So Bad It's Horrible/Video Games: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{Darth Wiki}}▼
{{quote|''"When I did a [http://www.gametrailers.com/player/16971.html Video Game Vault] on this game, I mentioned it made little kids cry. Upon further review, I was wrong: [[No Except Yes|it makes grown men weep like babies]]."''|'''[[Screw Attack|Stuttering Craig]]''' on ''3D Ballz'', "[http://www.gametrailers.com/player/20506.html Top Ten Worst] [[Fighting Game]]s".}}▼
{{Video Game Examples Need Sorting}}
▲{{quote|''"When I did a [http://www.gametrailers.com/player/16971.html Video Game Vault] on this game, I mentioned it made little kids cry. Upon further review, I was wrong: [[No Except Yes|it makes grown men weep like babies]]."''
|'''[[ScrewAttack|Stuttering Craig]]''' on ''3D Ballz''|"[http://www.gametrailers.com/player/20506.html Top Ten Worst] [[Fighting Game]]s".}}
Hopefully, someone in the quality-assurance divisions of several game companies got fired over letting [[So Bad It's Horrible (Darth Wiki)|these titles]] slip through the cracks. These probably wouldn't pass muster as coasters or clay pigeons.
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'''''Second Important Note:''''' A game isn't horrible just because [[The Angry Video Game Nerd]], [[The Spoony Experiment|Spoony]], [[Zero Punctuation|Yahtzee]], or any other [[Caustic Critic]] [[Reviews Are the Gospel|reviewed it]]. There needs to be independent evidence, such as actual, professional reviews, to list it. (Though once it is listed, they can provide the detailed review(s).)
{{examples|Examples (more-or-less in order by generation, then name):}}
== Second Generation (1977-84) ==
* ''Karate'' for the [[Atari 2600]] was a near-unplayable [[Fighting Game]] with extremely unresponsive controls and with almost no chance to win. There's only so much you can do with a digital joystick and one button. (Let us note that Atari's first-party joysticks were fragile, so unresponsive controls will lead to shredded controllers.) Some even consider ''it'' the worst Atari 2600 game.
* ''[[Voyage Into The Unknown]]'' on the [[ZX Spectrum]]. In the same year (1984) that Mike Singleton released the seminal ''[[The Lords Of Midnight]]'', [[Rare|Ultimate Play the Game]] put out three classic arcade adventures (''[[Saber Wulf]]'', ''[[Knight Lore]]'' and ''[[Underwurlde]]'') and Matthew Smith unleashed the epic ''[[Jet Set Willy]]'' showcasing just what the Spectrum was capable of, budget label [[Mastertronic]] crapped out
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* ''Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'' for the NES has slow, plodding gameplay and controls; [[Everything Trying to Kill You]] to a ludicrous extent; a completely ineffective weapon as Jekyll and useful-if-you-could-hit-anything weapons as Hyde; and a gimmick whereby you can lose within seconds of turning into Hyde without a chance to save yourself<ref>Hyde only gets overkilled instantly if he appears in the same tile/area/spot that Jekyll appears in prior to becoming Hyde ([[Never the Selves Shall Meet]]). More or less, Hyde gets killed by a [[Temporal Paradox]]... ''Good luck finding anyone who knows that kind of detail to warn you, [[Guide Dang It]]!''</ref> — these all make for a game that no person can play without feeling like less of a person thereafter. [[The Angry Video Game Nerd]] considers it probably the worst game he's ever played, and the seriousness of his videos on the matter confirms it.
* The only thing good about the NES version (not so much a port as [[Reformulated Game|a completely different game]]) of the Laserdisc classic ''[[Dragon's Lair]]'' is the impressive fluidity of the graphics. The play control is unresponsive — there's a delay between the button press and Dirk's action ([[Damn You, Muscle Memory!|B jumps in this game]]). Dirk is rather large, which makes simple jumps difficult. There's also an elevator shaft that's intended to make winding through the castle seem like one, but it merely makes the game even harder than it needs to be. Adding to the [[Fake Difficulty|already insane artificial difficulty]] are [[Death Trap]]s everywhere, so extra precautions are necessary for basically the whole game. Add to that an insane final boss fight and [[A Winner Is You|a meager "Congratulations" ending]], and you have the NES equivalent of a [[Rage Quit|game rage-fueled nightmare]]. It was also reviewed by the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00xIvTOLrYA AVGN].
* One of the worst video game [[RPG]]s made, according to Japanese fans, is ''[[Hoshi wo Miru Hito]]'', which can be translated as ''[http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/
** [http://www5b.biglobe.ne.jp/~kiss-me/aji/star/index.html One group of people remade the game to make it competent and playable], though you need to know Japanese to play. There's also a fansite of the original game with loads of info if you're [[Bile Fascination|masochistic enough to play]] and can read Japanese [https://web.archive.org/web/20160804061112/http://www.geocities.co.jp/Playtown/2719/star/index.html here.]
* ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zUkK14bHDk Human Killing Machine]'' for the [[Atari ST]] was a rip-off of the first ''[[Street Fighter (video game)|Street Fighter]]'' game made by Tiertex, the same company who did the Atari ST version of the original ''Street Fighter'' (itself a [[Porting Disaster]]), and the 8-bit [[Porting Disaster|porting disasters]] of ''[[Strider]]''. The game lacks special moves, two-player mode (bad in a [[Fighting Game]], a genre that thrives on one-on-one competition), and scrolling. There are miscellaneous god-awful ethnic stereotypes all around and occasional cruelty to animals. Also, if you start off badly, the game makes it '''harder''' for you to win the next fight. Furthermore, the developers made it so all of a given character's frames of animation could be shoehorned into a single screen's worth of space, which has the unfortunate consequence of the [[Final Boss]] having only ''six'' frames of animation (two walking, two falling, one punching, one kicking).
* The adventure game ''[[Hydlide]]'' was a huge hit in Japan. It debuted on a microcomputer in 1984, was released on multiple systems there, and eventually landed on the Famicom/NES in 1989. Unfortunately, regardless of whether the game was any good on the earlier systems, it was borderline unplayable on the NES, complete with hints of [[Porting Disaster]]. The graphics were bland, and the music was an annoying loop that [[Suspiciously Similar Song|sounded like]] a dumbed-down ''[[Indiana Jones]]'' theme. The battle mechanics were practically non-existent—they amounted to just running into monsters while holding the "Attack" button. There were no clues anywhere of what to do or where to go, and the in-game save feature was useless because the cartridge didn't have a battery.<ref>Choosing the Save option only saves the player's most recent password, which is wiped from the cartridge's memory once the game is turned off</ref> [[The Angry Video Game Nerd]] ripped apart ''Hydlide'' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFOf70RyERU here].
* ''[[Ikari Warriors|Ikari III: The Rescue]]'' was a nigh-unplayable mess in its original arcade form, as SNK de-emphasized the run-and-gun nature of the first two ''[[Ikari Warriors]]'' games (essentially turning the third game into a beat-em-up) but kept the rotary controls, making it extremely hard for attacks to connect. Oddly enough, the NES version of ''Ikari III'' was better than the NES [[Porting Disaster]]s of the first two games, as it was a somewhat-decent game on its own. It helps that the NES port didn't bother to simulate the arcade games' rotary controls.
* ''Scramble Eggs'' for the [[MSX]] is a cheap knockoff of ''[[Scramble]]'' where you can't move horizontally or drop bombs and the enemies and terrain are boringly designed. The graphics look primitive, but the sound and music are worse.
* After ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' proved to be a big hit, some hacker tried [https://web.archive.org/web/20130716145432/http://nintendo8.com/game/84/sonic_the_hedgehog_blast_5/ porting it to the NES] as ''[[Word Salad Title|Sonic 3D Blast 5]]''. It was a broken and nearly unplayable port, and possibly the worst case of unbuilding a game ever. It doesn't help that the game is actually a hack of Hummer Team's bootleg crossover ''Somari''.
* ''Super Monkey Daibouken'' is an [[RPG]] based on ''[[Journey to the West]]'' in which Son Goku and his party make an agonizingly slow journey from China to India through a confusingly designed overworld with blotchy graphics and invisible exits. It has side-scrolling combat sequences like ''[[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link]]'', but worse in practically every way.
* ''Super Pitfall'' was an attempt to update [[Activision]]'s classic hit ''[[Pitfall]]'' for the NES... but they didn't update the right things. The gameplay was sluggish and unenjoyable because of unforgiving amounts of [[Fake Difficulty]] stemming from terrible stage design, [[Trial and Error Gameplay]] that gives [[Guide Dang It|zero clue]] as to what to do, and [[Moon Logic Puzzle|logic-defying]] ways of getting to a different place (for example, at one point you must jump into a bird enemy that looks no different than any other bird mook in the game). Your character (who looks a bit too much like Mario) remains a [[One-Hit-Point Wonder]] and, while he does have a gun, it's near useless until the final level because most of the enemies are waist-high in height and you can't shoot while you duck! The graphics were awful, full of sickening strobing, slowdown, flickering, and bland sprites (waterfalls look like avalanches of blue garbage). The music is the same annoying loop played over and over again until the final level. The company that anonymously developed the game, Micronics, was also responsible for the NES [[Porting Disaster]]s of ''Athena'' and ''[[Ikari Warriors]]''. The game was a failure when it was released and is considered among the worst games available for the NES. (The obscure [[PC
* ''[[Transformers]]: Convoy no Nazo'' ("Mystery of Optimus Prime," or, as the label calls him, "[[Rouge Angles of Satin|Comvoy]]") for the Famicom has Ultra Magnus as a [[One-Hit-Point Wonder]], palette-swapped bosses (including three instances of the Decepticon logo), Trypticon as a [[Giant Space Flea From Nowhere]], and an ending that is [[A Winner Is You|nothing but text]]. You had to collect letters that spelled out Rodimus and then beat the game to play as Rodimus Prime (also a OHPW); if you beat the game with him, then you got [[A Winner Is You|"Congratulation!"]] and your high score. [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|On top of that, the logo of the company who made the game has some guy in blackface.]]<ref>This was Takara's, presently TakaraTomy, who distributed the toyline and its predecessors ''Diaclone'' and ''Microman'' in Japan.</ref> It is yet another horrible video game that [[The Angry Video Game Nerd]] reviewed on his show.
* ''[[Where's Waldo?]]'' for the NES. The appalling graphics are inexcusable because ''the point of the game is to see where Waldo is''. To add insult to injury, the real Waldo is sometimes wearing ''different colors''. The levels that don't consist of finding Waldo are just as terrible, especially the subway level. In it, you had to reach Waldo by entering through tunnels. The board is randomly generated, meaning that sometimes, the whole level becomes [[Unwinnable By Mistake]].
== Fourth Generation (1990-94) ==
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* ''Isle of the Dead'' is a strong contender for the worst FPS of all time. Coming out the same year as ''[[Doom (series)|Doom]]'', its engine is more on the level of ''[[Wolfenstein 3D]]''. Right from the start, the game offers enemies which can tear you to pieces in seconds and respawn right after you leave the room. The graphics and sound are horrible—with nothing to tell parts of the map apart, navigation becomes far too difficult. There are some static screens where you interact (similar to adventure games), but in these you are often clueless about what you are supposed to do, and can easily miss crucial items. To top it all off, quitting the game is referred to as "the coward's way out," and is greeted with a [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3nh27bRXYQ#t=6m41s graphic depiction] of a [[Ate His Gun|shotgun suicide]].
* ''[[Legend of Success Joe]]'', a horrible excuse of a boxing game [[The Problem with Licensed Games|based on]] the manga/anime ''[[Ashita no Joe]]''. The gameplay alternates between ''very'' primitive [[Beat'Em Up]] segments in which Joe fights a few [[Mooks|wimpy enemies that die in one punch]] before fighting a very long boss, and boxing matches based on famous battles of the series. The controls are clunky and unresponsive, and the music sounds like something out of an early NES game even though this game was produced for one of the most powerful systems of the early 1990s. The graphics are not much better — an ugly, overly-bright color palette, non-existent animation, and hunchbacked character sprites. It was one of the few early [[Neo Geo]] titles that [[No Export for You|stayed in Japan]], for good reason.
* ''Lord of the Rings: Book 1,'' Interplay's attempt at ''[[The Lord of the Rings|Fellowship of the Ring]]'' on the SNES, quickly and flagrantly broke all [[Universe Bible|the rules established in the books]]. [[You Shall Not Pass]]? Well, not if the player decides to beat the [[Big Bad]] [[Sequence Breaking|elsewhere first]]...if the player managed to make it that far, since [[Game Breaking Bug|glitches]] would often cause the mere act of walking to the next area to be fatal. You could finish the game as two unnamed Hobbit children and Bill the pony. Before the advent of [[GameFAQs]], if you lost [[Guide Dang It|the manual]], then you were boned - it had all the layouts of the dungeons (which were [[Marathon Level|at least fifty screens long]]) printed within.
** It doesn't end there. Cutscenes, even ones that are supposed to take place in castles, are composed of [[Walls of Text]] between people standing in some field. Sprites are poorly made — only cloak color differentiates the hobbits from each other, and no one but Gimli and Gandalf looks any different from the generic NPCs. The cities look like any other part of the world, except they have lazily-designed houses in them. And at the end? You fight the Balrog, using the horrendous control scheme which causes you to either control every member of your party at once or let them wander around and die — not that it matters, as the fight is more or less [[Unwinnable]] anyway. There are noticeable loading times between areas despite this game being on the SNES. The game's sole redeeming point is its beautiful music...but it only has three tracks, and one of them is reserved for the title screen.
* The ''[[wikipedia:Make My Video (series)|Make My Video]]'' series on the [[Sega CD]]. All four games involved "editing" three videos with filters and silly stock clips. That's the entire game. Even for the time, it was ridiculously limited. Since the Sega CD had limited video capabilities, the resulting videos were grainy, had a limited color palette, and were displayed on a very small portion of the screen (especially bad since all three videos are played at the same time). The "Kris Kross" release is often cited as the single worst Sega CD game which, considering the amount of crap in the U.S. library for the Sega CD, is saying something.
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* The SNES [[Reformulated Game|version]] of ''[[Space Ace]]'' meant to translate every single level from the Laserdisc original into a platformer, and [[Gone Horribly Right|succeeded]]...somewhat. The controls are sluggish and unresponsive; combined with poorly-placed hit boxes and fast-scrolling screens, that makes for a frustrating time. It is almost impossible to land your jumps, and missing jumps kills you in most levels. If you want to shoot someone, good luck — there are ''two'' buttons to draw your gun, one for each direction. Then there's the Space Maze, painful [[Padding]] sandwiched between every level; in these sections, you have to steer your impossibly-fast ship through a bunch of narrow alleys while shooting obstacles. The graphics are ugly at times - the developers did include a few of the [[Full Motion Video|FMVs]], but they're so grainy and disjointed that you have to wonder why they bothered. The result is a long, frustrating, poorly-designed game.
* The [[Sega Genesis]] [[Reformulated Game|version]] of ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tournament Fighters]]''. The SNES version was a great game, but its Genesis counterpart had glaringly inferior graphics and half as many playable characters; the ones they did have include Sisyphus, a weird mutant cicada who [[Original Generation|never appeared anywhere else in the franchise]], and an [[In Name Only]] version of April O'Neil that looked like some random fighting game chick (she wore a headband, sports bra, and miniskirt). It was not very playable: the damage of various moves was severely unbalanced, and the AI was too good even on easy difficulty unless you were playing as Ray Fillet and [[AI Breaker|did his strong ducking kick over and over again]]. If you did that, then the AI would walk into you and die (even boss characters Triceraton, Krang, and Karai would fall for this trick repeatedly).
* ''[[Captain Novolin]]''. At first glance, this is an [[Edutainment Game]] for the [[SNES]] with the goal of teaching children with type 1 diabetes how to eat healthy, considering their condition. Unfortunately, it is also a rather shameless case of [[Product Placement]] by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novo_Nordisk Novo Nordisk], who markets a brand of insulin and funded the game's development. The game itself is a 2D side scroller where the player controls the eponymous superhero (the typical muscular, square-jawed do-gooder, except he’s also a type-1 diabetic) who must avoid enemies (junk food that has been turned into monsters by a super-villain named Blubberman) while grabbing healthy foods to keep his glucose level in the safe zone, while occasionally scoring extra points via questionnaire mini-games. The player can indeed learn a great deal about diabetes, assuming they aren’t laughing too much at the absurdity of the premise. Possibly the worst part of this game is that Novo Nordisk tried to promote it by offering free copies to hospitals for use by sick kids - assuming that such kids would enjoy a badly-made video game that reminded them of why they were there in the first place.
== Fifth Generation (1995-2000) ==
* ''Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge''. The music is monotonous, and the graphics are heavily pixellated despite being [[Full Motion Video]]. The steps to move forward in the game seem completely random, and the game doesn't give you any clues on how to progress. Even the directions do no more than explain a few basics. Then there's the ending — some outtakes from filming the monster Pumpkinhead and footage of the guy in the suit dancing around with asinine doo-wop playing over it. The game was never meant to be "won"; if it ''is'' won, then it thumbs its nose at you. If you get the ''good'' ending, that is; if you don't beat the game the way you're "supposed" to, the ending video is Pumpkinhead ''literally'' [[Flipping the Bird|giving you the finger]].
** The game is so bad that Spoony had to do '''two''' reviews — [https://web.archive.org/web/20100420013004/http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/bt/spoonyone/reviews/13100-holl01 One explaining how he couldn't figure out how to play it], and [https://web.archive.org/web/20100617212145/http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/bt/spoonyone/reviews/22072-spoony-lordkat-pumpkinheads-revenge one after LordKat finally showed him how.] And LordKat himself couldn't figure out the puzzles either; he ''went into the game with a HEX editor to figure it out.'' The guys ended up just borrowing from a Let's Play [http://www.youtube.com/user/mmntw26#p/c/A94BA51581E1C4CC created by a fan] who somehow beat the whole thing, with him giving the okay because it would be the same whether or not they actually beat it themselves.
* An attempt at reinvigorating the ill-fated ''[[Bubsy the Bobcat]]'' franchise, ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20101008183748/http://www.seanbaby.com/nes/egm17.htm Bubsy 3D]'' for the Sony [[PlayStation]] is considered one of the worst games ever made. The primitive graphics, ranging from jittery models to patchwork surroundings (most of which were made of flat polygonal surfaces with a single shade), were pathetic even by the standards of the day. The gameplay was abominable: it was difficult to move Bubsy in any direction other than straight forward, and jumping on platforms was a chore because of the bad camera angles. To add insult to injury, Bubsy was given one of the most grating voices known to man and shrieked dialogue every five seconds to [[Stop Helping Me!|explain every nook and cranny of the game]]. ''[[Bubsy]]'''s 2D games are often considered a [[Love It or Hate It]] affair and have their fans, but ''Bubsy 3D'' effectively [[Franchise Killer|put the bobcat out of his misery]]. Its failure was compounded by the release of ''[[Super Mario 64]]'' mere months before.
* ''[[Carmageddon]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y4wlk1HR4w 64]'' by [[Titus Software]] had horrible graphics and was unfairly [[Nintendo Hard]].
* ''[[Video Game/Catfight|Catfight]]'''s sole redeeming quality was featuring an all-female cast in a [[Fighting Game]], actually the first of its kind. Never mind that the controls didn't work, the game (for the PC only) ran at a framerate measurable in the single digits, and [[Artificial Stupidity|the AI didn't know how to do anything but block]].
* ''[[Chronicles Of The Sword]]'' was a two-disc [[PlayStation]] game that wasn't worth the $5 you probably paid for it. It had a horrible to [[Excuse Plot|non-existent plot]] about a nameless [[King Arthur|Arthurian]] knight who's trying to earn his armor (or something like that). It's a standard [[Pixel Hunt]]ing [[Adventure Game]] that was mostly "[[Hidden Object Game|find a large number of useless items]] and [[Fetch Quest|trade them]] [[Chain of Deals|repeatedly]]", but it was impossible to know their purpose, as your inventory only showed a large 3D-rendered video of the object with no description. (A particularly bad example: the character at one point obtains a broken clay pot which has to be given to a perfume-making monk. Why? Because the pot has ambergris in it. But there's [[Guide Dang It|no way to know that]] without randomly attempting to give the thing to the monk.) Then there was the battle system, which consisted of ''[[Full Motion Video]] battles.'' Unfortunately, whoever programmed it made the timing of the battle independent of the load time on the disc. By the time you could tell you were being attacked, you were dead. (Thankfully, there was an "Easy" option which turned the videos into cutscenes, making it the game's single redeeming feature.) Oh, and inspecting certain items in your inventory would ''[[Game Breaking Bug|crash the Playstation]]''.
** Not to be confused with the ''[[Soul Series|Soul Calibur III]]'' mode "Chronicles of the Sword"; neat idea, but plagued by [[Loads and Loads of Loading]], [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|cheating computers]], and a [[Game Breaking Bug]] that sometimes corrupts memory cards so much that they don't work ''even if you reformat them''.
* ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20101108082704/http://www.seanbaby.com/nes/egm02.htm Club Drive]'' for the [[Atari Jaguar]]. For most of your missions in this game, you have to go in an RC car and pick up glowing balls of string, which is something that is [[Sarcasm Mode|truly spectacular]]. The graphics are shoddy and the physics are so eccentric to the point where it borders on [[Artificial Stupidity]]. In some instances, your car can levitate into the air and fly briefly. There's even an instance of [[Fake Difficulty]] to be found. In his review, where he names it the second worst game of all time (behind only the ''E.T.'' game), [[Seanbaby]] speculates that the programmers of ''Club Drive'' "might have stole their programming code from ''Dolphin Adventures in Tuna Nets''".
* ''[[Cosmic Race]]'' for the [[PlayStation]] is an awful "racing" "[[Obvious Beta|game]]" with ugly graphics (some were ripped straight from ''devkits''), stupid characters (a caveman who pilots a flying bus/pineapple hybrid?!), forgettable music, random collision detection, an unnecessarily-convoluted control scheme (R1 is to accelerate, and you need to push the D-Pad and the corresponding face button just to turn), and long, boring levels. It's no wonder ''[[Game Players Magazine]]'' gave it a 0% and named that rating after this game; to put this into perspective, 1-9% is known as "Shoot Me".
* ''[[Daikatana]]'' is known in Spanish as "Daikagadatana" ("Daicraptana"), and for good reason. Your sidekicks are [[Artificial Stupidity|so stupid]] they not only can't find their way through an open door but also often got ''killed'' by collision damage on the sides of doors. And [[We Cannot Go on Without You|when they died, you died]]. The titular sword filled a diagonal third of the screen and, when you killed things with it, "[[Evolving Weapon|leveled up]]" and gained [[Power Glows|sparkling and lightning effects]] that filled even '''more''' of the screen. Since the game is an [[FPS]], this is a bad thing... the Daikatana swung wildly, missing whatever you were swinging at (which included ''walls'') as often as hitting; and it would always [[Selectively-Lethal Weapon|stop when the beastie had one hit's worth of life left to allow it to hit you one more time]]. When you acquire the sword, you are "treated" to a view of the [[Big Bad]] in horribly-rendered mustard yellow and ketchup red "Samurai" armor and told that you can't attack him because the sword he has is the same one from a different time, and so it would [[Divide by Zero|destroy the universe]]... even though you're carrying around tons of other weapons and have two similarly-armed (if woefully-inaccurate) sidekicks who are likely to kill you and themselves more than anything else.
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** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoUfRRrwPyA This was the actual US commercial for the game.] A rather fitting analogy, indeed.
** It must be said that despite the fact that ''Ultimate Battle 22'' was simply a bad game and shamefully resurrected to maintain Western interest in the franchise with minimal effort, it ''did'' have a great (if somewhat repetitive) soundtrack. The music heard in the above-mentioned ad is the [[Ear Worm]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOrjMhVLouQ character select screen music].
* ''Dual Heroes'' was a terrible [[Fighting Game]] for the [[Nintendo 64]] which featured characters who were all [[Power Rangers]] ripoffs. The story was bizarrely convoluted and made little sense — [[Let's You and Him Fight|why are they fighting each other when they're all after the same guy]]? The endings for all the characters contained [[A Winner Is You|bland text exclaiming "The Battle Is Not Yet Over!"]] The entire game could be won, from start to finish, by [[Button Mashing]] the B button. Even on the hardest difficulty, it was a joke, and you ran out of stuff to do fast, as there is little to do but fight the samey characters over and over, which gets old faster than you'd think. This was a rushed, terrible cash-in to satisfy the need for fighting games on the N64. (Read the scathing but hilarious review on IGN [https://web.archive.org/web/20090908054609/http://au.ign64.ign.com/articles/151/151964p1.html here.])
* ''[[Extreme Paintbrawl]]'' for the PC. Among ''many'' other mistakes, it has one of the worst examples of [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]] that one could ever find. What's funny about this is that it was originally shipped ''[[Artificial Stupidity|without any AI at all!]]'' If you wanted to play against any bots that would do anything more than run into a wall, then you had to download the patch when it came out a month later.
** According to a letter to the editors of PC Gamer (which gave it 6%, the worst score up to that time), the ''game itself'' was produced in two weeks on a rushed schedule.
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* ''Perfect Weapon'', a [[Beat'Em Up]] title released early in the [[PlayStation]]'s life. It has a terrible, unfitting control scheme—imagine ''[[Resident Evil]]''-style [[Tank Controls]] for a [[Beat'Em Up]]; camera angles that [[Camera Screw|change completely if you move as much as two steps]]; a main character who [[Most Annoying Sound|constantly shouts "No way"]] every three seconds; and constant slowdown despite unimpressive graphics. It somehow managed to sneak onto the U.S. [[Playstation Network|Playstation Store]] where it is among the worst-rated "PS One Classics" games.
* ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZZPC6eBQUc Planet Joker]'', one of the many shmups on the Saturn and tied with the aforementioned ''Divine Sealing'' and ''Galactic Crusaders'' as one of the worst games in the genre. It is notable for ''spectacularly''-horrible graphics even after taking the Saturn's handicap with 3D graphics into account, a strange isometric view that makes dodging bullets harder than it should be, bad collision detection, unresponsive controls, being ridiculously easy at even the harder difficulties, the huge size of the player characters, and several unskippable cutscenes involving babbling heads (especially bad in a shmup).
* ''[[Plumbers Don't Wear Ties]]'' on the 3DO was a rare Western example of a [[Visual Novel]], but it had nothing but still images run through bad [[Photoshop Filter of Evil|Photoshop filters]] with annoying narration. The only way the player could affect the game's outcome was by selecting an option in a menu screen; thus, the game was no more interactive than a standard DVD menu. The game [[Railroading|railroads]] the player through a single specific sequence of choices. [[Wall Banger
** The sad thing about this game is that it could have been [[So Bad It's Good]]. It has many genuinely funny [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]] moments, and it [[What the Hell, Player?|gleefully tells you what a perverse gamer you are]]. If it had been in a non-interactive medium, then it would've been [[So Bad It's Good]]. But it was a full-priced game on the 3DO that didn't include any gameplay; thus, it's Horrible.
* ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25ZoxZFp9Dk Robocop]'' for the PC, by Titus Games, suffers from broken controls, crappy AI, and horrid voice actors.
* ''Ronde'' is infamous for [[Franchise Killer|killing off]] the ''[[Majin Tensei]]'' branch of the ''[[Megami Tensei]]'' franchise, as its preview demo ''alone'' caused such a negative reaction that thousands of Japanese gamers cancelled their preorders for the game on a scale that was virtually unprecedented in Japanese game industry history up to that point. It would take another ''12 years'' for ''[[Mega Ten]]'' fans to see a [[Strategy RPG]] in the franchise with the release of ''[[Devil Survivor]]''. [[Hardcore Gaming 101]] said that the game has some of the ugliest graphics of the 32-bit era. A video of the first mission can be seen [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yT6avnWhio here].
* ''[[Rugrats]]: Time Travelers'' for the [[Game Boy Color]] is a good demonstration of why knowing your audience is mandatory. Despite having a surprisingly good presentation (the graphics and mood stays true to the actual cartoon, while many little details ensure it stays above the level of shovelware), the [[Nintendo Hard]] aestheic scares away its target crowd (younger players) while frustraing even older players, [https://web.archive.org/web/20120122131045/http://gameboy.ign.com/articles/162/162092p1.html including this IGN reviewer.] First of all, the babies can't attack, leaving them defenseless against enemies such as mice, birds, and [[Little Red Riding Hood]]. Many of these enemies are too big to jump over. The game [[Guide Dang It|gives no indication of how to progress]], leaving players to go through [[Trial and Error Gameplay]] before they get the idea (having to collect a certain number of bottles along with a golden token). Even then, the sprawling labyrinths of levels require more memorization and patience than a younger player can stand...and there's a time limit ticking away. Even fans of the cartoon aren't likely going to enjoy this experience, and it definitely isn't able to get past the [[Nostalgia Filter]].
* ''[http://www.gamespot.com/3do/action/shadowwarriors/player_review.html?id=148612 Shadow: War of Succession]'' (aka ''Shadow Warriors'') on the 3DO, yet another [[Fighting Game]] with digitized characters, may be the worst game for the ill-fated console and also the worst game in its genre. Horribly drab backgrounds, horrendous character design (one of the characters is supposed to be a woman but looks like a man), silly characters whose animation frames are in the single digits, the screen shaking every time a fighter lands after jumping, awful opening [[Full Motion Video]], laughable voice clips, controls based on just two buttons, and nonexistent collision detection are just a sampling of the long list of ''Shadow Warriors''' flaws. Watch it in all its glory [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjUOeGz7vOo here.]
* The ''Spice World'' video game (not to be confused with the [[So Bad It's Good]] [[Spice World|movie of the same name]]) is exactly what you'd imagine a game starring the [[Spice Girls]] to be like — thoughtless rushed-out-of-the-door tripe padded with archive footage from interviews with the group. The ultimate goal is to set up a [[Spice Girls]] concert (or something), and you guide your hideous [[Super-Deformed]] polygonal Spice Girl of choice (despite having left the group by the time the game came out, Geri Halliwell is playable) through mixing your own version of a [[Spice Girls]] song from a pathetically small library of samples which don't even cover the entire song, learning your dance moves through an asinine [[Rhythm Game|rhythm-based]] minigame with [[Unfortunate Implications|a blatantly-racist black stereotype for a dance instructor]] and awkward timing for the button presses, and planning your choreography—which is exactly as exciting as copy-pasting the same moveset four times sounds. In the end, you will get to see the girls dance for you...and that's it. The whole game can be finished in ten minutes. The only gaming media outlet to have given this game [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvptv7_C-bY a positive review] was [[Gaming in The Clinton Years]] — and they couldn't even pass Stage 2.
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20130314021402/http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/9147 If you actually want to see the game there is this video of Seanbaby and others playing the game].
* ''Sniper: Path of Vengeance'' is a cheap, shoddy game made by City Interactive - the same company who later released the much better, but still underwhelming ''Sniper: Ghost Warrior''. What's so special about ''Path of Vengeance''? Let's see: its engine (Lithtech Jupiter, cutting-edge for the time) is horribly optimized, causing the game to stutter in medium details on a computer that could run ''[[No One Lives Forever]] 2'' (better-looking game on the same engine) on high details without any problems, the graphics look monstrously outdated, despite the title there aren't many opportunities to actually use a sniper rifle, the gameplay is atrocious, the acting and script [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBDfu4L9YIU#t=1m11s are downright horrible], and [[Booze-Based Buff]] seems to be inserted only in a juvenile attempt at making the game "cool and mature".
* ''Spirit of Speed 1937'', or at least its [[Dreamcast]] version. Meant to simulate 30's roadsters race, the game was routinely trashed for its atrocious loading times, bad controls, lack of multiplayer mode (bad in a racing game), mediocre production values and boring, drawn out tracks. Quite fittingly, [[Acclaim]] briefly ressurected the much-reviled [[LJN Toys|LJN]] label for this game only.
* ''[[Star Trek]]: New Worlds'', an RTS game for the PC (a Dreamcast port was planned but cancelled). The game's tutorial is very unhelpful, and does little to explain how to utilize the confusing resources system. Mission objectives themselves are generic and basic, and you're not allowed to pause or save and pick them up later. This, coupled with bad AI, little differentiation between units, and battlefields so large that they take forever to traverse, makes for a very boring ''Trek'' game. Arguably the only exciting aspect was setting all your buildings to self destruct, which would [[Stuff Blowing Up|blow up and collapse]] in an over-the-top and drawn out manner.
* ''[[Superman]]'' (aka "that [[Superman: The Animated Series|cartoon]] [[Superman 64|tie-in game for the Nintendo 64]]") is considered a trainwreck in every conceivable way. It had such poor graphics that the game had to [[Hand Wave|"excuse" the huge amount of fog as "Kryptonite Fog" in a simulation]], made half the missions [[Pass Through the Rings|flying through rings]] with awkward controls, and failed to be entertaining. Described by [[Seanbaby]] [https://web.archive.org/web/20130116023821/http://seanbaby.com/nes/egm07.htm here]:
{{quote|"It would have been more fun if they made a game about Superman window shopping with Aquaman."}}
** The rings, in which Lex Luthor tasks you to "Solve My Maze",<ref>of ''linear'' ring formations, mind you</ref> became a [[Running Gag]] in ''N64 Magazine'' and got [[Ascended Meme|promoted]] to a ''regular feature'' when it became ''NGC magazine''. The Mexican magazine ''Club Nintendo'' made a running gag of having the positive aspects of [[Creator Killer|what little games Titus released after this one]] being "It's a Titus' game that doesn't feature Superman"
** To make insult to the injury, [http://micro-64.com/features/supermanbeta1.shtml it was revealed] that the ''beta version'' was actually ''more playable'' than the one that ended in retail ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCBX-OuZxcA people who played a leak of that version did confirm this]), and [
* ''[[Virtuoso]]'' was a ''hilariously'' bad shooter... or something. It's hard to figure out what kind of game it was, mainly since the combination of shitty graphics and the terrifyingly-bad camera made seeing the game something of a [[Bragging Rights Reward]]. Maybe that was a good thing, since the game was ''terrible'' on its face. Apparently, you play a "famous rock and roll music star" in the future who "escapes from the rigors of stardom" by logging onto the future version of a VR [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]], which is one meta level too many. The enemies were also terrifyingly generic. You fight spiders, bats, giant spiders, more bats, and the boss (are you sitting down?) is ''another spider''. But [[Giant Spider|bigger]] this time! Yay.
* ''WCW Nitro'' and ''WCW/nWo Thunder'' for the [[PS 1]] are probably the worst wrestling games ever made. The presentation's decent — the intro's kick-ass, and the taunt option (where a FMV of the wrestler plays to urge you to pick him) is a neat idea...but everything else sucks:
** The point of the game is to whittle your opponent's life bar down until you can pin them. Each wrestler only has about 3-4 moves; most are easy to spam. This was pre-''[[Smackdown vs. Raw]]'', so pressing X-X-X [[Game Breaker|pretty much won you the match]]. Wrestlers with top rope moves are useless because you can't pin them when you're off the ground (no small cradles, no roll ups), and wrestlers with submission moves instantly win the match. There aren't any match options beside toggling weapons on and off, and the game is basically a cake walk if you use weapons. The controls are horribly stiff and don't let you attack while running—you can't pull off any clotheslines or dropkicks. Striking and grappling are slow and pointless processes that simply don't work. Multiplayer is a joke.
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* ''Dragonball Z: Legacy of Goku'' for the [[Game Boy Advance]]. The two games that came after it were decent beat-em-ups, but the first one was terrible. You could [[Denial of Diagonal Attack|only move in four directions at an incredibly-slow speed]], the melee attack was completely useless and only had a single animation, and the story would've been [[Continuity Lock Out|completely indecipherable to anyone not familiar with the anime]]. Its one saving grace was that it wasn't very long. It's a real shame that [[Atari]] and Webfoot Technologies didn't make a game of the first two arcs in the style of ''Legacy of Goku 2'' and ''Buu's Fury''.
* ''Dragon Ball Z Sagas'' for the Gamecube tried to recapture the beat-em-up charm of last two ''Legacy of Goku'' titles and add a co-op mode. Didn't work, thanks to depressingly-linear levels, ridiculously-high difficulty, and no checkpoints.
* ''[[Drake of the 99 Dragons]]'' for the XBox. Its attempt at creating a comic book-style action shooter is undermined rather quickly by horrid collision detection, an auto-targeting system that forces Drake to flail his arms about like a drowning swimmer, and controls that showed nothing but scorn and contempt at the player's desire to move in a given direction. The game supposedly adapts a "comic book" feel complete with SFX bubbles whenever a gun is fired or a character jumps, but this has the unintended effect of making the graphics look even worse — it highlights the similarities the graphics have to a [[Rob Liefeld]] comic. Jumping is useless, as are any platforming elements, unless one could will collision detection into being from thin air, assuming one gets past the enemies by way of precognition first. There's no hints of what to do at any point, and only by pure chance can one figure out how to clear the levels. To simply call the game "bad" would be a gross understatement (although [https://web.archive.org/web/20070121180517/http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/drake/review.html Gamespot] and [https://web.archive.org/web/20130310020120/http://www.g4tv.com/videos/21086/drake-of-the-99-dragons-review/ X-Play] have tried).
* ''Endgame'' is perhaps the worst ''[[Time Crisis]]'' [[Shoddy Knockoff Product|knockoff]] ever conceived. No double gun mode despite what it says on the box, [[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy]] accuracy even from the [[Elite Mooks]], [[Meaningless Lives|easily-replenished lives]] ''and'' a [[Life Meter]], dull and predictable gameplay, terrible voice acting (everyone has [[American Accents]], but the game is set in ''Europe''), and a wretched hive of bugs.
* ''Godai Elemental Force'', a 3D [[Beat'Em Up]] made by 3DO for the [[PlayStation 2]], is a [[Idiot Programming|complete technical disaster]]. Despite featuring muddy textures, small environements and few models displayed at any given time, the game [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=810Gj8t9JII chugs at a pathetically low framerate] that can't even stay consistent. The game design isn't much better - while the main character has an handful of projectile attacks and moves, his main form of offense is a short [[Button Mashing]] combo that can't be changed or mixed up in any way, and while weapons can be collected throughout the levels, most of them simply [[Bigger Stick|hit harder]] and do not change his fighting style. The fixed camera angles are [[Camera Screw|screwed up]], enemy variety is low and the main character's gliding ability allows one to [[Sequence Breaking|skip large chunks of the game]] with impunity. The game was [http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-2/godai-elemental-force eviscerated] by players and critics alike and 3DO went bankrupt within one year of releasing it. With games like this, it's not hard to see why.
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* The Xbox 3D fighting game ''Kabuki Warriors'' was described by [http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/kabukiwarriors/review.html Gamespot] as "... one of the worst games to be released this year or any year, on the Xbox or any other platform." Characters that are only differentiated by palette swaps of identical graphics, stages that differ only by backgrounds, terrible character animation, and a "fighting" system that is just as effective as closing one's eyes and mashing buttons make it one of the worst 3D fighters ever. It holds the dubious honor of being the first game ''Edge'' magazine — infamous for its refusal to adhere to the [[Four Point Scale]] and stinginess with giving a 10/10 rating — has given a 1/10 to, and remained the only game with that rating until ''[[Flat Out]] 3'' 10 years later.
** In Game Informer's review of the game the reviewer states "[[Sincerity Mode|I literally won a match just by bashing the controller against my ass. I wish I was joking, but the score is seriously Kabuki Warriors zero, my ass one.]]" This was confirmed by other editors.
* The [[Game Boy Advance]] adaptation of ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]: The Fellowship of the Ring'' came out after the movies but (to keep [[Electronic Arts]] off the developer's back) was touted as being based on the books. If a player wasn't careful, then by the midpoint of the game items essential to progress would simply vanish. There were [[Unwinnable By Mistake|glitches that rendered the game impossible]] unless one knew how to get around them. There's even a spot where you need to save during a transition between scenes to keep the game from becoming [[Unwinnable]].
* ''[[Lunar]]: Dragon Song'' recycled many characters and plot elements from [[Lunar: The Silver Star|the original game]], and wrapped them up in a ridiculously awful battle system, where running on the world map hurts you and you can't select your targets. The beginning enemies are ''way'' overpowered, or seem so because you only have 20 hit points and weak attacks to start with. You can choose to receive experience ''or'' [[Vendor Trash]] for the battles you win, but not both. Enemies attacking you can randomly break your equipment, and God help you if you don't have a spare. Your main healer's lost early on, and in her place comes the ''Level 1'' replacement healer in a location that makes it near impossible to train her without a ridiculous amount of luck. The ''only'' redeeming features about the game are the music and the R button, which lets you speed up battle animations. It's not a stretch to say that it almost killed the franchise for good. Thank the good lord for ''Lunar: Silver Star Harmony''.
** The sad part about the whole recycled plot and characters thing is that the game was touted as being the first ''Lunar'' game that wasn't a remake of ''[[Lunar: The Silver Star]]'' in several years. It was—sort of. Unfortunately, European gamers are now [[No Export for You|denied the chance to play the rest of the series]] because [[Ink Stain Adaptation|this was the first installment]] sent there.
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== Seventh
* ''[[wikipedia:1968 Tunnel Rats|1968 Tunnel Rats]]''. Yes, a Uwe Boll movie was given a tie-in video game. The film is [[
* ''Air Control'', a "[[Blatant Lies|flight simulator]]" that came out on PC via Steam in 2014. It's also known as one of the worst, most ineptly produced games in recent memory. Whether it's the clearly [[Obvious Beta|unfinished gameplay elements and graphics]], recycled (and shoddily slapped-on) stock Unity models, [[Mind Screw|nonsensical scenes like an airplane being underwater]], the use of actual copyrighted airline material or a host of other issues, the game was so poorly received that it had to be pulled from Steam. Here's Markiplier in particular [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7UwKGWc7gI suffering through it].▼
* ''Alien Disco Safari'' is a shooter where you shoot aliens for... coming to Earth because they like disco. There's ''no disco-related content in the game at all'' [[All There in the Manual|aside from the backstory]], so you're just [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|shooting aliens for existing]] on their own ship. You have unlimited ammo in your main weapon, and that weapon [[Boring Yet Practical|kills most enemies in one hit and is perfectly accurate]]. The levels are the same six bland levels played again and again in order without getting harder.
* [[Survival Horror]] game ''[[AMY (video game)|AMY]]'', released very early in 2012, boasts a novel premise (an [[Escort Mission]] game in which [[Inverted Trope|the player needs the NPC to survive]]), but has too much wrong with it to even bother. Controls are difficult (if even possible) to correctly use, the AI is very stupid, clipping and [[Hitbox Dissonance]] are far too common, and the [[Check Point Starvation|checkpoint system is unfairly sparse]]. This results in repetitive [[Trial and Error Gameplay]] with a ''very'' high degree of [[Fake Difficulty]]. On top of that, the writing's clichéd, the voice-acting's terrible, and the puzzles and [[Jump Scare|scares]] seem shoehorned in. [https://web.archive.org/web/20140111213253/http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/5346-Amy Come, kick back and watch Yahtzee tear it a new one.]
* The ''[[Backyard Sports]]'' games from ''Backyard Baseball 2007'' onward. With their blocky graphics, stoic voice acting ([[Replacement Scrappy|except in some cases]]), and awful controls, these games have been hated by every major video game review website.
* ''[[Bomberman]]: Act Zero'' is considered one of the dumbest series reboots in recent memory. [[In Name Only|Title]] and a threadbare resemblance to gameplay are all that ties this game to the franchise; the kid-friendly, cartoony atmosphere was ditched in lieu of a [[Darker and Edgier|grimdark]] post-apocalyptic mood. Its graphics are barely on par with the original [[Xbox]], let alone [[Xbox Live Arcade]]. There's no offline multiplayer, one of the series' biggest selling points. The only challenge in any of the 99 sluggish, repetitive levels (all of which are set on the same FPS beta reject of a map with little variation) is [[Fake Difficulty]] - you have to play through all 99 levels in one sitting, and you only get one life and [[Check Point Starvation|no save points]]. Everything else is just generic - the forgettable music, the characters (of which there are only two), the barely-present voice acting, even the story. Add to this a fistful of bugs and some downright audience-insulting moments, and you've got a game that all parties involved still crack jokes about to this day.
* ''Chasing Dead'' is a 2016 science-fiction [[Survival Horror]] first-person shooter. While the PC version available on [[Steam]] is arguably more successful in delivering the intended [[So Bad It's Good]] (complete with hokey plot and laughable [[Full Motion Video]] cutscenes integrated into the gameplay), the [[Wii U]] port this indie game just ''awful.'' There are [[Obvious Beta|bugs and blatantly unfinished material aplenty]], stuttering graphics that the console can just barely render, and glitches that at points make it virtually unplayable. While it's no surprise that the game's panned with a 24% on Metacritic, what makes it all the more frustrating is [http://gamerant.com/chasing-dead-reviews/ how with more polish, it could have been a pretty decent work at least]. Let [[Two Best Friends Play|Matt and Liam]] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_YjKGMdLWo share the experience] in all its "glory."▼
* ''Damnation'' shows that basing a commercial release on a popular [[Game Mod|mod]] is not alway a good idea. Though everyone agreed the premise (involving a [[Alternate History]] where steampunk weaponery severely extended the length of the [[American Civil War]]) and the concept of an "acrobatic" third person shooter could have been cool in a better game, it was bashed for its insanely idiotic friendly and enemy AI, inconsistent game design (for example, being killed by gunfire boots you back to a checkpoint but falling to your death respawn you immediatly on the spot for some reason), laggy aiming, boring weapons and an insane number of bugs. Developer Blue Omega Entertainement [[Creator Killer|went bust]] immediately after releasing the game.▼
* ''[[Command and Conquer]] 4: Tiberian Twilight'', released in 2010 has since become infamous for [[Franchise Killer|all but killing off the storied RTS franchise]]. Presented as the grand finale to the Tiberium universe that Westwood Studios started, it jettisoned almost ''everything'' that comprised classic ''C&C'' experience (including base-building and resource gathering) in favor of a overhauling gameplay to be more akin to ''[[World in Conflict]]'' and ''[[Company of Heroes]]'', while failing to replicate what made those games work. Combined with a rushed, [[Troubled Production]] and ''significant'' [[Executive Meddling]] from [[EA]], the result is a horrendous mess that is a tedious chore to play and makes a mockery of the franchise. It's no surprise then why the game would receive a 64% and an abysmal 2.1 from fans in Metacritic.
▲* ''Damnation'' shows that basing a commercial release on a popular [[Game Mod|mod]] is not
* ''Dimension Witches'' is a free game (though at one point it was for sale at a ridiculous price apparently) that plays off the ''Touhou Project'' style of playing but fails horribly with terrible looking gameplay and even worse, and cliche looking, designs and art style to the playable characters as well as
* ''Elf Bowling 1 & 2'' for the [[Nintendo DS]]. To begin with, you're spending $20 on two games you can already get as freeware on your PC, and the DS version has even been slightly ''downgraded'' from the PC versions by removing some animations and sounds and the coin toss from the beginning of ''Elf Bowling 2'', which is unacceptable since the games were so minimalist in the first place, so the game has already commited the crime of shamelessly ripping you off! But even then, everything about it is awful—the graphics are pathetic and don't remotely take advantage of the DS's capabilities, the music is all but non-existent, the occasional quips from the elves are embarrassingly juvenile ("Those all the balls you got, Santa?") and the gameplay is as bare-bones as you can get with a bowling game.
* ''[[Empire Earth]] III'', released for the PC in 2007, is considered the worst entry in the franchise and seen as [[Franchise Killer|responsible for killing it and its publisher, Sierra]]. Much of the complexity, gameplay mechanics, and historical scale seen in the previous games are simplified in what's arguably one of the most blatant, misguided cases of "dumbing down" seen, complete with an inexplicable attempt at a cartoony tone that falls flat. This isn't even getting to the bad pathfinding, terrible AI, atrocious voice-acting, a ''[[Rise of Nations]]''-[[Follow the Leader|esque]] campaign mode that's barely functional and multiple crashes. Combined with a 50% critical rating on Metacritic, it's no wonder this piece of work was thrown into the dustbin of history.▼
* ''European Street Racing'', one in a series of budget racing titles by Dutch developer Team 6, fails in many ways - blocky-looking cars that neither drive nor sound like high-powered vehicles, laughably stupid computer driver AI, and a physics engine that causes cars and other objects to bounce off walls like pinballs. Someone went so far as to explain the "ESR" acronym as '''E'''xtremely '''S'''hitty '''R'''acing.
* ''[[G.I. Joe]]: [[G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra|The Rise of Cobra]]'' was rushed to come out with the new film to make a fast buck. Its controls are retarded, the graphics (if you can call them that) look like they were programmed 15 years ago, and the sound and music are annoying. (German computer games magazine CBS said it was "[...]the first game which is better WITHOUT sound.") If you try to aim at anything, the weapon will most probably fire at the enemy...then the bullet rethinks this and flies straight to any random object but the enemy. Oh, and if you die (which happens easily), then you land right at the beginning because no save points exist. This is an unwelcome throwback.
** By the way, you get to play as Cobra in it for one mission...fighting other Cobra troops as they say "GI Joe is HERE!" (''[[Wall Banger
* ''Guitar Superstar'', a horrid [[Plagiarism|ripoff]] of [[Guitar Hero|a certain popular rhythm game franchise]]. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-z4DhMtGW54 You have to see it to believe it.]
** Looks an awful lot like [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhHOaMXYXU4 the thing Dr. Ashens reviewed.]
* ''Hour of Victory'' was a bizarre and terrible mishmash of the ''[[Call of Duty]]'' and ''[[Wolfenstein (2009 video game)|Wolfenstein]]'' games, starting out as another historical [[World War II]] shooting game, but then taking a jump off the deep end and turning into a game about the Nazis developing nuclear weaponry. As if that weren't bad enough, the graphics were barely even of [[PlayStation 2]] standard (despite the game proudly boasting on the box that it was the first World War II shooter to use the [[Game Engine|Unreal Engine 3]]), the gameplay mechanics were screwed up beyond belief, the heavily-promoted destructible scenery and vehicular combat barely even featured, and the multiplayer mode somehow managed to have fewer options than games released ten years previously. It was perhaps the worst-reviewed [[Xbox 360]] game to have been released until that point, and arguably even a [[Genre Killer]] for the World War II shooter, with only ''Call of Duty: World at War'' having met with any real success since ''Hour of Victory's'' release.
* ''Infestation: Survivor Stories'' (originally titled ''The WarZ'') is a [[Survival Horror]] MMO from Hammerpoint Interactive/OP Productions that came out on PC in 2012 under its original title; the game was removed from Steam for a time until it reemerged under its present name. An attempt to [[Follow the Leader|cash in on the popularity]] of mods like ''DayZ'', it fails not only as a [[Mockbuster]] but also as a game in every conceivable way. Be it in its myriad bugs, missing content, unbalanced gameplay, shoddy online pay scheme and promotional material that outright ''lies'' about what's in the game, there's much to loathe. Which isn't helped at all by the creators' egotistical response to criticism and the fact that said developers were also responsible for dredge like ''[[Big Rigs Over the Road Racing]]''. [[Total Biscuit]], however, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtKAm3nzg6I said it best].▼
* ''[[Jumper (novel)|Jumper]]: Griffin's Story'' is an [[Obvious Beta]] if there ever was one, with too many [[Game Breaking Bug]]s to count. It hurts all the more because of how promising it was—Jamie Bell voiced the cutscenes quite well, and the teleporting mechanic came within hairs-breadth of being ''fun''. Being rushed to market to meet the movie's opening date ruined it.
* ''[[Leisure Suit Larry]]: Box Office Bust'' has a terrible, offensive sense of humor. The gameplay mostly consists of fetch quests and awkward jumping puzzles, and it has multiple [[Game Breaking Bug]]s. Following the franchise tradition and having some eye-candy shots of attractive girls in it would maybe at least make it a [[Guilty Pleasure]], but it even fails at this, as many of the female characters [[Fan Disservice|look butt-ugly]]. The game currently holds the single-lowest composite score of any game on Metacritic, with [http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/leisure-suit-larry-box-office-bust 17 whole points to its name], and reviews of it can be found from [https://web.archive.org/web/20140723005801/http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/bt/the-sage/sage-review/5931-lslbob Bennett the Sage,] [http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/adventure/leisuresuitlarryboxofficebust/review.html Gamespot,] and even [http://www.allowe.com/Larry/BOB.htm Al Lowe], the series' original creator (who had [[God Does Not Own This World|no input on BOB or its prequel]], and is [[Creator Backlash|all the happier for it]]).
* ''[[Limbo of the Lost]]'' was an irredeemably-bad [[Adventure Game]] thrown together in thirteen years by a group of three middle-aged Brits with no experience in coding, graphic design, or writing. The results show all too well - the game is chock-full of [[Combinatorial Explosion]]s, [[Pixel Hunt]]s, [[Guide Dang It]] moments, [[Moon Logic Puzzle|nonsensical puzzles]], and [[Plagiarism|resources stolen from more famous games]], piled together using a freeware adventure game engine with code almost entirely written by wide-eyed forumgoers who [[Ungrateful Bastard|have yet to receive a single mention of gratitude for their effort]] and aren't listed in the game credits. Tying it all together is a dreadful generic fantasy story played out through [[Uncanny Valley|terribly-modeled pre-rendered characters]] whose dialogue was practically phoned in from across the globe (almost all voiced by the same guy). Fortunately, the game was pulled off the shelves by its distributors after they learned that the devs used stolen assets, for the greater good of mankind and the survival of the distributors. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URcvdDtnM_0 To top it all off, check out the ending]...or experience it in all its traumatizing "glory" in [http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=400406 Wields-Rulebook-Heavily's] screenshot-and-comment [[Let's Play]].
** How bad is the writing? Half the characters are an offensive stereotype of some sort, and the rest are just vilely disgusting and superfluous to the so-called plot. The plot is barely even a generic fantasy story, but mostly consists of [[Pinball Protagonist|the main character wandering from one scene to the next]] and generally either [[Designated Hero|acting like a dick for no reason]], or getting forced to do something. One chapter has you collect 50 items, but you only use about four of them before a troll comes up and removes your items (no lie; a random troll barges in at the end of the chapter and shakes the guy down).
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* ''M&Ms Kart Racing'' is a textbook example of how even a concept as simple as "Make a [[Mario Kart]] [[Follow the Leader|knockoff]] [[Product Placement|with mascot stars]]" can be completely botched, and examplifies just about everything that can go wrong with a [[The Problem with Licensed Games|licensed video game]]. Everything about it is rushed and uninspired: the core racing has no substance, challenge or strategy—there are no weapons, no shortcuts, and no techniques to exploit. They don't even try to instill a sense of speed beyond having a voice periodically shout "Approaching sound barrier!" The race tracks are so poorly designed that they often [[Fake Difficulty|trap or bottleneck players]]—the fact that the vehicles have little to no grip just makes it worse. The unlockables that do exist are nowhere near worth it. The graphics are bland, owe more to older consoles, and have a very obvious draw distance. The sounds are obnoxious, and the soundtrack, levels, and bonus characters are all completely generic. On top of that, it still takes as many as ten seconds to load a single screen. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR5GxtqYoDQ See it here] and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SAHwWlJgiM here,] the latter to give a sample of how awful the tracks are.
** [http://www.gamespot.com/m-and-ms-kart-racing/reviews/mandms-kart-racing-review-6189077/ This] Gamespot review says it best in a screenshot caption: "If you think this looks bad, just wait until you see the game moving."
* ''Mighty No. 9'' is rapidly gaining this reputation among both critics and gamers alike. A [[Kickstarter]]-funded production launched in 2013 and meant to be a [[Spiritual Successor]] to ''[[Mega Man]]'' (complete with [[Keiji Inafune]]'s backing), it was released in 2016 after a [[Troubled Production]] rife with controversy and myriad delays, with the end result found lacking. While the game's controls harken back to classic ''Mega Man'', the presentation undercuts whatever nostalgia value is present by being generally subpar with bland designs, little personality and graphics that at times come across as straight out of the ''[[PS 1]]''. Combined with significant [[Hype Backlash]] and continuing fallout from said [[Troubled Production]], the game was met with [[So Average Its Okay]] ''at best'' by critics and disappointment by a sizable portion of its backers. Its reviews on [[Steam]] [http://store.steampowered.com/app/314710/ speak volumes].▼
* The latter half of the ''[[Painkiller]]'' series was already notorious for basing ''Overdose'' on a [[Running the Asylum|fan-made game mod]]. ''Painkiller: Resurrection'' does the same thing, but not as well. Everything but a single monster (which looks like an orc made of raw hamburger and has [[Your Size May Vary|three different sizes]]) and a single weapon (a re-skinned "Battle Out Of Hell" weapon) are taken pixel-for-pixel from earlier installments. The levels are the largest the franchise has ever seen, but are usually either too cramped to comfortably accomodate the sort of monsters found in them or so huge that the player must backtrack constantly to find a new monster spawn point. The clumsy storyline is shoehorned into the game with comic-style cutscenes ''à la'' ''[[Max Payne (series)|Max Payne]]'' and mood-killing voice acting ''à la'' ''[[Resident Evil]]'' ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfWFImtwLnQ case in point]). It's [[Obvious Beta|loaded with bugs]] that no patch effort has successfully deterred — it crashes to desktop frequently, the weather effects slow the dated engine to a crawl, [[Artificial Stupidity|enemy AI tends to get hung up on the scenery]], online co-op (a major selling point) was inaccessible at launch, the game crashed if a certain weapon was fired in multiplayer, and glitching out the final checkpoint was common and made hour-long levels [[Unwinnable By Mistake]]. If that won't make you quit playing ''Painkiller'', put on "[[Judas Priest|Painkiller]]", and down some painkillers, then nothing will. For added pain, be sure to [
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYuPdzVM4oY Painkiller: Recurring Evil wasn't much better].
* ''[[Power Gig: Rise of the
** Speaking of outlawing playing in public, this game's drum controller seems designed for it. It is four pads sitting on the floor, and you have to air drum ''over'' them. It is quieter, but it misses the point of playing drums. You also have to be absurdly precise to know which pad you're "hitting"; you get no touch feedback from air drumming, and keeping an eye on the screen and another on the ground won't let you watch your hands to be sure where they are.
* ''Ride to Hell: Retribution'' is a 2013 third person action-adventure game purportedly about hardened biker gangs in [[The Sixties|late-60s America]]. In reality, it's a barely playable mess that makes ''[[Big Rigs Over the Road Racing]]'' look like ''[[Gran Turismo]]'', with moronic AI, [[Obvious Beta|unfinished locales]], legions of graphical glitches, a nonsensical plot, unlikable characters and broken gameplay; the introduction sequence ''alone'' is [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvpxxVUPW-0 a sight to behold]. Its attempts at being edgy and "mature" also fall horrendously flat. This is most infamously evident in the optional "[[Fan Disservice|sex]] [[Fetish Retardant|scenes]]," which succeed at being insulting to both men and women. To no one's surprise, it's nigh universally panned by gamers and critics alike, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA3vijm17Bs though it's best to see it for yourself]. Or let [[Angry Joe]] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1HTKWX15oo demonstrate].▼
* ''[[Rogue Warrior]]'' is a FPS/stealth action hybrid title based on the exploits and autobiography of real-life Navy SEAL Dick Marcinko (voiced by Mickey Rourke), with a multiplayer mode that was supposed to revolutionize online play with its randomized maps. This was ''supposed'' to be Bethesda's big game for the 2009 holiday season. Instead, it was roundly trashed for its completely broken enemy AI, hit detection, and [[Useless Useful Stealth|stealth mechanics]]; a single-player campaign runtime of under two hours; and a script [[Cluster F-Bomb|so foul-mouthed]] that it was more annoying than hardcore. The only redeeming factor was the [[So Bad It's Good]] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVoyGUcXepc rapping] that Mickey Rourke does over the credits. [http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-rogue-warrior/17-1719/ Here's] [[Giant Bomb]] having their fun with it.
* ''[[Stalin vs. Martians]]'' aimed for the [[So Bad It's Good]] camp...[http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/stalinvsmartians/review.html and missed by a country mile.] It's ''supposed'' to be a real-time strategy game, but instead is a buggy, unplayable mess of bad design decisions — bad AI, bad enemy placement, bad mission structure, and bad attempts at humor. Fortunately, a series of music videos were produced for the game, and they remain firmly in the [[So Bad It's Good]] category. The best part? They're all available online, meaning you don't have to play the game!
* ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Eo8W3VsBrE Terrawars: NY Invasion]'', a PC game released in 2006 by Tri Synergy and developed by Philippines-based Ladyluck Digital Media. The game purports to be a budget-priced quality shooter inspired by ''[[The War of the Worlds (novel)|The War of the Worlds]]''. Instead, the game is just about as shoddy if not much worse than its price tag. Level designs are either incredibly bland or painful to the eyes. Most enemies are generic aliens with different colors. The story [[Excuse Plot|doesn't make much sense apart from "aliens invade New York,"]] with phoned-in voice acting done by people who [[Not Even Bothering with the Accent|barely even ''pretend'' to give an American accent]]. Graphics-wise, it uses the dated Lithtech Jupiter engine (the same one used in ''[[No One Lives Forever]]'') but manages to look even worse. While gameplay itself is repetitive, dragging and plain un-engagingly boring. Gamespot described the game [https://web.archive.org/web/20131010004138/http://asia.gamespot.com/terrawars-new-york-invasion/reviews/terrawars-new-york-invasion-review-6154704/ as a rip-off that has to be avoided]. And the sad part of all this: not only did the developers [[Shown Their Work|go through the trouble of making a scale recreation of NYC]], but the game was also intended to be a ''showcase'' of a burgeoning Filipino gaming industry.▼
* ''[[Thor (film)|Thor]]: God of Thunder'' is a towering symbol of [[The Problem with Licensed Games|every problem with licensed games]]. The last-gen graphics and phoned-in voice acting should be warning signs, but if you soldier on, you will find yourself confronted by a combat system that can't even get button-mashing right due to laggy controls and broken hit detection. Throw on tedious, mind-numbingly repetitive combat and more [[Fake Difficulty]] than you can shake an [[LJN Toys]] cartridge at, and you've got Exhibit A for why not every game should cost $60. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-M6z0Kfekc Now prepare to be convinced to buy it anyway...]
* Following a drop in sales and review scores, not to mention competitor [[Electronic Arts|EA]]'s ''[[Skate]]'' series, [[Activision]] attempted to bring back the ''[[Tony Hawk Pro Skater]]'' [[Franchise Zombie]] with ''Tony Hawk: Ride'' — a game built around a board peripheral that, in theory, would accurately simulate skateboarding. Said peripheral barely worked as it was overly sensitive,<ref>(lowering your arm, tilting too far, or objects moving near the board would register an attempted grab)</ref> lagged, couldn't distinguish between movements, and its curved bottom (perhaps intended to help simulate turns) made it damn near impossible to stay atop. The gameplay proper was far too linear (even ''steering'' for you on Easy difficulty), and it was built around the same combo-score system [[Scrappy Mechanic|most fans had grown tired of seeing from previous installments]]. Worst of all, the skateboard was [[But Thou Must!|the only way to play]] as it had no controller support. All of this ran for more than the price of an average skateboard.
** Despite ''Ride'' being a commercial failure, Activision pressed on with ''Tony Hawk: Shred'', including a sturdier peripheral and a snowboarding mode. Despite this, most of the same problems that plagued the original peripheral are still there. The gameplay itself hasn't changed for the better, as jumping over gaps and doing correct tricks are still difficult to perform. ''Shred'' managed to sell even less than ''Ride'' and almost killed off the franchise.
* ''Unearthed: Trail of Ibn Battuta'' is an episodic Arab adventure game purportedly in the mould of the likes of ''[[Tomb Raider]]'' and ''[[Uncharted]]''. Despite its pretensions of showcasing the best of Middle Eastern game development, the game is ''at best'' a [[Mockbuster]], and at worst barely playable. From unoptimised performance (despite running on the Unity Engline) to hackneyed combat and bugs galore, it was almost universally panned upon the release of the first episode. Here's AncientReality's [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNVU1Xv-wCo attempt to make the game watchable] and [[videogamedunkey]] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQShIMS9R6I laughing through the game] ([[Trolling Creator|his video is disguised]] as an [[Uncharted]] 4 demo).▼
* ''Vampire Rain'' is a piss-poor stealth-action survival horror game that features among other things: a thinly-written plot with wooden voice acting, dreadful dialogue, lousy gameplay that shamelessly rips off both ''[[Splinter Cell]]'' and ''[[Metal Gear]]'' (and doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as either), laughable enemy A.I. and [[Schizophrenic Difficulty|wildly inconsistent difficulty]]. You know a game is terrible when the most innovative thing about it is that your knife (a ''melee'' weapon) actually requires ''ammo'' to use! (they do justify it by making the knife ''[[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot|explode inside the victim]]'', but this doesn't make things less frustrating).
* ''Vendetta: Curse of Raven's Cry'' (formerly ''Raven's Cry''), is a 2015 action-adventure RPG that came out on PC and the Xbox 360. Ostensibly following the exploits of Christopher Raven in the golden age of piracy, the game [[Follow the Leader|tries hard to invoke]] the likes of ''[[Assassin's Creed]] IV: Black Flag'' and ''[[Sid Meier's Pirates]]'', but falls far short of its erstwhile inspirations. Despite the effort put into creating the game and a years-long [[Troubled Production]], [[Obvious Beta|it comes across as horribly buggy and unpolished]] that even the [[Updated Rerelease]] shoved out months later ''had the same issues.'' Combined with some controversy involving the publishers rigging the game's Steam reviews with positive ratings,<ref>Which is suspected to be one of the reasons why Steam [http://techraptor.net/content/ravens-cry-removed-from-steam pulled out the game from sale for a time].</ref> the game simply does nothing to earn its price tag. Here's the [[Two Best Friends Play]] guys [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g1vZ16mnGs enduring it].▼
* ''[[Windy X Windam]]'' has been derided by fighting game enthusiasts for its choppy animation, bland music and repetitive sound effects, a small roster of characters (half of whom are ''[[Guilty Gear]]'' knockoffs), and a bug-riddled fighting engine coupled with extreme [[Artificial Stupidity]] that discourages any strategy beyond [[Button Mashing]]. The threadbare plot is done no favors by U.S. publisher Graffiti Entertainment's weak translation (misspellings and [[No Punctuation Period|dropped commas and periods]] are commonplace), and even the game's [[Just Here for Godzilla|main draw]] - the chance to play as Izuna and Shino from ''[[Izuna Legend of the Unemployed Ninja]]'' - is short-lived, as they can only be unlocked for play by finishing the game on the higher difficulty levels.
* ''Yaris'', an advergame on XBLA which, despite being free, somehow managed to make the customers feel ripped off. It received a score of 17 from Metacritic, citing bad gameplay, painful audio and no replay value. It was pulled from the service after a while due to bad reception, and thank God for that.
* ''You Are Empty'', a Russian game released by 1C Games in 2006. The plot reads like a mishmash of ''[[The Butterfly Effect]]'', ''[[The Red Star]]'' and ''[[Command & Conquer]]: Red Alert'', the game is bugged to death, and it uses flat textures. That's right, folks — in 2006, someone released a game with no lighting effects whatsoever. Gamespot's reviewer '''apologized''' for wasting the reader's time with the review. One of the game's greatest moments is when a monster jumps out at you from a higher level...and [[Not the Fall That Kills You|dies on impact with the floor]].
▲* ''Dimension Witches'' is a free game (at one point was for sale at a ridiculous price apparently)that plays off the Touhou Project style of playing but fails horribly with terrible looking gameplay and even worse,and cliche looking, designs and art style to the playable characters as well as NPC and enemies. It was taken down from the [[Indie City]] site and would have been forgotten had [[Mike Nnemonic]] not played it one a livestream as well as post a video on his youtube channel [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxAeC-H0TqQ&feature=plcp\] (somewhat NSFW)
▲* ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Eo8W3VsBrE Terrawars: NY Invasion]'', a PC game released in 2006 by Tri Synergy and developed by Philippines-based Ladyluck Digital Media. The game purports to be a budget-priced quality shooter inspired by ''[[The War of the Worlds]]''. Instead, the game is just about as shoddy if not much worse than its price tag. Level designs are either incredibly bland or painful to the eyes. Most enemies are generic aliens with different colors. The story [[Excuse Plot|doesn't make much sense apart from "aliens invade New York,"]] with phoned-in voice acting done by people who [[Not Even Bothering with the Accent|barely even ''pretend'' to give an American accent]]. Graphics-wise, it uses the dated Lithtech Jupiter engine (the same one used in ''[[No One Lives Forever]]'') but manages to look even worse. While gameplay itself is repetitive, dragging and plain un-engagingly boring. Gamespot described the game [http://asia.gamespot.com/terrawars-new-york-invasion/reviews/terrawars-new-york-invasion-review-6154704/ as a rip-off that has to be avoided]. And the sad part of all this: not only did the developers [[Shown Their Work|go through the trouble of making a scale recreation of NYC]], but the game was also intended to be a ''showcase'' of a burgeoning Filipino gaming industry.
▲* ''Unearthed: Trail of Ibn Battuta'' is an episodic Arab adventure game purportedly in the mould of the likes of ''[[Tomb Raider]]'' and ''[[Uncharted]]''. Despite its pretensions of showcasing the best of Middle Eastern game development, the game is ''at best'' a [[Mockbuster]], and at worst barely playable. From unoptimised performance (despite running on the Unity Engline) to hackneyed combat and bugs galore, it was almost universally panned upon the release of the first episode. Here's AncientReality's [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNVU1Xv-wCo attempt to make the game watchable] and [[videogamedunkey]] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQShIMS9R6I laughing through the game] ([[Trolling Creator|his video is disguised]] as an [[Uncharted]] 4 demo).
▲* ''Air Control'', a "[[Blatant Lies|flight simulator]]" that came out on PC via Steam in 2014. It's also known as one of the worst, most ineptly produced games in recent memory. Whether it's the clearly [[Obvious Beta|unfinished gameplay elements and graphics]], recycled (and shoddily slapped-on) stock Unity models, [[Mind Screw|nonsensical scenes like an airplane being underwater]], the use of actual copyrighted airline material or a host of other issues, the game was so poorly received that it had to be pulled from Steam. Here's Markiplier in particular [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7UwKGWc7gI suffering through it].
▲* ''Infestation: Survivor Stories'' (originally titled ''The WarZ'') is a [[Survival Horror]] MMO from Hammerpoint Interactive/OP Productions that came out on PC in 2012 under its original title; the game was removed from Steam for a time until it reemerged under its present name. An attempt to [[Follow the Leader|cash in on the popularity]] of mods like ''DayZ'', it fails not only as a [[Mockbuster]] but also as a game in every conceivable way. Be it in its myriad bugs, missing content, unbalanced gameplay, shoddy online pay scheme and promotional material that outright ''lies'' about what's in the game, there's much to loathe. Which isn't helped at all by the creators' egotistical response to criticism and the fact that said developers were also responsible for dredge like ''[[Big Rigs Over the Road Racing]]''. [[Total Biscuit]], however, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtKAm3nzg6I said it best].
▲* ''Vendetta: Curse of Raven's Cry'' (formerly ''Raven's Cry''), is a 2015 action-adventure RPG that came out on PC and the Xbox 360. Ostensibly following the exploits of Christopher Raven in the golden age of piracy, the game [[Follow the Leader|tries hard to invoke]] the likes of ''[[Assassin's Creed]] IV: Black Flag'' and ''[[Sid Meier's Pirates]]'', but falls far short of its erstwhile inspirations. Despite the effort put into creating the game and a years-long [[Troubled Production]], [[Obvious Beta|it comes across as horribly buggy and unpolished]] that even the [[Updated Rerelease]] shoved out months later ''had the same issues.'' Combined with some controversy involving the publishers rigging the game's Steam reviews with positive ratings,<ref>Which is suspected to be one of the reasons why Steam [http://techraptor.net/content/ravens-cry-removed-from-steam pulled out the game from sale for a time].</ref> the game simply does nothing to earn its price tag. Here's the [[Two Best Friends Play]] guys [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g1vZ16mnGs enduring it].
▲* ''Ride to Hell: Retribution'' is a 2013 third person action-adventure game purportedly about hardened biker gangs in [[The Sixties|late-60s America]]. In reality, it's a barely playable mess that makes ''[[Big Rigs Over the Road Racing]]'' look like ''[[Gran Turismo]]'', with moronic AI, [[Obvious Beta|unfinished locales]], legions of graphical glitches, a nonsensical plot, unlikable characters and broken gameplay; the introduction sequence ''alone'' is [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvpxxVUPW-0 a sight to behold]. Its attempts at being edgy and "mature" also fall horrendously flat. This is most infamously evident in the optional "[[Fan Disservice|sex]] [[Fetish Retardant|scenes]]," which succeed at being insulting to both men and women. To no one's surprise, it's nigh universally panned by gamers and critics alike, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA3vijm17Bs though it's best to see it for yourself]. Or let [[Angry Joe]] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1HTKWX15oo demonstrate].
▲* ''Chasing Dead'' is a 2016 science-fiction [[Survival Horror]] first-person shooter. While the PC version available on [[Steam]] is arguably more successful in delivering the intended [[So Bad It's Good]] (complete with hokey plot and laughable [[Full Motion Video]] cutscenes integrated into the gameplay), the [[Wii U]] port this indie game just ''awful.'' There are [[Obvious Beta|bugs and blatantly unfinished material aplenty]], stuttering graphics that the console can just barely render, and glitches that at points make it virtually unplayable. While it's no surprise that the game's panned with a 24% on Metacritic, what makes it all the more frustrating is [http://gamerant.com/chasing-dead-reviews/ how with more polish, it could have been a pretty decent work at least]. Let [[Two Best Friends Play|Matt and Liam]] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_YjKGMdLWo share the experience] in all its "glory."
▲* ''[[Empire Earth]] III'', released for the PC in 2007, is considered the worst entry in the franchise and seen as [[Franchise Killer|responsible for killing it and its publisher, Sierra]]. Much of the complexity, gameplay mechanics, and historical scale seen in the previous games are simplified in what's arguably one of the most blatant, misguided cases of "dumbing down" seen, complete with an inexplicable attempt at a cartoony tone that falls flat. This isn't even getting to the bad pathfinding, terrible AI, atrocious voice-acting, a ''[[Rise of Nations]]''-[[Follow the Leader|esque]] campaign mode that's barely functional and multiple crashes. Combined with a 50% critical rating on Metacritic, it's no wonder this piece of work was thrown into the dustbin of history.
▲* ''Mighty No. 9'' is rapidly gaining this reputation among both critics and gamers alike. A [[Kickstarter]]-funded production launched in 2013 and meant to be a [[Spiritual Successor]] to ''[[Mega Man]]'' (complete with [[Keiji Inafune]]'s backing), it was released in 2016 after a [[Troubled Production]] rife with controversy and myriad delays, with the end result found lacking. While the game's controls harken back to classic ''Mega Man'', the presentation undercuts whatever nostalgia value is present by being generally subpar with bland designs, little personality and graphics that at times come across as straight out of the ''[[PS 1]]''. Combined with significant [[Hype Backlash]] and continuing fallout from said [[Troubled Production]], the game was met with [[So Average Its Okay]] ''at best'' by critics and disappointment by a sizable portion of its backers. Its reviews on [[Steam]] [http://store.steampowered.com/app/314710/ speak volumes].
== Companies ==
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** The Genesis version of ''Action 52'' was only ''published'' by Active, as actual development was done by Farsight Technologies (developers of the ''Game Party'' [[Minigame Game|mini-game compilation]] series and various pinball collections). Their version of ''Action 52'' is still an overall failure, [[Polished Port|but still not as bad as the trainwreck the NES version turned out to be]].
* '''Color Dreams'''. Many of their beat-em-up games share the same gameplay, with unresponsive controls, near-zero attack range, etc. They eventually changed their name to Bunch Games ''because'' of the poor reputation of their video games, and later on became a Christian company known as Wisdom Tree. However, it should be noted that while they had some of their best-selling games as Wisdom Tree and was the ''only'' company to have an unlicensed SNES game that works (but in a weird manner), they no longer sell video games in their current market and are no longer associated with Color Dreams. [[Dr. Ashens|A FITTING PUNISHMENT!!]]
** Wisdom Tree put some of their NES games up on the site as playable Java games. If you want to take a dive in their infamy, [https://web.archive.org/web/20131017060330/http://www.wisdomtreegames.com/arcade.html help yourself].<ref>The Zelda-clone ''[[Spiritual Warfare]]'' is actually not half bad, if you don't want to waste time clicking.</ref>
* '''Data Design Interactive''' is an infamous shovelware developer whose games were released on the [[Wii]] in North America, with very few differences between them. All of their games started as [[PlayStation 2|PS2]] games from low-budget European companies that [[Sony Computer Entertainment]] America prevented from crossing overseas. Due to the [[Wii]]'s nature, Nintendo decided to be more lax with third-parties...which backfired, as the gate was now open for shovelers to dump their crap upon America, much like the pirated NES multi-game cartridges and the flood of cloned Atari games that sparked [[The Great Video Game Crash of 1983|the video game crash]] in the U.S. Some examples of DDI's "handiwork" include:
** ''Action [[Xtreme Kool Letterz|Girlz]] Racing'', one of DDI's countless made-in-five-seconds racing games, became only the third game in IGN's history to get a rating of less than 1.0 (it got a 0.8) and was called the worst game of 2008.
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** One of their works was ''Fighting Hero'', a [[Shoddy Knockoff Product|horrible knockoff]] of the already dubious ''[[Street Fighter (video game)|Street Fighter]]''. The game has some of the worst controls in any fighting game, as they're incredibly unresponsive and button mashing is rendered useless because the player will constantly interrupt his attacks while doing so. The computer opponents are also ridiculously hard as they'll block most of your attacks.
** They also ended up making the games on the [http://bootleggames.wikia.com/wiki/Caltron_6-in-1 Caltron 6 in 1] (Caltron being an alias for NTDEC) and while the games on it aren't awful, they're mostly just mediocre clones of other games.
* '''[https://web.archive.org/web/20080821124320/http://www.phoenixgamesgroup.com/ Phoenix Games]'''. Go look them up on [[YouTube]] and witness the...well, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uukwhK9hcWA "horror" is far too light a term.] You gotta love that they aren't even ''pretending'' they aren't copying the [[Disney]] character designs...and since when is Thumper the size of a horse?
** Case in point, ''The '''[[The Lion King|Lion]]''' <small>{{color|dddddd|[}}</small> '''[[The Lion King|King]]''''' [https://web.archive.org/web/20141024124622/http://www.phoenixgamesgroup.com/images/packshots/ds/lionandtheking3big.jpg here.]
** Their most infamous "games" are ''English dubs'' of [[Disney]] ripoffs from [[Dingo Pictures]] (who are also covered on [[So Bad It's Horrible/Western Animation]])...but many of their ''actual'' games are worse.
* [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment|While we wish to remain neutral concerning its beliefs and musical output]], there's no denying that white supremacist/neo-Nazi record label '''Resistance Records''' ''cannot make a game to save its life.'' Its entire output (all FPS games) has been compared '''unfavorably''' to ''[[Daikatana]]''. None of its games seem to have [[Obvious Beta|ever passed the beta phase]]:
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** They then made a couple of [[Spiritual Successor|spiritual successors]]: ''White Law'' and the two-part ''ZOG's Nightmare''. They're not much better than the original — some basic touch-ups (more weapons, graphics that take less squinting to deem passable) in exchange for [[Loads and Loads of Loading|a load time of nearly two minutes (sometimes more) between levels]], unbelievably pitiful framerates, and various [[Game Breaking Bug|game breakers]].
* Would you believe a pinball company was once asked to make a [[Fighting Game]]? '''Stern Pinball''', then a division of Data East, were commissioned to make ''[[Tattoo Assassins]]'', despite the fact that nobody involved had any skill in making video games. It was thus nearly unplayable, with poor moves, [[Artificial Stupidity]], and an [[Most Annoying Sound|annoying parrot]]. The pointlessly hyped story (what with its loose connection to [[Back to The Future|Bob Gale]]) fell flat. It never went past the beta phase ''because they couldn't find testers who could bear to play it''. [http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/tattoo-assassins/ If you really want to, you can find more information about this game right here.]
* The Taiwanese company '''Thin Chen Enterprises''' (aka [[I Have Many Names|Sachen, Joy Van, and Commin]], but mostly known as '''Sachen''' nevertheless) was one of the biggest unlicensed [[Shovelware]] developers of the time. They also made many bootleg [[Porting Disaster]]s of arcade and 16-bit console games, and even created [[Shoddy Knockoff Product|their own NES hardware clone]], the [https://web.archive.org/web/20051102170942/http://www.nesplayer.com/pirates/q-boy.htm Q-Boy] (considered by some to be much better than their games). Several of their games were published in America by Color Dreams, Bunch Games, or occasionally American Video Entertainment. Their works include:
** ''Challenge of the Dragon'' (not to be confused with the just-as-bad Color Dreams game), a nearly-unplayable and possibly-[[Unwinnable]] ''[[Double Dragon]]'' clone.
** ''Jurassic Boy 2''. The only good point of this game is the funny intro. [[Porting Disaster|It got an even more brain-evaporating GameBoy port]].
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== Web Games ==
* [[Game Maker]]'s [http://www.yoyogames.com/ official website] has a buttload of crappy games.
** "[https://web.archive.org/web/20101222025506/http://www.yoyogames.com/games/108956 Dodge the Viruses]". The game only consists of the main character jumping around while dodging the viruses bouncing around. The creator believes that all criticism is "horrible comments".
** "[https://web.archive.org/web/20100202035328/http://www.yoyogames.com/games/110044 Smiley 2__Save the World]". The game has absolutely no challenge whatsoever. It has a smiley face going back and forth, and another one controlled by the player. If the player hits the space. The game displays "[[Title Drop|Smiley save the world]]".
** Sturgeon's Law is taken [[Up to Eleven|over the top]] on the YoYo Games archive. Going by the length of the "featured games" list, less than 1% of games are considered [[So Cool Its Awesome]] by the ''Game Maker'' staff — or at least awesome enough that drawing attention to them is a good thing. Anything considered So Bad It's Horrible against this backdrop is...well, you get the idea.
*** Just to give you an idea of the scale involved, YoYo Games has ~400 featured games, taken from a library of '''116,000''' games.
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* "[http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=9955 Wow]" (more popularly known by its filename, wow.wad) is a 1999 ''[[Doom]]'' level consisting of a square room with a hanging body, a [[BFG|BFG 9000]] with ammo, a Cyberdemon in a deep pit...and nothing else. Oh, and the walls of the pit have no textures, resulting in graphical glitches. It's certainly one of the most pointless levels for any game, but making it one of the [http://www.doomworld.com/10years/bestwads/infamous.php Top 10 Infamous Wads] is the author's passing it off as a mission to hunt and kill a wounded Cyberdemon trapped in an "illusio-pit". That's [[Painting the Fourth Wall]] an ugly color. Can be viewed [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A4rSgFaLbk here.]
** The word "illusio-pit" comes from the use of untextured pits having fake floors drawn over them, which makes them useful for illusions simulating deep water (an area of water surrounding an illusio-pit will make the water seem to stretch over the pit, making things look like they are submerged in the water) or monsters rising up out of the ground. Of course, wow.wad's use of the "illusio-pit" seems more a consequence of the author not knowing how to apply upper and lower textures.
* "[http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?id=16760 Doomguy's Warzone] is not to be confused with something with the same name that came out years earlier. It is essentially a gameplay mod with far too many unnecessary difficulty modes, too many overpowered custom weapons, too many [[Goddamned Bats|ungodly annoying]] or [[Demonic Spiders|lethally-aggravating custom enemies]] amongst the randomly-generated roster, and almost [[AL Lof]] the resources are pretty much plagiarised...not to mention, there are a [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|ton of custom items]] that either [[Game Breaker|make things too easy]] or are [[Joke Item|utterly useless]]. [[It Got Worse|On top of all this]], the author, Doomguy 2000, [[What an Idiot!|continues to]] [[Beyond the Impossible|pimp the hell out of his disasterpiece]]; [[Wall Banger
=== [[
* Christian Weston Chandler (better known for the creation of ''[[Sonichu]]''; see the [[So Bad It's Horrible/
** "Autism Tutorial". It's a cutscene with no gameplay proper, but the content's the real problem — it starts out as the basics about Autism, taken from [[That Other Wiki]]. Not halfway through, it's a schizophrenic, self-important, rambling [[Author Tract]] that has nothing to do with Autism, yet somehow exhibits every negative stereotype associated with it, culminating in a "satirical" talk show segment where the host beats up Hans Asperger for no other reason than that he ''made Chris feel less special''. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1mbTyKiqF8 Here] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn0Ef0PvLZU it] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I-zOv41b80 is,] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epV54L7JWUA in] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b9n1ms-pno just] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yspuz_ZNIx0 seven] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqlr2zBgmtk parts.]
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* "[[Raruto]] Full Game", a game based on a Spanish ''[[Naruto]]'' [[Affectionate Parody|parody comic]] (which is WAY better than the game) whose whole roster comprises poorly-coded Kung Fu Man edits. The stages available in-game are all stolen. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUFNWhDjMug Here's a peek at said horrid characters getting beaten up.] By far, funnier than the "full game" itself.
* There are some characters referred in the ''MUGEN'' community as "Retarded Characters", all considered such because of horrible controls, badly-coded features, or deplorable spritework. In some cases, the spritework may be good but the characters are [[Dolled-Up Installment|blatant ripoffs of existing characters]], also known as "Spriteswaps". For example, Warner's Vampire Burns (a spriteswap of an already-horrible Jedah by Kong) and the extremely-infamous Peter Griffin by Actarus ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwuNEM2dFik no words needed]).
* Spriteswaps in general tend to be pretty awful. Given the fact that the underlying code is meant for a different character, hilarity is bound to ensue even if no modifications are made. [http://randomselect.smeenet.org/ddm/trunks.html Of course, some creators have even done sprite swaps of their own characters.]{{Dead link}}
* For more examples of Retarded Characters, [http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=retarded+mugen&search_type= just look at what YouTube drops on results on retarded character beatdowns.]
* One particularly awful character creator is GooGoo64. He combines the horrible-to-the-point-of-gamebreaking coding of Kong or Ainotenshi with the spriting styles of some of RyouWin's earlier ''[[Marvel vs. Capcom 2]]'' characters (essentially, using a capture card to get footage and then manipulating it into sprites for the character). His characters have unblockable moves, moves that render the character invincible while using them, one-hit kills, and various other problems. But one that stands out even among this crowd of miserable failure is his version of Gold Lightan from ''[[Tatsunoko vs. Capcom]]'', which turns out to be a spriteswap of an MvC-style Ryu; to make it worse, while the character is open-source, he didn't appear to have given credit to the original creator, or even changed the file names.
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* ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da3uZsohdwg Mario's in Terror]''. Probably a troll game to be honest, it's a glitched, near unplayable mess that plagiarises ''Brutal Mario'' (first and fifth level), ''Kaizo Mario'' (second level) and the original game (one of the others).
* ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf2QSA-iPoU SMB Crossover]'' ([[Not to Be Confused With]] the [[Super Mario Bros Crossover|popular and well-done Flash game]]). It's entirely level remakes based on better games, and horrendously done, massively cut off and glitched remakes to boot (the Yoshi's Island level has to be seen to be believed).
* ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20120407192353/http://www7.atpages.jp/smw/view.cgi/1322637326/ Mario Super Star]''. No video to show it, but it's a terrible game with many... unusual problems. Namely, a level with entirely glitched graphics to the point of unplayableness, levels without any enemies, flat levels, levels which are nearly the exact same as the originals (except you're invisible), massive slow down, cut off, and an [[Unwinnable By Mistake|unwinnable final boss]] with no weaknesses or attacks. The biggest problem? Unlike most games listed here, which are usually only a few levels long, this game lasts for nine worlds.. You will lose the will to live if you try to play the entire thing.
** Its sequel of kinds, [[SMW 3]] New Levels and Retro Levels is a bit better, but not much. The first five or so levels have zero challenge whatsoever and often no enemies or sprites in them, but it really, really starts to fall apart in 'level' 8. That level is literally just the SMW Bowser fight. Then the next one is just the first level in [[Super Mario World (video game)|Super Mario World]], except you're permanently invincible, the next is another unedited SMW Bowser fight, except you're forced to be small, and while one final level is sort of new, the final real one is a completely unedited SMW level. It's just so lazy all round, and it's the author's fourth game in a row which could be classified as at least [[So Bad It's Good]]. It can be found [http://www7.atpages.jp/smw/view.cgi/1334400221/ here]{{Dead link}}
* ''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quWuOUx7QIQ Hammer Brother]''. A trainwreck in every possible way, the game has horrendous (read, [[Sonichu]] level) graphics, awful out of tune music (some of which sounds worse than Crazy Bus), broken level design (including unbeatable bosses) and an absolutely ridiculous amount of stolen content. Indeed, it's so bad that ROM hack reviewer levelengine gave the game a score of -1% and branded it one of the worst ROM hacks he'd ever played.
** Its predecessor, ''Super Mario Kollision'' (misspelling intentional) isn't much better. The bosses are now beatable, but the music is horrific, the graphics are poor, the level design quality still gets abysmal towards the endgame and the amout of plagiarism is ten times higher than in Hammer Brother! Seriously, the whole last world is copied wholesale from parts of Brutal Mario, except at a level that would make The Asylum proud.
** There's also a ''Super Mario Kollision 2'', which somehow steals even more content than the above two put together.
== Hardware ==
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** Even more, because of its design, a lot of games either [[Unwinnable by Design|couldn't be played or couldn't be beaten]]! Playing games from the 32X, Sega CD, and the Master System-enabling Power Base Converter forced you to mod it or use third-party devices... and the first ''X-Men'' game for the Genesis is unwinnable because there's no reset button! <ref>One [[Guide Dang It]] puzzle at the end requires you to reset the game in order to reach the final level.</ref>
* The '''Ouya''' console, which was released in 2013, promised much to gamers, hackers and indie developers alike. The Android-powered console also gained much publicity due to being crowdfunded via [[Kickstarter]]. Reality soon set in however, when it became apparent that the Ouya simply could not meet its hyped expectations, thanks to technical issues, limited support and the fact that even its touted capability of running retro emulators proved to be insufficient. Combined with the lack of any semblance of profitability, [http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/03/07/hit-kickstarter-video-game-console-ouya-is-basically-dead/#49781cce178d the Ouya as a hardware console went the way of the dodo by 2014]. Although a shade of it continues to exist as a software platform, it's since become a poster child for ambition failing to meet reality.
* The '''[[Pippin (useful notes)|Pippin]]''', released in 1996 as a partnership between Apple Computer (yes, ''[[Apple Macintosh|that one]]'') and Bandai, was an unusual cross between a computer and a console, created with the intent of having a cheaper computer play on your TV screen. Instead, the sticker price was $599 USD at the time of launch, the very same price the [[
* The ''notoriously'' bad [[Shoddy Knockoff Product|Shoddy Knockoff]] systems continue to be churned out by an unnamed company affectionately dubbed as simply '''"Popstation"'''. Why are they so bad? They're glorified [[Game and Watch|Game And Watches]] masquerading as high-end electronics. The only good thing out of them have been the reviews by [[Stuart Ashen|Dr. Stuart Ashen]].
* Mattel and PAX's '''Power Glove''', a [[Nintendo Entertainment System]] accessory made famous by its appearance in ''[[The Wizard (film)]]'', would theoretically allow the player to the control the game using one hand. It was meant to be a [[Revenue Enhancing Devices|Revenue-Enhancing Device]], but ended up a barely-functional [[Promotional Powerless Piece of Garbage]]. It cost more than an NES console, and was nearly unusable. There were only two games released with programming '''specifically''' for the Power Glove, although three others were planned — the infamous ''Bad Street Brawler'' and ''Super Glove Ball''. There was a method intended to make the Power Glove work with other games—but even then, it controlled at best like a drunk on a unicycle. To make matters worse, the only way these other games could be played was by punching in codes using a keypad to enter in the combination.
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* The '''[[Virtual Boy]]''' console was one of [[Nintendo]]'s most publicized failures. Originally intended as a ground-breaking 3D game system, the project was spearheaded by [[Gunpei Yokoi]], creator of the [[Game Boy]], who was forced to get the system out as fast as he could, and it shows: The system couldn't handle color, so it stuck to a monochromatic, headache-inducing red-and-black display, which could even cause permanent eye damage if played too long. The system was bulky and had to be propped up on a table for you to play it, and only the player could see the games being played, meaning multiplayer on the same system was impossible (while the system had a port for a link cable, the system was discontinued before the cable could even be released). Only 22 games were ever released for the system, without any standout titles that took advantage of the 3D effect in a significant way, such as first-person shooters. While some of the games might not have been half-bad, such as ''[[Wario Land]]'', there was no reason for them to be on [[Virtual Boy]] to begin with, and putting an incredibly addictive game like ''[[Tetris]]'' (two separate versions of it, no less) on a system that can cause permanent eye damage in long sessions is just puzzling. Nintendo themselves [[Old Shame|don't like to speak about this system]], to the point where they even edited out a reference to it in the English version of ''[[Super Smash Bros.]] Melee''.
* For something that's somehow even worse then the [[Virtual Boy]], try the VictorMax '''Virtual Reality Stuntmaster'''. It has a design that's somewhat better with an output that's at least better than the Virtual Boy, but getting it to work is simply cryptic! The box says that it works for the SNES & the Sega Genesis, but it doesn't hold any real cable for the thing to work for the SNES at all (At least to the current knowledge shown so far.), and it can only work in the oldest version of the Sega Genesis. It doesn't contain any instructions, but it ''does'' have an odd joke resume (its hero includes [[The Bible|The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse]]) and parts of the Stuntmaster that doesn't make sense at all! Connecting it to the Sega Genesis creates a mess of wires (when it already holds a mess of wires to begin with). While it does have more colors then the Virtual Boy, playing it is barely any better than doing it with the [[Sega Game Gear]]! [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy373DpKGAE James Rolfe & his friend Mike Matei] take a look at it, and James thinks that the [[Virtual Boy]] is like God when compared to what VictorMax did.
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