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Terrible Games From A Terrible Year
1up is running an article written by the ever amusing SeanBaby, wherein he write about some of the worst games from the worst year in gaming. The year was 1984, and the U.S. videogaming industry was close to non-existence. What was released, then, left a lot to be desired. From the article: "Snacks N' Jackson - In this game, you play the part of a clown's head attached to a 4-foot tentacle neck. Your nose detaches itself from your face, and it's the rest of your clown face's job to keep it from bouncing through the window behind you. Also, you have to tentacle your head around to eat levitating breakfast foods. The strange name Snacks N' Jackson was a last-minute replacement of the original title, What Hitler Sees When He Closes His Eyes."
That is quite possibly the most disturbing game concept i've ever seen...
Just a heads up about the link not working properly, takes you back to your own account Journal page.
either zonk spazzed on the link, or seanbaby's writing style has changed dramatically.
Go Go Broken Link!
...Want to check the link there, it should be here not https://slashdot.org/admin.pl?op=edit
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http://1up.com/do/feature?cId=3146061&did=1
The real link...
At least the link isn't slasdoted, let's try this one.
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For the record, I had that game originally. The game itself was fun and a decent port of the arcade game... But the article's correct, the graphics were just awful. After the crash/shakeout/term-of-the-week, most third party games were just junk, but ironically, some of Atari's own last titles finally caught up to Activision quality, like Solaris, Midnight Magic, and Jr. Pac Man. By that time, the NES was established and that was all she wrote.
Those who complain about affect & effect on
If you're into really bad video games, or just poking fun at them, another place to check out is Something Awful's ROM Pit.
The reviews score the games in various categories (gameplay, sound, etc.) on a scale of -10 to -1, and the writeups are fantastic.
That green slime had it coming.
I think the game would have been a big hit if they kept the name "What Hitler sees when he closes his eyes"
This sig is neither interesting, nor humorous. Including meta-humor.
This might have been in an interesting article if Seanbaby actually stayed on topic. For the most part, it's him just trying to sound clever. Also, his analysis of the games is lot to be desired. For instance, in his review of the Gremlins game for the Atari 5200, he aims his frustrations at the manual instead of the actual game. And during his dissection of the manual, he spends the better part of the paragraph describing the fate of that ill fated tech writer. Advice to you, Seanbaby ... write the article first. Be funny second. If I wanted to laugh, I'd ask you to drop your trousers.
... Snacks N' Jackson sounds pretty out there, but it sounds like the developers were trying to do something new as opposed rehash another rehash. I didn't read one gripe about the gameplay, just the concept.
I once played an import game called "Switch" for the Sega CD and the only thing you did was press buttons. If you pressed the wrong button, boobs would appear all over your character or an easter island statue would fall on him. It was the weirdest game I ever played, but it made for a great party game. My long winded point, sometimes the good things don't come in boxes.
And one other thing
First, a suggestion: start with the older Rom Pit games. The new guy just can't keep up the pace.
Now that that's said, also don't forget their Game Reviews over on the left-hand bar--same sort of deal as the rom pit, but with modern games (and hentai, if you're not at work). Modern games usually don't have as much of the "WTF" factor, leaning more towards the "Broken half-assed crap" factor, largely thanks to cut-rate publishers/distributors/whatever. The movie reviews are good if you enjoy raw human failure, but unfortunately most of the old links to video clips are broken.
No, I don't work for SA, I'm just easily amused.
I agree with the people who think he should have tried to write something interesting instead of a bunch of tired heckling one-liners. The suck of 1984 is a topic that actually has enough substance to write a good article. So what does he do? He writes a sucky article full of lame pseudo-jokes instead of a good article about suckage.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
...I should point out that Gremlins for the Atari 5200 is one of the hardest to find carts of that era, mainly because so many people threw theirs away. For the collector, this is a bad thing. For the seller...well..you know the saying: One man's trash...blah blah.
In this game, you play the part of a clown's head attached to a 4-foot tentacle neck. Your nose detaches itself from your face, and it's the rest of your clown face's job to keep it from bouncing through the window behind you.
:)
Whew! Imagine a beowulf cluster of clowns heads attached to... errr never mind
It was 1984, those who wheren't scared off by the possibility of orwells book coming true (thank good they couldn't see into the future, they'd never let us live) where still living in an age where graphics like that was (on the lower end of the scale but still) acceptable.
This article seems like a lot of game bashing solely for the reason of bashing old games.
Atleast my own account journal page was mildly entertaining, whereas the original article is an insult to the very words it was written in. Only one word would have been enough to replace the entire article "boring".
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Tetris was released the following year. Maybe they were saving their gaming energy up for that.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
This article was kind of weak. Go check out seanbaby.com for some of his funnier writings. His 10 worst video game ideas was one of the funniest things I've read in a while.
I am glad to hear this. In the years following 1984, there was a great boost in really great, awesome games being made. (At least for the Mac, which I use. Sosumi. Banzai, Scarab of RA, Crystal Quest, Social Climber, Fool's Errand, Zero Gravity, Bird Race, Strategic Conquest and Dark Castle to name a few!)
Considering that there have only been two or three half-decent games released in the most recent few years and certainly not a single one in 2005, perhaps we can hope for a new boost of great games now? =]
Well, I can dream...
Frog blast the vent core.
to allow mentally handicapped people write articles. Seanbaby is retarded right?
detachable nosed clown waving his tentacle around during breakfast? is this an arcade game or the Michael Jackson trial?
I watched "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" the other day to learn more about Arthurian legends. I came away thinking that the movie wasn't very informative and could have been done better. If you didn't think the article was funny, that's fine (I thought it was some of Seanbaby's worst), but don't criticise it for not being a well-written thesis on video game history.
When I read the header of the article, I thought for a second that the article referred to 2005! It sounds like 1984 wasn't a bad year for games, just a strange one. This year was bad for games. I can't think of a single game that has inspired me to play since WoW released in 2004. Psychonauts, maybe, but even that... At least the afforementioned computer game was ORIGINAL, and not a spin-off or franchise tie-in.
first hit on google, a better description of what Hitler sees when he closes his eyes... er, Snacks n' Jaxson:
http://mvt3k.overclocked.org/episode006.htm
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
They didn't seem to have this particular game, but I am definately going to check some of those out.
Actually, I think some of them look cool, but I like obscure games no one has heard of.
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