The 20 Worst Games Ever

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Posted by ryuzaki0 on Saturday October 21, 2006 @10:23PM from the for-real dept.

EGM's Seanbaby has a 'director's cut' of a list of the top 20 worst videogames, a list published in the 150th issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly earlier this year. While some top lists may claim authority, this one is the real deal: these games are utter crap. From the article: "#10: Revolution X (SNES) This game is biblically horrific. You're overthrowing an oppressive world order. With Aerosmith. And music is your weapon. That scream of terror you just heard was probably you. Using your weapon, music, you'll fight a massive army of soldiers sent by the government to keep you from rocking. And since the artists were lazy, the army is made up entirely of a man in a yellow jacket and his several thousand identical twins."

26 of 218 comments (clear)

Plumbers don't wear ties? by Gord · 2006-10-21 22:33 · Score: 5, Interesting

What about the infamous 'Plumbers don't wear ties?'. I remeber this scoring 4% in PC Format (UK) about 10 years ago and holding the title of 'Worst Rating' for many a year, it may even still do so. ..
1. Re:Plumbers don't wear ties? by Sigma+7 · 2006-10-21 23:00 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  There's also "J-Space for Windows". The only instance I heard about it was in a small book listing cheats for ~101 PC games in circulation at the time.
  
  The tip for that game was don't buy it, since it got 4% -- PC Format's lowest ever rating. Other than that single comment, it seems as if the game disappeared from the face of the Earth. I have no idea why it was bad, since that comment didn't really cite when it was reviewed.
2. Re:Plumbers don't wear ties? by shreevatsa · 2006-10-22 00:07 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  OTOH, my nomination "most awesome game ever" goes to Desert Bus from Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors game package (it never made it big, surprisingly). The game was an answer to the Jack Thompson-types. Quoting from various sources:
  'Desert Bus' was a game we thought would really appeal to people who didn't like unrealistic games, and didn't like violence in their games. It was just like real, loving life.
  The objective of the game is to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time at a maximum speed of 45mph, a feat that would take the player 8 hours of continuous play to complete, as the game cannot be paused.
  The bus contains no passengers, and there is no scenery or other cars on the road. The bus veers to the right slightly; as a result, it's impossible to tape down a button to go do something else and have the game end properly. If the bus veers off the road it will stall and be towed back to Tucson, also in real time. If the player makes it to Las Vegas, they will score exactly one point: the counter - which was five zeros - went to 1.
  
  It's available as a torrent; feel free to wallow in its awesomeness!
3. Re:Plumbers don't wear ties? by Pluvius · 2006-10-22 03:14 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors game package (it never made it big, surprisingly).
  
  That's probably because it was never released commercially.
  
  Rob
You're Winner! by stinerman · 2006-10-21 22:42 · Score: 5, Interesting

#1 has to be Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.

Also, check out #9, Custer's Revenge, for some hot pr0n. Wow, were they ahead of their time or what?
yay for old news by floatingtrem · 2006-10-21 22:43 · Score: 5, Informative

this might have been interesting if i hadn't read this, oh i dunno, 6 or 7 years ago when this article was published.
Old/10 by Kyokugenryu · 2006-10-21 22:45 · Score: 4, Informative

I think I still have this issue of EGM, from, oh, 2003 or so? How is this on the front page?
Ultima 9: Ascension by owlman17 · 2006-10-21 22:51 · Score: 5, Interesting

Finally, an article on /. about a list of worst games, instead of the usual rehash of the "Top 5/10/20 best games of all time, etc ad nauseum" lists.

Hmmm. Nobody seemed to mention Ultima IX, a terribly bug-ridden game. From the README file alone: "Be certain you empty your Recycle Bin before installing the game." Or : "We recommend that you not save the game while you're poisoned; this has been somewhat problematic in the current version."

Wow, why didn't anyone mention that?

(Another game worth mentioning: Conquest Earth. Its not buggy but... hey, might as well have been.)
1. Re:Ultima 9: Ascension by NexFlamma · 2006-10-21 23:10 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  To show you just how old this new story is, it was originally published on Seanbaby's site before Ultima 9 came out, hence why it's not on the list.
  
  Does it even qualify as news if it's that old?
Re:The list by suv4x4 · 2006-10-21 23:03 · Score: 4, Insightful

Bypass the link:

20: Extreme Sports With the Berenstein Bears
19: Bible Adventures
18: Kriss Kross: Make My Video
17: Bubsy 3D ...

Good way to get some karma, but the point of the article is that it's funny to read. The list is totally not interesing, as the games were chosen and ordered apparently randomly (you could say they're just 20 terrible games of probably a thousand terrible games).
Battlecruiser 3000AD by Ullteppe · 2006-10-21 23:07 · Score: 5, Interesting

How about Battlecruiser 3000AD? As to ET, there are actually worse 2600 games than this. Maybe not with the same historical significance, okay...
Re:The list by Walt+Dismal · 2006-10-21 23:14 · Score: 5, Funny

You forgot Happy Fun Time Cheesegrater Testicle Assault, from Namco for the Atari, voted the most painful game of all time.
For obvious reasons, I believe no one ever got to the final level, which involved Mexican hot peppers and flesh-eating wolverines. Ahh, let's not go there after all. Those wacky Japanese game geniuses.
Big Rigs: YOU'RE WINNER! by Poro · 2006-10-21 23:36 · Score: 5, Informative

At least according to a race sim maniac like me, "Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing" would be a good candidate for a more up to date version of the worst games ever list. Wikipedia has some nice words about this quite extraordinary game.
Bible Adventures! by binkzz · 2006-10-21 23:41 · Score: 5, Interesting

While I definitely played worse games (and better ones), I found it kind of pointless that he chooses to just rant about the Bible and his religious views instead of discussing the game.

--
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
1. Re:Bible Adventures! by Matteo522 · 2006-10-22 09:43 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Especially because it really wasn't a bad game by NES standards. I played that game a lot as a kid, and it was a lot of fun. We weren't even Christian growing up -- I got it as a gift from a Christian uncle. I didn't play the David & Goliath mini-game as much as the Noah's Ark one... but it was fairly challenging, had a whole bunch of levels, and decent replay value. Oh well. If you read the rest of his "reviews" (see the CDI Zelda one), you'll see this was just some idiot 16 year old.
This list is awful by Anonymous Coward · 2006-10-22 00:26 · Score: 5, Insightful

This list is one the worst I've read. The author just lists games out of his ass, and he is not even coherent with his previous list about "Worst 20 NES videogames", so you find that some NES videogames that scored less on that list scored more on this, and the supposedly worst (Deadly Towers) is missing on this list. What the...?

Suggestion: Avoid reading. Leave game trashing to professionals.
Digging up E.T. by Sippan · 2006-10-22 00:46 · Score: 5, Interesting

The funniset thing in that article was the sentence "So if you ever lose your mind and want a copy of E.T., or maybe five million, grab a shovel and drive out to the desert. They're free."

It's funny because you can't actually do it - Wikipedia: "Starting on September 27, 1983, a layer of concrete was poured on top of the crushed materials".

Crushed, buried, sealed in concrete. Now that is one bad video game.

--
Frog blast the vent core.
1. Re:Digging up E.T. by frogstar_robot · 2006-10-22 02:07 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Wintergreen made a video about the whole E.T. disposal debacle. It has nice touches like the 2600 E.T. running around the desert where his carts are buried. Funny stuff.
  
  http://keithschofield.com/et/
This info is rather stale (like the 2600) by christoofar · 2006-10-22 01:05 · Score: 4, Interesting

This list has been rather arbitrary, however the "official" list can be found and edited on Wikipedia.

I agree on #1 though. I cannot forget how much ET sucked (and I was a little tyke around this time). I had JUST gotten exposed to the 2600 and the crappy Pac-Mac clone released for it when the console abruptly was shoved into the closet never to see the light of day again.

I did enjoy the Atari 400 my mother had bought for my older sibling. We would both play Zaxxon for hours on it, which required starting a rather chunky and heavy cassette tape machine which you connected to the 400. There was some cheesy elevator music with some marketing propoganda (you had to turn the volumn down to ignore it). After going to get a soda and cigarettes at the store for my brother, the game would be completely loaded into RAM and we'd spend a good part of the afternoon trying to top scores.

ET however managed to suck the life out of Atari and it destroyed the company. Had it not done that, NES would have had no void to fill.

In fact, the Atari caused so much damage to the video game market (and all the other cheap video game systems), that Nintendo had to market the first 8-bit consoles by showing only the Nintendo R.O.B. (remember that thing?) The ROB had a major suck factor, but it was such a cool gimmick that the "seperate console" it needed to play the game managed to suck in enough kids that eventually the ROB was discarded (within about 6 months after it released).

The ROB gimmick was quickly removed from the marketplace and the only boxes you could find where the standard console and the one with the Duck Hunt gun. The original issue had everything--the NES, the ROB and the gun with all those games! What a steal!
Revolution X by filthWisard · 2006-10-22 03:01 · Score: 5, Funny

Is it just me or does Revolution X sound like it could have been a good idea for a game if you replaced aerosmith with spinal tap?
1. Re:Revolution X by markimusk · 2006-10-22 03:46 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  it's just you.
Extreme PaintBrawl by ESqVIP · 2006-10-22 05:01 · Score: 4, Informative

Another possible missing game is Extreme PaintBrawl; as far as I know, it got the lowest rating ever on IGN in 1998 (0.7 out of 10) and since then has never been topped (uhm, "topped" doesn't seem the right word for such games...).
1. Re:Extreme PaintBrawl by Quietude · 2006-10-22 11:35 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  PC Gamer gave it a single-digit rating, which led to the lead programmer writing them a letter and begging them to re-review it after the patch that added AI to the game was released.
Re:Was pretty funny until it got homophobic by WilliamSChips · 2006-10-22 07:03 · Score: 4, Funny

Except that it's not funny to anybody with more than two braincells.

--
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Re:The list by irving47 · 2006-10-22 07:19 · Score: 4, Funny

Well in my case, it provided a lot of closure. I always felt like a retard when I tried to play that ET game. I'd sit awake in my room at night figuring, "OK" I just need to be smarter or pay more attention. I can't believe a video game on the atari would be wrong or bad, so it must be me!!"

When I saw the article title, I thought, "Oh please God, let it be on the list. Anywhere on the list!" Number One... There is a God.

--
I had a sucky sig.
Re:The list by lisaparratt · 2006-10-22 20:37 · Score: 4, Informative

"Sir"? The word you're looking for is "Mistress"!