List of video games notable for negative reception

Video and computer games that have been considered among the worst ever are listed in this article.

Games are usually considered to be awful for various reasons; the main reasons being a combonation of exceptionally poor graphics, laughable premises, shoddy controls and awful gameplay.

Some games, such as Daikatana, are not horrid games in their own right - Other factors contributed to their universal panning (see Derek Smart and John Romero).

A

Action 52 is the game that is one of the most hated due to terrible controls and poor gameplay. Many of its namesake 52 games do not load, or are extremely buggy. [1]

An interesting note about Action 52 is its prohibitive cost: Action Enterprises sold the game for $199, far more than most games at the time. It also marked the first appearance of the Cheetahmen, whom Action Enterprises hoped to turn into a franchise akin to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

B

Battlecruiser 3000AD (1996, PC) is an awful game by all rights (horrible interface is cited as the main culprit), although it is more 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.

Is it worth noting that, after the initial and buggy release, numerous patches were created that fixed many of the game's issues and made it a quality game. [2]

Bebe's Kids (199?, SNES) is notorious for awful control and terrible gameplay, and possibly the worst movie-to-game conversion in history. [3]

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing (2003, PC): Considered by many to be the worst video game ever made. Technically, it was said by many to be a broken game. No collision detection, trucks that that reverse at unlimited speeds and stop on a dime, going off of the map, going over almost 90-degree hills, and a computer controlled player that didn'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 G4, called this "the worst game ever made". Surprisingly, it is so bad that there is a dedicated cult on several gaming forums. As of current, it has a 4% rating on GameRankings, making it their lowest-rated game.[4]

C

Custer's Revenge (198?, Atari 2600is a game where you must rape a Native American girl while dodging arrows. It is considered by some to have one of the worst premises ever in a game, and was ranked #1 on Gamespy's "Ten Most Shameful Games of All Time" [5]

D

Daikatana (????, PC) had a similar beginning to Battlecruiser 3000AD, as John Romero placed an advertisement in gaming magazines proclaiming "John Romero is About to Make You His Bitch" prior to the release of Daikatana. Between the death schedules used at Ion Storm, Romero's showmanship, and the overall mediocre quality of the game, Daikatana was universally panned and often the punchline of jokes in gaming.

The fallout from Daikatana was so great that, while working on Deus Ex (which is considered to be one of the best games of all time) at Ion Storm, lead designer Warren Spector was often abused simply because he was working at the same company that produced Daikatana.

E

E.T., a game based on the movie 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 horrible games, this game alone almost single-handedly ended video games in general by being a major part of the Video Game Crash of 1983. Atari, expecting that the E.T. franchise and Christmas season would boost sales, produced more copies of the game than the number of Atari 2600s in existence. Instead of being a financial boon, though, many copies of the game were returned due to the poor controls and shoddy gameplay (the game was created in five weeks, in order to maximize on the Christmas rush), costing Atari millions and assisting in its fall. According to urban legend, in order to dispose of copies of E.T., Atari filled a large area of desert in the American West with copies and covered it in concrete (thus spawning the gaming joke, "if you want a copy of E.T., go to Arizona and dig." [6]

Extreme Paintbrawl (1998): A game (which surprisingly spawned several sequels) which was considered to be, until Gods and Generals and Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, the worst game ever made. Horrile physics, abysmal graphics, and the worst team A.I. ever concocted (at the time) made this game hold the "honor" of being the worst video game ever reviewed by IGN (which is still held today). It should also be noted that after this game, IGN went on to review as many games carrying the "Extreme" title (and bashing them for being so "extreme") as they could. [7]

S

Superman 64 for the Nintendo 64 is widely aknowledged as one of the worst games ever made by many. It mainly consists of flying through hoops, which many hated, saying it was not what they wanted in a Superman video game. [8] [9]