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The 50 Worst Videogame Names of All Time
Game Revolution has a great feature looking at fifty of the worst-named games ever to require a controller. They dig deep here, unearthing gems like 'Yo! Noid!', 'Awesome Possum Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt!', and 'Huygen's Disclosure'. From the article: "From Dick Butkus to Hootie and the Blowfish to Lake Titicaca, bad names have been with us forever. But thanks to the inevitable collision of reclusive nerds, bizarre artists and painfully unhip marketing execs, the video game industry enjoys some of the worst names of all. The following list was compiled after hours of lively debate, pages of exhausting science and one actual geek fistfight."
Okay, I played the original Ogre pocket game. It was pretty cool. One player plays the part of one very large, very powerful battle tank. The other player plays a swarm of small, fast-moving, easily swatable mini-battlebots. The object is to destroy the other guy. Neat tactical war game.
But where in the !@#$ did they come up with "Let Us Cling Together"? I'm guessing it is where the minibots can cling together to create one large bot. Defeats the whole point of the original and is an incredibly stupid name (hence its place in this list). Had to have been a marketing droid that came up with this one.
But why is the rum gone?
I remember what ended the "Avoid the Noid" campaign, or at least so I thought.
Back in 1989, a guy named Kenneth Noid held up a Domino's in Georgia and kept the employees hostage for 6 hours. The man was paranoid delusional and thought that the campaign was directed specifically at him. The stand-off ended with no one hurt, and I believe the guy got off with an insanity plea.
I remember this in the news when I was a kid, because I'm from Georgia. It was "the big story" that day.
Turns out though, according to the Wikipedia, the campaign was actually ended becase the artist who created the character wanted more money. That's kind of disturbing in a way.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Atari 2600: Name this Game. Like they couldn't figure out a name, so you're supposed to name it yourself. Or maybe it was a note from the programmers to the marketing team: Name this Game. So instead of naming it, they just used what the programmers penciled in.
God spoke to me.
The exact etymology of Donkey Kong's title is debatable. My favourite honest-to-goodness botched transliteration is that great big-top racing sim, Continental Circus.