lone maniac developer) has released the old versions of the game for free on the game's Web page [3000ad.com]. A while back I downloaded BattleCruiser Millenium, the 2nd generation of the title. [BattleCruiser 3000 was the 1st.] I have to admit, it is impressive. The scope of the idea of the game: space cruiser combat, space fighter combat, and (FPS) ground combat is very ambitious. Unfortunately the gameplay is not very good and the game itself is unstable. It doesn't help that Derek denies that his games have any stability problems.

I recommend you try it out.

Extreme PaintBrawl

[ESqVIP]

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

Re:The list

[Vreejack]

If there is some minimum bar, or aggravating factor for getting position on lists such as this then I would include such things as "hype" and number of sales. Since Since John Romero's Daikatana didn't make the list I have to assume that hype was left out, but the fact that E.T. came out number one on his list suggests that sales figured in his calculations. E.T. was actually investigated by a television news team for being so terribly awful. Its creator was interviewed and shrugged it off on camera, saying that he was just a hired contractor who was required to meet a deadline. I even recalled Mad magazine making fun of this bomb of a game, which listed for something like $50 when it was released.

Curiously, Custer's Revenge also made the TV news, though for different reasons (native protests played a small part). Amusingly, the broadcaster decided to blank out the offending part of Custer's anatomy, making the roughly pixelated penis look larger, and black.

Dana Plato certainly made some poor choices in her life. Perhaps this game was one of them, but as a fan of hers I prefer to think of her as a "pioneer." Lots of has-been and would-be actors would be discovered or buried in these video game roles in the years to come.

Re:Plumbers don't wear ties?

[tylernt]

Was the game 'Trantor'? Picked it up from the $5 bin years ago, it came in a big box that was empty except for a naked 5.25" floppy that wasn't even in a sleeve. Impossibly difficult to survive for more than about 30 seconds, as I recall it didn't have a 'quit' option.

Re:Extreme PaintBrawl

[Quietude]

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

Worst Game Ever

[BigFootApe]

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

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

Re:You're Winner!

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the Wikipedia page you linked to for Karateka: you've apparently missed the real ending. (Princesses don't take lightly to being approached in the improper stance.)

I've never played the game, but I think that it sounds like a pretty damn amusing feature, though obviously a bit cruel if it's hard to finish the game. I'll have to get that game going on an emulator sometime to see for myself.

Heroes of the Lance?

[The Wooden Badger]

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

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