• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

The 100 worst games of all time (GamesRadar)

Honestly Silent Hill: Book of Memories and Yaiba are only on this because of franchise expectations. So really more dissapointing than actually bad.

Thats kind of the problem with a list like this, the actual 100 worst games are random shlock on mobile you've never even heard of.

I think Silent Hill: Book of Memories would have been much better received if it had been released soon after a high quality traditional Silent Hill game. It's the Metroid: Federation Force problem - even if the game is good at what's it's trying to do, the fanbase is upset that they aren't getting what they want.
 

mreddie

Member
I only know Big Rigs from the X-Play and AVGN reviews, It's that bad?

Shocked Shaq Fu isn't higher. And no Driv3r?
 

Dremark

Banned
Yeah I don't think it's quite the worst game ever, but I do think some defenders try to give it too much credit. It was a late gen release for the 2600 and if you look at some of the other games from that time like Pitfall and Yar's Revenge, it's pretty weak in comparison. Maybe not compared to some of the other earlier crap like Haunted House, but it's still bad. It's high-profile definitely enhanced it's reputation as crap through.

It's not great by any means but it's at least average if not slightly above average for the platform. Yars Revenge is probably the best game on the platform and games that were comparable to it and Pitfall were few and far between.
 

oneida

Cock Strain, Lifetime Warranty
eh.
misses lots of mid 90's "0 quality control" garbage in favor of recent games that are at worst just below mediocre.

but itll get clicks, so who cares
 

Camwi

Member
I only played 2 games on that list. Daikatana and Custer's Revenge. I think people hated Daikatana more because of the obnoxious ad campaign and it ended up being extremely average. Custer's Revenge is pretty childish and offensive though.

Mercenaries 2 should have been on there for sure.

Mercenaries 2 was the buggiest game I've ever played in my life, but it was still fun as hell.
 

Dremark

Banned
eh.
misses lots of mid 90's "0 quality control" garbage in favor of recent games that are at worst just below mediocre.

but itll get clicks, so who cares

That's pretty much all these lists. Recent below average quality games, older games that have bad reputations regardless of if the game is actually that bad.

I recall seeing one a month or two back that had Resistance 2 on it, I don't think even it's most hardcore detractors would say it's in the top 20 (or so) worst games of all time
 

Dr.Acula

Banned
E.T. being bad is hyperbole. It's perfectly fine considering the limitations of the 2600, and the gameplay is manageable if you just read the instruction booklet

E.T. almost single handedly destroyed the industry though. That has to count for something.

eh.
misses lots of mid 90's "0 quality control" garbage in favor of recent games that are at worst just below mediocre.

but itll get clicks, so who cares

It feels like the bottom 100 "notable" games. I'm sure you can spend 5 minutes on the android app store and put together a list of 1000 games worst than this 100, but that's not fair. The worst movie isn't The Room or Plan 9 From Outer Space, it's some movie some students made that no on ever saw, but The Room and Plan 9 were actually released for consumption.
 

digdug2k

Member
Yeah I don't think it's quite the worst game ever, but I do think some defenders try to give it too much credit. It was a late gen release for the 2600 and if you look at some of the other games from that time like Pitfall and Yar's Revenge, it's pretty weak in comparison. Maybe not compared to some of the other earlier crap like Haunted House, but it's still bad. It's high-profile definitely enhanced it's reputation as crap through.
I never knew it was hated till I was much older. We played a lot of Atari Pacman as well and thought it was great. You could play Pacman in your home! A lot of our favorite Atari games had more to do with multiplayer than single (ET was actually pretty multi-player firendly, and I think that's why I don't remember playing Pitfall much).

I was little then, I spent a lot of time playing basically unplayable games as well though too. :)

The worst games ever made are all on iOS or Flash.
 

stufte

Member
Yay none of the games I've worked on are up there!

Which is actually pretty surprising, considering America's Army: True Soldiers was pretty fucking awful.
 

truly101

I got grudge sucked!
I don't know if Rambo is the NES game, but that was a pretty good game.

E.T. almost single handedly destroyed the industry though. That has to count for something.

At worst, ET is the poster child for everything that was wrong for the video game industry, and heck, companies still do cheap cash ins on popular licenses today.

As to what game did the most damage....I'm 41 so I lived through that time. Nobody gave a shit about ET. The 2600 version of Pac Man was the self destruct button. It sold way more copies than E.T. so more people played it, and were pissed off about its shit tier quality. Imagine the SNES version of SFII ending up like Way of the Warrior...its the only analogy I can think of. The 2600 was a joke after Pac Man and serious gamers were looking at other options after that shit.
 

Hypron

Member
There are thousands of games that would kill to have DMC2's problems.

Maybe if you start counting those flash, mobile and indie games, but it's hands down the worst retail game I've played in my life.

It's just not fun at all. It's a terrible game and just because there's worse out there doesn't make it good or even mediocre.
 
I bought Super 3D Noah's Ark on a Steam a couple months ago to support the developer of ECWolf. I wouldn't say it's bad. The enemy behavior and mechanics are exactly the same of Wolf3D, with worse feeling to everything, but it does have some novelty value.
 
I don't understand the inclusion of the bible games in there.

I mean, ok, Noah's Ark 3D is a dumb premise, but it's literally a palette swap of Wolfenstein 3D. Putting it on the list of the worst games of all time is almost like saying that Wolfenstein belongs there too, which granted might be true. It's got worse graphics and sound than Wolfenstein, sure. But yeah, the gameplay is only as bad as the game it's based on.

And Bible Adventures on NES is fun as hell, or at least the Noah part. Collecting animals and food for the ark is awesome, it's not glitchy or shoddy or anything, the gameplay is well-thought-out. There's actual shovelware on the NES out there where they put no thought into it, stuff like Total Recall...Bible Adventures is a good game, overall.
 

Dremark

Banned
I don't understand the inclusion of the bible games in there.

I mean, ok, Noah's Ark 3D is a dumb premise, but it's literally a palette swap of Wolfenstein 3D. Putting it on the list of the worst games of all time is almost like saying that Wolfenstein belongs there too, which granted might be true. It's got worse graphics and sound than Wolfenstein, sure. But yeah, the gameplay is only as bad as the game it's based on.

Yeah I was pretty sure that was the case, I never played the game though. If I remember correctly it mentioned in masters of Doom Nintendo was such a pain to work with in regards to the SNES version they let those unlicensed devs use thier code for the game out of spite. Correct me if I'm remembering incorrectly.
 

Lothar

Banned
How could Ghostbusters and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde not be on it?

Friday the 13th is a bad game but it's not even in the top 100 just for NES.
 
How could Ghostbusters and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde not be on it?

Friday the 13th is a bad game but it's not even in the top 100 just for NES.

Also Deadly Towers should be on there.

Fact is, there have just been too many games released period for anyone to have a realistic view on what should be considered the worst. Unless you want to consider their image in public consciousness as part of what makes them the worst...like how Big Rigs is well known from the reviews back in the day, but there are even worse "games" released on iOS daily.

Hell, The Letter isn't on the list for some reason!
 
I do not like Unlimited SaGa at all, but it doesn't really belong on this list. There isn't much that's objectively bad about it, it's just an extremely, extremely niche title. There's about 12 people out there who genuinely love it, it's not for the rest of us.
 

Dusk Golem

A 21st Century Rockefeller
I think Silent Hill: Book of Memories would have been much better received if it had been released soon after a high quality traditional Silent Hill game. It's the Metroid: Federation Force problem - even if the game is good at what's it's trying to do, the fanbase is upset that they aren't getting what they want.

I think that's a big part of it, also that Book of Memories may very well be the last Silent Hill game released outside of Pachinko Machines for the forseeable future where Konami drive their stocks and company into the ground and take their IPs with them.
 

Dremark

Banned
Also Deadly Towers should be on there.

Fact is, there have just been too many games released period for anyone to have a realistic view on what should be considered the worst. Unless you want to consider their image in public consciousness as part of what makes them the worst...like how Big Rigs is well known from the reviews back in the day, but there are even worse "games" released on iOS daily.

Honestly Deadly Towers is still the worst game I've ever played. But yeah with the way things work now I can't imagine it's even closest to the worst ever at this point.


I do not like Unlimited SaGa at all, but it doesn't really belong on this list. There isn't much that's objectively bad about it, it's just an extremely, extremely niche title. There's about 12 people out there who genuinely love it, it's not for the rest of us.

This list has a ton of stuff that didn't belong on it, I felt that game was judged particularly unfairly though. I did really want to like that game and couldn't. It's not that it's a bad game though, as you said, it just has a really limited audience.
 

Mega

Banned
E.T. almost single handedly destroyed the industry though. That has to count for something.

It feels like the bottom 100 "notable" games. I'm sure you can spend 5 minutes on the android app store and put together a list of 1000 games worst than this 100, but that's not fair. The worst movie isn't The Room or Plan 9 From Outer Space, it's some movie some students made that no on ever saw, but The Room and Plan 9 were actually released for consumption.

That's not true at all regarding E.T. The industry was well on its way to crashing even if that game did not exist.

Putting aside mobile, flash, Greenlight and lesser known indie titles, I still think this is a weird list that doesn't really have the worst commercial console games ever.
 
Top Bottom