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Big Rigs Makes Play For Worst Game Of All Time

Thanks to GameSpot for its review of Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing for the PC, which it awards its worst score ever, 1.0/10, rhapsodizing: "Big Rigs is a game so astoundingly bad that it manages to transcend nearly every boundary put forth by some of gaming's absolute worst of the worst and easily makes it into that dubiously extraordinary category of being one of the most atrocious games ever published." The review goes on to explain some of that atrociousness, noting: "You can clip your truck right through every object on a race course in Big Rigs, from the biggest of houses and walls, right down to the smallest of lampposts. Furthermore, bridges evidently don't actually exist, despite the fact that you can see them - driving over any of them results in you sinking right through them." Although Big Rigs makes a valiant attempt, what videogame would you rate as the worst of all time?

16 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. I don't have to rate it... by FreeForm+Response · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Game Players Magazine already rated Cosmic Race as the worst game of all time.

    It was so bad, in fact, that I seem to remember their review scales changing to rate games on a scale of 10 down to Cosmic Race. =)

  2. Bestest review ever! by Universal+Nerd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I read the reviews last week.

    The user comments are even better than the main review. Well worth the read.

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  3. Drek by Konster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Ultra low visibilty drek pales in comparison to Ultra High Visibilty Drek like Daikatana and Battlecruiser 3000 AD.

    Daikatana had a gestation period of 5 years; Battlecruiser 3000AD, seven years. I am still befuddled as to how something could take so long and yet be so poorly done as those two examples were.

    With Daikatana, we had John Romero (I AM JOHN ROMERO LOOK AT MY HAIR LOOK AT MY BUTT LOOK AT...)promising to make us his bitch for the better part of 5 years. What we got instead was a lukewarm game that was 5 years out of date, and many good jokes about John, and the excess of Ion Storm.

    Derek Smart gets the award for the crappiest game ever that had the longest gestation period. SEVEN years he worked on it, and in the end it was a buggy, unplayable mess and a laughing stock.

    It doesn't surprise me when games like Big Rigs come out and are unplayably bad, as their gestation periods are quite small. They hardly register in the minds of many before they vanish into oblivion where they belong.

    Games such as Daikatana and Battlecruiser 3000AD continue to amaze me to this day, for it isn't everyday in the PC games industry that so little has been done with so much.

  4. My personal worst by Pentagram · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The worst game I have ever played was a footy game with Ryan Giggs' face plastered all over it called 'Ryan Giggs' Super Soccer' or some such shite. It was clearly coded by a bunch of drunken stoats and never even approached a state of completion.

    The game was hideous graphically (they couldn't even get the Welsh flag correct), totally inaccurate, and incredibly easy. The worst bit was the AI though; the ball was just followed around the pitch by all 20 players, and at free kicks the defenders formed a wall ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE ATTACKING PLAYER including the goalkeeper.

    The game was released for the Sega Megadrive in the mid 90s. I never saw a review of it, and can only assume that they expected to get all their income from clueless relatives buying the game as a gift (which is what happened in my case).

    You'd think some companies would have more self respect...

  5. Atari 2600 E.T. and Atari 2600 Pac-Man by mrshowtime · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Atari 2600 E.T. and Atari 2600 Pac-Man. Even as bad as "truckers" is, it can't compare to getting fucking stuck in pit and being unable to get out. The 2600 version of Pac-Man was so rushed, it barely resembled the game it was based on. The worst part about 2600 Pac-Man, was the COLORS; blue became yellow/orange and dots became rectangular wafers. Later on when Atari released Ms.Pac-Man, it proved that they could have done at good job in the first place, given the time.

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  6. No question by Torgo's+Pizza · · Score: 4, Interesting
    That honor has to go with Night Trap. Sure, go with the usual suspects that everyone is throwing out. Night Trap has that unusual distinction of not only being a bad game, but also for nearly forcing a Congressional law mandating ratings on video games.

    Yep, it was so bad, so awful, so shocking (mainly because it featured Dana Plato of Diff'rent Strokes fame) that Joe Liebermann & Co. was about to enact legislation to prohibit depraved games from getting into kids hands. Sound familiar? In response, the video game industry came up with the ESRB rating system that you see on today's games.

    You can throw out all the game suggestions you want, but only one game was so bad that it forced the industry to go to a ratings system. Top that.

  7. This review makes me remember another game... by Zangief · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Stunts / 4D racing.

    That game was actually playable, and was somewhat good, but the thing that made it remarkable was the stupid physics engine that it included. My friends and I wasted hours and hours trying to set up the most amazing disasters, so we could see what happened. Some of the crazy stuff that the game allowed was:

    -The main atraction: I guess some programmes remembered that things launehed through the air follow a parabolic trayectory. However they sliopped a sign somewhere, because things went flying in a parabole of positive A (Ax^2 + Bx + C), like an U, rather than one of a negative A (like an n)

    -When the AI car crashed, if you touched, slowly,the AI car which was burning (and stopped), sometimes you would be sent flying away (where did all that momentum came from?).

    -If you reached max speed, the grass would stop resisting you.

    -If you were fast enough, and with a little of luck, you could pass through small walls.

    -From time to time, you were sent flying away for no apparent reason.

    This game had poor programming, and delivered hundreds of hours of laughs. If Broderbund had made their work right, I doubt I would ever played it twice.

    1. Re:This review makes me remember another game... by Zangief · · Score: 2, Interesting

      In Gran Turismo 2, for the playstation (at least the japanese version), in the track called "Laguna Seca", there is a small obstacle, right at the start:

      | |_
      | V*\
      | |
      |-------| Starting line.

      the * represents the V-shaped space, in which you can put your car, shake a little, and get out of the track, to a collision free limbo! (try with blocky cars, not the rounded ones)

      You can navigate blindly (guiding yourself only with the map, which shows that the map is drawed based on your REAL position, not relative to the track), so you get under the big cliff that characterizes this track, and you will be rocket-launched back to the surface.

      It makes for some misterious looking replays, and is really funny. There is another track in which you can do this, but it is far harder than the glitch in Laguna Seca. I remember (I did this three years ago, I think) that it was a Urban track, and it was at a tire barrier.

      I once saw an early version of an OS racing game which had a bug similar to stunts. If you achieved some very high speed, you went flying away. I don't remember the name.

    2. Re:This review makes me remember another game... by Zangief · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I think I may have been misunderstood. I think Stunts was great. It was, along with civilization, one of the big timewasters of my youth.

      What I'm saying is that what makes Stunts a great game, is its funny bugs. That, and the level editor which allowed great room for experimenting with the faulty physics in the game, made Stunts great.

      I have always been intrigued if this physics engine was left that way deliberately, or the game was rushed. Maybe Broderbund made another version of the game, which was more realistic, and realized it was not as fun as the previous, buggy version.

      Nah...

  8. Gotta go back a few years by Grab · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Come on, there have always been turkeys.

    - "Sam Fox Strip Poker" for the C-64 has to feature somewhere
    - All ports of Outrun
    - Any US Gold film tie-in title in the 80s

    Grab.

  9. Re:No such thing as bad publicity by tiled_rainbows · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What I don't understad, is what did it score 1/10 for? I mean, what did it do in order to earn that one point? Not getting 0/10 suggests that it wasn't as bad as it could have been, but at no point in the review do they mention anything even remotely non-borken about the game.
    I guess that it loaded, at least. And there were trucks on it.
    It reminds me of the tests we had school where the first 10% of your score was for getting your name right.

  10. Forbidden Forest for the c64 by HomeGroove · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This may have actually been a good game. The problem with it was we had the good ol' C64 tape deck. So you'd hit play on the deck, go have dinner, go outside to play a bit, and then come back to the computer to play the game. Seeing as though I was likely between 5-7, I would last about 2 minutes before getting taken out by some spider or that dragon flying in the sky. I thought it's name was chimera but googing around proved me wrong. I seem to remember though when you started the game a voice would say "Chimera" with a lust for murder in it's computerized voice. I seem to remember that Forbidden Forest was the only game we had for the tape deck. You can imagine my excitement when we made the move to floppies.

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  11. Look at PC gamer magazine by superpulpsicle · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Man, if you think gamespot gave them a low score you should read PC gamer magazine. In every issue at least one game gets completely trashed score-wise. Not to mention half the PC games never get released into the market anyways.

    After Doom III and halflife2 I predict a long and boring period for PC games.

  12. E.T. - extremely terrible by ColonBlow · · Score: 5, Interesting

    E.T. (1982) - The game that sank Atari? 5,000,000 unsold copies?
    How many other games have been so bad that 14 trucks worth of it were buried in a landfill?
    Even when I was 10, playing it for 30 seconds at a dept store, I knew it sucked ass.

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  13. Gods and Generals by kisrael · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Gamespot's "Worst of 2003" included Gods and Generals...the "See it in action" video on that page is worth checking out.

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  14. Disappointing games are worse than bad ones. by Psykechan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Back to the Future for the NES gets an honorable mention for worst game. In an era where movie licensed games sucked, LJN was renown for their crappy license games. BttF had a 7 second audio clip that played over and over until you turned the game off. Torturous for the player and anyone else in the room.

    But the winner(s) would have to be Link: Faces of Evil and it's sister game Zelda: Wand of Gamelon. The CDi had more than it's share of failures *cough* Alien Gate *cough*, but aquiring the rights to a well known and respected franchise and releasing this upon the world deserves a stupidity award. Gameplay is rudimentory and very choppy, and when your reward for completing objectives is another bouncy cartoon that makes you want to jab pointy things into your eyes, you will understand why this earns the title.

    There have been quite a few games that haven't been bad, per se, they've just been disappointing. These games are what really makes me sad. Notable titles include:

    Sonic Adventure/Heroes series - You would think that by the third game that problems like the camera being the biggest enemy in the game and players die by being "clipped" through the solid floor would be fixed. Nope.

    Kingdom Hearts - Yet another license snafu. It has wonderful graphics, cinemas, music, and humor. Everything that an Epic Disney/Final Fantasy game should have but it falls flat on playability. Gameplay consists of pressing the X button lots of times while battling the evil camera system. Platforming elements are boiled down to a chore. Computer controlled allies try to waste as much magic/items as possible. It's simply not fun, and with so many things going for the game, it's a real shame.

    Castlevania: Lament of Innocence - Igarashi saying that Castlevania should not be in 3D is fine but why does he have to prove his point by making this forgettable game? Someone should tell all of those developers working on "Devil May Cry" clones that DMC wasn't really that great. C:LoI has players haphazardly fighting recurring monsters in rooms that, while finely detailed, tend to look all the same. To quote from Zork: "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike".

    These games and more aren't really terrible, they just could be better if more thought/time was put into them. As Shigeru Miyamoto said: "A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever".