What is the Worst Game you Ever Bought?

[Rex Dart]

I'm standing steadfastly by Floating Runner for PS1.

 

You may complain about tricky camera angles in 3D games, but if you can manage to see 10ft beyond your character, then you're leaps and bounds beyond Floating Runner.

The only qualifying difference between this game & Bubsy 3D is that I never bought Bubsy 3D.

[+madman]

The only qualifying difference between this game & Bubsy 3D is that I never bought Bubsy 3D.

I've never played Floating Runner, but your last sentence made me laugh. My only experience with Bubsy 3D is visiting a friend's house and her son was playing it. I was out of tune with games for a few years and instantly recognized it was a new Bubsy game. I never actually played it, but seeing her son's frustration with it brought me back to my days of being upset with bad NES games. Crappy games are a rite of passage.

[Metal Ghost]

Bionic Commando for Xbox 360 has got to be up there (the retail reboot of the franchise....not the XBLA game). What a horrible excuse for a game that was.

[SoulBlazer]

I'm not sure if this qualifies, since it wasn't a 'game' per say, but I rue the day that I plunked down $40 for a copy of Bleem! for my PC.

 

I bought it partly to support the company, as I didn't agree with what Sony was doing (even though I had and loved both my PS1 and PS2). I also bought it cause the idea of playing Playstation games on my PC (which was pretty high end at the time) with better graphics and faster gameplay was very attractive, even though I knew only a handful of games were supported. Everything I heard indicated those games that WERE supported would run very well on my system and the company was committed to regular updates to support and increase what Bleem could do.

 

All a bunch of lies and smoke and mirror. All of my Playstation games which were susposed to run well did not. Slow, sluggish, with bugs, and not nearly as good. And then the promised support and patches never happened. To be fair, most of that is cause Sony kept attacking them until they went bankrupt. But I was left with a pile of garbage I couldn't even use. I ended up giving it a friend for nothing.

 

I learned my lesson after that -- no emulation of disc based gaming systems. I still follow that rule today. Cart based ones only.

[+davidcalgary29]

Oh c'mon, people -- Jinks is godawful on any platform.

[+Gemintronic]

Athena for the NES. It's one thing to be "arcade hard" - this game is just broke. YOU CANNOT beat the game without doing a sequence of things never explained in the game itself. sigh.

[SoulBlazer]

Athena for the NES. It's one thing to be "arcade hard" - this game is just broke. YOU CANNOT beat the game without doing a sequence of things never explained in the game itself. sigh.

Never actually played this one....just never got around to it, been meaning to check it out in emulation. I saw reviews and walkthroughs of the game BITD (and still have one in a book) so I know people can beat it. What's so wrong with it?

[mbd30]

I'm not sure if this qualifies, since it wasn't a 'game' per say, but I rue the day that I plunked down $40 for a copy of Bleem! for my PC.

 

I bought it partly to support the company, as I didn't agree with what Sony was doing (even though I had and loved both my PS1 and PS2). I also bought it cause the idea of playing Playstation games on my PC (which was pretty high end at the time) with better graphics and faster gameplay was very attractive, even though I knew only a handful of games were supported. Everything I heard indicated those games that WERE supported would run very well on my system and the company was committed to regular updates to support and increase what Bleem could do.

 

All a bunch of lies and smoke and mirror. All of my Playstation games which were susposed to run well did not. Slow, sluggish, with bugs, and not nearly as good. And then the promised support and patches never happened. To be fair, most of that is cause Sony kept attacking them until they went bankrupt. But I was left with a pile of garbage I couldn't even use. I ended up giving it a friend for nothing.

 

I learned my lesson after that -- no emulation of disc based gaming systems. I still follow that rule today. Cart based ones only.

 

Playstation emulation has gotten much better. I played all the way through the first "Crash Bandicoot" without a hitch using epsxe. I also didn't have any issues with "Tomb Raider", "Spyro", "One" and "Klonoa". And epsxe isn't even one of the more accurate emulators out there right now.

 

Emulators for cart based systems used to be terrible as well. It would be like giving up SNES emulation after a bad experience with VSMC.

[+FujiSkunk]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Commodore 64): there's just nothing right about this game. Graphics are decent, I suppose. I didn't buy it because I thought it'd be great or anything (I just got it a couple of years ago for my collection), but I'd hoped it'd at least be playable. Noop.

 

Hmm. I guess I'd kind of blocked out all the Commodore 64 games I've bought. I didn't get a Commodore until my junior year of high school, 1990. New games were still coming out, but they were gradually getting pushed off store shelves. Even so, I bought a ton of games, eager to make up for lost time on this magical system I had always heard good things about but couldn't enjoy until I finally had one of my own.

 

And yeah, TMNT is bad. I think I found it on clearance, or at least reduced, so I paid maybe $10 for it. It perfectly represents the state of Commodore gaming in the late '80s. Despite its age, the system was still quite capable of playing the platformers and SHMUPs and other genres popular at the time, if you had programmers willing take the time to build and optimize those games properly for the Commodore. Unfortunately that seemed almost never to happen. The game would look great and maybe even sound great, but it would play terribly because either the programmers didn't "get" the intricacies of the Commodore hardware, or the publisher wasn't as interested in sparing the time and resources needed to make the game truly excellent, not when there was more money to be made catering to Nintendo fans. Sky Shark, Double Dragon, Marble Madness, Robocop and many others are all examples of games that should have been great on the Commodore, but instead are "fair" at best. Even some of the good efforts like Commando, Thunder Blade and OutRun probably could have been even better with a little more TLC. On the other hand, look at Road Runner, The Simpsons Arcade Game or Ghosts 'n' Goblins to see the magic the Commodore was still capable of even more than five years after its release. I even like C-64 Contra about as much as the NES gold standard, even if the Commodore version is a bit abbreviated and requires you to be enslaved to the space bar.

 

I think for us American Commodore gamers, the problem with not-quite-good games was exacerbated by most late '80s Commodore programming being done in Europe, that is, PAL land. Games would be designed for PAL hardware, then get imported to NTSC land with little or no modification, making them play too quickly and have odd timing quirks. I suspect TMNT is a victim of this. I've actually seen a couple of different versions of TMNT when browsing for Commodore compilation disk images on the Internet, suggesting there was a separate PAL release and maybe even more than one effort at bringing that version to NTSC systems. I haven't bothered to research all this yet, but it does make sense.

[SoulBlazer]

No other version of TMNT that I'm aware off. This video shows the ports of the game:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnjUn0E_k4k

[+FujiSkunk]

I should note I didn't see radically different versions. You could tell they all came from the same code base. But still there were subtle differences, small changes in graphics and sound that were actually quite common when Commodore games made the jump from PAL to NTSC, and sometimes from cassette to disk at the same time.

 

If I get a free moment (haha) I'll see about whipping up some screenshots for comparison. Unfortunately the cable on my SD card reader broke so I'll have to dig out the x1541 cable.

 

Oh, and also, this is about the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, not Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game. TMNT:TAG actually isn't half-bad on the Commodore, despite being one player only and losing a lot in the translation. Sadly it also has a bug that renders the penultimate boss battle with Krang useless.

[Atariboy]

A few of the selections in here just boggle the mind like Solar Fox for the 2600.

 

Lots of candidates for this but I suppose Mini Desktop Racing for the Wii would top the list. Was dirt cheap, the title brought to mind memories of many excellent top down racers, and I've never put much stock into the opinions of reviewers.

 

But they were right about this one.

[SoulBlazer]

I should note I didn't see radically different versions. You could tell they all came from the same code base. But still there were subtle differences, small changes in graphics and sound that were actually quite common when Commodore games made the jump from PAL to NTSC, and sometimes from cassette to disk at the same time.

 

If I get a free moment (haha) I'll see about whipping up some screenshots for comparison. Unfortunately the cable on my SD card reader broke so I'll have to dig out the x1541 cable.

 

Oh, and also, this is about the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, not Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game. TMNT:TAG actually isn't half-bad on the Commodore, despite being one player only and losing a lot in the translation. Sadly it also has a bug that renders the penultimate boss battle with Krang useless.

Ah, okay! My mistake. I thought you were talking about the arcade game. I didn't realize the NES game was ported to some computers.

[BassGuitari]

IIRC there actually are slightly different versions of Teenage Mutant Ninja/Hero Turtles on C64. The only real difference I notice is the way Donatello's attack works. In Ninja Turtles, he spears the bo outward like in the NES version. In Hero Turtles, his attack is like Leonardo's slashing-waggling thing. That and the different title logos are the only differences I notice, though.

Either way it's a pretty rough game.

Edited February 27, 2014 by BassGuitari

[+Gemintronic]

Never actually played this one....just never got around to it, been meaning to check it out in emulation. I saw reviews and walkthroughs of the game BITD (and still have one in a book) so I know people can beat it. What's so wrong with it?

 

The difficulty is arcade hard but the controls suck Dankey Kang. Plus, if you just straight play through the game the final boss is invincible. Literally.

[darthkur]

I'm usually very forgiving about games and their various quirks. I try to find something good about them. Crazy Golf for the Wii though has truly tested that tendency and even though I was able to make myself play it for a while it's nothing I'd advise anyone else getting. The worst thing is that there is absolutely no options for left handed players. There really is no excuse for such an oversight. What controls there are are horribly counter intuitive. At least it was a $5 Ebay purchase. I still feel ripped off though.

As far as games I paid full price for I'd have to say Slot Racers for the 2600. Not that it was horrible; it's the sad fact that I never had anyone else to play it with. Yes, I knew it was two player only when I got it.

[Tempest]

IIRC there actually are slightly different versions of Teenage Mutant Ninja/Hero Turtles on C64. The only real difference I notice is the way Donatello's attack works. In Ninja Turtles, he spears the bo outward like in the NES version. In Hero Turtles, his attack is like Leonardo's slashing-waggling thing. That and the different title logos are the only differences I notice, though.

 

Either way it's a pretty rough game.

So exactly what does Michelangelo do? I thought Nunchucks were banned in the UK?

[gorfcadet]

Ghostbusters for NES. I hated that game. I bought Urban Champion new and still enjoy it in small doses to this day, but Ghostbusters... nope.

[BassGuitari]

So exactly what does Michelangelo do? I thought Nunchucks were banned in the UK?

He sacrifices himself in the water level.

[Cobra Kai]

I straight up blind bought Double Dragon V for the Jaguar at an Electronics Boutique brand new. I had no idea it was going to be a 1v1 fighter, and then be a completely terrible 1v1 fighter on top of it all. I didn't even take time to read the back of the box enough to figure it out, I just remembered loving the Double Dragon series and ASSumed it was another beatemup.

[cimerians]

It's either Firefly on Atari 2600 or Rise of the Robots for PC.

 

Utter garbage.

[Jess Ragan]

Ghostbusters for NES. I hated that game. I bought Urban Champion new and still enjoy it in small doses to this day, but Ghostbusters... nope.

 

A terrible game. Terrible on EVERYTHING, really. I can't think of a single system that made this design tolerable to play. It's awkward and confusing and tedious and it just makes you hate life. I understand that the developer was trying to make the game true to the film, but it would have been a lot smarter to make it fun for the player. Now New Ghostbusters II by HAL Labs, that was a lot of fun; both entertaining and faithful to the series. Naturally, it never came to the United States... we got another Activision-designed disaster instead.

[+FujiSkunk]

I liked Ghostbusters, particularly on the Commodore. I even thought the NES version with its little additions turned out pretty well, at least until the inexplicable change for getting to the final showdown. Those stairs are murder!

[SoulBlazer]

I liked Ghostbusters, particularly on the Commodore. I even thought the NES version with its little additions turned out pretty well, at least until the inexplicable change for getting to the final showdown. Those stairs are murder!

Totally agree, I loved Ghostbusters on the C64. That was one of my 'go to' games as a kid. They totally destroyed the game with the NES port, though.

[BillyHW]

Drakkhen on SNES. It was one of the few releases available really early on. For some reason i felt like picking up an RPG. But I could never figure out what to do. I should have picked up F-Zero or something instead.