List of video games notable for negative reception

Games are considered to be "the worst ever" for various reasons, including exceptionally poor graphics or music, a clichéd or stereotypical premise and storyline, a poor user interface, or what is perceived to be poor gameplay. More generally, and despite the natural differences in players tastes and tolerances, a game attracting the "worst game ever" comment is usually failing in being enjoyable for most players.

Concept and criticism usually apply only to games commercially released and marketed by major distributors and targeted at well-known gaming systems such as personal computers, consoles and arcade machines, while shareware, freeware, public domain and amateur games are usually not exposed to much criticism.

Criticism of the concept

The concept of "worst video games ever" is somewhat controversial because, unlike films, music or other forms of art and intellectual work, there is no widely accepted and accredited institution or individuals specifically trained for judging video games. There are usually few professionally employed critics, estimators, study institutes, or similar entities and no universally accepted and systematic video game reviewing method.

Most reviews of a specific game, even those by specialized magazines or websites, are done by people who are not, in any way, officially recognized video game critics, as such a professional qualification does not yet exist, and there is a non-trivial component of personal views, bias or mere inexperience or ignorance in many games reviews. Nevertheless, those reviews are usually accepted by the gaming community as guidelines, and have the power of affecting the sales or just the fame of a game.

Some games have a well-documented failure or success history, including traditional media coverage (such as the case of many failed Atari 2600 titles), while the fates of lesser or more obscure titles usually lay in the hands of a few reviewers, or even a single reviewer.

Categories of "worst ever" games

Any game which, at least once in its existence, has been considered as being "the worst ever" or merely a "bad" game, usually falls under a precise category of reasons that made it gain such a reputation.

Purely technical criteria

Technical criteria such as graphics and sound are the most variable with the passing of time and evolution of technology, as they are strongly tied to the game system's hardware or just to the trend of a particular review time, and are particularly restrictive for what regards commercial games. For example, a 2006 game using NES-quality graphics or an older 3D graphic engine (e.g. Quake's) is very likely going to be labelled as poor for its time by most reviewers, putting it on par with an Atari 2600 title. After the novelty of 3D has begun to wear off, 2D graphics of great quality is becoming more and more recognized as an equally valid form of videogaming aesthetics. The Castlevania series may be one of the best examples of a series reaching the heights of 2D gaming, while the 3D episodes have yet to find their tone. However, there are some important exceptions to the above rule, like manager games (eg. Eastside Hockey Manager) where numbers are more important than graphics, certain tactically accurate wargames where symbols are used instead of graphical units or roguelikes which usually sport ASCII or minimal tile based graphics (although such games tend to be of independent, freeware, shareware or public domain origin rather than being mainstream, especially after the mid 1990s). Games for handheld systems such as the Nintendo DS are held to a lesser standard as these units entail a trade of technical capability for necessary traits such as significantly reduced physical size and power consumption, although 3D graphics and thousands (or millions) of colors have become commonplace even on portable systems after the year 2000. Many people will argue that games with outdated engines can still be fun, and that as long as a game is entertaining it fufills its purpose regardless of the graphical appearance of the game, but it is very possible for graphics to limit a game's playability if the player cannot tell what they are looking at (which usually occurs when a company tries to do more than a particular platform can handle)

Technical issues can also arise with a game's engine when rushed programming or a lack of testing causes a game to be released incomplete. Glitches in gameplay are a common problem with gaming, and increase as games become more complex to program (with more lines of code there is a higher chance of error) but some games, such as Extreme Paintbrawl, are so glitched that they become nearly unplayable.

Genre and platform criteria

Some game genres fade in and out of popularity, or are not particularly welcome by reviewers on a particular gaming system. For example, 2D shooters or platform games are considered as "out of fashion", at least regarding the gaming industry and the latest gaming hardware, and thus any such new release by a major manufacturer, even in some cases for a modern handheld system, would probably bias most professional reviewers negatively merely on the basis of being a 2D shooter or platform game. Similarly, PC ports of games or genres considered more appropriate to game consoles often receive negative reviews, and most reviewers consider good console ports to be the exception rather than the rule.

Non-technical design and concept criteria

There are also a class of games that, while not technically challenged or deficient, were ridiculed for a secondary feature or concept in their design, such as being too unoriginal, too bizarre or simply incomprehensible. These games were effectively condemned to the "worst games ever" class without really being unplayable or flawed.

"Obscure" games

A significant number of video games fall into the "obscure" category. These are games that never attracted much attention at the time of their appearance, and very often resurfaced because of the "attentions" of mostly cynical or humourous reviews, especially of emulated console or arcade games.

Usually, this kind of "worst ever" game has no real technical flaws, but rather is unoriginal, has unappealing gameplay, or simply was "obscure" in the sense of "rare."

Interest among players

Not all games receiving the "worst game ever" title were commercial failures or clamorous flops, and with the evolution of the Internet, emulators, and the relative ease of finding playable versions of these games online, many of these "worst games ever" received unprecedented levels of attention by players and collectors, not unlike the way some films fans are interested in what are considered to be The worst films ever by the "So bad they're good" principle, meaning they are so terrible, it is humorous.

List of specific video games considered to be the worst ever

A

• Action 52 (1991, Active Enterprises, for NES, a Sega Genesis version was also produced) is a collection of games hated by gamers due to terrible controls, poor gameplay, and poor programming. Many of its namesake 52 are barely playable due to massive bugs in the game's coding, including one completely unplayable game that does not load at all. Active Enterprises sold the game for $199, far more than most games at the time, and still more than most games cost today. It also marked the first appearance of the Cheetahmen, whom Active Enterprises hoped to turn into a franchise akin to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

• Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis (2003) This game inspired the golden mullet awards on G4's X-play, and X-Play also named it the worst Game Cube game ever.

B

• Battlecruiser 3000AD (1996, PC) is a controversial game (a horrible interface is cited as the main culprit), infamous for its creator, Derek Smart, who began one of the largest flame wars in Usenet history. Initially, the game was promised to be the most sophisticated game at the time, yet had its release date pushed back repeatedly. After the initial and buggy release, numerous patches were created that fixed many of the game's issues and made it a playable game

• Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em (1982, Atari 2600) is a pornographic video game notorious for its particular plot. In the game, the player controls two women with the intent of using their mouths to catch the falling semen of a man ejaculating from a rooftop.

• Bebe's Kids (1993, SNES) is notorious for poor control and gameplay, and hailed as the worst film-to-game conversion in history, topping Nintendo Power's 10 Worst Games list in their 100th issue. The gameplay was very similar to an earlier game, DJ Boy, which is considered one of the most racist arcade games, while Bebe's Kids main characters were African American, thus making the whole game appear, in addition to having its own problems, a sort of "DJ Boy with the roles reversed" . Notably, the film itself was also a giant flop.

• Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing (2003, PC): Nonexistent collision detection, trucks that accelerate infinitely in reverse and stop as soon as the down arrow key is released, players being able to go up hills at a 90-degree angle and a computer controlled player that doesn't move were some of the many reasons why this game is "massively flawed." GameSpot gave the game a 1.0 out of 10.0, the lowest score ever given by the review site . X-Play, a game reviewing TV show on G4TV, called this "the worst game ever made", and was unable to give it a rating because their rating scale does not have a zero. This negative fame has spawned dedicated cults on several gaming forums. As of current, it has a 4% rating on GameRankings, making it their lowest-rated game . It also has an average score of 8 out of a possible 100 at Metacritic, making it the worst-reviewed game ever on that site. A review provided by the latter: "This is hands-down, the worst videogame to ever see the light of day. Really"

• Bokosuka Wars (1985, NES) is a simplistic strategy game, where the player controls the movements of a ninja warrior and his army in a randomly generated sparse "maze world", populated by random moving enemies. The game features perhaps the worst scrolling and greatest control lag ever seen in a NES game, minimal graphics and completely unintuitive gameplay. The player has very little control over the outcome of his encounters with enemy characters; instead, the game enters a non-interactive "battle mode" with random outcome each time the player or one of his armies collides with an enemy . A more careful review of the game actually reveals it to be a sort of "misunderstood" strategy/RPG game which actually has some gameplay depth, but even then the poor control system and the slow response have turned many players away .

• Bubsy 3D (1996, PlayStation) Bubsy 3D was panned by critics and fans alike due to its confusing control schemes and poor camera angles. It was featured on Seanbaby's EGM Crapstravaganza: The 20 Worst Games of All Time list. Its failure is said to have killed the Bubsy series, as no new games have come out since. The lackluster qualities of the game were due to the fact that programmers were not used to programming in 3D. Many franchises made by respectable companies were killed by the world of 32 Bit consoles. Earthworm Jim died in 3D and was last seen in Clay Fighter 63 1/3. Even Sonic The Hedgehog himself vanished as no canon Sonic game was released for SEGA's majorly promoted Saturn console. Mario 64 seamed to have worked like magic, but programming the game was so tough that it is said that one person left the video game industry entirely because of it.

• Burning Desire (1982, Atari 2600) is a pornographic video game with crude graphics and boring, simplistic gameplay. It was considered to have one of the worst premises ever and the game had an explicit ending scene after each level.

C

• Carmageddon 64 (1999, N64) is the N64 version of Carmageddon. The N64 port was highly disastrous and got overwhelmingly negative feedback from fans of the PC version, citing poor graphics, bad camera angles, bad collision detection, unresponsive controls, and horrific environment textures. The animations for the pedestrians (which are zombies in this version) were incredibly crude and jerky. The slow, unstable frame rates moved at about 0-15 frames per second, affecting the gameplay considerably. Carmageddon 64 is simply rejected by Carmageddon fans and is widely considered one of the top worst, if not the worst, N64 games ever .

Cheetahmen

• Cheetahmen (part of Action 52, see above) and Cheetahmen II (1991 and 1993 respectively, NES) by Active Enterprises are generally considered awful games mostly due to their sloppy coding, awful graphics, numerous bugs and graphical glitches, especially Cheetahmen 2, which was never released by Active Enterprises and the game suddenly broke into the NES scene when a number of unopened boxes containing stock of Cheetahmen II were located in a warehouse. The cartridge itself is a highly prized collector's item.

• Charlie's Angels (2003, Nintendo Gamecube North American release. Playstation 2 other regions) was ranked #5 on Nintendo Power's 5 Worst Games Ever list saying, "A game based on a movie based on a TV show-we all know how this one ends." X-Play gave it a 1 out of 5, starting their review with "This game sucks. Normally, X-Play tries to avoid using generic terms when reviewing a game. However, in the case of Charlie's Angels for the GameCube, we can think of nothing more fitting". CGNO gave it a 1.5, concluding "All in all, Charlie’s Angels is probably near the bottom of the totem pole of all the GameCube games," while the main culprit is identified in the many gameplay glitches and faulty controls, rendering the game "a chore" . Game Rankings has Charlie's Angels ranked as the worst game of all time when the review scores from many major review websites are averaged out .

• Cosmic Race (1995, Sony PlayStation) was the sole description for Game Players magazine's 0.0 on its 0-10 rating scale. Cosmic Race features graphics directly from the PlayStation SDK as well as a lack of collision detection.

• Custer's Revenge (1982, Atari 2600) is a pornographic video game developed by adult video game developer Mystique. In the game, the player moves a naked General Custer across the screen and navigates various obstacles with the intention of raping a Native American woman tied to a post. The game generated considerable controversy, and was ranked #1 on Gamespy's "Ten Most Shameful Games of All Time" .

D

• Dangerous Vaults (2003, PC) by Near Fatal is a pornographic game loosely based on the Tomb Raider series, featuring a Lara Croft look-alike named Tara Soft. The game epitomizes many common design flaws such as extremely poorly made 3D graphics, problematic controls, ridiculous premises, with the most obvious being that it is a poor clone of the Tomb Raider games and a poor excuse for seeing Lara Croft raped in various situations. The player controls Tara through a jungle, where she can easily be injured by just moving around or, more frequently, from being raped by various creatures such as gorillas, 3-meter tall tribesmen and giant lizards . A technically improved sequel named Dangerous Vaults 2 is currently in the works and an incomplete demo has been released.

• Deadly Towers (1987, NES) is a action-adventure game where the progatonist ventures through a maze-like castle. The game was panned for its poor controls, repetitive levels, and extreme levels of difficulty. For many people, however, the main flaw was that there were uninspired yet dangerous enemies to fight, such as giant bowling balls or blue blobs, the latter of which could cause great damage by mere contact. Deadly Towers was ranked #1 on Seanbaby's list of the 20 worst games for the NES.

• Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Battle 22 (PlayStation, 2003) is a fighting game. It is generally regarded as the worst game based on Dragon Ball Z and considered to be one of the worst games for the PlayStation. GameSpot gave the game a 1.2, its lowest for a PlayStation game and nearly the lowest the review system allows . Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the game an average of 1.8 out of 3 reviews. Official PlayStation Magazine gave the game a 1/5. X-Play gave the game a 1, saying it was the worst PS1 game ever made. The American version of the game was released in the middle of the PlayStation 2's life cycle, when interest in the original PlayStation was all but gone. The game was originally released in Japan in 1995, and also had been released in Europe when it was fairly new. The English version sold very poorly due to the franchise not having been introduced to the English speaking population at the time. Another problem with the game is that FUNimation's translation studio didn't want to redub new dialogue for the cutscenes, therefore, the cutscenes were omitted from the American release of the game.

• Drake of the 99 Dragons (commonly known simply as Drake; 2003, Xbox, PC) is an action game with a comic book style to it. It received unanimously low reviews from critics, receiving a rare abysmal rating from GameSpot with a 1.6 and receiving a 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 from EGM due to extreme bugginess. It was also released with a comic book made specifically for the game that was considered terrible. In the midst of PBS "Video Game Rush" show, a person who was polled selected it as the third worst game ever. In their televised review of the game, X-Play actually claimed it had eclipsed Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis as the standard by which they compare bad games, X-Play now has said it is the worst Xbox game ever.

E

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• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982, Atari 2600), a game based on the film E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial, was released for the Atari 2600 in 1982. In a time when the market was being flooded with dozens upon dozens of lackluster games, this game is cited as being a major cause of the Video Game Crash of 1983. Atari, expecting that the E.T. franchise and Christmas season would boost sales, produced five million copies of the game (even though there were only ten million Atari 2600 consoles in existence). The game itself was a disaster, with poor controls and shoddy gameplay, a fact owed to its hasty development in just six weeks, in an attempt to meet the anticipated Christmas rush. Sales were dismal and most copies went unsold. The company (then secretly) buried the remainder of the cartridges in a landfill site near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The fiasco cost Atari millions of dollars and contributed to the subsequent collapse of the company. An episode of X-Play was devoted to hosts Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb traveling to New Mexico to find the landfill site, with Sessler dressed up as the character Dr. Gonzo from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Webb impersonating Amelia Earhart. #1 on SeanBaby.com's Top 20 Worst Games List.

• Ethnic Cleansing (2002, PC) by Resistance Records is one of the few declaredly racist video games made and commercially released. It is not the first one to include racial stereotypes or use them as essential plot elements, as several "racist" mods such as White Power Doom and smaller PD games such as KZ manager and Aryan hero had already done. The game itself is a first person shooter with a white supremacism-based plot, where the player takes the role of an "aryan" fighter killing blacks, Latinos and Jews. The game portrays and voices the "enemies" in stereotyped or insulting manners (e.g. blacks emit ape-like voices, latinos wear a sombrero, Jews are depicted as gun-wielding rabbis etc.) and the backgrounds themselves represent a dystopian world supposedly "ruled by Jews and their henchmen", according to the game's creators. Apart from the questionable storyline and contents, the game itself is a rather poorly made FPS, having ugly graphics (especially its characters), an extremely slow graphics engine, low quality sound, problematic controls, and unappealing gameplay.

• Extreme Paintbrawl (1998, PC): Horrible physics, abysmal graphics, and a bad team A.I. gave this game the "honor" of being the worst video game ever reviewed by IGN (although, score-wise, it has been beaten out by Olympic Hockey Nagano '98, which got a 0.0/10 on IGN, although the actual game was not reviewed) . IGN went on to review as many games carrying the "Extreme" title as they could and bashed them for being so "extreme." The game was lampooned for knowingly being shipped without any AI programming whatsoever; that section of the code had not even been implemented . PC Gamer US awarded the game one of its lowest scores ever, a 6%, advising gamers, "Avoid at all costs"

G

File:Gngenerals.jpg

Screenshot of Gods and Generals.

• Gods and Generals (2003, PC) by Activision Value, is a 3D first person shooter based on the eponymous film about the American Civil War. The game itself was shoddily made using an outdated graphics engine, undetailed graphics, lackluster artwork, nonexistent AI and poor playability. Even with the outdated graphics engine, it caused slowdowns on high-end computers of the time. The game lacked built-in multiplayer support, requiring instead an optional "multiplayer expansion pack", which many considered absurd due to how badly the game itself flopped

H

• Hard Head 1&2 are arcade games released by SunA corporation with similar gameplay to Super Mario (Hard Head, 1988, arcade/NES) and Toki/Juju (Hard Head 2, 1991, arcade) that copied some characteristic elements of both games. In themselves, the games were neither a commercial failure nor a success, but received some negative or cynical reviews because of their very bizarre, kitsch graphics and gameplay, and their "copy and paste" nature. It should be noted that the manufacturer, SunA, is well known for making inferior copies of more famous games, like the blatant Bubble Memories clone Ultra Balloon.

J

• Jaws (1987, NES) LJN Toys produced a NES game based on the film Jaws: The Revenge that is seen as one of the worst franchise-based video games released for the Nintendo system, although most of the games produced by LJN were both based on popular franchises and seen as a disappointment.

K

• Kabuki Warriors (2001, Xbox) was a launch title for the Xbox that was a critical and commercial flop. GameSpot gave it a 1.4 / 10 (abysmal), going so far as to say it was "...one of the worst games to be released this year or any year, on the Xbox or any other platform". IGN, which gave it a 2.0 / 10 (terrible), called it "...a prime example of what an XBOX game should not be." Gamedreamz.com gave it a 0 / 10. It is the only game ever to receive a 1 / 10 score from Edge .

• KISS Pinball (2001, PlayStation, PC) is a pinball game based on the rock band KISS. Many reviewers claimed that it wasn't even worth its $10 budget price. Most notably, it contains none of KISS's music. Electronic Gaming Monthly put the game (which received a 1.0 / 10 in Issue 144) at #6 in its "Top 10 Worst Reviewed Games" countdown and wrote in their review, "...we want our $10 back." GameSpot, which gave the game a 1.3 / 10 (abysmal), said that "KISS fans will be disappointed by the distinct lack of KISS, and pinball fans will be disappointed by the distinct lack of pinball."

L

• Last Action Hero (1993, SNES) is a poorly made brawling game by SNES standards, characterized by buggy collision detection, sub-par, undetailed graphics and flawed gameplay. The game was developed by Imagesoft, a Sony Entertainment division, and did nothing but further strengthen the stereotype of films being translated into poor video games.

P

File:A2600 Pac-Man.png

Screenshot of the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man.

• Pac-Man (1981, Atari 2600): considered by many to be a co-conspirator in the Video Game Crash of 1983, along with E.T. The original arcade game is generally considered a classic, and highly influential on game design. However, the very poor job of porting the game to the 2600, the too-bright graphics, the loud electronic beeping, only one ghost out at a time, and Atari's accompanying hype has merited the designation of "worst ever" .

R

File:RevolutionXSNES.gif

Screenshot of the SNES version of Revolution X.

• Revolution X (multiplatform, 1994) was, in its original form, a bitmap-based arcade light gun shooting game similar to Beast Busters or Terminator 2: Judgment Day featuring (at least in the manufacturer's intentions) the well known rock music band Aerosmith. The game was converted for a small number of systems without great success. Most versions and particularly the SNES version are remembered for being boring and unappealing. The game had a minimal selection of enemies (practically, all enemies encountered were identical men in yellow unforms), sound effects were restricted to exactly 5 effects, most music was made of short, looping, low-quality sample of the Aerosmith song "Eat The Rich", and the graphics were a mixture of hand-drawings, crude 3D renderings and blocky, pixelated digitized images. Animation of the "yellow soldiers" and most other objects in the game were also very crude. The gameplay itself was repetitive and unchallenging. The gamepad controls were, if the user lacked a lightgun, slow and imprecise. Other (generally CD based) versions of the game featured FMV scenes, better audio and more gameplay variety, but the SNES version is generally regarded as one of the worst SNES games ever, essentially a crude collage of music samples and bitmaps .

• Rise of the Robots (multiplatform, 1994): A versus fighting game that appeared on multiple consoles and handhelds that was overhyped for its pre-rendered graphics. As for the rest, the player was left with clunky control, forgettable music and poor variety in fighting mechanics. Most notably, on most versions of the game, the player could only pick one robot (the Android) which was by far the weakest of all enemy robots. Combine that with the relatively high AI skills and the game was seen as too difficult and unappealing. It was panned by almost every magazine at the time (at every version reviewed) and gamers alike. The review came too late for many buyers though as the publishers refused review copies before release, leaving reviewers to actually buy their copy to review. This tactic is often used when a much hyped game is actually worse than anticipated to increase sales (it is also frequently used by the film industry). It also spawned a sequel, Rise 2: Resurrection, with superior graphics, soundtrack and highly enhanced gameplay, but still unsuccessful in the market. The CD-I version of the game had a soundtrack made exclusively for it by Brian May, the lead guitarist of popular rock/opera band Queen, while the game allowed the player to listen to either the soundtrack or sound effects (but never both).

S

• Shaq Fu (1994, multiplatform) is widely considered to be the worst fighting game ever due to its slow gameplay, horrible character agility, and was often seen as a vain marketing vehicle for Shaquille O'Neal

• SilverLoad (1997, PC/PlayStation) The now bankrupt Vic Tokai produced this graphic adventure game where the player, through a first person perspective, controls an old nineteenth century cowboy in a mysterious town that has been cursed because their ancestors committed genocide against an American Indian tribe. The game was noted for having bad voiceovers for townspeople featuring sterotypical ethnic accents as well as a town barber that was widely seen as being a sterotypical gay character. Aside from the bad voiceovers, the game included poor control functions that made it hard to interact with people and objects in the game. To top it off, fight scenes used poorly developed Doom style gameplay and picking up certain objects caused the town clock to move forward an hour, forcing the player to pick up objects in the game in a certain order or else you had to restart from the beginning.

• Spawn: The Eternal (1997, Playstation) is a game that is widely regarded as one of the worst of all time. As quoted by IGN [1]: "To begin with, it's as ugly as the backside of a male dog with explosive diarrhea. The textures in the game are grainy and sloppy and look like something you might have seen on the 3DO four years ago. There are a few decent touches, like the sewer water, but overall looking at Spawn: The Eternal is like looking at a pile of broken glass. Which doesn't even cover the man himself. Poor Spawn looks like an ape in a costume, and that ain't pretty. He doesn't even have his magnificent cape until he gets into combat, which brings us to the next problem. The fine folks at Sony Interactive decided to give Spawn two engines: one for exploration, and one for combat. Control in the exploration mode is slow and awkward, but doesn't even compare to that of the combat mode. Once Spawn gets close to a bad guy, the camera switches to a side-on, fighting perspective. But for some reason the control scheme has also inexplicably switched, so now Spawn moves forward by pressing Right on the D-pad instead of Up. It's terribly confusing. In the end, though, most of the enemies can be beat by repeatedly pressing kick and sidestep at the same time. What's the point?"

• Spice World (1998, PlayStation) is a game based on the movie Spice World, which was also based on the then popular music group Spice Girls. It was labeled as a "fan trap" that was "slow, uninspired, and unrewarding" by IGN, and GameSpot remarked that they "wouldn't recommend this game to a single fan" .

• Superman 64 (1999, Nintendo 64). Reasons for this include the poor graphics, absurd storyline and the gameplay itself, which disappointed many Superman fans. For example, Superman himself was "forced" to fly through fixed hoops and was generally underpowered compared to expectations. According to Gamespy, "Gameplay is so terrible, the controls so unresponsive, and the graphics so foggy that the developer had to spin some silly backstory about Lex Luthor creating a 'virtual reality' Metropolis, since nothing this bad could possibly exist in the real world." Superman 64 has a game ranking of 21% based on 17 media outlet reviews at Gamerankings.com, and Seanbaby.com wrote, "Superman looks a lot like a flying log in panties, and the entire world is covered in a dull green fog" . Nintendo Power ranked it #1 on its 5 worst games ever list, saying, "Titus, oh, my dear Titus. Why have you foresaken me?" It also spent a very long time in development (almost three years) and was heavily hyped by Nintendo Power and other gaming magazines.

• Super 3D Noah's Ark (1994, SNES) released by Wisdom Tree, well known for its Christian themed games for the NES, is basically a graphic modification of the Wolfenstein 3D SNES port . The player was supposed to be playing Noah who has to deal with restless animals on board the Noah's Ark in a first person shooter perspective. The game featured sub-par graphics for an SNES game and dull gameplay.

T

File:Thundra.jpg

Screenshot of Thundra.

• Thundra (2000, PC) by Spungulas Software is an FPS game developed by a small software house. It was sold through their website for $22 (in 2000) and a demo version was also released, but the game was thoroughly mocked by Something Awful for supposed bad artwork and poor controls. The game can be freely downloaded in its full version from Spungulas Software itself. Thundra was reviewed on Something Awful and was the first game to receive a perfect -50 rating .

W

File:White men can'tjump.jpg

A screenshot of White Men Can't Jump.

• World War II Combat: Road to Berlin (2006, PC/Xbox) is a budget-priced first-person shooter developed by Direct Action Games and published by Groove Games. The game received extremely negative reviews from both users and reviewers alike. For instance, GameSpot gave it a 2.0 / 10 (terrible), while Official Xbox Magazine gave it a record low score of 1.0 / 10. The game suffered from poor control and aiming, the inability to pick up med-kits or additional weapons during a mission, boring level designs, and abysmal graphics and animations. The chunky aiming was especially frustrating because enemies shot at the player with high accuracy even from a far distance away, and the inability to pick up extra weapons during a mission was especially a problem during the sniper missions: since the sniper rifle replaced the machinegun, players were stuck only using the pistol for close combat in these missions. The worst aspect of the game for many players was that the Allied soldiers would shoot at the player instead of the enemies. This was especially irritating because friendly fire could not be turned off, and killing an Allied soldier would result in a mission failure.

• White Men Can't Jump (1996, Atari Jaguar) is a sports video game that simply used the title of the 1992 movie of the same name, but includes only minor references to the film. Players played two-on-two basketball in the game, but the graphics and sound were both lacking and the game was thus hailed as one of the worst, if not the worst, video games of all time. It has some of the worst scaling and rotation ever . Also, blatant racism and stereotyping was prevalent for both white and black characters.

Z

• Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon (1993, CD-i) is widely considered to be the worst Zelda game ever created. As part of the termination of a contract from Nintendo, Philips gained the license to produce three Zelda games. All three received overwhelmingly negative feedback and are referred to in some circles as the "Unholy Triforce." They were notorious for bad animation, scripting, and voice acting, but The Wand of Gamelon was roundly condemned by all Zelda fans and is #6 on EGM's 20 worst games list. Filter also ranked it #1 on their "Top 10 Worst Games of All Time" list.

See also

• List of controversial games
• List of commercial failures in computer and video gaming
• Computer and video games that have been considered the greatest ever

External links

• Gamespy's 10 top worst games of all time
• Worst Games Ever Part One
• Worst Games Ever Part Two
• Seanbaby's EGM'S Crapstravaganza 20 top worst games of all time
• Sharky Games worst games of 2000
• Something Awful's Game reviews Note: not all of the reviewed games are considered "bad" by the reviewer; most reviews require careful reading to understand, and some are deliberately hilarious or exaggerated.