List of video games notable for negative reception

Games are considered to be "the worst ever" for various reasons, including exceptionally poor graphics or music, a clichéd or stereotypical premise and storyline, a poor user interface, or what is perceived to be poor gameplay. More generally, and despite the natural differences in players tastes and tolerances, a game attracting the "worst game ever" comment is usually failing in being enjoyable for most players.

Concept and criticism usually apply only to games commercially released and marketed by major distributors and targeted at well-known gaming systems such as personal computers, consoles and arcade machines, while shareware, freeware, public domain and amateur games are usually not exposed to much criticism.

Criticism of the concept

The concept of "worst video games ever" is somewhat controversial because, unlike films, music or other forms of art and intellectual work, there is no widely accepted and accredited institution or individuals specifically trained for judging video games. There are usually few professionally employed critics, estimators, study institutes, or similar entities and no universally accepted and systematic video game reviewing method.

Most reviews of a specific game, even those by specialized magazines or websites, are done by people who are not, in any way, officially recognized video game critics, as such a professional qualification does not yet exist, and there is a non-trivial component of personal views, bias or mere inexperience or ignorance in many games reviews. Nevertheless, those reviews are usually accepted by the gaming community as guidelines, and have the power of affecting the sales or just the fame of a game.

Some games have a well-documented failure or success history, including traditional media coverage (such as the case of many failed Atari 2600 titles), while the fates of lesser or more obscure titles usually lay in the hands of a few reviewers, or even a single reviewer.

Categories of "worst ever" games

Any game which, at least once in its existence, has been considered as being "the worst ever" or merely a "bad" game, usually falls under a precise category of reasons that made it gain such a reputation.

Purely technical criteria

Technical criteria such as graphics and sound are the most variable with the passing of time and evolution of technology, as they are strongly tied to the game system's hardware or just to the trend of a particular review time, and are particularly restrictive for what regards commercial games. For example, a modern game using 8-bit-quality graphics or an older 3D graphic engine is very likely going to be labelled as poor for its time by most reviewers, putting it on par with an Atari 2600 title.

After the novelty of 3D has begun to wear off, 2D graphics of great quality are becoming more and more recognized as an equally valid form of videogaming aesthetics. However, there are some important exceptions to the above rule, where numbers are more important than graphics, certain tactically accurate wargames where symbols are used instead of graphical units or roguelikes which usually sport ASCII or minimal tile based graphics (although such games tend to be of independent, freeware, shareware or public domain origin rather than being mainstream, especially after the mid 1990s).

Games for handheld systems such as the Sony PSP are held to a lesser standard as these units entail a trade of technical capability for necessary traits such as significantly reduced physical size and power consumption, although 3D graphics and thousands (or millions) of colors have become commonplace even on portable systems after the year 2000. Many people will argue that games with outdated engines can still be fun, and that as long as a game is entertaining it fullfills its purpose regardless of the graphical appearance of the game, but it is very possible for graphics to limit a game's playability if the player cannot tell what he is looking at (which usually occurs when a company tries to do more than a particular platform can handle)

Technical issues can also arise with a game's engine when rushed programming or a lack of testing causes a game to be released incomplete. Glitches in gameplay are a common problem with gaming, and are increasing as games become more complex to program (with more lines of code there is a higher chance of error) but some games are so glitched that they become nearly unplayable.

Genre and platform criteria

Some game genres fade in and out of popularity, or are not particularly welcome by reviewers on a particular gaming system. For example, 2D shooters or platform games are considered as "out of fashion", at least regarding the gaming industry and the latest gaming hardware, and thus any such new release by a major manufacturer, even in some cases for a modern handheld system, would probably bias most professional reviewers negatively merely on the basis of being a 2D shooter or platform game. Similarly, PC ports of games or genres considered more appropriate to game consoles often receive negative reviews, and most reviewers consider good console ports to be the exception rather than the rule.

Non-technical design and concept criteria

There are also a class of games that, while not technically challenged or deficient, were ridiculed for a secondary feature or concept in their design, such as being too unoriginal, too bizarre or simply incomprehensible. These games were effectively condemned to the "worst games ever" class without really being unplayable or flawed.

"Obscure" games

A significant number of video games fall into the "obscure" category. These are games that never attracted much attention at the time of their appearance, and very often resurfaced because of the "attentions" of mostly cynical or humorous reviews, especially of emulated console or arcade games.

Often, a kind of "worst ever" game has no real technical flaws, but rather is unoriginal, has unappealing gameplay, or simply was "obscure" in the sense of "rare."

Interest among players

Not all games receiving the "worst game ever" title were commercial failures or clamorous flops, and with the evolution of the Internet, emulators, and the relative ease of finding playable versions of these games online, many of these "worst games ever" received unprecedented levels of attention by players and collectors, not unlike the way some films fans are interested in what are considered to be The worst films ever by the "So bad they're good" principle, meaning they are so terrible, it is humorous.

In another case, often "worse ever" is frequently due more to the game failing to live up to high expectations, rather than based strictly on objective evaluation. It does not help that the game is heavily hyped early in conception; the press frequently turns negative as development problems and delays surface, leading to a massive backlash when the game is released.

List of specific video games considered to be the worst ever

A

• Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis (2003, GameCube/Xbox) This game inspired the Golden Mullet Awards on G4's X-Play (an award it gives out for the worst games to come out that year, the name deriving from the golden locks of the title character), and X-Play also named it the worst GameCube game ever. The Golden Mullet Awards can be considered as a video game version of the Razzies given out to the worst movies of the year.

B

• Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing (2003, PC): This game has a truck-racing premise but features nonexistent collision detection (even on bridges), trucks that accelerate infinitely in reverse, stopping as soon as the down arrow key is released, players being able to go up hills at a 90-degree angle, a computer controlled player that does not move, and a complete lack of a boundary preventing the truck from leaving the map were some of the many reasons why this game is considered "massively flawed." GameSpot gave the game a 1.0 out of 10.0, the lowest score ever given by the review site, and described it as "one of the most atrocious games ever published." X-Play, a game reviewing TV show on G4TV, called this "hands-down, this is the worst video game to ever be released" and was unable to give it a rating because the TV program's rating scale does not have a zero. This negative fame has spawned dedicated fans on several gaming forums. As of current, it has a 4% rating on Game Rankings, making it their lowest-rated game. It also has an average score of 8 out of a possible 100 at Metacritic, making it the worst-reviewed game ever on that site.

• Bokosuka Wars (1985, NES) is a simplistic strategy game, where the player controls the movements of a ninja warrior and his army in a randomly generated sparse "maze world," populated by random moving enemies. The game features perhaps the worst scrolling and greatest control lag ever seen in a NES game, minimal graphics and completely unintuitive gameplay. The player has very little control over the outcome of his encounters with enemy characters; instead, the game enters a non-interactive "battle mode" with random outcome each time the player or one of his armies collides with an enemy.

• Bubsy 3D (1996, PlayStation) Bubsy 3D was panned by critics and fans alike due to its confusing control schemes and poor camera angles. It was featured on Seanbaby's EGM Crapstravaganza: The 20 Worst Games of All Time list.One of videoGaiden's "Warnings from history".

C

• Charlie's Angels (2003, Nintendo Gamecube (North America) PlayStation 2 (other regions) was ranked #5 on Nintendo Power's 5 Worst Games Ever list saying, "A game based on a movie based on a TV show – we all know how this one ends."

D

• Deadly Towers (1987, NES) is an action-adventure game where the protagonist ventures through a maze-like castle. Deadly Towers was ranked #1 on Seanbaby's list of the 20 worst games for the NES.

• Drake of the 99 Dragons (more commonly known as simply Drake; 2003, Xbox, PC) is an action game with a comic book style to it. It was universally panned by critics, and GameSpot described it as "one of the most atrociously unplayable games to come along in quite some time." The controls in particular have come under criticism for "not working".

E

• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982, Atari 2600), a game based on the film E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial, was released for the Atari 2600 in 1982. In a time when the market was being flooded with dozens upon dozens of lackluster games, this game is cited as being a major cause of the Video Game Crash of 1983. Atari, expecting that the E.T. franchise and Christmas season would boost sales, produced twelve million copies of the game (even though there were only ten million Atari 2600 consoles in existence). The game itself was a disaster, with poor controls and shoddy gameplay, a fact owed to its hasty development in just five weeks, in an attempt to meet the anticipated Christmas rush. Sales were dismal and most copies went unsold. The company then (secretly) buried the remainder of the cartridges in a landfill site near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The fiasco cost Atari millions of dollars and contributed to the subsequent collapse of the company.

K

• Kabuki Warriors (2001, Xbox) was a launch title for the Xbox that was a critical and commercial flop. GameSpot described it as "one of the worst games to be released this year or any year, on the Xbox or any other platform", and it is the only game ever to receive a 1 / 10 score from Edge.

R

• Revolution X (multiplatform, 1994) was, in its original form, a bitmap-based arcade light gun shooting game similar to Beast Busters or Terminator 2: Judgment Day featuring the rock music band Aerosmith. The game was converted for a small number of systems without great success. Due to its paucity of enemies and animation and poorly-digitized, looping music, Electronics Gaming Monthly writer Seanbaby described the SNES port of this game as "worst second of your life repeated forever" and "biblically horrific".

S

• Shaq Fu (1994, multiplatform) was described by game review site Netjak as the worst fighting game ever due to its slow gameplay, horrible character agility, and was often seen as a vain marketing vehicle for professional basketball player Shaquille O'Neal.

• Spawn: The Eternal (1997, PlayStation) was described by IGN as "one of the worst games ever" and a disappointing game that sullies the fine Spawn name."

• Superman 64 (1999, Nintendo 64). Reasons for this include the poor graphics, absurd storyline and the gameplay itself, which disappointed many fans of Superman. Electronic Gaming Monthly writer Seanbaby wrote, "Superman looks a lot like a flying log in panties, and the entire world is covered in a dull green fog".

Z

• Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon (1993, CD-i) is widely considered to be the worst Zelda game ever created. As part of the termination of a contract from Nintendo, Philips gained the license to produce three Zelda games (Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda's Adventure along with Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon). All three received overwhelmingly negative feedback and are referred to in some circles as the "Unholy Triforce." They were notorious for bad animation, scripting, and voice acting, but The Wand of Gamelon was roundly condemned by all Zelda fans and is #6 on EGM's 20 worst games list. Filter also ranked it #1 on its "Top 10 Worst Games of All Time" list.

See also

• List of controversial games
• List of commercial failures in computer and video gaming
• Computer and video games that have been considered the greatest ever

External links

• GameSpy's 10 top worst games of all time
• Worst Games Ever Part One
• Worst Games Ever Part Two
• Seanbaby's EGM'S Crapstravaganza 20 top worst games of all time

Note: not all of the reviewed games are considered "bad" by the reviewer; most reviews require careful reading to understand, and some are deliberately hilarious or exaggerated.