Videogames You Love To Hate

Thanks to FiringSquad for their editorial discussing why sheer wretchedness is (allegedly) a good thing in gaming. The author rhapsodizes: "Bad experiences define this hobby. As much as we all enjoy sharing love stories about great moments in gaming, we tend to play up the bad stuff even more. Even though I'll always have fond memories about racking up 400,000 points in Donkey Kong... while a crowd cheered me on... the time that Daikatana taught me the true meaning of sorrow will somehow always be more powerful." Which legendarily bad games have given you fondly hateful memories?

Comments

One game springs to mind.

[Yorrike]

And that game is Starfox Adventures. Of all the games I've played on my GameCube, SFA (heh), was the one I originally had extremely high hopes for (when it was revealed as Dinosaur Planet on the N64).

After Nintendo hyjacked the project and added the Starfox characters in there, I lost all interest in the game (Starfox in a Zelda game? Pfft).

Upon seeing the results of the game being transferred to the GameCube and having the characters so wonderfully modelled (with fur!), I was once again excited about the game.

What followed my short stint in the game was cries of frustration and a solid opinion that Rare had lost the plot. Truely the most disappointing game I've come across.

My Defining Video Game Disappointment

[Babbster]

Mine is probably the same as many: Pac-Man for the Atari 2600. I can't even describe the disappointment I felt as a little tyke when my grandparents and I got to their house and plugged that game in. Even then (elementary school), I knew that there was no way it would be an arcade-perfect translation but I had played so many really fun games for the 2600 that I felt it was a "can't miss" proposition. Boy, was I wrong.

I noticed immediately that the graphics were atrocious. Again, it wasn't that I was expecting an arcade game but the COLORS! They were simply awful. I was prepared to accept the hideous colors because, well, it was still Pac-Man, darn it! It HAD to at least play well! As I started the game and clutched my joystick...upside down - one of my little quirks was that I always held Atari-style joysticks upside down because I felt like I should be hitting the button with my right thumb, a belief vindicated later by virtually every other game console...but I digress. So, I'm holding my joystick as I start the game and I move the stick to the left and...well...Pac-Man...moved...so...slowly. I started working myself into a rage. Atari was ruining Pac-Man, a gaming classic. As I continued to move about the maze, I of course noticed that the ghosts looked horrible, the dots weren't even dots anymore (little rectangles) and my frustration boiled to a point I had never reached before while playing a video game.

Even then, I was a pretty calm, "good" kid. I put my joystick down, got up, turned the console off, removed Pac-Man and put it into one of the game cases (big, beautiful plastic things that held 20 cartridges a piece). I placed the instruction manual carefully in the provided slot in the case and took out another game - ANY other game (don't remember specifically as we had many) - and tried to calm myself down. I didn't even tell my grandparents how angry I was since I didn't want to seem ungrateful for the gift.

For the remainder of my time playing the Atari 2600, whenever I played any game that I thought was bad I always compared it to the miserable abortion that was Pac-Man and so I managed to stay fairly satisfied. To put it into even more perspective, that attitude even helped me find enjoyment in E.T. and M.A.S.H.!

Pac-Man for the Atari 2600:
Worst...gaming...experience...ever.

I blame the marketeers

[carndearg]

If I were asked to name the worst game I ever played it would have to be Banzai Bug. I have a special reason to comment on the awfulness of this game because running the helpdesk for the publisher I not only had to play it rather a lot but I saw some of the management decisions that led to the awful state of the released product.

There are certain projects with little real substance but well crafted gloss that cruise the games industry waiting for gullible publishers to snap them up believing them to be "the next (insert name of gaming fad of the time here, Lemmings, Tomb Raider, Quake etc)". Such was Banzai Bug, a 3d game where you had to fly an insect through a series of adventures to escape an exterminator. It could probably have been made quite good with the right publisher, but sadly with a publishing company run by marketeers with little game playing experience that wasnt going to happen.

They signed it in the first place on the basis of an intro video, they were very proud of the fact that they'd had some input on the gameplay despite their games testers telling them it was very poor, and to cap it all when it was finally released they tried to market it as a flight simulator because you were flying the insect character. Naturally this went down well with the flight sim crowd:)

So dont necessarily blame the developers if a game turns out to be a turkey. They will almost certainly know it's a turkey and won't be able to do much about it. Responsibility rests squarely on the publishing company who, blinded by marketeer's self-belief, almost certainly made it that way all by themselves.