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

sheer wretchedness

[patch-rustem]

From the editorial:

Computer and video gaming is probably the only pastime on the planet where sheer wretchedness is one of the main drawing cards.

He obviously hasn't watched alot of US television.

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.

ET? Nobody's mentioned ET?

[HomeGroove]

I'm surprised that ET for the 2600 hasn't been mentioned yet. Jeeze, what a piece of crap that was. Crappy enough for Atari to dump 5 million copies down Mexico way.

Re:Extreme Paintbrawl

[PurpleFloyd]

How do you figure that? No matter what, the game had to have certain costs: pressing CDs, printing a manual (even if it's just a single sheet describing how to install Acrobat Reader), printing the box, shipping to retailers, and of course paying employees. While it's certainly possible to make a profit making bargain-bin games (look at Serious Sam), costs like pressing the first run of CDs and paying developers, marketroids, and managers are constant no matter how many copies you sell. While corners weren't as much cut as bombarded with tactical nuclear devices, I still can't see HeadGames making more than $5 per copy sold, or maybe $2.50 on the bare jewel case versions released after a while.

It seems to me that HeadGames went after the less PC-savvy market with the "Extreme" series of games; people who play paintball would probably, on average, have less computer knowledge than the general population (although I do know a few sysadmins, programmers and the like who play paintball, most of the people I know who like paintball aren't the computer-savvy type). Thus, it's possible to rip them off once or twice before they're turned off to HeadGames or gaming in general.

Another possiblity is a Producers-style scam; for some reason, the upper management wanted the company to fail. After all, word does get around about software, especially something as outstandingly awful as Extreme Paintbrawl. To ignore this fact is rather naive, and I am surprised that whoever was providing HeadGames with financial backing would continue supporting them after they saw a product as awful as Extreme Paintbrawl. Perhaps someone needed to lose money fast for some reason (taxes, laundering?) and decided to sink it into a POS company and run it into the ground.