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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
No Daikatana?
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No mention of Atari's ET?
4 of these games are nothing to be ashamed of. Ninety-Nine Nights and Stretch Panic were pretty good games, granted they both had a few play control issues but no show stoppers. 18 Wheeler did very good in the arcade, so no shame there, it just never translated to the home market. The inclusion of Stunt Race FX really blows me away. This game sold very well, and was a damn good game, it had a great sense of speed. Great play control. A really well done game. If there was one thing I would say bad about it, is the graphics have not held up with age and now it's a very difficult game to try and watch. If I was trying to play it now on the Wii for the first time, I might slam it. But having played it when it was released originally on the SNES, that game was hot shit at the time, and put to shame Virtual Racing on the Genesis (it's competition at the time).
That was a fun game. A little bit awkward to play, but the bouncy mechanics made it a lot of fun. If you compare it racing games of today, Burnout and so on, Stunt Race fx comes off feeling really slow. If you compare it to the racing games of the mid 90s when it came out, 4d Stunts, Mario Kart, maybe not f-zero, it was pretty normal. The motorcycle was pretty fast too. :)
I think you are referring to Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.
Zing!
Excuses, excuses. It wasn't THAT bad? Bad is bad. E.T. was crap. Compare it to other games of its day. I feel game reviews are usually shit but this thing would get maybe 2 stars, 30-40%... unless it's IGN, they who perpetuate sympathy points.
You can say "If they'd just done..." till you're blue in the face for all I care. All that jabbering and the game is still shit.
If I'm a little ranty, sorry, but I get tired of sympathy votes.
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Presumably, Gabe picked up the Dreamcast version: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/05/25
In 3010, the potatoes triumphed
no custer's revenge?
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Ah, don't take it too seriously. These days everyone has to throw together some smack talking "top X worst Y", just to show that they're hip and irreverent like that, and you better believe them that when, by contrast, they give 95% to EA's latest game they really mean it.
There are a ton of games who were worse, or did worse for other reasons. Daikatana, ET, etc.
The reasoning starts to get dubious right on the first page linked from the summary. So a console fighting game is bad because by the 90's everyone was sick and tired of fighting game clones? Well, gee, I guess they never heard that fighting games _still_ sell on consoles, a decade later.
Second page... from what I understand, so that game was bad because it was a button-mashing Diablo clone. Well, gee, someone tell that to the people _still_ selling button-mashing Diablo clones.
Etc.
As I was saying, just another "top X worst Y", and not even well thought out at that.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I'm sure they'd like us to forget they once promised us this title.
Stunt Race FX was a great game. It does not belong anywhere near the garbage on that list.
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degrading women?
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