I remember a time when there were no bad games.

[NE146]

Oh.. is NES Karnov considered a turd? I remember having lots of fun with it in the early NES days.

 

Also Golgo 13.. I could finish that so easily because I played it a lot. I'm not sure if it's considered a crappy game today though.

[+thegoldenband]

I have a slightly different perspective. Yes, some games really ARE bad, those where something just doesn't work, or controls are imprecise or where collision detection is plain incorrect, for example. I usually think of these types of games as basically unfinished, untested, or programmed by someone incompetent (Data Age and Mythicon come to mind).

 

Some games are better than others, of course, and I enjoy some types more than others. But most games CAN be fun with the right mindset and conditions. Even Tic-tac-toe with paper and pencil can be fun with your 5 year old niece. I always like to put myself into the head of the developer and try to imagine what they were thinking when THEY played the game...what's really cool about this game, where is the challenge; how can I create a challenge for myself with score, or time or whatever.

 

This is pretty close to how I feel about it.

 

In many ways I've lost interest in whether games -- or any form of art -- are "good" or "bad", because I find that what many people mean by those terms is largely irrelevant to my experience of them. When people say something is "good", what they often mean is that it's some combination of "slick" and "socially acceptable to like", maybe with a dash of "conforms to my expectations"; when something is "bad", it's the opposite: not conventionally polished, not something they feel comfortable identifying with as a consumer, not something that offers a familiar and comfortable experience.

 

But truth be told, I've often gotten more enjoyment out of "bad" games than "good" ones, especially lately. For every acclaimed game I've loved, like Super Metroid or Robotron or Chrono Trigger, there are ten more that leave me completely unmoved, to the point that playing them feels like work. Or worse yet, they feel like I'm being flattered by some obsequious con man who wants something out of me -- in this case, my time -- in exchange for something that promises much satisfaction, but delivers none.

 

Meanwhile, that licensed shovelware PlayStation disc, this obscure and outdated Genesis sim, or that infamously terrible NES or VCS game gets me addicted enough to see it through. Maybe it's that the boring AAA games feel like they were designed by a well-funded committee, while I'd rather play something where I can see the seams and have fun tugging at them. Who knows.

 

So for me, as a player, there are just games (and genres) that do or don't interest me. Only occasionally do I feel the urge to really revile a game, typically because it's fraudulent in some way (Onslaught for Genesis is one example). When people start gleefully and hyperbolically trashing games, then unless they're really funny -- and very few are -- it often strikes me as a dominance display, like when dogs hump each other.

[+GoldLeader]

 

This is pretty close to how I feel about it.

 

In many ways I've lost interest in whether games -- or any form of art -- are "good" or "bad", because I find that what many people mean by those terms is largely irrelevant to my experience of them. When people say something is "good", what they often mean is that it's some combination of "slick" and "socially acceptable to like", maybe with a dash of "conforms to my expectations"; when something is "bad", it's the opposite: not conventionally polished, not something they feel comfortable identifying with as a consumer, not something that offers a familiar and comfortable experience.

 

But truth be told, I've often gotten more enjoyment out of "bad" games than "good" ones, especially lately. For every acclaimed game I've loved, like Super Metroid or Robotron or Chrono Trigger, there are ten more that leave me completely unmoved, to the point that playing them feels like work. Or worse yet, they feel like I'm being flattered by some obsequious con man who wants something out of me -- in this case, my time -- in exchange for something that promises much satisfaction, but delivers none.

 

Meanwhile, that licensed shovelware PlayStation disc, this obscure and outdated Genesis sim, or that infamously terrible NES or VCS game gets me addicted enough to see it through. Maybe it's that the boring AAA games feel like they were designed by a well-funded committee, while I'd rather play something where I can see the seams and have fun tugging at them. Who knows.

 

So for me, as a player, there are just games (and genres) that do or don't interest me. Only occasionally do I feel the urge to really revile a game, typically because it's fraudulent in some way (Onslaught for Genesis is one example). When people start gleefully and hyperbolically trashing games, then unless they're really funny -- and very few are -- it often strikes me as a dominance display, like when dogs hump each other.

 

 

You've got a pretty good point there! I'm reminded of the legions of people who say E.T. is not a bad game, and notice most people ripping on it have Never actually Played it or don't know how. Or perhaps saying it another way, they had fun with it back in the day, until the internet told them it was a bad game haha...I tend to think that there's certainly games that each of us enjoy even though they're universally hated. Or maybe I should say there's gotta be at least one game that everyone now claims is bad, that you liked back in the day...Or more than one.

 

I, for instance Love Deadly Towers on NES! Online and nowadays, people generally think of that as a bad game...And I notice people here saying Data Age games suck (and Maybe most of them do), But BITD I bought and still have Frankenstein's Monster and always thought of it as an Amazing game!

[TPA5]

Yeah, when I was a kid I never really made the distinction between "bad" or "good" games. To me it was all just games, and it came down to whether I liked them or not. Even if I didn't like it that much I still played it, because when I was a kid games were limited. It wasn't until I hit my teen years that I started to realize some games were different than others in terms of quality.

[Flojomojo]

Oh.. is NES Karnov considered a turd? I remember having lots of fun with it in the early NES days.

 

Also Golgo 13.. I could finish that so easily because I played it a lot. I'm not sure if it's considered a crappy game today though.

 

I liked the arcade version of Karnov, so it was a kick to play it at home.

 

Golgo 13 was GREAT, especially the music, and the variety of styles. It's ugly and has sloppy controls and collision detection by today's standards, but I still like it. Especially with a map for the maze sections. Did you like Mafat Conspiracy? That one didn't grab me as hard, even though it had driving sequences.

[Cynicaster]

 

 

In many ways I've lost interest in whether games -- or any form of art -- are "good" or "bad", because I find that what many people mean by those terms is largely irrelevant to my experience of them. When people say something is "good", what they often mean is that it's some combination of "slick" and "socially acceptable to like", maybe with a dash of "conforms to my expectations"; when something is "bad", it's the opposite: not conventionally polished, not something they feel comfortable identifying with as a consumer, not something that offers a familiar and comfortable experience.

 

Heh, well said. This exact same description can be applied to almost anything--music, clothes, food, beer, etc.

 

It's amazing how concerned some people get about whether or not the things they like will be "validated" by some other group of people.

[CatPix]

It's part of being socially accepted.

It's interestign to see that when you are around real amateurs of a thing, then social convention goes away for the benefits of people's preference and likeness.

 

Just yesterday, I visited a friend, and he showed e his retrogaming stuff.

He booted his Megadrive, with a Pocahontas game in it. Most people would just go "lol, Pocahontas, it's a kid game" but after watching about 30 seconds of gameplay... It's a very decent game, with good background graphics and excellent, cartoon like sprites, interesting game mechanics. Not a revolutionnary game, but certainly a game I'll try to buy if I see it.

I mean that I was neutral toward the game, and seeing it being played I found it to be good. Certainly many people will stop at the "it's a kid game" aspect but... I don't care.

[+thegoldenband]

You've got a pretty good point there! I'm reminded of the legions of people who say E.T. is not a bad game, and notice most people ripping on it have Never actually Played it or don't know how. Or perhaps saying it another way, they had fun with it back in the day, until the internet told them it was a bad game haha...I tend to think that there's certainly games that each of us enjoy even though they're universally hated. Or maybe I should say there's gotta be at least one game that everyone now claims is bad, that you liked back in the day...Or more than one.

 

I, for instance Love Deadly Towers on NES! Online and nowadays, people generally think of that as a bad game...And I notice people here saying Data Age games suck (and Maybe most of them do), But BITD I bought and still have Frankenstein's Monster and always thought of it as an Amazing game!

 

There are tons of games I've enjoyed that others say are the worst garbage ever made: Sword of Sodan, E.T., Dark Castle, Plumbers Don't Wear Ties, even some games in Action 52. Some of those are "objectively" bad games, some certainly aren't. In some cases I was cursing the game every step of the way, but mastering them gave me a kind of satisfaction I don't get from the curated, hand-holding experience many games offer.

 

Sometimes I like playing a game that doesn't want you to win, or that forces you to relearn how to play games in order to beat it. Sometimes I'm not looking for "fun" in the usual sense of the word, but more in the mountain-climbing sense. As long as there's actual gameplay and an opportunity to master it, there's hope.

 

(PDWT is different since you literally can't lose, and it's certainly a bad game in every meaningful sense of the word. As a ridiculous B-movie/graphic novel/interactive fiction hybrid, though, it's hilarious.)

 

I also think many people get really, really furious when confronted with a game that resists their usual habits and expectations -- often because it has a major learning curve, or because you have to read the manual to understand it. Without getting too psychoanalytical, I think many people feel frustrated and helpless in their daily lives, and when a game makes them feel that way, they lash out in rage. It feels like the game is trying to humiliate them, so they want to humiliate it instead, with hyperbole and invective.

 

So E.T. can't be a flawed but playable game that doesn't happen to be of interest to them; it has to be the worst thing ever, because everything that threatens their ego is the worst thing ever and has to be destroyed. I'm sure we've all known people like that!

 

(Huh, I never noticed that "humility" and "humiliate" share the same root -- makes sense. Too bad a lot of people see them as functionally equivalent. )

 

BTW I like Bugs a lot -- it's one of my favorite twitch games on the VCS -- and kind of like Airlock. OTOH I loathe Sssnake, so I don't give a free pass to all Data Age games by any means.

 

 

Heh, well said. This exact same description can be applied to almost anything--music, clothes, food, beer, etc.

 

It's amazing how concerned some people get about whether or not the things they like will be "validated" by some other group of people.

 

I think it's probably a hard-wired part of being human -- fear of being perceived as unfavorably different. That in turn could derive from important survival skills for early humans, e.g. ostracizing the sick and the untrustworthy.

 

I once read that researchers took a monkey, dyed him pink, and returned him to his group. He'd been accepted before, but upon his return he was immediately torn to pieces. That's always stuck with me (though apparently it may be apocryphal).

 

There's a quote by W. Somerset Maugham that's along somewhat similar lines. The drive to sublimate the self into a group identity is a powerful part of our makeup, and isn't easy to overcome -- or as Lisa Simpson once said, "I'm not popular enough to be different!"

[DesertJets]

There is one that stands out for me. Codename: ICEMAN from Sierra. I remember first playing this at my friend's house in the 6th grade and later getting a copy of it from him -- I think I gave him a copy of SimCity for it in exchange. I remember thinking this game was awesome and I didn't really have much experience with Sierra titles. I remember we had a copy of Leisure Suit Larry that I wasn't supposed to play but still did. Never did finish the game though. I got as far as the battle with the Russian destroyers and made it under the arctic ice cap but got stuck there. I think I didn't do something early on in the game that blocked progression, because I literally spent hours navigating that ice field.

 

What I remember all these years later is that there were a lot of little things you needed to do along to way to ensure progress in the game -- and not obvious things either -- or else you'd be simply unable to finish. There was an early sequence where you had to correctly perform CPR on a drowning victim that had to be followed from the manual (a classic form of copy protection), there was a dice game that had instructions in the manual in order to get a bottle of whiskey from an old sailor on board the sub, and you basically had to wander and explore the sub and press all the buttons. Because if you didn't you discovered that your torpedo loading system was broken and the Soviet destroyers would sink you. And if you forgot to check to make sure the guard at the Pentagon, all the way at the beginning of the game, gave you the correct ID back you couldn't finish the game.

 

It was technically a really cool game for its time but the gameplay and many of the details were just bad.

[BassGuitari]

 

BTW I like Bugs a lot -- it's one of my favorite twitch games on the VCS -- and kind of like Airlock. OTOH I loathe Sssnake, so I don't give a free pass to all Data Age games by any means.

(Can you keep a secret? I like Bugs, too. )

 

Warplock (Warr-Plock! ) is surprisingly fun as well. It's a shit game, to be sure, but somehow it's pretty fun in spite of itself.

[+GoldLeader]

 

There are tons of games I've enjoyed that others say are the worst garbage ever made: Sword of Sodan, E.T., Dark Castle, Plumbers Don't Wear Ties, even some games in Action 52. Some of those are "objectively" bad games, some certainly aren't. In some cases I was cursing the game every step of the way, but mastering them gave me a kind of satisfaction I don't get from the curated, hand-holding experience many games offer.

 

Sometimes I like playing a game that doesn't want you to win, or that forces you to relearn how to play games in order to beat it. Sometimes I'm not looking for "fun" in the usual sense of the word, but more in the mountain-climbing sense. As long as there's actual gameplay and an opportunity to master it, there's hope.

 

(PDWT is different since you literally can't lose, and it's certainly a bad game in every meaningful sense of the word. As a ridiculous B-movie/graphic novel/interactive fiction hybrid, though, it's hilarious.)

 

I also think many people get really, really furious when confronted with a game that resists their usual habits and expectations -- often because it has a major learning curve, or because you have to read the manual to understand it. Without getting too psychoanalytical, I think many people feel frustrated and helpless in their daily lives, and when a game makes them feel that way, they lash out in rage. It feels like the game is trying to humiliate them, so they want to humiliate it instead, with hyperbole and invective.

 

So E.T. can't be a flawed but playable game that doesn't happen to be of interest to them; it has to be the worst thing ever, because everything that threatens their ego is the worst thing ever and has to be destroyed. I'm sure we've all known people like that!

 

(Huh, I never noticed that "humility" and "humiliate" share the same root -- makes sense. Too bad a lot of people see them as functionally equivalent. )

 

BTW I like Bugs a lot -- it's one of my favorite twitch games on the VCS -- and kind of like Airlock. OTOH I loathe Sssnake, so I don't give a free pass to all Data Age games by any means.

 

 

I think it's probably a hard-wired part of being human -- fear of being perceived as unfavorably different. That in turn could derive from important survival skills for early humans, e.g. ostracizing the sick and the untrustworthy.

 

I once read that researchers took a monkey, dyed him pink, and returned him to his group. He'd been accepted before, but upon his return he was immediately torn to pieces. That's always stuck with me (though apparently it may be apocryphal).

 

There's a quote by W. Somerset Maugham that's along somewhat similar lines. The drive to sublimate the self into a group identity is a powerful part of our makeup, and isn't easy to overcome -- or as Lisa Simpson once said, "I'm not popular enough to be different!"

 

I remember the time I got dyed pink, Oh wait, that was a sunburn!

 

I think GoldenBand, that you among us may be smart enough to write a book on Groupthink, video games, and the condition of the human psyche...

 

I'd buy it!

[+LS650]

That's strange, because I've been playing videogames since about 1977 or so, yet I can definitely remember there always being some stinkers out there.

[fiddlepaddle]

 

I once read that researchers took a monkey, dyed him pink, and returned him to his group. He'd been accepted before, but upon his return he was immediately torn to pieces.

 

I'm sure that was a 'boy" monkey, and he should have been painted blue.

 

[high voltage]

Sword of Sodan is a great game on Amiga, played it for hours.

[phoenixdownita]

Sword of Sodan is a great game on Amiga, played it for hours.

I beg to disagree.

The gfx was impressive for the time with giant objects moving but the gameplay was utter crap poor at best (beware of pits ... did you just open a trapdoor under my feet, beware of spikes .... ouch I just got impaled)

And I played for hours too just to see how the gfx evolved in later stages, mounting the giant bird was awe inspiring, tip toeing when the water mounted was interesting but in general, take the gfx out and the game is really poor.

 

[+frankodragon]

When I seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit in NP magazine, I thought it was going to be a good game. I thought it was going to be another adventure game like a top-down Zelda. Only I wasn't too thrilled with all the cheap deaths and that horrible game over password screen. You had to write the long password down as quickly as possible before the timer expired. And of course, it's a game made by LJN. But whoever thought it would be a good idea to have a timed password screen?

 

[+GoldenWheels]

 

 

What I remember all these years later is that there were a lot of little things you needed to do along to way to ensure progress in the game -- and not obvious things either -- or else you'd be simply unable to finish. There was an early sequence where you had to correctly perform CPR on a drowning victim that had to be followed from the manual (a classic form of copy protection), there was a dice game that had instructions in the manual in order to get a bottle of whiskey from an old sailor on board the sub, and you basically had to wander and explore the sub and press all the buttons. Because if you didn't you discovered that your torpedo loading system was broken and the Soviet destroyers would sink you. And if you forgot to check to make sure the guard at the Pentagon, all the way at the beginning of the game, gave you the correct ID back you couldn't finish the game.

 

It was technically a really cool game for its time but the gameplay and many of the details were just bad.

 

I played a James Bond text adventure game when I was a kid (the Stealth Affair I think)....in maybe the second level you had to search undersea for a rubber band (!) that had not been mentioned or pointed too and was not obvious, at all.

 

You later needed said rubber band in the last scene to attach a bomb to a helicopter so the bomb goes down when the bad guys drop it...and pulls back up at the heli with the rubber band, Wile E. Coyote style. This took me a 900 hint line call to figure out, plus I then had to re-do the whole game to go back and get ONE DAMN item. I was not amused.

[CatPix]

Ah, cheap tricks in games. There is one like that in Alone in the Dark, another excellent game too (for BITD standards). I found the pirate saber. Try to use it on ennemies, it breaks. OK.

Until I found later the pirate ghost. And there, is when I needed to use the pirate saber to fight him. But as mine was broken, I was stuck.

Since then on PC adventure games I took the habit of making several saves, even if that sort of BS is mostly gone or reversible today, or changed (forgot to find the rubber band? Now in modern games you'd likely get an option for kicking the bomb away before it goes off, but get a bad ending for it.)

Edited August 4, 2016 by CatPix

[Gentlegamer]

You could definitely break old King's Quest games and have to start over if you weren't keeping multiple saves to restore to.

[high voltage]

I beg to disagree.

The gfx was impressive for the time with giant objects moving but the gameplay was utter crap poor at best (beware of pits ... did you just open a trapdoor under my feet, beware of spikes .... ouch I just got impaled)

And I played for hours too just to see how the gfx evolved in later stages, mounting the giant bird was awe inspiring, tip toeing when the water mounted was interesting but in general, take the gfx out and the game is really poor.

 

Yeah sounds like that nowadays. Don't think I could play it again.

[+thegoldenband]

I don't know about the Amiga version, but in the Genesis version of Sword of Sodan you can absolutely see where the pits are -- there's a distinctive tile that shows up and serves as a trigger point. You can see it just left of the player's feet here:



That's one of the complaints that always irritated me -- if it were a popular game, like something in the Zelda series, no one would bat an eye at using a slight tile variation to mark a trap. There are tons of NES/Famicom games that do it.

[+frankodragon]

When I used to play Championship Bowling for NES, I thought how unfair it was trying to get a perfect game using another character than the left handed bowler. I would have about three, four, maybe five strikes, all aimed for the pocket. Then the game would "cheat" by steering the ball (and you could almost see it doing this) so you wouldn't get a strike.

[GameGirl420]

First crappy game I ever played was Spy Hunter on the NES I think. Oh gawd that one made me mad actually lol. Before playing it I really assumed it was going to be just like the arcade,but instead it was really lame and a big disappointment. There are alot of crappy games for the NES but hardly for the 5200 imo. The NES has so many inaccurate arcade ports it's not even funny. NES games were very expensive back then too. I love the NES but gotta admit it probably has got the most lackluster games in it's library compared to other systems.

[Gabriel]

Oh.. is NES Karnov considered a turd? I remember having lots of fun with it in the early NES days.

 

 

Years ago some gaming personality on YouTube or something decided Karnov was universally reviled and fandom went along with it.

 

Like you, I remember it being moderately popular back in the day.

[GameGirl420]

 

Well, the car moves too damn fast for me. You did shift out of first gear, right? Any time I got into third, death was imminent.

 

Huh? You can shift gears in that game?? I tried the game again recently and couldn't find anything to make it go faster. Super Bug was still a very sad experience the second time around. Then again back in the 70's people were high on drugs,and the ability to move something on a TV screen must have been mindblowing.

 

 

I also find it hilarious that many people thought the 2600 version of Pac-Man sucked. I mean what did they expect??? They thought the Atari 2600 was capable of reproducing the arcade graphics identically??? Home computers and consoles were obviously still very new in the public's mind then,but it's funny how people weren't aware of the many limitations of the hardware. Same thing seemed to happen even worse with the NES. People were disappointed left and right thinking that brand new game they were taking home was gonna be just like the arcade but turned outmost of the arcade ports on the NES sucked. I loved the 2600 version of Pac-Man though when I was little though. Maybe because I played it before I tried the actual arcade game so I didn't expect too much.