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Post by Weasel on Apr 29, 2016 18:58:27 GMT -5
The first thing to really shatter my illusions that games could never suck: Road Runner in Death Valley Rally. Wait, I remember that being pretty fun? It was really not fun at all to 7-year-old me, to be honest; it seemed like nothing I did in the game resulted in anything but death, and it was among the few rental games that got taken back the very next day instead of kept through the entire rental period.
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Post by jorpho on Apr 29, 2016 22:58:11 GMT -5
The earliest recognizably bad game I can recall? Probably Donkey Kong 3 for the NES. Rented it and couldn't stand playing it for more than a couple of minutes, possibly because it was just such a departure from the first two games.
I'm not sure if I recognized Bart vs the Space Mutants as an objectively bad game; they sure promoted the wazoo out of it at the time. Even now it seems hard to firmly dismiss; there's such an intriguing veneer layered over all the utter crap.
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Post by akumajobelmont on Apr 30, 2016 6:56:56 GMT -5
I used to love pretty much every game I played as a kid. I rented Taz-Mania on the Mega Drive for weeks on end. Can't touch it now... at all.
One of my favourite games as a kid was the Crash Test Dummies game on the Mega Drive. I played that game to the end, and over again. I guess it's bad, but I still kinda like that one. But I think my earliest memory of realizing a game was actually bad was Awesome Possum. Rented that one weekend, played for 5 mins, and asked Mum if we could return it early so I could get something else.
Though, it wasn't until I was a little older that games could consistently strike me as being horrible. I found a lot of stinkers during my Saturn days - garbage like Independence Day and The Incredible Hulk were some of the games I can remember as having really bad controls - bad enough that I couldn't play through the 'horrible' like I used to.
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Post by elektrolurch on Apr 30, 2016 7:21:03 GMT -5
I grew up on home computers, so yeah even as a kid I was confronted with broken shareware or shovelware games on DOS and Amiga. And as kid, you can tell a broken game from a functioning one, at least I could. The videogame crash- yes, I've learnt about that later, but, coming from europe, the carsh did not really effect us so much in the first place...
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Post by The Great Klaid on May 1, 2016 3:33:41 GMT -5
I don't know what you'd expect an NES game to look like in 1999. Of course it's gonna look like an NES game. Unless that's a typo and you mean 1989, the year it came out in the US, when, yeah, it was looking pretty dated compared to other NES games coming out at the time, considering it came out on Famicom in '86. I guess I was getting at both. Like I couldn't tell what the hell I was looking at. And I hadn't really played much on the NES back then. And I was 7.
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Post by Gendo Ikari on May 1, 2016 3:37:25 GMT -5
Never. As a kid, there were some arcade games I really didn't like, even more if they were in some genres (soccer games for example). Back when I had my first PC, I got Prince of Persia and Alley Cat but also some games I found crappy already, I just played them because there wasn't much more.
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Post by wyrdwad on May 1, 2016 4:02:42 GMT -5
I still believe there's no such thing as a bad game. As long as at least one person gleans enjoyment from a game, then that game has done good for the world. And I'm pretty sure every game that's ever existed -- even Superman 64 -- has brought joy to at least a single person at some point in its existence (even if only ironically).
Games can be poorly programmed, poorly designed, etc. But there is no universal "good" or "bad." There are only games you like, and games you don't. Everybody's going to have different opinions -- personally, for example, I actually legitimately enjoyed Super Pitfall on NES and the first Bubsy game when I was a kid. I played both to completion multiple times, and have a lot of fond memories of them. Super Pitfall is deeply flawed in a lot of ways, and Bubsy has a few crucial flaws (though honestly not as many as people seem to think IMHO), but both games still managed to click with me, and I'd certainly be hard pressed to call either of them bad.
Hell, I even enjoyed playing E.T. on my brother's Atari 2600 when I was a kid! And Roger Rabbit and Friday the 13th on my NES, too! And Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle! A lot of the AVGN's featured games are games I have really fond memories of, in fact.
-Tom
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Post by Allie on May 1, 2016 20:53:29 GMT -5
I like plenty of bland games that most would think of as boring, but even for me some games are a bridge too far.
Wizards & Warriors X being an example of that bridge too far.
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Post by DrakeDwarf on May 7, 2016 16:06:50 GMT -5
I believe it is like growing up to eat food, really. Taste changes, palate broaden, and the occasional universally-recognized bad stuff.
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Post by Sac (a.k.a Icaras) on May 8, 2016 8:28:36 GMT -5
My 1st system growing up was a Commodore 64, and we had access to a ton of pirated games. So many that it was impossible to think all games were good, I had access to too many crappy ones.
Mind you, I don't recall my young self really caring much weather he was playing cream or crap, as long as I was actually playing a game, heh.
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Post by Lash on May 8, 2016 11:58:56 GMT -5
Simon's Quest comes to mind as a game I had complete faith in from start to finish and beyond. I hadn't yet been exposed to many terrible games (around the time I played it, my opinion of a bad game was likely anything I'd seen on an Atari console) and Castlevania was a promoted title, Nintendo Power backed it, etc. I'd have never figured it all out on my own, but I also had no idea what the par for difficulty in a game should be like. I had less than a handful of cartridges, and in Simon's Quest poured my heart and soul into what I felt was an entire world full of secrets to divulge. I'd have never figured it all out without help, but my impressionable young mind assumed these tips came from people with more talent/patience than I. Once I beat it and knew where I was going or what I was doing, I played through and enjoyed the experience many times over.
To be honest, I don't have too much of a problem with games like this. For some reason I like cryptic nonsense and it's nothing I can defend. It just reminds me of a different time, and games can almost seem too padded/balanced out these days. For example, I think the trial and error approach of Unlimited Saga would have been better accepted had it been released two generations prior. It has flaws, but by the time it came out I was largely spoiled and impatient.
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Post by Allie on May 8, 2016 16:36:29 GMT -5
Simon's Quest comes to mind as a game I had complete faith in from start to finish and beyond. I hadn't yet been exposed to many terrible games (around the time I played it, my opinion of a bad game was likely anything I'd seen on an Atari console) and Castlevania was a promoted title, Nintendo Power backed it, etc. I'd have never figured it all out on my own, but I also had no idea what the par for difficulty in a game should be like. I had less than a handful of cartridges, and in Simon's Quest poured my heart and soul into what I felt was an entire world full of secrets to divulge. I'd have never figured it all out without help, but my impressionable young mind assumed these tips came from people with more talent/patience than I. Once I beat it and knew where I was going or what I was doing, I played through and enjoyed the experience many times over. To be honest, I don't have too much of a problem with games like this. For some reason I like cryptic nonsense and it's nothing I can defend. It just reminds me of a different time, and games can almost seem too padded/balanced out these days. For example, I think the trial and error approach of Unlimited Saga would have been better accepted had it been released two generations prior. It has flaws, but by the time it came out I was largely spoiled and impatient. Unlimited Saga would be fine if it wasn't for the game forcing you to accept panels that leveled you down sometimes.
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on May 9, 2016 2:15:21 GMT -5
My 1st system growing up was a Commodore 64, and we had access to a ton of pirated games. So many that it was impossible to think all games were good, I had access to too many crappy ones. Mind you, I don't recall my young self really caring much weather he was playing cream or crap, as long as I was actually playing a game, heh. That's kind of similar to my situation growing up. We had so many DOS and Gameboy games, that you can't possibly think they're all good, even as a kid. When you only have four NES games and you can only rent an additional one for the weekend, you look at them differently than when you instantly have access to a whole bunch of them, I imagine.
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Post by Ryzuki on May 9, 2016 19:12:55 GMT -5
I didn't have a whole lotta games growing up, so until I was old enough to work and get my own games, there were never any bad games in my mind. Now looking back, my parents had a bunch of Disney games for the SNES...I played the hell outta them and often enjoyed them,even though most of them are *really* bad. Beauty and the Beast in particular, was a horrible horrible game; although I never even made it past the first level, I still had some fun with it at the time, and would play it again now. It's actually kinda awesome having that sort of mindset, so when I come across a game that's actually good, like Mario RPG for instance, it just blows my mind.
Now that I'm an adult, naturally there are plenty of games I've said suck, but honestly I guess it really just varies from person to person. For me, Dark Souls is one of the worst games I've ever played. I could write a book about how much I hate that game...but obviously tons of other people like it, so apparently it doesn't suck...(I guess) The same goes for plenty of other games. I may never understand the popularity, but I can at least slightly grasp how some people can enjoy certain things.
I guess we just get spoiled and grow tired of things as we get older.
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