Good games that are actually rubbish.

[craigix]

Emulation is a wonderful thing - it allows us to revist our youth and play the games we remember being awesome!


Apart from sometimes it make you realise to your horror that you were being fed bullshit by fixed magazine reviews.


I'll start:


Superfrog on the Amiga - pages and pages of good reviews at the time (probably helped by a huge advertising campaign in every magazine) but the game is rubbish - but it still has an image of being a good game for some reason.


Anymore which you have since realised via emulation are terrible and that we were tricked at the time?

 

[Prometheus]

Taz-Mania for the Game Gear is one of many that spring to mind. I remember spending a lot of time playing it as a kid, and also sometimes wondering why none of the screenshots in magazines actually showed the real game (it turned out that the magazine bods were all just lazy and were just using photographs of the similarly-named Master System title, which was actually a completely different game).


When I came to play it again years later, it was blatantly an unplayable mess with sluggish and unresponsive controls, stupid placement of required power-ups (if you don't grab them, by holding a button and watching a stupid animation for several seconds, you are doomed to die because Taz can't do his most vital move without them) which leads to you frequently getting killed while you're trying to grab them, frustratingly unclear objectives*, and a horrible, ear-splitting atonal mess that I believe was actually supposed to be music.


*(I remember thinking it was unprofessional at the time, but the manual's synopses of the levels are actually more-or-less walkthroughs. I realise now that this was probably done in order to try to compensate for the game's unnecessarily cryptic nature and horrendous design problems.)

 

[Pickle]

Superfrog on the Amiga - pages and pages of good reviews at the time (probably helped by a huge advertising campaign in every magazine) but the game is rubbish - but it still has an image of being a good game for some reason.

Actually i thought superfrog was a decent game, whats bad about it? (Note i didnt grow up with a amiga so i discovered this game while working on uae emu's)

 

[EvilDragon]

I still love SuperFrog and play it regularly... what's so rubbish about it?


One of the best Jump'n'Runs on the Amiga in my opinion

 

[kuru]

The only thing I dislike about it is the smug look on the frog's face. For some reason I'd love to punch it from his visage. Please excuse me.


I must say that the more old games I try the more unexpectedly good ones in general or particularly well-made details I find. But this of course depends on my relatively low levelled expectations and/or not having read games magazines other than the Saturn Magazine.


And for misleading reviews and personal taste, well there is such things.

 

[Sugar_Kane]

I would dare to say civilisation

 

[craigix]

I still love SuperFrog and play it regularly... what's so rubbish about it?


One of the best Jump'n'Runs on the Amiga in my opinion

It's just awful. Poor collision detection, terrible physics, boring level goals, unfair deaths (touch spikes, even from the side and you die!), repetitive just mundane boringness. If it had not been by Team17 I'd have said it would have been a budget game which got average reviews at the time and disappeared.


Another one I think is terrible is Chuck Rock yet I think it appeared on almost every format available.

 

[Gruntfuggly]

Shadow of the Beast - gorgeous to look at, but total crap to play.

 

[McLovin]

Aye, about every game I played on c64 except gianna sisters is totally unplayable for me today.


Still, I'm looking forward to california games on pandora.

 

[Caine]

I would dare to say civilisation

Now here's a nice counter example for people who claim that opinions are never wrong.

 

[ndbsolar]

I think this one may be a little controversial, but...


Final Fantasy 8. One of the most overrated and crappy rpgs ever released.


[Edit]


Reread the first post. Via emulation?


Yoshi's Island and Super Mario RPG...

 

[Orion4874]

Rainbow Island is on the cover of the latest issue of Retro Gamer. IMO, one of the most aggrevating games ever! I was just never able to get the hang of it.

 

[EvilDragon]

Shadow of the Beast - gorgeous to look at, but total crap to play.

True. I never knew why people liked it. Played it for 5 minutes and never touched it again.


On the other hand, I played through Rainbow Islands


Regarding C64: yeah, there are a lot of games I remembered are great but aren't really fun to play nowadays. But there's a lot more than Giana:


Impossible Mission, Bruce Lee, Katakis, Alter Ego, M.U.L.E., Hero, Ghosts'n'Goblins, etc.


You have to look harder, but there are quite a few C64 games that are still fun to play.

 

[McLovin]

True. I never knew why people liked it. Played it for 5 minutes and never touched it again.


On the other hand, I played through Rainbow Islands


Regarding C64: yeah, there are a lot of games I remembered are great but aren't really fun to play nowadays. But there's a lot more than Giana:


Impossible Mission, Bruce Lee, Katakis, Alter Ego, M.U.L.E., Hero, Ghosts'n'Goblins, etc.


You have to look harder, but there are quite a few C64 games that are still fun to play.

I said "c64 game that I played". I had a quite big c64 collection, but it was nowhere close complete


Actually, I should have said "I remember to have played", cause reading the best-of-c64-thread, I rerememberd some games from back then that might actually still be fun. Will test when I get my pandy

 

[Gruntfuggly]

For some reason, I thought BC's quest for tyres was awesome back in the day. Last time I tried that in an emulator I nearly cried.


Mercenary feels very hard to play these days too.


Now Spy vs. Spy - there is a game that still does it for me.

 

[fuji99]

A game that a lot of people like but I don't is Battletoads.

 

[WizardStan]

Final Fantasy 8. One of the most overrated and crappy rpgs ever released.

Thank you! The plot had more inconvenient twists than a pretzel at the chiropractor. And they're all just kind of brought up in the middle, as if someone was writing the story and then decided to change the story without changing the parts already written.


"Oh by the way, the person you're going to kill is my wife." "Oh hey, we all grew up together, even the teacher, you've just all forgotten. Except me, cause I'm awesome." "Oh, by the way, the school can fly." "Yeah, the person you were sent to kill who is actually my wife is here to help us now. She was possessed but she's better now, for no real reason"


And that was just the first disk! By the time I got there I refused to put in the second. I just couldn't take it anymore.

 

[fuji99]

I think this one may be a little controversial, but...


Final Fantasy 8. One of the most overrated and crappy rpgs ever released.

This is my least favorite Final Fantasy as well. Not so much because of the story, but because of the draw system and how it effected character development. It really pissed me off that my favorite characters were essentially gimped at the end because they did not have access to the best magic while I progressed through the plot, forcing me to use the characters I disliked because I could build them up from scratch.

 

[Caine]

This is my least favorite Final Fantasy as well.

Mine as well. Although, Mystic Quest wasn't all that great either.

 

[Prometheus]

Thank you! The plot had more inconvenient twists than a pretzel at the chiropractor. And they're all just kind of brought up in the middle, as if someone was writing the story and then decided to change the story without changing the parts already written.


"Oh by the way, the person you're going to kill is my wife." "Oh hey, we all grew up together, even the teacher, you've just all forgotten. Except me, cause I'm awesome." "Oh, by the way, the school can fly." "Yeah, the person you were sent to kill who is actually my wife is here to help us now. She was possessed but she's better now, for no real reason"


And that was just the first disk! By the time I got there I refused to put in the second. I just couldn't take it anymore.

I am laughing so hard at this - this is exactly like a conversation I had about this game with a relative not too long ago. :lol: