I've played a few games that stand out as truly, truly awful. Anyone ever played "To the Earth" for the NES? I rented "TMNT III: The Manhattan Project" and found this monstrosity in the case. Fucking. Sucked. It's a Zapper gun rail shooter that is so unbelievably unfair it should be outlawed. They hurl simply unbelievable amounts of crap at you at once and you have got to shoot it ALL. On top of that, if you accidentally (or intentionally, I suppose) shoot off the screen, YOU LOSE HEALTH. That's right, the game assumes that if you shot offscreen, you must be shooting through the hull of your own spaceship. Of course, that's what I wanted to do.
"Godzilla" for the NES was pretty awful, too. Mothera is weak as hell, but the problem is, he's the FUN character to play because Godzilla has to punch and kick his way through about ten thousand stalagmite barriers or buildings or some other blockade to make it through the level. And holy shit did they ever find a way to make punching a radio tower into dust BORING. Awful game.
I think the most awful game on my shit list goes to "Race Drivin'" for the SNES. This game SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKED. In case the title didn't give it away, it's a car racing game. The most outstanding thing about the game: it's ugly. It's really, really ugly. The graphics are like Star Fox, only really, really bad. Cars are made of about five low-resolution polygons with eye-stingingly bad colors. The track is just a horrid black polygonal smear on the screen, and generally, the graphics are about as low-frill as you can get. No real scenery to speak of, or anything like that. You could choose from three or four cars, and there was absolutely no difference between them. There were three tracks, and the third track was actually unfinished. You'd hit a ramp about halfway through the race and it was impossible to make the landing. You'd wreck, and the race was over.
That was one of the worst aspects of the game: you wreck once, and that's it. Game over. That wouldn't be so bad, I guess it's realistic, but it's so damn easy to wreck. In the first track, there's a loop-the-loop where, if you're driving with automatic gear-shifting, you'll never have the speed to clear the first loop. You'll fall off halfway through and wreck. You have to drive manual. That's fine, but the only way you'll ever figure this out is that you get so sick of totalling your car you drive manual. So why does the game even give you the option?
Finally, the game has an unforgivingly short timer. If you have absolutely MASTERED the game (and God help you if you're such a boring person you have nothing better to do than play the shittastic "Race Drivin'" enough to get good enough to call yourself a master), you'll still make the time-extention checkpoints with only a couple seconds to spare. Am I the only person who wonders why these checkpoints even exist outside of an arcade machine? I coughed up the money to play--or at least rent--the game, and if I'm driving like a shithead I'm not going to win, so why put me on a timer like that? It adds the bad kind of challenge to the game, because the time allotted is just so unforgiving. When I'm racing, I should be worried about the other drivers, not some arbitrary clock on my screen.
That rental cost me $3, and to this day I still want that money back.
