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."

Plumbers don't wear ties?

[Gord]

What about the infamous 'Plumbers don't wear ties?'. I remeber this scoring 4% in PC Format (UK) about 10 years ago and holding the title of 'Worst Rating' for many a year, it may even still do so. ..

You're Winner!

[stinerman]

#1 has to be Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing [wikipedia.org].

Also, check out #9, Custer's Revenge [seanbaby.com], for some hot pr0n. Wow, were they ahead of their time or what?

Ultima 9: Ascension

[owlman17]

Finally, an article on /. about a list of worst games, instead of the usual rehash of the "Top 5/10/20 best games of all time, etc ad nauseum" lists.

Hmmm. Nobody seemed to mention Ultima IX, a terribly bug-ridden game. From the README file alone: "Be certain you empty your Recycle Bin before installing the game." Or : "We recommend that you not save the game while you're poisoned; this has been somewhat problematic in the current version."

Wow, why didn't anyone mention that?

(Another game worth mentioning: Conquest Earth. Its not buggy but... hey, might as well have been.)

Re:Plumbers don't wear ties?

[Sigma 7]

There's also "J-Space for Windows". The only instance I heard about it was in a small book listing cheats for ~101 PC games in circulation at the time.

The tip for that game was don't buy it, since it got 4% -- PC Format's lowest ever rating. Other than that single comment, it seems as if the game disappeared from the face of the Earth. I have no idea why it was bad, since that comment didn't really cite when it was reviewed.

Battlecruiser 3000AD

[Ullteppe]

How about Battlecruiser 3000AD? As to ET, there are actually worse 2600 games than this. Maybe not with the same historical significance, okay...

Big Rigs

[neonstz]

I'm surprised Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing [gamespot.com] didn't make it to the list... :)

Bible Adventures!

[binkzz]

While I definitely played worse games (and better ones), I found it kind of pointless that he chooses to just rant about the Bible and his religious views instead of discussing the game.

Re:Hey, didn't you read the title?

[Tim C]

Perhaps some even worse games have been released since, if it's that old...

Digging up E.T.

[Sippan]

The funniset thing in that article was the sentence "So if you ever lose your mind and want a copy of E.T., or maybe five million, grab a shovel and drive out to the desert. They're free."

It's funny because you can't actually do it - Wikipedia: "Starting on September 27, 1983, a layer of concrete was poured on top of the crushed materials".

Crushed, buried, sealed in concrete. Now that is one bad video game.

This info is rather stale (like the 2600)

[christoofar]

This list has been rather arbitrary, however the "official" list [wikipedia.org] can be found and edited on Wikipedia.

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 did enjoy the Atari 400 my mother had bought for my older sibling. We would both play Zaxxon for hours on it, which required starting a rather chunky and heavy cassette tape machine which you connected to the 400. There was some cheesy elevator music with some marketing propoganda (you had to turn the volumn down to ignore it). After going to get a soda and cigarettes at the store for my brother, the game would be completely loaded into RAM and we'd spend a good part of the afternoon trying to top scores.

ET however managed to suck the life out of Atari and it destroyed the company. Had it not done that, NES would have had no void to fill.

In fact, the Atari caused so much damage to the video game market (and all the other cheap video game systems), that Nintendo had to market the first 8-bit consoles by showing only the Nintendo R.O.B. (remember that thing?) The ROB had a major suck factor, but it was such a cool gimmick that the "seperate console" it needed to play the game managed to suck in enough kids that eventually the ROB was discarded (within about 6 months after it released).

The ROB gimmick was quickly removed from the marketplace and the only boxes you could find where the standard console and the one with the Duck Hunt gun. The original issue had everything--the NES, the ROB and the gun with all those games! What a steal!

Re:Digging up E.T.

[frogstar_robot]

Wintergreen made a video about the whole E.T. disposal debacle. It has nice touches like the 2600 E.T. running around the desert where his carts are buried. Funny stuff.

http://keithschofield.com/et/ [keithschofield.com]

Re:Plumbers don't wear ties?

[Tony Hoyle]

I used to be a part time reviewer, and I got sent a game that was so appalling I've never seen anything so bad since - it had jerky 2d motion and after I basically gave up on it found out that there was no quit - the only way to exit the game was to pull the power switch!

Damned if I can remember its name.. I've blocked it out. Gave it a negative percentage at the time...

Re:Battlecruiser 3000AD

[Fred_A]

In defense (sortof) of BattleCruiser 3000, it seemed to be developped by a lone maniac with a fairly strong following and appeared to be fairly innovative since it covered all the aspects of futuristic combat, from space to ground.

OTOH, it did too much, didn't do it very well and I have to admit I never really managed to play it. However I would give it some points for the sheer magnitude of the effort. It was an impressive piece of work. Kind of unuseable but still impressive. Which is why I wouldn't put it in the worst. In the "most impressive attempts" maybe.

Airport Tycoon

[SpryGuy]

The worst game I ever purchased was "Airport Tycoon". Talk about abysmal. The concept had so much promise, but the result was so buggy and unfinsihed and ugly and unplayable, that it's the only game I ever uninstalled completely after less than one day, and then shredded and destroyed rather than taking it back for a refund. The only pleasure I got was destroying that piece of crap game.

Examples of what was wrong: all the graphical colors were muddy earth tones, just ugly. Placing buildings was buggy as hell (many times a building, road, or runway would refuse to be placed, for no apparent reason). Placing things inside the terminal (like ticket counters and security) was pointless... you could pile everything up on top of each other so people couldn't possible reach them, and it didn't matter. All that mattered is that you placed them somewhere. Also, what happened on the screen showed ZERO relationship with what was going on in the game. The game would say that the runway was too crowded, but the display would show an empty runway.

Just horrible all around. There wasn't a single redeeming value.

Re:OLD

[gregmark]

And yet, here you are, reading the crappy Sunday Slashdot. Sounds like you don't have anything better to do, so be glad that you found something provocative enough to entice you to post comments.

I had never seen this article until now, so I'm glad it was resurrected. It's new to me.

Re:Bible Adventures!

[Matteo522]

Especially because it really wasn't a bad game by NES standards. I played that game a lot as a kid, and it was a lot of fun. We weren't even Christian growing up -- I got it as a gift from a Christian uncle. I didn't play the David & Goliath mini-game as much as the Noah's Ark one... but it was fairly challenging, had a whole bunch of levels, and decent replay value. Oh well. If you read the rest of his "reviews" (see the CDI Zelda one), you'll see this was just some idiot 16 year old.

Re:Extreme PaintBrawl

[The-Bus]

A friend of mine was a developer on that title. He said they just ran out of time and money and no one wanted to finish it. No one works for free I guess, and it's not the kind of title you'd be so proud of you'd be willing to make some sacrifices.