History Horrible / VideoGamesOther

* Tiger Electronics' '''R-Zone''', which manages the impressive feat of being a ShoddyKnockoffProduct of the VirtualBoy. The one thing it did have over the Virtual Boy was that you could wear it on your head rather than having to use a stand. When you did put it on however, you were treated to graphics ''worse than a GameAndWatch'' (mostly due to the eye-searing "red on slightly-darker red" color scheme) rendered about three inches in front of your right eye. Needless to say, this didn't produce anything even vaguely resembling virtual reality. Making this whole system even more ridiculous, there were no less than four different versions; the standard "headgear" version, a much larger tabletop variant, a traditional handheld version, and one which also incorporated an electronic organizer, all of which crashed and burned equally. Creator/StuartAshen [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09so0ghPYG4 gives his take]] on the handheld version while WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u5dtBtG9yU#t=15m23s briefly analyzed]] the headgear version.

->''"This game '''is horrendous'''!"''
-->-- '''WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd''' on ''VideoGame/{{Superman 64}}''

* ''TIGG'', short for ''WebVideo/TheIrateGamer [[TheProblemWithLicensedGames Game]]''. It's a blatant reskin of ''Commander Cool'' which fails on the merits of even that, thanks to horrid controls, unintuitive gameplay (including misleading backgrounds), paucity of individual enemy types, [[CheckpointStarvation absence of checkpoints]], tendency to hemorrhage health power-ups, and its story, composed wholly of constant, unfunny references and told exclusively via cutscenes. The only thing it has in its favor is a good art direction, and even that can't make it worth the four bucks. Even the Irate Gamer's fans won't defend this piece of crap.

* ''3D Cartoon Land: Safari'', released in 2012. Taking out of the account that this game is [[TheMockbuster blatantly trying to capitalize on another]] [[VideoGame/SuperMario3DLand popular and successful game that features a character in a red hat and blue overalls who jumps across platforms and stomps on brown monstrous mushrooms]], the game just doesn't hold up. The graphics are elementary-school-level cardboard collages at best with serious draw distance/pop-up problems, there are no sound effects save for a warbling out-of-place music loop, and the play control is utterly crippled. The game has now been rmoved from the App Store.

* ''TIGG'', short for ''WebVideo/TheIrateGamer [[TheProblemWithLicensedGames Game]]''. Even the Irate Gamer's fans won't defend this piece of crap. It's a blatant reskin of ''Commander Cool'' which fails on the merits of even that, thanks to horrid controls, unintuitive gameplay (including misleading backgrounds), paucity of individual enemy types, [[CheckpointStarvation absence of checkpoints]], tendency to hemorrhage health power-ups, and its story, composed wholly of constant, unfunny references and told exclusively via cutscenes. The only thing it has in its favor is a good art direction, and even that can't make it worth the four bucks.

* In the late-90's, {{Activision}} had a subsidiary called '''Head Games'''. They released several games under the "Extreme" label (including two sequels to Extreme Paintbrawl) that were simply horrible.
** ''Extreme Paintbrawl'' for the PC. According to a letter to the editors of PC Gamer (which gave it 6%, the worst score up to that time), the '''game itself''' was produced in two weeks on a rushed schedule. And boy does it show. Among many other mistakes, it has one of the worst examples of TheComputerIsACheatingBastard that one could ever find. What's funny about this is that it was originally shipped '''[[ArtificialStupidity without any AI at all!]]''' If you wanted to play against any bots that would do anything more than run into a wall, then you had to download the patch when it came out a month later. As for [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li5mXnHyg9w the music]], one Website/YouTube commenter described it roughly as power metal for people with Attention Deficit Disorder.
** That said, their awful games ''did'' get some pretty funny reviews at IGN: http://www.ign.com/articles/1999/01/27/extreme-tennis, http://pc.ign.com/articles/161/161608p1.html, etc.

The dark side of video games doesn't merely end with [[Horrible/VideoGameGenerations the software.]] A handful of game developers, both professional and independent, often have a hard time making games that are fun, or even playable. Those names are "immortalized" below.

* '''Active Enterprises''' is mostly infamous for creating ''{{Action 52}}'', a compilation of 52 different "games" — but only if you use a loose definition of the word. These games have ''a lot'' of [[GameBreakingBug bugs]], sloppy controls, bad level designs, etc. You couldn't tell that to the guys at Active; not only did they expect to make $200 a pop off of this garbage, but they also had plans to make one of the games (''Cheetahmen'', perhaps the most mind-wrenchingly terrible side-scrolling BeatEmUp ever burned to an EEPROM) into a [[CashCowFranchise merchandising empire]] rivaling the likes of ''Franchise/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles'', including a line of action figures and a Saturday-morning cartoon. Well, they weren't "plans" so much as "pie-in-the-sky dreaming with absolutely no grounding in what we call ''reality''" but, much like the legless boy who dreams of being an Olympic sprinter, it's somewhat endearing in a way to see somebody hoping to make so much out of such a crappy game. (Note that [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Pistorius the former]] has almost been accomplished.)

** Lowtax's [[http://www.youtube.com/user/lowtaxico?feature=watch Youtube channel]] features Let's Plays showcasing many poor Game Maker games, which show a general pattern: ripping off actual games or licenses, poor texture usage, bad graphics, bad sound design, and simplistic gameplay, if the gameplay works at all.

* The '''VirtualBoy''' console was one of Creator/{{Nintendo}}'s most publicized and definitely most infamous failures. Originally intended as a ground-breaking 3D game system, the project was spearheaded by GunpeiYokoi, creator of the GameBoy. He was forced to get the system out as fast as he could, and it shows: The system couldn't handle color, so it stuck to a monochromatic, headache-inducing red-and-black display, which could even cause permanent eye damage if played too long. The system was bulky and had to be propped up on a table for you to play it, and only the player could see the games being played, meaning multiplayer on the same system was impossible (while the system had a port for a link cable, the system was discontinued before the cable could even be released). Only 22 games were ever released for the system, without any standout titles that took advantage of the 3D effect in a significant way, such as first-person shooters. While some of the games might not have been half-bad, such as ''VideoGame/WarioLand'', there was no reason for them to be on VirtualBoy to begin with, and putting an incredibly addictive game like ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}'' (two separate versions of it, no less) on a system that can cause permanent eye damage in long sessions is just puzzling. It [[CreatorKiller destroyed]] Gunpei Yokoi's career with Nintendo, and was such a humiliating flop that Nintendo [[OldShame doesn't talk about it anymore]], even editing out a reference in the overseas version of ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrothersMelee''. It was decades until [[Nintendo3DS they made another 3D console]].

** ''Extreme Paintbrawl'' for the PC. According to a letter to the editors of PC Gamer (which gave it 6%, the worst score up to that time), the ''game itself'' was produced in two weeks on a rushed schedule. And boy does it ''show''. Among ''many'' other mistakes, it has one of the worst examples of TheComputerIsACheatingBastard that one could ever find. What's funny about this is that it was originally shipped ''[[ArtificialStupidity without any AI at all!]]'' If you wanted to play against any bots that would do anything more than run into a wall, then you had to download the patch when it came out a month later. As for [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li5mXnHyg9w the music]], one Website/YouTube commenter described it roughly as power metal for people with Attention Deficit Disorder.

* The '''VirtualBoy''' console was one of Creator/{{Nintendo}}'s most publicized and definitely most infamous failures. Originally intended as a ground-breaking 3D game system, the project was spearheaded by GunpeiYokoi, creator of the GameBoy. He was forced to get the system out as fast as he could, and it shows: The system couldn't handle color, so it stuck to a monochromatic, headache-inducing red-and-black display, which could even cause permanent eye damage if played too long. The system was bulky and had to be propped up on a table for you to play it, and only the player could see the games being played, meaning multiplayer on the same system was impossible (while the system had a port for a link cable, the system was discontinued before the cable could even be released). Only 22 games were ever released for the system, without any standout titles that took advantage of the 3D effect in a significant way, such as first-person shooters. While some of the games might not have been half-bad, such as ''VideoGame/WarioLand'', there was no reason for them to be on VirtualBoy to begin with, and putting an incredibly addictive game like ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}'' (two separate versions of it, no less) on a system that can cause permanent eye damage in long sessions is just puzzling. It [[CreatorKiller destroyed]] Gunpei Yokoi's career with Nintendo, and was such a humiliating flop that Nintendo [[OldShame doesn't talk about it anymore]], even editing out a reference in the overseas version of ''SuperSmashBrothers Melee''. It was decades until [[Nintendo3DS they made another 3D console]].

* In the late-90's, {{Activision}} had a subsidiary called '''Head Games''', who was responsible for the aforementioned ''ExtremePaintbrawl''. They released several other games under the "Extreme" label (including two sequels to Extreme Paintbrawl) that were equally horrible.
** Although they ''did'' get some pretty funny reviews at IGN: http://www.ign.com/articles/1999/01/27/extreme-tennis, http://pc.ign.com/articles/161/161608p1.html, etc.

* The [=VictorMaxx=] '''Virtual Reality Stuntmaster'''. The device is not a console, but rather a large set of goggles that can plug into a SNES or Sega Genesis and play games in front of the user's eyes. The box also boasted a "motion sensor", which supposedly reacts when the user turns his/her head. Whilst having a slightly better design with a headband rather than the Virtual Boy's stand, the thing's size and weight put serious discomfort on the user's nose. However getting it to work presents the biggest problem; there were no instructions in the box (though it did have a bizarre joke resume) and the wiring system was a complete mess, which out of the box was unable to plug into anything but an original model Genesis. When you finally get it working, you are treated to a horribly muddy Game Gear-like display that seriously hurts the eyes. And the "motion sensor" promised on the box? It was a ripcord-like stick you clip onto your shirt and plug into the device, that shifts the display a little when the ripcord runs along a sensor. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy373DpKGAE James Rolfe & Mike Matei]] take a look at it.

* Several authors take the idea of spriteswaps UpToEleven. Almost all of KoopaKingdom.com's characters are spriteswaps of MortalKombat characters, poorly made into Nintendo characters. Spriteswapping is far from the only flaw present in KoopaKingdom.com's characters. They also possess ridiculously powerful attacks, high priority on all of their attacks, spriting issues (even disregarding the spriteswapping), glitches, and several characters still have the pre-spriteswap sounds (resulting in Yoshi sounding like Scorpion, for instance.) Don't just take our word, see them in all of their unglory [[https://www.youtube.com/results?q=KoopaKingdom.com here]].

* ''FireEmblem'' has an extensive hacking community, so naturally a lot of stinkers turn up. Some of the most common issues are poorly designed maps with bad enemy placement, high level foes that the player must defeat long before it would be feasible for them to do so, unbalanced character stats and growths that either make the game too easy (no one has any real flaws, resulting in an army of juggernauts) or too hard (none of the characters stats go up reliably, resulting in a weak team well into high levels), terrible sprite work, and poor quality music.

** There's also ''FireEmblem Different Dimensions Ostian Princess'', or FEDDOP, which is what you will be after playing it. The design decisions make hardly any sense, the plot stars Lilina but has so many holes it's hardly there at all, and there's hardly any difficulty at all and, after clearing chapter 13 the game goes right back to chapter 12, causing an infinite loop. It's broken on a completely hilarious level.

* ''VideoGame/Left4Dead'' and ''VideoGame/Left4Dead2'' has tons of custom campaigns created for them and there are lots of bad ones. Most of the recurring elements of a badly designed map is areas that abuse DoorToBefore, throwing in hordes of zombies for seemingly no reason other than to "challenge" the player by forcing them to fight hundreds of zombies for the sake of it, and starving the player of items like ammo and health kits. Modders may not even bother to have the survivor AI work properly, which can cause frustrating things like the AI not picking up new guns or supplies and getting stuck due to badly programmed pathing.

[[AC:LittleBigPlanet]]
* Christian Weston Chandler (better known for the creation of ''{{Sonichu}}''; see the {{Horrible.Webcomics}} section for details) is infamous for his ''LittleBigPlanet'' mods. They are, barring perhaps the "First Date Level," quite bugged, poorly assembled, and full of FakeDifficulty. One of the mods, despite having been up for three years, has had fewer than 20 people clear it. This carried on to the game's sequel:

---->'''Custer''': Gentlemen, you are the bravest squadron of men it has ever been this [[ArtisticLicenseHistory Southerner's]] privilege to serve with. And you will need that bravery today, as your orders are to remove my pants and underpants. I will then attempt to force sex on an Indian girl under heavy enemy fire. Are there any questions?
'''Custer's Military Adviser''': Yes, general. ''[[ThisIsWrongOnSoManyLevels Several.]]''\\

---->'''Custer''': Gentlemen, you are the bravest squadron of men it has ever been this [[ArtisticLicenseHistory Southerner's]] privilege to serve with. And you will need that bravery today, as your orders are to remove my pants and underpants. I will then attempt to force sex on an Indian girl under heavy enemy fire. Are there any questions?\\\\
'''Custer's Military Adviser''': Yes, general. ''[[ThisIsWrongOnSoManyLevels Several.]]''

* "[[http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?id=16760 Doomguy's Warzone]]" is not to be confused with something with the same name that came out years earlier. It is essentially a gameplay mod with far too many unnecessary difficulty modes, too many overpowered custom weapons, too many [[GoddamnedBats ungodly annoying]] or [[DemonicSpiders lethally-aggravating custom enemies]] amongst the randomly-generated roster, and almost '''all''' of the resources are pretty much plagiarised...not to mention, there are a [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking ton of custom items]] that either [[GameBreaker make things too easy]] or are [[JokeItem utterly useless]]. On top of all this, the author, Doomguy 2000, [[WhatAnIdiot continues to]] [[SerialEscalation pimp the hell out of his disasterpiece]]; [[DarthWiki.WallBanger even being repeatedly told to cease and desist said pimping, by seemingly the whole Doom Community, didn't hinder him any.]] You may FacePalm at Doomguy 2000 for his [[TheDeterminator unwavering stupidity]] now.

* "[[http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?id=16760 Doomguy's Warzone]] is not to be confused with something with the same name that came out years earlier. It is essentially a gameplay mod with far too many unnecessary difficulty modes, too many overpowered custom weapons, too many [[GoddamnedBats ungodly annoying]] or [[DemonicSpiders lethally-aggravating custom enemies]] amongst the randomly-generated roster, and almost '''all''' of the resources are pretty much plagiarised...not to mention, there are a [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking ton of custom items]] that either [[GameBreaker make things too easy]] or are [[JokeItem utterly useless]]. On top of all this, the author, Doomguy 2000, [[WhatAnIdiot continues to]] [[SerialEscalation pimp the hell out of his disasterpiece]]; [[DarthWiki.WallBanger even being repeatedly told to cease and desist said pimping, by seemingly the whole Doom Community, didn't hinder him any.]] You may FacePalm at Doomguy 2000 for his [[TheDeterminator unwavering stupidity]] now.

* ''TIGG'', short for ''WebVideo/TheIrateGamer [[TheProblemWithLicensedGames Game]]''. Even the Irate Gamer's fans won't defend this piece of crap. It's a blatant reskin ''Commander Cool'' and fails on the merits of even that, thanks to horrid controls, unintuitive gameplay (including misleading backgrounds) paucity of individual enemy types, [[CheckpointStarvation absence of checkpoints]], tendency to hemorrhage health power-ups, and its story, composed wholly of constant, unfunny references and told exclusively via cutscenes. The only thing it has in its favor is a good art direction, and even that can't make it worth the four bucks.

** ''Series/FamilyFeud 2012'' unlike the others, is an X-Box 360 game and uses the console's avatars rather than it's own, but still manages to be equally bad. The fictional host, "Sparky Whitmore", makes '''Louie Anderson''' look good; the on-screen keyboard practically gives you the correct answers with its predictive text (if it doesn't show up in the choices after two letters, it's not going to be correct); there's long gaps between every action; the avatar animations look wooden; and the parser is stupider than [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5tyMXXDPX4 the broken one in the SNES version]] (it somehow interprets "Bike" as "Horseback")! [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya24jxwLQV8 Giant Bomb riffs on it.]]

** ''Series/FamilyFeud 2012''. The fictional host, "Sparky Whitmore", makes '''Louie Anderson''' look good; the on-screen keyboard practically gives you the correct answers with its predictive text (if it doesn't show up in the choices after two letters, it's not going to be correct); there's long gaps between every action; the avatar animations look wooden; and the parser is stupider than [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5tyMXXDPX4 the broken one in the SNES version]] (it somehow interprets "Bike" as "Horseback")! [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya24jxwLQV8 Giant Bomb riffs on it.]]

** ''[[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/284725 Metroid; Beginings]]'' [sic] is a very ObviousBeta that makes ''Elements'' look like ''VideoGame/SuperMetroid'' in comparison. If you play it, you'll find that most of the time, the game ends when Samus glitches out and falls through the floor. The game has no save feature, and if the player dies they [[CheckPointStarvation have to replay the entire game]]. There's no semblance of exploration or nonlinearity, and in fact very little to connect the game with the ''Metroid'' series. The plot is somehow both nonexistent and all over the place, the art style is ''ugly'', the bosses are all insanely hard in the worst possible way[[note]]The first one, Biodronider, is entirely luck-based; the second one, a Space Pirate, is fought underwater and is almost impossible to avoid thanks to floaty controls; the third one, Dark Samus, has an impossible-to-dodge shockwave attack and tends to fall out of the level[[/note]], and there's literally NoEnding.[[note]]As in, hacking it with a flash decompiler reveals that nothing was programmed to happen after the end of the 'final' boss fight.[[/note]]

* ''Super Monster Bros'' from Adventure Time Pocket (Also known as Mario Games Casas Team. No connection with ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime''.) is an obvious rip-off of ''VideoGame/{{Super Mario Bros}}'' with graphics heavily designed after ''Pokémon''. It suffered from plagiarized game play and designs and sound, occasional inconsistent physics, a limited projectile button, and micro-transactions in which are rather expensive for its quality, with few costing at least '''$99.99 each''', making this game a monstrous cash grabber. It is even almost identical to the related game ''Super Squirrel Bros.'' Even though it is now removed from the App Store, its notoriety remains a warning to parents who didn't supervise their children browsing the App Store, indicated in this [[http://www.cnet.com.au/super-monster-bros-is-the-worst-mobile-game-cash-grab-weve-seen-339344090.htm article]].

* ''TIGG'', short for ''WebVideo/TheIrateGamer [[TheProblemWithLicensedGames Game]]''. Even the Irate Gamer's fans won't defend this piece of crap. It's a blatant reskin ''Commander Cool'' and fails on the merits of even that, thanks to horrid controls, unintuitive gameplay (including misleading backgrounds) paucity of individual enemy types, [[CheckpointStarvation absence of checkpoints, tendency to hemorrhage health power-ups, and its story, composed wholly of constant, unfunny references and told exclusively via cutscenes. The only thing it has in its favor is a good art direction, and even that can't make it worth the four bucks.

* ''TIGG'', short for ''WebVideo/TheIrateGamer [[TheProblemWithLicensedGames Game]]''. Even the Irate Gamer's fans won't defend this piece of crap. The controls are atrocious (you can't jump and shoot at the same time, there's ladders and ropes that can't be climbed everywhere), the gameplay is unintuitive (at one point you have to walk off a ledge to activate a hang glider, but you're never told that anywhere, and it doesn't activate if you jump), there's only a couple of enemies ({{Palette Swap}}ped robots and land mines), there's [[CheckpointStarvation no checkpoints anywhere]], and the game is way too generous with health power-ups. What little story here is told through cutscenes that constantly make unfunny references to better games, and while the art style is genuinely good, it can't salvage the experience. Spend that $4 on something else.
** [[http://irategamersucks.blogspot.com/2013/10/ig-game-update-commander-reskin.html It gets worse]]. ''TIGG'' is a blatant reskin of another iOS game, ''Commander Cool''. It's been theorized that Mad Media Labs took Chris Bores' check, sat on it for three years, and then, when Chris got suspicious, bought the source assets from ''Commander Cool'' (available for $130) and put ''TIGG'' together in a week or so.

For "main" video games, [[Horrible/VideoGameGenerations click this link.]]

* '''Color Dreams'''. Many of their beat-em-up games share the same gameplay, with unresponsive controls, near-zero attack range, etc. They eventually changed their name to Bunch Games ''because'' of the poor reputation of their video games, and later on became a Christian company known as Wisdom Tree. However, it should be noted that while they had some of their best-selling games as Wisdom Tree (mostly because they took advantage of the loophole involving Nintendo refusing to supply officially lisenced games to stores that sold pirated or unlisenced versions of their games by mainly selling their games in bookstores where most other forms of Christian media was sold at the time) and was the ''only'' company to have an unlicensed SNES game that works (but in a weird manner involving plugging a secondary, official cartridge into it), they no longer sell video games in their current market and are no longer associated with Color Dreams. [[DrAshens A FITTING PUNISHMENT!!]]

-->[N]ot only is it prone to hardware failures, it's prone to about five different ways it can fail. It can fail if [it] isn't perfectly placed on the [Jaguar]. It can fail if the contacts aren't clean. It can fail if the [=MemoryTrack=] cartridge isn't perfectly set, and it can easily fail because the laser itself or the motor mechanism are defective, and they often are, and in [Spoony's] case, it would often fail because the lid is so poorly designed that, when closed, it actually closes too tightly and mashes the CD against the inside of the drive, preventing it from spinning, and that could easily cause additional internal damage[...E]ven when I did get it to work [it] still froze all the time, and I do mean ''all the damn time''!
** Spoony himself later remarked "After spending three days getting the thing to work [...] the motor [...] completely crapped out."

** Three of the most infamous examples (listed together because they're the exact same game minus a main character model swap) are ''VideoGame/NinjabreadMan'', ''Trixie in Toyland'', and ''Anubis II''. Horrible controls, a bad camera that you can't control, and a near-useless (and difficult to activate) melee attack. The games also contain only four levels, one of which is a "training" stage.
** The spine of ''Rock n' Roll Adventure'' calls it ''[[TyopOnTheCover Rock n' Roll Advneture]]''.