Your First Bad Video Game

[louisg]

I had a lot of bad games, but being a kid, I mostly liked them. I couldn't tell the difference between a game that was hard because it was badly made and a game that was hard just because I sucked.

The first and only game I ever returned to the store was Vanishing Point. What a turd. I later re-bought it on eBay for a couple bucks, played it a couple championships with a wheel. And you know what? It's still awful!

[stryc9]

Dunno about you guys, but back in the day what with pocket money being the main income used to procure new software we just played the shit out of almost anything, good or bad.

My first console was the 7800, and although it wasn't mine, my mate had a 7800 as well, and for Christmas he got Ace of Aces and Karateka.

Both of those titles were pretty bad on the old 7800, with Karateka playing like molasses and AoA proving too much for the console.

Like I said though, we still played them a lot.

EDIT: Forgot about Double Dragon (2600 version). Was hyped for this, got it, realised it was nothing like the coin-op (cmon, I was a kid) yet still managed to eke some enjoyment out of it

[ChainsawGuitarSP]

Dragon Ball Z: Taiketsu. I don't even think I understood what a fighting game was when I asked for it (!!) and yet I still knew it was all done wrong.
I also hated Mega Man Xtreme when I first bought it with my allowance money but I realized what I had in mind was not something the GBC was capable of and ended up enjoying it in the end.

[Marc]

Last Ninja, C64. To this day I no idea how this useless pule of crap - and its sequels - are remembered so fondly.

Oh, actually, Tron-Maze-A-Tron on Intellivision. I had not one fucking clue what I was supposed to be doing. Tried it again a few years ago and still don't.

[rancor]

Last Ninja, C64. To this day I no idea how this useless pule of crap - and its sequels - are remembered so fondly.

From reading Retro Gamer magazine, one would think it's the greatest game ever made - I swear they find some way to bring it up in damn near every other issue. I've never come in contact with it, but I know it can't be near as good as they tell everyone it is..

[ancestral-knowledge]

While it's not a bad game at all i hated A Boy And His Blob for GameBoy because i was just too stupid as a kid to figure it out. There were also a lot of RPGs on the GameBoy i could not get through because everything ingame was in english text although the manual and packaging was in German. I really cannot understand why all the games for the gameboy were not translated back then.

[Marc]

Last Ninja, C64. To this day I no idea how this useless pule of crap - and its sequels - are remembered so fondly.

From reading Retro Gamer magazine, one would think it's the greatest game ever made - I swear they find some way to bring it up in damn near every other issue. I've never come in contact with it, but I know it can't be near as good as they tell everyone it is..

It's not just 'not that good' it's utter garbage. Combat involves holding down the fire button, pressing up and down a few times, and legging it while your energy recharges. The character movement is atrocious, and the platforming is painful -look on YouTube for Last Ninja's 'stepping stones' for an example. It's not often I find anything in gaming to be an absolute, but I really don't understand how anyone would rate this, even back in the day.

[Ed Oscuro]

No way I'm going to mention Major Stryker here.

Y'know, pretty much any random game from the classic Games Empire shareware CD counts (although there were some real classics there, too).

Probably, in terms of a game that I bought (non-shareware) and played...probably would've been on the PSX or N64. Can't think of any that would be considered "bad" that I messed around with enough to count - eh, maybe one of the WWF wrasslin' games?

[Moniker]

The Karate Kid (NES)

I didn't actually know it was shit at the time; it served as the bridge b/w SMB1 & 3 for me. I remember getting as far as the typhoon stage. After playing it on an emulator recently, I wonder how I even got that far.

Fly & chopsticks minigame FTW.

[BIL]

Dunno about you guys, but back in the day what with pocket money being the main income used to procure new software we just played the shit out of almost anything, good or bad.

Same here... where I grew up I couldn't get games often - I bought so few for the NES and Genesis (never even had a SNES) that I can remember each and in what order. My Genesis library looked like:

Strider
Revenge of Shinobi, The
Shadow Dancer
Sonic 2
Hard Corps
Bloodlines
Zero Tolerance <-- LOLOLOLOLOLOL!
Dynamite Headdy

And I still played ZT to completion more than once. Protip: don't look at enemies and they won't see you! If someone attempted to give me a ZT cart today I'd take them to court for indecent assault, of course.

Can't think of any that would be considered "bad" that I messed around with enough to count - eh, maybe one of the WWF wrasslin' games?

As long as you don't mean one of AKI's N64 games (Wrestlemania 2000 & No Mercy)! Those are awesome games in their own right. That engine allowed for some intense competition in 1v1 / tag, and some raucous backstabbing sessions in battle royales. All other wrestling games on the system bar AKI's were middling to crap.

[louisg]

Last Ninja, C64. To this day I no idea how this useless pule of crap - and its sequels - are remembered so fondly.

From reading Retro Gamer magazine, one would think it's the greatest game ever made - I swear they find some way to bring it up in damn near every other issue. I've never come in contact with it, but I know it can't be near as good as they tell everyone it is..

It's not just 'not that good' it's utter garbage. Combat involves holding down the fire button, pressing up and down a few times, and legging it while your energy recharges. The character movement is atrocious, and the platforming is painful -look on YouTube for Last Ninja's 'stepping stones' for an example. It's not often I find anything in gaming to be an absolute, but I really don't understand how anyone would rate this, even back in the day.

There are so many games that are like this. I think for an awful lot of players the vague idea that there is action happening is good enough. The fact that it doesn't *play* well isn't even considered. LN for example had awesome graphics and music for the time-- I'm pretty sure that's what people were concentrating on.. sadly. Nothing ever changes

No way I'm going to mention Major Stryker here

Dude, if you want to count shareware, there are SO many bad ones. I have a soft spot for Major Stryker though. Any game where your character is a baked potato with aviator sunglasses can't be all bad.

[system11]

The House Of Usher on Atari 800 - the worst game ever made.

A bold claim, but I'm feeling pretty safe about it.

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-40 ... _6838.html

[stryc9]

From reading Retro Gamer magazine, one would think it's the greatest game ever made - I swear they find some way to bring it up in damn near every other issue. I've never come in contact with it, but I know it can't be near as good as they tell everyone it is..

Last Ninja is one, and Manic Miner is another British-made computer game (ZX Spectrum etc.) that RG endlessly fawns over.

I won't comment on MM as I haven't really played it, but I will bet a lot of Last Ninja's popularity stems from the isometric graphics on C64 (not a common graphic style on the machine to be executed well that often as a lot of the good isometric games originated on, and were all the better for the Spectrum hardware), and the fact the cover of Last Ninja looked very very cool as I believe it was one of the first to go for a big-budget 'movie poster' look and marketed as such.

You'll have to forgive RG sometimes as I think they are a tad too nostalgic and not nearly objective enough in their retrospections.

[drauch]

Yeah, RG has a bit of a thing for Manic Miner/Jet Set Willy. They are fun games, really. Good, challenging platformers. Best games ever? Hell no.

[Herr Schatten]

Last Ninja, C64. To this day I no idea how this useless pule of crap - and its sequels - are remembered so fondly.

It's pretty to look at, and it has really nice music. That was pretty much enough to make a game a 'classic' back when it was released. See also: Shadow of the Beast, a nearly unplayable mess of a game, but it had 17 layers of parallax scrolling and some fine music.

Note that most people who remember these games fondly today probably never actually played them. They just activated the invincibility cheat of their pirated copies and enjoyed the pretty sights unhampered by the glaring flaws in the gameplay.

[system11]

Yeah, RG has a bit of a thing for Manic Miner/Jet Set Willy. They are fun games, really. Good, challenging platformers. Best games ever? Hell no.

Actually Manic Miner probably does deserve to be in the top 100 games of all time. It's actually still quite fun today, but it was ground breaking when it came out. JSW on the other hand was good, but the open ended nature made it all a bit random, and most people just played it to explore a bit.

[Marc]

Agreed, I still play Manic Miner to this day, superb game. Didn't like JSW anywhere near us much.

Another awesomely bad game was Caverns of Kafkha on C64. Go play it people. And laugh.

[caldwert]

The first bad game I can really remember realizing it's crap was Bad Dudes on the NES. Holy fuck, that was such an atrocious port.

I popped in just to say this as well. This was the one where my mom refused to buy me any more arcade ports because I was madder than hell telling her it wasn't like the arcade version, lol. One of the very first PCB's I hunted down when I got into games, just to soothe my soul from the NES port. I have a friend who got Taboo on NES as a kid, lol.

[Udderdude]

The first bad game I can really remember realizing it's crap was Bad Dudes on the NES. Holy fuck, that was such an atrocious port.

I popped in just to say this as well. This was the one where my mom refused to buy me any more arcade ports because I was madder than hell telling her it wasn't like the arcade version, lol. One of the very first PCB's I hunted down when I got into games, just to soothe my soul from the NES port. I have a friend who got Taboo on NES as a kid, lol.

In my case, I hadn't ever played or even seen the arcade version. I just flat out recodnised it as crap ..

To this day, I've never actually played the arcade version of Bad Dudes. :p

[Marc]

I don't think the coin-op is much cop either, Kung-Fu Master was far more crisp and enjoyable.

[Ed Oscuro]

To this day, I've never actually played the arcade version of Bad Dudes. :p

What the fuck, I have lost all my faith in you.

play it now and be

[xbl0x180]

It seems I always had bad luck with buying quality video games and it sucked even more paying full retail for them. I don't know if they were horrible, though. I think they were just mediocre, but not on the level of E.T. bad. Off the top of my head:

Wrath Of The Black Manta (NES): Cheep Shinobi rip-off.
Strider (NES)
Dragon Warrior (NES): This was bad because I didn't know any English back then, so RPGs of any kind woulda sucked for me.
Back To The Future (NES)

Rushing Beat/Rival Turf (SNES)
Power Athlete (SNES)

DJ Boy (Genesis)

[Krimzon Kitzune]

Strider (NES)

I'm pretty sure that's there by mistake. The NES game was pretty good, if only a little unpolished.

[null1024]

Sonic Heroes.

Yeah, most of the games I remember owning for my NES, SNES, Genesis, and N64 back in the day were pretty enjoyable, mostly in part because my brothers got first pick at them, and tossed the shit games out.

I played Sonic Heroes, and just everything about it was mediocre or worse. The camera was bad [not as bad as Sonic Adventure 1's, but still bad], the level design was pretty ass [the levels weren't exactly fun, and the multi-hit enemies were way annoying], everyone had this nasty looking shine on them, whoever designed Rail Canyon should be dragged by a truck, then buried, then shot at, in that order, and as a whole, it let me down.
The music was pretty good though, but it's a Sonic game, so that's usually a given. Oh, and fuck Team Chaotix's missions.

I've probably played/owned worse before, but this was the first bad game that I can remember both owning and it being memorably bad.

[Ex-Cyber]

Strider (NES)

I'm pretty sure that's there by mistake. The NES game was pretty good, if only a little unpolished.

Yeah; I think it had the potential to be a classic reinterpretation a la Bionic Commando, but the sloppy mechanics kind of ruined it.

[Jeneki]

I always preferred the arcade screen, mentioning Reagan specifically makes it that much cheesier.



But hey at least they admit the game is bad.

[Klatrymadon]

Awww, I kinda liked TMNT:Tournament Fighters...

Konami along with Capcom was a member of the very exclusive Licensed Games That Don't Suck Ass club.

Fuckin' A. It's the secret best fighting game!

I'd played many other stinkers, but the first game I remember really wanting to take back to the shop was, perhaps rather too predictably, Rise of the Robots. It was fucking expensive, too - I was only a kid, but I felt really bad that my mum had spent her money on it. The whole experience was utterly joyless, from the depressing procession of licensing screens and the uninviting, slow-moving menu, to the drab faux-dystopian non-places you inhabited, the phoned-in, damp squib of a soundtrack and the back-of-a-beer-mat character designs. Oh, and the fighting was diabolical, obv.

I know it's one of those games that every lazy journo in the industry points to and scoffs at as an easy example of an unmitigated failure, but it occupies a special circle of hell in my demonology just because it seemed like such a personal affront to me as a kid. It really bummed me out.

[xbl0x180]

Strider (NES)

I'm pretty sure that's there by mistake. The NES game was pretty good, if only a little unpolished.

Yeah; I think it had the potential to be a classic reinterpretation a la Bionic Commando, but the sloppy mechanics kind of ruined it.

At the time, I remember being totally blown away by the look of the arcade game that when I got the NES game it was so anti-climactic. It just did not look great to me. It was the other way when I rented Ninja Gaiden - the NES game was way more fun and handled better than the arcade

[Vexorg]

Speaking of bad NES games, how about Bad Street Brawler? I never actually owned it, bit got a hold of a copy at some point, and the sheer terribleness of it all is astounding.