Bad games that are actually good.


craigix

craigix

Mega GP Mania
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Back in about 1993 I was given a notorious Amiga game called Doofus by a friend.


It was famous for receiving the record low score of 4% in Amiga Power, which called it 'Absolute crap', a lot of this was possibly due to the absurd price point of £28. Which was insane. But that didn't make it a bad game, actually that was probably entirely down to the publisher, not the games authors.


The original review can be found here: http://amr.abime.net/amr_popup_picture.php?src=amiga_power/magscans/ap33_1994_01/090.jpg&c=46595&n=1&filesize=459223


Anyhow, when I played it, it was at the time actually a pretty nice platformer, certainly not deserving of the terrible reviews, I used to enjoy playing it as a 10-20 minute distraction game on a regular basis.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/tsga301qUKk?feature=oembed

What games have you enjoyed which society deemed to be unfit for human consumption?
 
virtua-striker-3-ver2002.jpg



IMHO, it kicks (no pun intended) Fifa's arse~
 
I've got a couple worthy mentions here.


First, Shadow the Hedgehog. Critical reviewers have horribly panned this game, criticizing it for trivial things, such as having guns (despite the fact that characters other than Shadow, such as Sonic, outright state that they would never use a gun themselves) and swearing. As someone who's played through the entire game as well as Expert Mode (unlocked by getting an "A" rank in every level), it's clear to me that the critical reviewers just played the game once, through the "neutral" path.


I'll be the first to admit that Shadow the Hedgehog has some real problems. Much of the voice acting and the way swearing is used is cheesy and the camera isn't all that good. But the first is a minor issue, and the bad camera is dealt with very well by the excellent level design.


What's really great about Shadow the Hedgehog is its replay value. When you first play, you'll want to play at least 10 times so that you can see all the cutscenes and endings, and unlock all levels for play in Select Mode. Then, after you've beaten all endings, the Last Story, i.e. the true ending to the game, will be unlocked, which consists of a relatively long level with a time limit where you need to get to the end using Chaos Control, and a final showdown with Black Doom (the main antagonist of the game) as Super Shadow. But it's not over yet; get all A-ranks in every level and you will unlock Expert Mode, in which you play through tougher versions of all the levels in sequence.


After beating Expert Mode, there's nothing new to unlock, but it's still very fun to speedrun individual levels and Expert Mode.


Despite what the critical reviewers said, and what a few Sonic fans parrot, Shadow the Hedgehog is an excellent game that everyone should play.


Next up: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES.


I've already mentioned this in another topic, but there I was talking about difficulty. The NES version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a very fun game to play, despite the impression that some people give about the game. Sure, it has some bugs and questionable physics, and the difficulty of the game inside the Technodrome is downright evil, but overall very enjoyable and pretty well put-together. Not to mention, the music is awesome. I think the reason some people think it's so bad is it's different from other TMNT games of the era, i.e. it's actually a pretty complicated and involved game. But I like these kinds of games.


I'm not sure if this one is long-standing or just a result of people taking the Angry Video Game Nerd a bit too seriously, but I feel the need to mention it anyway: Milon's Secret Castle. This is a rather fun game, but you wouldn't get that impression talking to some people; you'd think it's the most cryptic game man has ever invented. In truth, it's not really any more cryptic than Metroid, and it even has the advantage of making it easier to find those secrets (by having an angled bubble that it's easier to search for hidden blocks with).
 
Rise of the Robots.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rise_of_the_Robots


Only kidding :)


My brothers and I actually did own this on PC ( more as a fingers up to Atari and Amiga owning friends, who had all the cool fast action / fun games but didn't have the then new VGA 256 colour graphics ), you could basically position and auto-fire your joystick and complete the game!


The graphics were very cool for their time, but fur coat and no ( single player at least ) gameplay.
 
Urban Chaos by Mucky Foot


The utterly terrible WinCE port for the Dreamcast, which by being Microsoft completely hamstrung performance such that the resolution, poly counts and texture size and ultimately frame rate all take a massive hit.


But yet.... there's something about it I like!
 
Star Fox Command for the Nintendo DS.


It basically got panned for not being yet another retread of the not-that-great-in-the-first-place Star Fox 64, and also for not taking itself excessively seriously (not taking itself overly seriously being a stark contrast to the Star Fox 64 series' usual childish melodrama and overacting).


It's actually a very fun game with a nice strategic twist - though the strategy maps are not really all that much like the one from the cancelled Star Fox 2, despite appearances and despite sharing a development team. It can get incredibly tense if you're in the middle of a battle and your fuel-timer is ticking down, and it requires skill and practice to be successful.


It's also got a ton of endings, determined by choices that you must make at certain points in the game, all showing every possible scenario which puts and end to the Star Fox 64 timeline. They run the gamut from depressing, to uplifting, to romantic (AWWWWWWW~), to new beginnings, and it's left to the player's imagination which one is the "real" one, which I really appreciated. The first run through follows the default path, and once you complete it the first time you're granted an item called "The Key of Destiny", which allows you to make the other choices and follow the game's myriad of different paths on subsequent playthroughs.


The little utility to record your own voice and have it chopped up into Lylatian chatter for in-game use is rather fun, too. I make a quite good Fox McCloud, apparently.


It's one of only two games in the Star Fox 64 series that I really like (the other one being the criminally underrated Star Fox Assault, which was also panned unjustly, and is also a fantastic game that's well worth playing), and is one of the tiny handful of games that I've ever actually wanted to "100%" (and actually did, of course).


Because it was wrongly panned as it was, the game became very cheap very quickly, so if you're inclined to check it out, you can easily get it for a very low price.
 
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Star Control 3 by Legend Entertainment (published by Accolade)


Everybody in the Star Control community loves to hate on the game because it followed the brilliant second installment and was made by different developers, but I think it's a pretty fun game in its own right. They changed a lot of things and took a rather bold direction with the story, and it's not without its flaws, but there are lots of memorable moments and fun times as well. Some things I thought were improvements on the second game, such as http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqepQ_fWZbg, and being able to build colonies so you didn't have to go back to a single home base every time.


And there are so few games in this genre (something of a mix between arcade space battles, exploration, strategy, RPG and adventure) that I'm thankful for every one we get.


Here's a "conversation" with an alien race from early in the game:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/dPxBxYtoInI?feature=oembed
 
I can only think of The Amazing Spiderman for the original Game Boy right now. Just googled it up and learned that it was done by LJN *cough*


I definitely got this because I was a huge fan of DIE SPINNE as the franchise was called back in the days in Germany. Most notable are the cutscenes in which Spidey talks to the upcoming stage's boss over a walkie talkie and they give each other names :D


And the fact that Spidey's punch is an utterly useless attack. To actually kill stuff you had to crouch-kick.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/kplRELiVYHs?feature=oembed

I just learned LJN even made a sequel^^


Edit: Lol, just watched this video. In stage 2 you're on the rooftops and there's people jumping down from above. No parachutes, wings or jetpacks though, they just fall down from the sky. What were they thinking^^


okay I guess today this questionable "pearl" would annoy the heck out of me.


Kay, here's another one: High Octane for the Sega Saturn, was my first game when i bought the machine shortly after launch. Damn I sold my SNES including 16 games back then, sniff. This game never achieved high ratings, but I surely played the heck out of it, even years later. Somehow the disc got missing though,shame. Also somehow managed to lose my copy of Three Dirty Dwarves, g'dammit :( , another hell of a game.


watch?v=BxoouhNfiCA


Three Dirty Dwarves Intro, amazing I might say


watch?v=QwniAr69Xh8


and some 3DD gameplay


watch?v=tirrboxkWiw


Sorry that those are no proper Yt links, damned board software insists on adding fucking media tags and at the same time limiting the number of those. Ingenious. This friggin editor plays hell on my linux opera anyway.


Edit: Fuck me! I just checked Three Dirty Dwarves on Ebay: 75 to 100€ for a complete PAL copy, that's insane! After all this can't be considered as bad by most as it's mobyscore of 65 makes it look.
 
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