Video games are great when they are cutting edge pieces of technology which get you caught up in nonstop action in a fantasy world or when they encourage you to use your brain to find creative solutions. Sadly, the worst video games in history are more likely to send you to sleep than send you to games heaven.
1. ET
This is the game which is so bad that Atari allegedly buried millions of unsold cartridges in the desert. It makes it onto the list of the 10 worst video games in history for a whole bunch of reasons. First of all, no one even had the faintest idea what they had to do to complete the game. After that, we could mention the awful graphics and the fact that our loveable alien buddy is almost impossible to control.
2. Superman 64
This game is more correctly known as Superman: The New Adventures. It is a 3D glitchathon which slows down fantastically well when it shouldn’t and allows you to fly through walls which you shouldn’t. It sold well for a month or so in 1999 before we all realised that it sucked.
3. Custer’s Revenge
You will find this spectacularly bad Atari video game on most people’s lists of bad games. The lack of quality in its production has a big part to play in it but it also has to do with the fact that it apparently shows a Native American woman getting raped. People unsurprisingly complained to Atari. Atari sued the fools who made the game and it got taken off the shelves. Burial in the desert is too good for Custer’s Revenge.
4. Extreme Paintbrawl
This PC game was doomed from the very instant some idiot came up with the ridiculous name of Extreme Paintbrawl. One glance at the game is enough to tell you that it is laughably bad. Weird maps, computer controlled players who act like buffoons and a mysteriously inappropriate soundtrack all add up to a very strange gaming experience.
5. Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing
In order for a racing game to not be one of the worst video games in history it should try to make sure that collisions are detected and that computer controlled vehicles actually take part in the race. Just small points like this. Oh, and a winner’s caption that doesn’t say “You’re Winner” would help. It still sold 20,000. Go figure.
6. Galaxy Defence
I was a proud ZX Spectrum owner back in the day. Actually, not so proud. Those were simpler days when the touch of sensual rubber keys and the screeching of the loading sound in my ears made me feel at one with the universe. Sadly, many of the computer’s games were unbelievably naff. The 14 year old author of Galaxy Defence said that it took him a whole 12 hours to code the game. It shows, buddy. What was wrong with spending another half hour on it and making my childhood slightly less miserable?
7. Duke Nukem Forever
From a game which took 12 hours to write to one which took 15 years. You would think that anyone putting a decade and a half of their life into a blooming video game would make it the best ever. Wouldn’t you? I said, wouldn’t you?
8. Ninjabread Man
This PlayStation 2 and Wii game has a great name. Sadly, that it all it has going for it.
9. Fight for Life
So, you’ve got these 8 people are they’re, like, dead. And then they, like, need to fight each order so that the winner can take on the son of the Devil and get resurrected. The backgrounds aren’t exactly hell-like but the gameplay is.
10. Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade
You know that you are faced with one of the world’s worst video games when it takes you longer to say the name than work out that it is stinks. Confusingly unplayable and unplayably confusing, this one’s rotten.