Did you ever play a terrible game when you were young, but remembering that you thought it was a good game?

[Borty The Bort]

I went back and found my old Xbox, and I played a game called Blinx 2. I remember loving the game to death, but playing it again I found the experience to be incredibly underwhelming. It was one of the first games I had ever played that had introduced me to the idea that just because a game wasn't a multiplayer shooter, it was still a fun game. At the time, at least. Now it's like I'm playing a bad Steam Greenlight game. Has anybody else ever had this happen to them?

 

[CaitSeith]

Not sure if you have heard of it, but I used to like a game called E.T.

 

[baddude1337]

Body Harvest for the N64, by DMA designs before they did GTA. absolutely loved the game as a kid. Went back to play it a few years ago.. Yeah, it's just awful. Even discounting it's age its a pretty bad game.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

Deus Ex. The first one. I loved it as a kid replayed it over and over on my PS2. I bught it for the PC a few years ago and ya I didn't like it as much.

 

[Igor-Rowan]

Don't you mean: "Have you played a game that was better in your memory?" There, same topic, fewer words.

I remember playing that isometric Sonic game at my friend's house and remember really liking it, sadly I bought that on the Virtual Console and it does not hold up.

Blues Brothers for the SNES, I actually thought that game was good.

When you're a kid, your standards aren't that high, but getting a good game should show you how bad the others are. But to this day I refuse to accept that anyone anywhere thought that this game was in any way acceptable:

Spoiler: Prepare your eyes

 

[Glongpre]

I remember playing Shaq Fu a lot at my friends house, and I think it was the genesis version.

I think I liked it more for the character designs and music though, because I remember not knowing how to do specials and just button mashing.

 

[Azure23]

I haven't gone back to it but apparently the popular consensus on Enter the Matrix is that it's terrible but I absolutely adored it when I was a young teen. The combination of slow motion gunplay and wall kicks had me entranced. I even went through the whole hacking mini game and unlocked all the load out drops in the main game and the multiplayer mode. Like every other kid in the 90's I thought the Matrix was radical and the way the game told a side story that dipped in and out of the movie narratives was really cool I thought.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

As in Blinx the timesweeping cat?? Noooo! Don't tell me that warm fuzzy memory was all tricks and deceit! He even had a damn time-hoover! And the water acted like water would in frozen time (well, as much as the xbox could handle i guess). I...I can't go back. The past is the past and it must stay vaguely hazy enough to mistake for positivity!

Umm, to wind back the clock some more (ooh accidental word linking!), probably Sonic Adventure 1. The pet chao garden was pretty cool, but i got a feeling the gameplay was not something that aged well. Goldeneye too. Since Perfect Dark was such a leap forward in comparison, it made goldeneye look a bit shamefully anemic.

 

[Rabish Bini]

Well, I haven't gone back to it, but I recently found out Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon for the Xbox is generally considered to be pretty terrible.

All I have is fond memories of it though, and now I'm scared to go back and shatter my illusion.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

A lot of 3rd party stuff from the SNES days... I don't think they're terrible but some of them overdid the difficulty. Like The Lion King.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Honestly not all of this is just fuzzy memories, as games have grown in graphics, gameplay, story, ect. many old games have just not been able to keep up. It's like a computer that was the most powerful 10 years ago, it's not bad, its just become outdated.

I played Chronos Trigger on the DS a year ago and despite me knowing that it's considered a really good and classic game, I just didn't like it. It wasn't a bad game, it was just outdated. The things that it did that were new an innovative have now become standard, the things that were bad about it because of technical and hardware limitations are no longer understandable if they were in a new game.

This isn't to say that there AREN'T games that are just outright bad when looking back, though I can't think of any off the top of my head in my own case.

 

[SmallHatLogan]

A couple of N64 fighting games. War Gods, which is essentially a Mortal Kombat 4 knock off with characters based on mythological figures. And Dark Rift, which is more Soul Edge-ish with a sci fi setting. Dark Rift is probably the better of the two but neither are all that good.

I remember playing that isometric Sonic game at my friend's house and remember really liking it, sadly I bought that on the Virtual Console and it does not hold up.

Labyrinth on the Game Gear or 3D Blast on the Genesis? I honestly though 3D Blast was decent (and the only 3D Sonic game I've enjoyed) and I have no nostalgia for it. Labyrinth was not so good.

I haven't gone back to it but apparently the popular consensus on Enter the Matrix is that it's terrible but I absolutely adored it when I was a young teen. The combination of slow motion gunplay and wall kicks had me entranced. I even went through the whole hacking mini game and unlocked all the load out drops in the main game and the multiplayer mode. Like every other kid in the 90's I thought the Matrix was radical and the way the game told a side story that dipped in and out of the movie narratives was really cool I thought.

I actually bought it a few months back for nostalgia reasons (don't remember how much I paid, less than ten dollars though). I didn't get very far, mainly due to the controls being shit. But what I did play was pretty underwhelming.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Oh, plenty.

Back in my Mega Drive days my standards were notably lower and I pretty much based my purchases (or rather, whined to my mom/grandma) on 'Do I know and like this IP?'. Also, the internet wasn't around yet and the I didn't even know there was such a thing as game magazines until late '94, so getting good information was scarce. So, I ended up with a bunch of crappy licensed games.

Although that sometimes did work out, like with Aladdin.

 

[Borty The Bort]

A couple of N64 fighting games. War Gods, which is essentially a Mortal Kombat 4 knock off with characters based on mythological figures. And Dark Rift, which is more Soul Edge-ish with a sci fi setting. Dark Rift is probably the better of the two but neither are all that good.

I remember playing that isometric Sonic game at my friend's house and remember really liking it, sadly I bought that on the Virtual Console and it does not hold up.

Labyrinth on the Game Gear or 3D Blast on the Genesis? I honestly though 3D Blast was decent (and the only 3D Sonic game I've enjoyed) and I have no nostalgia for it. Labyrinth was not so good.

I haven't gone back to it but apparently the popular consensus on Enter the Matrix is that it's terrible but I absolutely adored it when I was a young teen. The combination of slow motion gunplay and wall kicks had me entranced. I even went through the whole hacking mini game and unlocked all the load out drops in the main game and the multiplayer mode. Like every other kid in the 90's I thought the Matrix was radical and the way the game told a side story that dipped in and out of the movie narratives was really cool I thought.

I actually bought it a few months back for nostalgia reasons (don't remember how much I paid, less than ten dollars though). I didn't get very far, mainly due to the controls being shit. But what I did play was pretty underwhelming.

War Gods was pretty awesome. A shame it was pretty rough compared to MK, but it was still really fun. The hits sounded so brutal and the fatalities were more impressive than MK4's.

Also, idk if it's good or bad, but Road Rash 1&2 on Genesis were fun back then.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

Friday the 13th.

GOD I was obsessed with finishing that one and it was a bit jaw dropping to try it again now. NOt in a good way.

 

[BrawlMan]

(announcer title guy): The Bouncer! I don't know what it was, but my brother and I were obsessed with the game. More so me. We played hours in the multiplayer modes with our friends and each other. I played the crap out of the single-player, and thought most of critics were hating on the game for little to no reason. For example, X-Play (back then known as Extended Play) gave the game a 2/5. 11 year-old me knew the game wasn't perfect, but not a 2/5. I thought most reviewers were just being stingy assholes or did not know how to have fun. Not that it isn't true going by today's gaming journalism. I bought the game again back in 2010 from GameStop, and then I turned it back in two days later.

The graphics are still amazing; especially for a PS2 launch title, but the controls have aged horribly. What doesn't help was that I later learned that the Bouncer was supposed to have co-op by finding some of the old E3 trailers on YouTube. There was also destructible environments and weapons. For some dumb reason Squaresoft (before becoming SE) thought it was a good idea not to follow up on these ideas, completely eliminating any better gameplay potential the game had. The combat suffered for it by being more limited and not as diverse as it should have been. The fact that it was a glorified tech demo for FFX was the final nail in the coffin. The only thing I can say positive about it is that the soundtrack is amazing. Suddenly those mediocre or bad scores don't seem so false now.

 

[Glongpre]

Also, idk if it's good or bad, but Road Rash 1&2 on Genesis were fun back then.

Well, Road Rash 3 is still loads of fun

I have the stage themes engraved in my memory, haha.

 

[Lufia Erim]

Final fantasy Mystic quest.

The boss music was awsome, but apart from that the game was a linear PoS.

 

[Dalisclock]

I recently played the 2015 Kings Quest game and the number of references to other games in the series reminded me that a lot of the classic ones weren't that good.

Notably 5. It was my intro to the series, first on the NES and then the PC CD-ROM version. At the time I thought it was amazing. In retrospect all I can think about is how convoluted and arbitrary the difficulty is. In particular, there are so many bits where you can fuck yourself over and not know it until hours down the line, when you realize you have no way to keep from being killed because you didn't pick up a crucial item back at the beginning of the game.

 

[DeliveryGodNoah_v1legacy]

Quest 64

Would play it for hours just in the first town alone. I remember always getting to the first boss and always dying but I'd keep coming back to it. I think eventually I beat the guy with the wolf head, but I didn't get much further than that.

Played it only a couple years ago and have only realized how shallow its "RPG" mechanics were. I think ProJared explained it better than I ever could. Rock spell for damage, water spell to gain healing magic, repeat until you beat the game.

Driv3r, if only because when I went to my grandmother's house my uncle had his Xbox there and it was one of the games I could play. I actually played through the whole story back then, and when I tried it again recently I don't think it's the absolute worst game I've ever played, but it's certainly buggy and unpolished in several areas.