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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."
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
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
...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.
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.