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Games They'd Like Us To Forget
Games Radar has a short piece up talking about some games that otherwise very accomplished developers would probably like us to forget. They call them "Secret Shame" games, and run the gamut from cheesy cash grabs (Shaq Fu and Justice League: Task Force) to notable flops (the Miyamoto-produced Stunt Race FX). From their discussion of Justice League: "Originally, this game was to be published by Sunsoft, but was picked up by Acclaim after Sunsoft went under bankruptcy reorganization. We'd almost say they should have known better than to put this out, but this is notorious sh**-peddler Acclaim we're talking about. Thankfully, the game was rightfully ignored, and due to its relative obscurity, Blizzard is almost never subject to mockery for it. Up until now, at least."
As the article mentions, 18 Wheeler wasn't that bad of a game in the arcade. It was more or less a novelty
"truck-driving simulator". Which I personally think it didn't do too bad at. The only real problem there was that it was ported to home consoles. I mean, I know Sega was desparate for Dreamcast games, but seriously! Novelty games don't translate. Period.
Even Hydro Thunder (which *wasn't* a novelty game) lost a LOT in its transition to the Dreamcast. The final game was very similar to the arcade, but felt lame without the engine rumble and bass feedback. All the rush of the arcade was lost through that, and Sega made very little attempt to find a replacement for that feedback.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I know it's the game that everyone loves to hate, but E.T. wasn't *that* bad. If it had had more playtesting (primarily to expose the issues with constantly falling in holes you didn't want to fall into), we wouldn't be having this conversation today. But in Atari's infinite wisdom, they only gave HSW five weeks of development time in order to meet the Christmas holiday.
What's even more amazing is that some exec in Atari changed the order size for the game to an incredible 4 million units! They were so sure that it was going to be an instant hit that they effectively bet the farm on a game done in only 5 weeks.
Brilliant, wasn't it?
The coup de grace came from Intellivision with these commercials starring Henry Thomas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsmIma0ZQtQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3xqu4VrwsU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mPERZhkboc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOOvMi7Wzqo
Of course, Intellivision didn't realize that assisting in Atari's demise was assisting in their own demise. Whoops.
"WE'RE CLOSED NOW!"
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I remember all the stupid hype about the game, and then the inevitable press and gamers turning on the game, and then the game becoming a legendary joke title.
I waited for about a year after people stopped talking about the game and had a system that could run the game very well. I was kind of excited to sit down to play it, after all it had to be pretty decent to have so much time and effort into its development. All the hate had to be due to the fact that it simply wasn't the the end all of pc games.
It sucked. Oh lordy did it suck ass.
I think you are referring to Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.
Zing!
That's just an urban legend. There were 4 million cartridges made (which was a LOT of cartridges) but only 1.5 million sold. The legend stems from the previous Pacman game which had 12 million cartridges made when there were only 10 million Atari 2600s on the market. Atari obviously expected that demand for Pacman would sell a great deal more 2600s.
Instead, Atari sold about 7 million Pacmans and wrote off the other 5 million as a loss. Kind of stupid when you consider that 7 million units made it one of the best-selling 2600 games of all time.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Seems alot of people here are missing the point of the article. It's not about bad games in general, it's about bad games made by some of the more well respected development teams out there.
.. made by companies I never thought could produce such crap.
I was surprised to see some games on the list