Video Games That Have Disgraced The Industry

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I am amazed that there are only twenty games on this list. That ET game from the 80s was bad but not as bad as Rage (which didn't make the list). ;)

Bad games are released all the time, that is nothing new. However, to be this bad is almost an art form. Check out some of the worst video games ever created. Do you have a game in mind that didn’t make the list?
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The selections seem pretty random. They're not the absolute worst games of their respective generations, and mostly didn't have high expectations (besides ET and Superman 64) on release. It's a random catalog of flops.
 
I actually really enjoyed E.T when I was a kid :| I'm shocked to read it was such a terrible game.
 
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial doesn't really deserve a spot. I think the industry loves to blame that game for the crash but it wasn't the worst Atari game. It's the most popular game to hate but it wasn't the worst Atari game.
 
Agree with everyone here, E.T. gets too much hate. It wasn't wonderful, but there were so many worse games on the Atari. E.T. was just the wrong game at the wrong time.
 
Looks like 2003 was the nadir of game development. I think this was written by someone who was 13 in 2003? Just a guess.

If I had a nickel for all the terrible C64 and early PC games I played back in the day...

Any list like this should exclude games released to coincide with a new movie since these ALL suck. Too easy.
 
That is correct, 5 and a half weeks and for it being a game made in 5 and a half weeks, I consider that a masterpiece as designing, developing and testing in that amount of time is a very hard thing to do.
 
LordCalin said:
I actually really enjoyed E.T when I was a kid :| I'm shocked to read it was such a terrible game.
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It gets a lot of hate, but it also had TONS of hype and they made a lot more carts than they could have ever sold.

I really liked it when I was a kid, too. Lots of fun for a little kid. As an adult? Probably not so much.
 
I actually liked Rage once they fixed the graphics. Its not game of the year by no means but I bought it for $20 and feel like I got my moneys worth. Once fixed, the graphics were actually very cool and the landscapes especially.

If I had a nickel for all the terrible C64 and early PC games I played back in the day...
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Man aint that the truth. During the golden age of the C64 it seems like pretty much anybody could come out with a game for it and they pretty much did. There were so many cheap ass B games.
 
I'm tired of the ET hate. We know it wasn't fantastic, but honestly it wasn't markedly worse than the average game at the time. MOST were frustrating and odd.

I'd love to see what the designer could do with a year of funding and time, just to clear his name.
 
PhaseNoise said:
I'm tired of the ET hate. We know it wasn't fantastic, but honestly it wasn't markedly worse than the average game at the time. MOST were frustrating and odd.

I'd love to see what the designer could do with a year of funding and time, just to clear his name.
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gets old doesn't it? Most hating on it probably haven't even played it they just saw it on reddit or a twitch stream.

I owned it, didn't think it was too bad, beat it a few times wasn't really that hard tbh. It was more complicated than most atari games at the time.

Now raiders of the lost ark was a bitch of a game for 2600 and there was no internet back then to look up how to do stuff lol
 
I dont remember ET sucking that bad either. I remember it being extremely simple but this was the Atari 2600 after all and 95% of the games available on it were extremely simple. Hell the most complex I can remember was Yar's Revenge and maybe Pitfall. Missile Command, Defender, Cosmic Arc, Seaquest, Dodge 'Em and a whole bunch of others were dirt simple but still great for their time.
 
I think Amiga Format (iirc) had one of the best reviews of Shaq Fu. It started off with a paragraph that said something like "When I first heard about this game, I just assumed it would be another mediocre fighting game where you trap someone in a corner and kick them in the head until they die".

Later in the review, after trying to beat the game for a while, the author wrote something like "The most successful strategy I discovered was to trap someone in a corner and kick them in the head until they died." :D
 
Fuck E.T... overrated. But Custer’s Revenge??? that is a fucking classic. (no pun intended) Big "Mother Fucking" Rigs that was awesome... Some one must of been watching AVGN ep 118? or 119? Hong Kong 97 was pretty bad. And any game from LJN should be on there...
 
hkcavalier said:
If I had a nickel for all the terrible C64 and early PC games I played back in the day...

Yes but... We also had Ghetto Blaster, and a 15 minute load time on Airborne Ranger, And Jeep Command! And... Oh, the good old days!
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Never played Hatred but I love the concept of the game. Then again I only play emulated games. I really can't stand modern day shit. Don't get it don't want to. I'll stick with my classic consoles. They're more enjoyable at least for me.
 
I'm 30 and I remember absolutely WTF'ing E.T. as a kid. The game made no sense what so ever. I remember starting it up as a young child, moving back and forth among the same repeating screens with no apparent objective to be noted, then dying to that damn guy for no reason. It remains my #1 fail in my history of gaming.
 
Did you read the manual? I thought many games of that era required that.
 
dark_reign said:
For $5 it wasn't that bad and I kinda enjoyed the gameplay. It just didn't live up to the years and years of hype.
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It was kind of mediocre, not horrendous, but in terms of games "that disgraced the industry" it definitely belongs up there given over a decade of coverage on it.
 
Its pretty sad that people still think ET was a terrible game, if not the game that killed the Atari 2600. Howard Scott Warshaw was given 5 weeks to make ET!... 5 Weeks!
If anything, Warshaw should go down in history as one of the founding fathers of Video games. He made Yar's Revenge and Raiders of the lost Ark for the 2600, two of the best games for the 2600 imo.
 
dark_reign said:
For $5 it wasn't that bad and I kinda enjoyed the gameplay. It just didn't live up to the years and years of hype.
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It should make the list because the article was about games that disgraced the industry. While many games are certainly worse they do not have the notoriety as DNF.
 
E.T. was the end of a long period of shitty games. The Atari 2600 maybe regarded as a great game console but it was littered with shit. One game didn't crash the gaming industry and ET was far from the worst. But ET was the last nail in the coffin and everyone quit dealing with shitty video games, until the Nintendo console was released and revolutionized gaming.
 
I don't know... "disgraced the industry" is a bit harsh for bad video games, most of those initial ones I don't even remember, so I'd hardly say they disgraced the industry, while everyone over the age of 30-35 remembers how bad ET was, hell the youtube guy Angry Video Game nerd made a fucking movie on it.
 
That's why these types of stories are "Opinion" pieces. I liked Rage and wished it was a longer game. I've played better but also worse.
 
LordCalin said:
I actually really enjoyed E.T when I was a kid :| I'm shocked to read it was such a terrible game.
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There's a big article somewhere that details the problem. Some assumed the hit box was the feet, but it was the whole body. They even patched the rom.
 
Rage is a good game that had a crappy release. Once the bugs were fixed it's pretty decent.

Now you want to talk about disgracing the industry, the whole CoD franchise should be up there for spawning a whole generation of foul-mouthed brats that started all the swatting crap, as well as pretty much eviscerating the FPS genre.
 
Ashbringer said:
E.T. was the end of a long period of shitty games. The Atari 2600 maybe regarded as a great game console but it was littered with shit. One game didn't crash the gaming industry and ET was far from the worst. But ET was the last nail in the coffin and everyone quit dealing with shitty video games, until the Nintendo console was released and revolutionized gaming.
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It must have been delayed since console video game sales peaked the following year. ;)

Oh, I remember plenty of crappy video games for the 2600 that came out after E.T.. Supermarkets and 7-11 sold Atari cartridges.

Also, I'm pretty sure that people didn't stop playing console games because they were waiting for something to be invented. There were plenty of solid console and home computer games back then, but Atari (and several other console makers) imploding and game makers going out of business in a very crowded market were bigger factors than a couple of disappointing titles.
 
Derek Smart's Battlecruiser belongs on the list. Yea, I have the free Steam version installed now, but still, it was bad.
 
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