A question about old, 'bad' games

[Shoggoth2588]

So here I sit in anticipation of the Fed-Ex man or woman who will, in the next few days, be bringing me my very own copy of Shaq-Fu for the Super Nintendo. I've been rebuilding my Super Nintendo collection for about 4 or 5 months now, picking up a game or two when I can afford to and I was excited to find the infamous Shaq-Fu online for a single penny.

In my anticipation, I watched an older episode of the AVGN. More specifically, the one where he reviews Shaq-Fu (I dunno if it was the original...it was the second half of the Christmas Carol episode) ANYWAY, during the review, the AVGN mentions that there used to be (or rather is) a website dedicated to finding and destroying every single Shaq-Fu cartridge.

This isn't the first I've heard of a bad game from a bygone era being hunted and destroyed or, downright exiled. Cheetamen 2 and, E.T. for the Atari are two of the more famous cases of games being destroyed or, hidden because of how horrible they are.

So, the point (I'll through up the TL,DR thing here too)

What games have you heard of or played that were so bad, so terrible, that you would hunt down and destroy EVERY copy of that game? Do you think that really bad games, horrible games should be destroyed? Have you ever snapped a disc in half or, thrown away a cartridge? And one way or another, why?

I've never destroyed a game and I wouldn't if I had the chance to. Hell, I picked up Shaq-Fu that should tell you how tolerant I am of bad games! I've even got a dust cover waiting for it when it gets here to keep it from damage.

 

[Ordinaryundone]

I honestly didn't think Shaq-fu was THAT bad. I mean, its a bad game, but its not offensive. Its just bad. I've actually played worse fighters. The Clayfighter series, for instance.

If I had to choose one....that Aerosmith light gun game. Revolution X, I think? Boy that game was bad.

 

[Ordinaryundone]

I honestly didn't think Shaq-fu was THAT bad. I mean, its a bad game, but its not offensive. Its just bad. I've actually played worse fighters. The Clayfighter series, for instance.

If I had to choose one....that Aerosmith light gun game. Revolution X, I think? Boy that game was bad.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

If I had to choose one....that Aerosmith light gun game. Revolution X, I think? Boy that game was bad.

Was there a home-version of the Aerosmith shooter? I remember playing it at a local pizza-place and liking it but I can see how a home version would be cringe worthy.

edit: I've watched a short LP of the SNES version of Revolution X and plan on watching the PSX version next. The SNES version looks laughable.

...

What the fuck!? The Playstation one is worse than the SNES one! I was only able to find gameplay of the amazon level but that was more than enough for me.

 

[Savagezion]

I thought this was going to be a thread about nostalgia and how it steers us wrong. So, I literally laughed out loud when I read "Shaq-Fu" and thought "Oh, you mean actual bad games." Yeah, that game was kind of like the Anna Nicole show; just plain embarrassing that someone out there thought that was a good idea.

What games have you heard of or played that were so bad, so terrible, that you would hunt down and destroy EVERY copy of that game? Do you think that really bad games, horrible games should be destroyed? Have you ever snapped a disc in half or, thrown away a cartridge? And one way or another, why?

I wouldn't ever hunt down and destroy every copy of any game nor do I think they should be destroyed. (The economy will take care of that anyway.) I did snap a copy of Diablo 2 in half but the disc no longer worked and I wanted to see how hard it would be. (They got a bit more flex than I thought.) I also pitched a SNES cartridge that had some weird syrup or goo on it that I didn't want to clean off. I think it was like Monopoly or something.

Get Joe & Mac 2 on the SNES if you can. Joe and Mac seems to have been fairly popular and 2 wasn't but I always thought 2 was way better than 1. 2 is more of a remake than a sequel and I think a lot of people held that against them. Awesome game though.

P.S. I loved the first Clayfighter

 

[Broderick]

If I had to choose one....that Aerosmith light gun game. Revolution X, I think? Boy that game was bad.

Was there a home-version of the Aerosmith shooter? I remember playing it at a local pizza-place and liking it but I can see how a home version would be cringe worthy.

Reading this kinda made me laugh, because yes there is a home version for the sega saturn, and I own it =0, i remember actually liking it when I was younger. As for the game I would destroy, I think it would have to be "Custer's revenge", that game has nothing that makes it worth getting, even back in the day it was first made. The content is cringe worthy, gameplay (or lack thereof) is bad.

 

[Dogstile]

...Why would you destroy every single copy of a game? No matter how bad it is, destroying every copy seems pointless

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Superman 64 would be the obvious choice. Although Firebird released a pack of games called "Don't Buy This".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Buy_This but they were only £2.50

(And probably not as bad as JCB Digger)

Haven't played it but...

DAIKATANA!

It seems to equal ET in sheer hate.

Oh god this. I played it once and literally couldn't be arsed to play it again...let me find a Let's Play.


It IS that bad.

Edit: Oh sorry...that was the 10 minute cut scene at the start.

Here's the actual game(after 2 minutes more cut-scenes):

 

[LadyTiamat]

...Why would you destroy every single copy of a game? No matter how bad it is, destroying every copy seems pointless

Because it will be on the web in some digital form, forever there to haunt us.....

 

[Shoggoth2588]

-snip-

Reading this kinda made me laugh, because yes there is a home version for the sega saturn, and I own it =0, i remember actually liking it when I was younger. As for the game I would destroy, I think it would have to be "Custer's revenge", that game has nothing that makes it worth getting, even back in the day it was first made. The content is cringe worthy, gameplay (or lack thereof) is bad.

It looks like the Sega version is the closest to the arcade one. I don't know how the PSX one got it so horribly wrong though! All three versions look hard as hell though.

Has anyone here tried the Justice League game Blizzard put out on the SNES? Justice League...something or another. I haven't heard anything too bad about it other than the fact that it's a clone of Street Fighter 2.

 

[Fishyash]

This is my personal 'must destroy' one.

Horrible game. I doubt the cartoon was any good too.

 

[evilneko]

EDIT: Found this, the OP might find it interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_notable_for_negative_reception

Holy shit I saw a copy of Extreme Paintbrawl at Half Price Books just yesterday. I had no idea it was a piece of gaming history.

 

[krazykidd]

Superman 64 , should be hunted down , burned and the creators should be hunted and burned.

 

[Mandalore_15]

I think I would probably destroy every copy of every football management game ever made. I don't care which one in particular.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

EDIT: Found this, the OP might find it interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_notable_for_negative_reception

Anyway, yeah. Games so bad they were thrown out... Daikatana, Shaq-Fu, ET, Super Man, stuff that's all been mentioned before. I have heard of a game called Drake of the 99 Dragons that got "worst game on the Xbox" on something a while back. And there was a really bad Aquaman game on the Xbox, too.

Who the hell wants to play as Aquaman, anyway?

That is an interesting list! Thanks for the link. As for Aquaman, I find it very hard to believe that it could be made, completed and sold whereas Flash gets cancelled outright.

I've actually seen copies of Aquaman for sale at a local Play-N-Trade...I've been curious about it and after having read the wiki about it, I think I'll pick it up (price pending) just to say I've tried it and to ensure I get one before it gets stupid hard to find.

 

[xvbones]

Battletoads.

Because fuck the jetski level.

 

[theevilgenius60]

I'm going to have to go with Super Pitfall. That game sucked and was old-game-hard. Pitfall, it's predecessor, was hard but also a hell of a game. Super, on the other hand, was a POS that made my childhood worse for being in it.

 

[xvbones]

Haven't played it but...

DAIKATANA!

It seems to equal ET in sheer hate.

http://lparchive.org/Daikatana/

Full runthrough with a running commentary, if you're interested.

It was not a good game, but it also wasn't the hellish nightmare all the hate paints it as.

The hate for Daikatana is pretty much entirely hate for John Romero, specifically for the ad you quoted and the attitude behind it. Seriously, that right there is a seriously ballsy ad: it does not contain any information about the game beyond its title, not a single image, nothing but John Romero promising to deliver a game that would take you forcefully from behind with its teeth clamped onto your neck.

Then it got delayed, then it got delayed again, and then there was a delay, and then when it finally released its first level was perhaps the single worst level in the history of FPS; a vomitous nightmare of putrescent graphics and small, poisonous, fast-moving demon frogs and flies coupled with a story ripped straight from the doodles on a bored 12-year-old's notebook.

The game actually does get better as it goes on, reaching and remaining at mediocrity by about its midpoint, but nobody gets that far.

Critics made John Romero their ***** and he became and remains a laughingstock of the game community.

The end!

 

[Shoggoth2588]

http://lparchive.org/Daikatana/

Full runthrough with a running commentary, if you're interested.

It was not a good game, but it also wasn't the hellish nightmare all the hate paints it as.

The hate for Daikatana is pretty much entirely hate for John Romero, specifically for the ad you quoted and the attitude behind it. Seriously, that right there is a seriously ballsy ad: it does not contain any information about the game beyond its title, not a single image, nothing but John Romero promising to deliver a game that would take you forcefully from behind with its teeth clamped onto your neck.

Then it got delayed, then it got delayed again, and then there was a delay, and then when it finally released its first level was perhaps the single worst level in the history of FPS; a vomitous nightmare of putrescent graphics and small, poisonous, fast-moving demon frogs and flies coupled with a story ripped straight from the doodles on a bored 12-year-old's notebook.

The game actually does get better as it goes on, reaching and remaining at mediocrity by about its midpoint, but nobody gets that far.

Critics made John Romero their ***** and he became and remains a laughingstock of the game community.

The end!

I've seen Game-Play for the N64 release. It doesn't look terrible to me. Hell, it looks better than Duke Nukem 64! I can understand the hate though. That won't stop me from picking it up when I can find it though.

 

[thiosk]

This is my personal 'must destroy' one.

Horrible game. I doubt the cartoon was any good too.

The cartoon was better than the new kids on the block animated series.

But not by much...