The World's Worst Video Game? | Hacker News Reader

The World's Worst Video Game?

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It's certainly a terrible game, and a product of Atari trying to get it done quickly and on the cheap.

But I think the whole 'world's worst video game' thing may be a tad overblown. I mean, mechanically it loses out there to stuff like Big Rigs, Superman 64 and Bubsy 3D.

It's just gotten a somewhat exaggerated status due to being one of the causes of the video game crash and being a massive business failure for Atari.

This one never seems to make those lists, but perhaps should: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_Peril

[edit] Found a video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmte0t2tb1g

I think a lot of the discussion gets wrapped up in the gameplay perspective, but it's trivial to make a "worst" game - maybe a text file renamed "worstgame.exe," or something I can slap together in JS/Canvas in two minutes.

A meaningful "worst" is so much more. Nowadays, it's spending $70 on a game that doesn't deliver anything it promises. Or, in the "good old days", saving up for a month and buying a game that's barely playable. Or, in this case, a game that had huge hopes, a significant license, and ended up being a frustrating mess. A school project can't be as much of a failure as a high-profile failure, and context matters.

Maybe even then the distinction belongs to Pac Man on the 2600, which is commonly cited as the biggest reason for the video game crash.

Back in the day, it was certainly Pac-Man for the 2600.

While ET wasn't exactly a hit, its extraordinary bad reputation came after the fact (retro gaming without instructions, etc). Moreover, as opposed to common notion, ET was only about 10% of the cartridges buried in the infamous New Mexico landfill and even not the most prominent title. – But, yeah, a meme.

(Edit: However, Big Rigs may be another candidate.)

For reference, here is Pac-Man on the 2600: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ5phkEZqsY

Also, a more recent homebrew attempt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clddb79LQcM

I love that someone took the time and effort to fix the bugs in E.T.: http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/

That's amazing!

E.T. is only the worst game due to its context - the hype around the movie, the initial sales, and the fact that it was Warshaw, who did Yars Revenge, was its creator.

There are far lamer 2600 games, at least in my opinion. It is confusing and frustrating - but go play some Atari 2600 as so many of its games fit that bill.

Ghostbuster for the 2600 game was idiotic has well, I never figured out what the hell was going in that game.

I don't think Ghostbusters was that bad. I played it a lot as a kid and enjoyed it, but I agree it was confusing (you needed to read the instructions to understand how to bait the Marshmallow Man, for instance). The C64 version of Ghostbusters was much better, especially for its karaoke title screen.

I'm tempted to give my vote to Bobby Is Going Home on 2600, except I actually played it a lot as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djgTlZbwIgQ

And despite retraining as a therapist, he still seems to blame himself for the gross strategic negligence of a management crew that thought it reasonable to ask someone if they can write a game in five weeks. Why didn't they do prototypes during the negotiations? It's ridiculous and he shouldn't blame his 25-something ego for what happened. He didn't know what he was talking about, and the only way management wouldn't know this is if they were a bunch of man-children themselves. If it was all up to him, then why was everyone else pulling a salary?

Someone needs to read about reframing bad experiences.

I think it's reflected in his current work. He's packing as much learning as he can in so that he can help his clients. Being an admitted failure probably helps his work no end.

Certainly, but the way he talks about that time... I think he's trying to help other people get over the kind of events that he himself is still struggling with.

If Lowtax's "Gaming Garbage" YouTube channel has taught me one thing, it's that there's no single worst video game in the world, but rather a seemingly endless stream of them.

That said, the worst game of all time has to be Beestmeel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVUjVqKKmoI

What the heck

Desert Bus - a work of genius - is the actual worst video game of all time

It's ET for Atari 2600

There is an hour long YouTube about it https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Urd9JbjLmbY

ROM: https://m.emuparadise.me/Atari_2600_ROMs/E.T._-_The_Extra-Te...

Edit: YT and ROM link

I don't know where it ranks on the all-time worst list, but the worst game I ever played was Dragon's Lair for the original Gameboy. Not the Gameboy Color one, or any other Dragon's Lair game. This one. The actual game play is terrible, the game is extremely limited, and it was part what had been a ground-breaking series. Here's a review:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48U4Qd1io0I

One of my favorite underappreciated tv shows, is Code Monkeys, which had a great episode about the ET game

https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.dailymotion.com/vide...

Anybody have a link to an emulator version? I'd like to port it for Android.

javascript seems to handle it ok...

http://www.2600online.com/et.php

..which seems altogether too fitting.

IIRC, didn't they make more copies of ET than they'd sold consoles?

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