This is the worst game I've ever played

[stayAwhile]

I've played loads of terrible games but I think Def Jam: Icon is possibly the worst.
Everything about it is bloody terrible; the graphics are substandard for a 360 games, the moves are cack and the music abhorrent.
Thankfully I played it when someone I know brought it round so it cost me nothing to discover how terrible it is.

def jam vendetta and fight for new york were good apart from cack music

[kiwimike]

Atari 2600 Pac man. Godawful. And proven to be godawful when the excellent Ms Pac was released for 2600...proving it was just shoddy

[martyg]

Atari 2600 Pac man. Godawful. And proven to be godawful when the excellent Ms Pac was released for 2600...proving it was just shoddy

Not really an apt comparison, Ms. Pac-Man had a larger ROM and wasn't a two player game (which opened up more of the extremely limited RAM). You can read the story behind the original 2600 Pac-Man's development here:

http://ataribook.com/book/what-are-the- ... velopment/

[greenberet79]

Camelot on the Speccy. One hit and death. ARRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Brutal difficulty to the point of being unplayable.

Looks nice though. Oh, turns out it was called Camelot Warriors.

[the_hawk]

I really liked Pacman on the Atari VCS, I still do, in spite of its infamy.

[davyK]

I really liked Pacman on the Atari VCS, I still do, in spite of its infamy.

I believe that if it wasn't a port of an arcade game then more would be thought of it as a game as the basic mechanics are sound enough. I believe it was thrown together in a couple of weeks as a prototype to prove the game could be done and the developer was horrified when management decided it was good enough to go with. It actually sold quite a lot of copies - 7m or so. Problem was Atari manufactured millions more than that...probably because they paid too much for the licence and had a stupidly high sales target.

[ianpmarks]

Pac Man would be okay as a game on the VCS if it wasn't for the flickering. I think it is quite an enjoyable game of Pac Man, but I can't play it as that screen flicker just makes my eyes and brain go funny.

[Sixteen Plus]

Green Beret on the C16, nothing else has ever come close to how terrible this is, shocking graphics, just one noise for a sound effect, ugly blocks round all the characters, the enemies have guns, when you only have a knife, there is nothing right about this game, nothing at all.

You beat me to it, I was about to suggest the same game.

So I will go for my second choice, a very close second only because the graphics aren't quite as horrid, but it's getting there.

Commodore 16 - Ghosts 'n Goblins


There are a few reasons why this is particularly terrible. Firstly, it has only the first two levels. That's it and it's game over. On top of this, like Green Beret it is also a multiload, and a horrendously long one too.

Also, the collision detection is god-awful due to the blocky main character sprites making for a very difficult game, OK there are only 2 levels but it's still near impossible to get past the main boss on level one.

Finally, if you think that Arthur looks all wishy-washy monochromatic, that's because there is a small colour bug in the code where the author actually forgot to colour him in. There has since been a small manual fix for this however by freezing the game and changing a couple of values in the main code as shown below from the main game link above. Not that this saves the game in anyway. It doesn't.

It's so bad that I'm actually unsure which game out of these two which I hate more.

[adippm82]

You beat me to it, I was about to suggest the same game.

So I will go for my second choice, a very close second only because the graphics aren't quite as horrid, but it's getting there.

Commodore 16 - Ghosts 'n Goblins


There are a few reasons why this is particularly terrible. Firstly, it has only the first two levels. That's it and it's game over. On top of this, like Green Beret it is also a multiload, and a horrendously long one too.

Also, the collision detection is god-awful due to the blocky main character sprites making for a very difficult game, OK there are only 2 levels but it's still near impossible to get past the main boss on level one.

Finally, if you think that Arthur looks all wishy-washy monochromatic, that's because there is a small colour bug in the code where the author actually forgot to colour him in. There has since been a small manual fix for this however by freezing the game and changing a couple of values in the main code as shown below from the main game link above. Not that this saves the game in anyway. It doesn't.

It's so bad that I'm actually unsure which game out of these two which I hate more.

These were two of the games that really broke the Plus 4 for me, it was becoming too much of a lottery at the time to go into a shop and pick up something that could really be terrible, I used to start loading a game up with trepidation rather than expectation, nowadays we have the internet to help sort the dross from the good, back then there was word of mouth, and the occasional supplement like the C16 one in Zzap to try and keep you on the right path.

I got hold of Green Beret on the 4 Konami Coin Op Hits compilation, and to be honest the other games on there are nearly as bad, £5.95 utterly wasted, not a small amount of money in 1986, same with Best Of Elite Vol.2, which is where I played Ghosts 'n' Goblins, could not believe how awful it was, one of my mates who usually was a right mickey taker, actually put his hand on my shoulder and then just said 'sorry mate'.

Elite never got the hang of the C16, only Ikari Warriors and Bomb Jack 2 are anywhere near to being acceptable quality, every other game by them is just atrocious, and Ocean/Imagine were not far behind.

[The Hardest of All Freds]

Club Drive on the Jag.
Like Bubsy 3D on wheels.

Championship Hockey on Master System. Beyond broken

[JetSetWilly]

I remember playing a fighting game on the Amiga round my old mates house.

Not Street fighter (though the Amiga version was IMO one of the worst of that series) or the rather excellent Body Blows. No there was this one where you had a choice of 2 characters and fought each other. It was a button mashing disaster where you just mashed the buttons hoped that a special move would happen and the sounds sounded like the characters and narrator had Laryngitis.

Also there was this weird tank game (also Amiga) where you controlled a tank and had to avoid crashing into pyramids (though they looked like Dairylea cheese triangles) and this skull would laugh at you if you failed to get where you needed to go.

That fighting game, wouldn't be Human Killing Machine, would it? Never played it myself, but from the looks of it I'm not missing much. Now, the second game sounds a lot like a PD game called Pyramid Run, or something-Run. I had it myself. It was crap, but for some reason, I kept playing.

[MadManDan79]

I remember playing a fighting game on the Amiga round my old mates house.

Not Street fighter (though the Amiga version was IMO one of the worst of that series) or the rather excellent Body Blows. No there was this one where you had a choice of 2 characters and fought each other. It was a button mashing disaster where you just mashed the buttons hoped that a special move would happen and the sounds sounded like the characters and narrator had Laryngitis.

Also there was this weird tank game (also Amiga) where you controlled a tank and had to avoid crashing into pyramids (though they looked like Dairylea cheese triangles) and this skull would laugh at you if you failed to get where you needed to go.

That fighting game, wouldn't be Human Killing Machine, would it? Never played it myself, but from the looks of it I'm not missing much. Now, the second game sounds a lot like a PD game called Pyramid Run, or something-Run. I had it myself. It was crap, but for some reason, I kept playing.

No its not Human killing machine (though that looks crap as well), but you're on the right track with the pyramid run game is actually called Egyptian run. That was just crap and uncontrollable...

[Treguard]

I remember playing a fighting game on the Amiga round my old mates house.

Not Street fighter (though the Amiga version was IMO one of the worst of that series) or the rather excellent Body Blows. No there was this one where you had a choice of 2 characters and fought each other. It was a button mashing disaster where you just mashed the buttons hoped that a special move would happen and the sounds sounded like the characters and narrator had Laryngitis.

Also there was this weird tank game (also Amiga) where you controlled a tank and had to avoid crashing into pyramids (though they looked like Dairylea cheese triangles) and this skull would laugh at you if you failed to get where you needed to go.

That fighting game, wouldn't be Human Killing Machine, would it? Never played it myself, but from the looks of it I'm not missing much. Now, the second game sounds a lot like a PD game called Pyramid Run, or something-Run. I had it myself. It was crap, but for some reason, I kept playing.

No its not Human killing machine (though that looks crap as well), but you're on the right track with the pyramid run game is actually called Egyptian run. That was just crap and uncontrollable...

I had Egyptian run. It's basically the first level from Aztec Challenge on the C64, but broken.

[binaryRooster]

Club Drive on the Jag.
Like Bubsy 3D on wheels.

I wonder what the development team thought when Atari said 'yeah, that'll do' and released it despite it being nowhere near finished.

[The Laird]

Club Drive on the Jag.
Like Bubsy 3D on wheels.

I wonder what the development team thought when Atari said 'yeah, that'll do' and released it despite it being nowhere near finished.

Club Drive is censored but quite fun 2-player. There are worse games on the Jag believe it or not. Supercross 3D and Double Dragon V are barely playable.