Rose-tinted glasses - you chose the 100 worst retro games

[tssk]

OK. I've been thinking long and hard about this.

Back in the day for about six months the only PC set up in one of the major department stores was an Amstrad.

Sometimes I would get a feel for a game on it and buy the C64 version.

Most of the time I didn't get stung too badly. (I bought Jet Set Willy 2 on the C64 on the basis of the Amstrad one and although it looked and sounded roughly the same it just never felt as 'right' as it did on the Amstrad.)

The one sting was The Rocky Horror Picture show.

OK, the game was no great shakes in the first place. It was a fairly drab collect 'em up.

I was probably taken with the surreal 'drug' room with the menacing syringes.

But what was an average looking game on the Amstrad was turned into a woeful looking one on the C64.

Behold



Amstrad Rocky Horror Show.



C64 Lego Horror Show

[paranoid marvin]

I quite enjoyed Rocky on the Speccy

Do not press this button....again!

[merman]

Tssk, tssk, tssk

(That's the sound of disapproval as well as your name )

At least on the C64 you get FLESH. On the Amstrad, you get yellow/green/blue skin according to what room the character is in!

[Dudley]

Paperboy 2 (SNES)

Seriously, What?

A brilliant arcade game was ruined by a home only sequel that destroyed everything good about the original in such an organised way you'd almost assume it was deliberate. Paperboy 2 was slow, fussy, contained about 3 different houses that repeated endlessly and on the SNES looked worse than the Master System version of the original game.

[ivortheinjun]

Auf Wiedersehen Pet - Acorn Electron/BBC B





Absolutely horrible game. Three crappy little mini-games with stick-man graphics, hopelessly unresponsive controls, and just absolutely nothing to make you want to play on. The controls were so bad, you could die in each mini-game within about 2 seconds of starting, before you'd even managed to make your character move in any direction of your own choosing.

It would have made a below-par magazine type-in, even back in 1984, but it was an absolutely appalling full-price release. Elite and Revs came out that year, FFS.

Tynesoft, to their credit, became a really good software label 2 or 3 years later. This was an absolute travesty though.

[felgekarp]

It's also got to be one of the best covers to any game I've ever seen

[ivortheinjun]

I'd like to think that the top left of the cover is so bare because they were waiting for some brilliant reviews to come in so that they could plunder a couple of quotes.

Sadly, they never surfaced.

[tssk]

Tssk, tssk, tssk

(That's the sound of disapproval as well as your name )

At least on the C64 you get FLESH. On the Amstrad, you get yellow/green/blue skin according to what room the character is in!

Which is OK if you're into lego porn

[Commander Jameson]

Would like to put a vote in for Ghostbusters on the Spectrum. Completely ruined Christmas '85 for me. The game that finally made be go and but an azimuth screwdriver so I could get the swine to load. Then - oh my days.
I loved the file (Still do! ) and was wetting my pants with excitement when I got this, but JEEEEEEEEZ it was terrible. The "Driving to the Job" part was supposed to be like Spy Hunter I suppose, but when your car is HUGE and there are no other vehicles on the road, it's not that challenging. At All.
And the "Catch the Ghost with Particle accelerators and Ghost Traps was just random cr@p - weren't you unable to move your man once the beam was fired, or some such nonsense?
Anyway - needs to go in sokme Mexican Desert Landfill for my money.

[chewy]

Number 56:

Back To The Future II (Sega Master System)

Oh dear god. What an absolutley loathsome pile of grannies grundies. A promising license, (who wouldn't want a hoverboard?) albeit a slightly ropey movie, was the only thing going for it. Doomed from the start by the fact the end of the second film is left wide open for the third, this detestable testicle was marred by awful hit detection, a hoverboard that couldn't travel up kerbs, and blocky graphics not seen since the speccy. Thank god it was given to me with a bundle of other games. I feel dirty for even trying it in the first place. And double thanks for the cheat so you can skip levels. It only took up 10 minutes of my time.
I tried to find a screenshot, but none where available, and I'll be damned if I'm wasting my time taking screenshots.

[stormyinthenorth]

Shao Lin's Road on the Spectrum.



I used to play it on a cocktail cabinet in our local pub as a wee lad and I loved it. I still do. It was a simple game, but challenging with controls that are spot on.

The Spectrum version was none of those things. I excitedly bought this when it came out for my 48k friend and to this day a game has never disappointed me more.

The flying kick is near impossible to pull off, but when you managed it you fell down a platform. Usually on top of a foe, leading to an unfair lost life. In the arcade original you could kick whilst jumping up and down platforms - It was the most effective method of dispatching the baddies. They chose not to include it on the Speccy.

All this made the game near unplayable.

[SirClive]

I really liked the Speccy one. I picked the arcade game for the retroleague last season on the stregnth of the Speccy version.

Ah well, horses for courses.

[Bub&Bob]

Ah well, horses for courses.

Whilst we are on the subject then, how about Sport of Kings?
Booooooorrrrring..................zzz zzzz zzz zzz



PS - Nice ambulance!

[Antiriad2097]

Ah well, horses for courses.

Whilst we are on the subject then, how about Sport of Kings?
Booooooorrrrring..................zzz zzzz zzz zzz



PS - Nice ambulance!

Sport of Kings is a good party game for when you're too drunk to actually do any gaming - you all just yell at your horse on telly, requiring no co-ordination at all but it feels good. We used to get very competitive with our gambling on that.

[SirClive]

Again, nother game I used to love