Tankichi said:
Sorry to go off topic for a minute, but I've noticed since the AVGN has gotten popular (swearing is funny kids!) more and more people have said E.T. based on the fact that the Nerd said so.
*snip giganto "E.T. wasn't so bad" rant*
You're committing the same sin here in regards to AVGN that you are accusing other folks of doing with E.T.
The fact that pinning the collapse of pre-Nintendo era home-video-gaming on E.T. is only just BARELY an exaggeration should speak to the validity of the claims that it is an honest to god candidate for "worst game ever." It just epitomized everything that was wrong with the home video game market. Executives actually made more E.T. carts than there were Atari systems to play them on! Why? Because they wanted/expected households with more than 1 kid to buy a copy for each kid. Thought processes like that tend to put it right up there with all time classic blunders like, "John Carmack will make you hit *****" or "never start a land war in Asia."
For me, I really love the meta-topic of this topic. Defining what "worst game" means. Financially? Gameplay-wise? Per system? Hype vs Delivery? The amorphous "overall?" For pretty much any valid category E.T. is a contender. This game is of such amazing level of fail it is creating it's own legend that logic and rational thought cannot hold back. Whispered legends of landfills full to the brim with unsold copies, sealed and paved with concrete fill the ears of "gamers."
For those of you that throw 2600 Pac man out there I can only say that it was beloved at the time. I played E.T. when it was released (I am old) and I remember very quickly swapping it out for ANYTHING else on 2600, Pac Man for sure! Ms. Pac Man was better though.
Zelda II? "Worst game ever made?" PFF. It was at least, AT THE VERY LEAST, playable. And I don't mean that as a level of quality "playable" I mean it is a fully functional game with internal logic and no need to have someone explain basic gameplay to you. Something like E.T. you literally have to read a manual and even then... enjoy falling in pits while trying to hover/fly out of them over and over, trying to figure out the controls or wonder why Elliot won't show up to save you at random when you try to use your "reeses pieces" or whatever they were. Saying Zelda II is the worst is saying you would rather play ANYTHING else instead of Zelda II, let that sink in for a bit. ANYTHING.
Subjective topic is subjective, I understand that now more than ever. When I was a younger man I worked on a PS2/Xbox/Pc title called "25 to Life." Everyone that worked on developing that game suffered. Let me tell you. Hard core QA testers that play games all day then go home and play games to relax would actually whine and cringe when being rotated back onto that title. Unanimous consent around the office was that this game was going to be one of the "all time great failures." The most optimistic appraisal we could come up with was that it would maybe sucker punch some folks with it's soundtrack and marketing but that would only lead to an even greater hate for those that thought they would like it. Then it came out, and sold something like 200,000 copies per platform. It got low 7's and developed a small cult following and eventually sold through EVERY copy ever printed.
If you were to go back to my young self and ask him if TTL was a contender for "worst game ever made" I would have given you a resounding, "YES!" But now... now I truly know what it means when people say, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
I think it's interesting to compare this topic with "worst movie" or "MST3K/Rifftrax" style threads. People will try and say something like "The Phantom Menace" is the worst movie ever. There is simply no way this can be true. Most modern movies or block buster style titles are at least watchable. You may not like them or enjoy them but they aren't functionally broken on a basic level. Unlike some MST3K titles where the movie may actually be rendered unwatchable at some points due to poor lighting, filming, framing, sound work, whatever. Some technical flaw that literally undoes the movie.
One argument I often think of against such a PoV would be, "At what point does a technical flaw cause a movie to literally STOP being a movie?" If, in "Hercules Against the Moon Men" the movie becomes actually unwatchable for 10 or so minutes during the "sand storm" segment does it even qualify as a movie anymore, at least for those 10 minutes? At one point the movie "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank" devolves into Discovery Channel type stock footage of monkeys frolicking with random, stupid, voice over by Raul Julia, that's not a movie that's a nature documentary! Or the Hamlet episode for just plain dreary, dark, hard to hear, hard to look at, hard to understand, hard to sit through pain!
Back on topic of games though, perhaps not a contender for worst EVAR but maybe for "worst on platform" would be the N64 Southpark game. A doom style shooter it's one of the only games that I RENTED, hoping it would be good mind you, that I thought, "Holy shit, thank god I only RENTED this game." It nearly ruined a party with it's suckatude and hope-dashing-crapulence. It had all the categories covered. Poor framerate and visuals making it nigh-uplayable. Good hype and marketing dashing our hopes. I doubt very much it sold very well as nobody I knew owned it, at least. Pretty much a contender all around.
