10. Kabuki Warriors
System: Microsoft Xbox
System: Microsoft Xbox
For every good turn there must be an evil opposite. And for every Halo there must be a Kabuki Warriors, an Xbox launch title that threatened to sink the ship before it had even left the dock. The graphics were poor even for a launch title, the animation jerky, and the character design blocky and embarrassing. A supposed beat-em-up, Kabuki Warriors is, in reality, an exercise in button mashing to the point where it is possible to complete the game blindfold literally hitting one button throughout.
9. Pit Fighter
System: Super Nintendo
System: Super Nintendo
Pit Fighter was a reasonable if unspectacular game in the arcades. Unfortunately, things fell to pieces when it was ported to the Super Nintendo by THQ, who were notorious at the time for the shocking quality of their games. The arcade version had large, colorful sprites that somehow got shrunk to half their original size on the SNES. The SNES port of the game has horrendous animation and laughable AI, to the point where an enemy character will frequently stand in one spot kicking randomly at thin air. The controls are non-responsive and bashing one button repeatedly gives you as good as chance of finishing the game as trying to employ any kind of strategy.
8. Captain Novolin
System: Super Nintendo
System: Super Nintendo
Novolin is a brand name for insulin. And Captain Novolin, a.k.a. "Jumping the Donut", is a brand name for crap. Masquerading as an educational game for children with diabetes, Captain Novolin must traverse various levels equipped with his only special power: the ability to jump. Unfortunately, this ability is haphazard at best, frequently taking multiple button mashes and resulting in a game that at times borders on uncontrollable. The main enemy is a giant floating donut that has a tendency to lurch in your direction, apparently at random. This behavior is made all the more frustrating because, when you try to jump over it (the only move your character has), the donut will sometimes veer erratically towards you even when you are mid-jump. There are various quizzes and mini-games of sorts between levels where the player has to select the amount of insulin they need. However, as many levels verge on the impossible because of the Captain's inability to do anything other than jump (and not always when you want him to), you probably won't even get there.
7. Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon
System: Philips CD-i
System: Philips CD-i
In a desperate attempt to revive the flagging fortunes of the CD-i, Philips signed a deal with Nintendo to license the Zelda franchise. Unfortunately, the three Zelda games that materialized were so shockingly bad that Nintendo doesn't even acknowledge their existence. Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon was one member of this Trinity of Turdness with poor animation and laughable voice acting. The "gameplay", for lack of a better word, consists of hitting a button to go from one cut scene to another. If you're thinking this sounds a bit like navigating a DVD menu, you would be correct.
6. Action 52
Systems: Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis
Systems: Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis
The idea behind Action 52 is a reasonable one: put a bunch of decent games (52, actually) together on one cartridge and sell it for an outrageous price. Unfortunately, although the cartridge did sell for the jaw dropping amount of $199, its collection of games could hardly be described as "decent." Almost every game has poor graphics and animation, with many being rushed and unfinished. Many games are virtually unplayable because they have bugs or, even worse, crash completely. The NES version even has music blatantly plagiarized from various Activision games. Unsurprisingly, Active Enterprises, who put together the NES debacle, never released another video game again.
5. Pac-Man
System: Atari 2600
System: Atari 2600
Released during the height of Pac-Man fever in early 1982, the Atari 2600 was one of the most eagerly anticipated console ports in history. What players got, however, was a game almost completely different to the original. Development was hindered by the 2600's hardware limitations but also by Atari giving programmer Tod Frye little time to finish work on the game. The layout of the maze differs significantly to the arcade original, the small white pellets have been replaced by turd brown pellets, and Pac-Man is the wrong shade of yellow and poorly animated. Due to the 2600's technical drawbacks, it wasn't possible to display all four ghosts on screen at the same time. Therefore, the game draws them every other frame, causing a horrendous flickering that left many players complaining of headaches and nausea.
Although Pac-Man did sell well for the Atari 2600 in terms of raw numbers, it severely eroded confidence in the video game industry. Anticipating that people would buy the console just to get their hands on Pac-Man, Atari made 12 million cartridges despite there only being 10 million consoles sold at the time. In droves, dissatisfied customers returned the game to stores and Atari only sold an estimated 7 million games, leaving a surplus of 5 million cartridges
The only redeeming part of this sordid tale is that Tod Frye "persuaded" (some would say extorted) Atari into giving him 10 cents for every cartridge that sold, otherwise he would quit and start working for rivals Activision instead. Frye pocketed an estimated $700,000 from the arrangement. Nice one, Tod.
Although Pac-Man did sell well for the Atari 2600 in terms of raw numbers, it severely eroded confidence in the video game industry. Anticipating that people would buy the console just to get their hands on Pac-Man, Atari made 12 million cartridges despite there only being 10 million consoles sold at the time. In droves, dissatisfied customers returned the game to stores and Atari only sold an estimated 7 million games, leaving a surplus of 5 million cartridges
The only redeeming part of this sordid tale is that Tod Frye "persuaded" (some would say extorted) Atari into giving him 10 cents for every cartridge that sold, otherwise he would quit and start working for rivals Activision instead. Frye pocketed an estimated $700,000 from the arrangement. Nice one, Tod.
4. Custer's Revenge
System: Atari 2600
System: Atari 2600
In the early era of pornographic games, it seemed that anything was fair game. Custer's Revenge had the player controlling a blocky, pixelated (and semi-naked) General Custer, complete with a Fedora hat and enlarged erection. The game is pretty shoddy anyway but achieved notoriety when, in an appalling lack of judgment, the designers found it reasonable to simulate the rape of a Native American woman tied to a post. Any doubts about whether this really is a rape scene are swiftly removed by a cursory check of the game's packaging, which reads: "She's not about to take it lying down, by George! Help is on the way. By God! He's coming."
3. Superman
System: Nintendo 64
System: Nintendo 64
A Superman game should have the player duking it out with bad guys, using his freeze breath, burning holes with his laser vision. A Superman game should be cool. Cue the arrival of Superman for the Nintendo 64, a cartridge better served as a door stop as the player is forced to run errands for Lex Luther, most of which involve flying through hoops. The graphics are laughable and the collision detection is more than suspect. The flight controls don't respond to button presses, to the point where it can take multiple button mashes before Superman finally does what you are telling him to. To top if all off, the game is shrouded in a green fog that the designers attempt pass off as a Kryptonite cloud but those in the know realize is there to cover up the game's poor engine and shocking draw distance.
2. Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing
System: PC
System: PC
Arguably the worst PC game ever made, Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing is a tour de force of just about everything that can possibly go wrong with a game. The graphics were sub par even for the time (2003) and the sound is virtually non-existent. There is, quite literally, no collision detection whatsoever, meaning you can drive through any solid object in the game, even driving up vertical walls. If you are thinking that means the game can't be much of a challenge you would be correct, particularly when your computer opponents never move from the start line. The crowning achievement of Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing is surely the game's now infamous "YOU'RE WINNER!" sign that displays after you "win" (but even this is hit or miss because the game frequently doesn't recognize when you cross the finish line). What's astonishing is that this total shambles of a game actually sold fairly well, being bought by an unsuspecting public or, more likely, by people who were just morbidly curious and couldn't believe a video game could be this bad.
System: Atari 2600
Not content with merely being one of most shoddy games ever created, E.T. also has the dubious distinction of being the game that nearly brought down the entire video game industry. The losses made by Atari, coupled with other high profile debacles like Pac-Man (see above), caused confidence and game sales to plummet in 1983-4, almost bringing the industry to its knees.
In 1982 Atari thought they had scored big time by licensing the rights to E.T., the biggest movie of the year. However, by the time everything had been signed on the dotted line programmer Howard Scott Warshaw was given just six weeks to code the entire game from scratch to have it ready for Christmas. The result was a fairly predictable mess of a game that was both boring and buggy. One of the most widely criticized aspects of the game was the propensity of E.T. to frequently fall into pits that were almost impossible to get out of.
Atari made a huge loss on E.T., with an estimated 60% of cartridges unsold. In one of the video game industry's most notorious incidents, Atari shipped the unsold cartridges out to a New Mexico landfill where they were buried and later encased in concrete.
In 1982 Atari thought they had scored big time by licensing the rights to E.T., the biggest movie of the year. However, by the time everything had been signed on the dotted line programmer Howard Scott Warshaw was given just six weeks to code the entire game from scratch to have it ready for Christmas. The result was a fairly predictable mess of a game that was both boring and buggy. One of the most widely criticized aspects of the game was the propensity of E.T. to frequently fall into pits that were almost impossible to get out of.
Atari made a huge loss on E.T., with an estimated 60% of cartridges unsold. In one of the video game industry's most notorious incidents, Atari shipped the unsold cartridges out to a New Mexico landfill where they were buried and later encased in concrete.
