Where should I start…?

I guess it all began with Saddam Hussein and his regime believing they could invade any country in the Middle East without any type of repercussion from an oil thirsty western civilization that wants to promote democracy and Starbuck’s. Global politics aside, a year after the Gulf War, rouge forces lead by a General Kilbaba take over an Arab Emirate with the hopes of beginning WWIII. That is of course if the mighty Apache attack helicopter and its Hellfire missiles has anything to say about it! The military industrial complex of the United States has done it again. A weapon was crafted that takes off from its frigate-base off shore and roars across the dunes with its Gattling gun blaring, leaving only smoldering structures and dismembered human tissue in its wake. Like most other games (all in fact), certain objectives must be met. In order to meet these goals and win, a warrior mentality is needed, along with a strong trigger finger. The Apache is outfitted with Hellfire missiles, Hydra rockets, and a loud cannon that tears shit up! Sounds fun huh?

Sorry…it gets old quick. This happens for several reasons. First, level after level occurs on virtually the same map. Maybe the enemy positions change a little along with the objectives. But the frigate is in the same place off shore. The main refueling and rearming areas are located in the same area. To the laymen, it is just repeated over and over. The game does try and counteract you from getting too bored with the map though. If you do not do the objectives in order, and approach enemy weaponry that is guarding say, a radio tower that is objective three, and you’re still on objective one, the enemies will automatically lock on you and unload their metal payload into the hull of your gunship. A second reason why it got old quick is because of the rather mediocre graphics. This is of course for Sega, so we aren’t expecting HD blood spatters, but when an enemy combatant is killed they fizzle into the dirt as if they were never there. Rather weak if you ask the staff here at Old Wiz. The final reason it gets old quick is because when you face off against the “Big Man” himself, he is rather easy to beat. The final boss is obviously inspired by Saddam Hussein. I mean come on! It took two wars and billions of dollars to find the guy in a spider hole. In Desert Strike it only takes a few well guided missiles and its over. You win. Yay…

Boo is more like it. 12. The Three Stooges (NES)While most games are bad because the idea of the actual game being played is terrible, or because it is so difficult you can’t get by the first level, “Three Stooges” introduces a new reason why a game can be awful. Three Stooges is basically incomprehensible to play. For the most part you have no idea what you’re doing when you’re playing this game. You press start and you’re taken to an outside street with the three stooges where a Wheel of Fortune wheel comes out of thin air that ostensibly picks what you’re supposed to do in the game. Next you notice you’re in another random place where you have no idea what you’re supposed to do. You’re at a bowl of soup with a spoon in it. There are also what looks like pieces of cat excretion in the soup that you have to eat. Trying to control your spoon proves to be one of the more difficult tasks you will take on in this life. After a couple of minutes of throwing your controller at the screen you hear a sound that sounds like a box fan breaking down which I think is supposed to be one of the 3 stooges getting angry that you didn’t pass a test that you couldn’t control and knew nothing about, and had no idea how you got there, and why your eating soup with ambiguous objects inside. You next may randomly find yourself in a hospital flying down an operating room with a nurse picking up things she’s dropping. You have no idea what you’re picking up though. Once again, trying to control this fiasco proves excessively enigmatic, and once again you will be throwing your controller at the screen.

This game is so bad, it’s difficult to review any longer. This is a perfect example of what happens when you try to take something from the TV or movie screen and apply it to video gamedom. Creators who want to cash in on screen success pay no attention to the garbage they’re putting out for the video game. 11. Superman: The New Superman Adventures (N64)Superman: The New Superman Adventures, released for the Nintendo 64, is by far the worst thing to happen to the Superman franchise since Richard Pryor. Univerally panned for its ridiculous plot, the game also offers up bad graphics and poor gameplay. The plot unfolds to reveal Lex Luthor’s entrapment the Man of Steel’s best friends – Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Professor Hamilton – in some virtual world into which you must enter to save them. My first thoughts upon hearing this plot were, “Okay, sounds stupid so far, but most Superman plots are. I still can’t wait to play as Superman on the N64. This is going to be great! Besides, anything with Superman can’t be all bad. ” Boy, was I wrong. The gameplay and missions themselves are just plain boring. For some reason, Lex Luthor has suspended some hoops in the air, and you must fly through them in order to complete you mission objectives. Okay, this can still be cool: I like flying. Nope. The unresponsive controls will have you assuming you have pushed the wrong button which usually results in mashing others to get some sort of response, all the while being confused by the weird perspectives. Not only that, but you barely get to use your other powers since you are occupied flying around through some boring backgrounds that look more like they belong on SNES than the N64. You do occasionally get to fight a virtual copy of one of Superman’s archenemies, though. The only reason to play this game is to see how bad it is, and only if you can find a friend who still owns a copy and hasn’t resold it or burned it. 10. Ghosts n’ GoblinsA reoccurring theme for the top 20 worst games of all time has been when games have been so difficult that you had to buy a new tv from smashing your controller against it too much. There is no game that exemplifies this upshot from sheer difficulty like Ghosts ‘n Goblins. 1/8th through the first level you’re surrounded by mound and mounds of enemies. As you’re walking as your character, you’re basically surrounded by a force field of enemies coming at you from every possible angle. Ok, maybe if you had a lot of energy or someone decent armor, you could take the level one onslaught of nefarious enemy’s. As you walk, you see you do have armor, looks like pretty strong armor, until a weak ass looking bird swoops down, barely hits you, and your armor comes flying off. Not even faux-Halloween armor is this poor. I’m pretty sure that if a bird touched a plastic armor suit that you wore for Halloween, it wouldn’t come flying off. As your worthless armor comes flying off, you’re left with an almost-naked character who is left with nothing on except underwear. Q: Who wears nothing under armor? Am I inept to mid-evil tradition or is there something completely untenable about someone wearing nothing under armor? Your basically left naked running around in the wild with a force field of petulant enemy’s surrounding you at every second. This stultifying game play leads you to give up after 1 to 2 minutes making you feel like shit and making you retire to much more germane games with more sane difficulty levels. When programmers make these games, don’t they realize these most obvious setbacks for the player? Setbacks so large, that they stop playing the game after 5 minutes?9. Jurassic Park (Sega Genesis)One of the best selling books of all time subsequently made into one of the highest grossing movies of all time, right? You’d think they would attempt to design a game of similar stature, right? You obviously have never played this boring as paint drying game. One would think that when a certain storyline is created, that most subsequent recreations of the story would follow a similar pattern. Jurassic Park though just kind of meanders through the jungle and leaves the game player feeling dejected and hurt in the end. After a rather weak opening scene of the T-Rex roaring at you in low-def, the game simply starts. There is Dr. Grant standing in the jungle, armed with a dart gun and a few grenades, waiting to be brought through the jungle to a destination. And that’s about it. You need to do some jumping, a little hopping over rocks, and maybe maneuver to avoid little creatures trying to drain your life bar. You come across a dinosaur that will simply fall over for about a minute after you hit it with a dart. The grenades of course make them not get up anymore. A little more jumping and hopping along through the jungle and maybe stomp on a baby raptor while doing so. And then…. TA DA! You reach the end of level one. Maybe level two will have something more exciting? But sorry, it may be a different scene, but the same general premise level after level. You go into substations, go back into the jungle, and maybe drive a motor boat through another low-def scene. This is all happening with the final goal being to get back to the Visitor Center. The second to the last scene is going through the ventilation system with raptors running around below you. Once you jump through a final hatch, you land on top of the large bones setup in the Visitor Center main hall. With a simple flick of the thumb and the toss of a grenade in between the skeleton setups, they crash onto the raptors waiting below. And the game ends…

With one simple grenade the last “boss” is defeated. In the most simplistic and moronic way, the game is over. Sorry Sega, but this blockbuster movie just doesn’t translate into your silly little black cartridges. That T-Rex is a pussy too!8. Joust (NES)Joust is unbearably boring. Same screen, same enemies, same poor sounds, no music. If one were looking for a legal soporific agent, Joust would be your best treatment. Who could possibly think this idea would keep the attention of the player beyond 30 seconds? When designing this game, who thought that this 1 screen sleep fest would be enough to justify its place in an entire cartridge? At least have a 2 nd game along with this garbage. At least have some weak ass side scroller with your jouster (who looks more like a flying ostrich) killing medieval enemies. Speaking of the enemies, what exactly are these things? How come all the players and enemies in “Joust” look like poorly designed birds? In Joust, you’re enveloped with one boring game, controlling something that looks like a bird, fighting against things that may or may not be more birds. Yes, the controls are simple; yes the concept is simple, but so simple that you don’t know why you should be playing this game after 30 seconds. That this ever retained a place in an arcade is beyond Old-Wizard. The sight of this NES cartridge at a used video game store induces the largest of yawns. 7. Wayne’s World (SNES)It is quite ironic that Wayne’s World begins with Wayne and Garth reviewing their “Top Ten Worst Arcade Games List” since it is the only Super Nintendo game to make our worst ever video games list. Being fans of the SNES, a game released on that console needs to reach inordinately bad marks to be considered for inclusion on our list, but Wayne’s World did just that. Usually, video games based on movies without “Star Wars” in the title don’t turn out very well, and games based off BAD movies turn out even worse. This game is no exception. As you might expect from a game based on Wayne’s World, the story line is less than stellar: an evil purple putridosity called Zantar has kidnapped Garth, and you have to guide Wayne as he tries to rescue his hapless sidekick. Wayne is armed with a guitar that helps him defeat various enemies inhabiting Kramer’s Music Store, Stan Mikita’s Donut Shop, the Gasworks nightclub, and suburbia. In each location, the assailants include monster bagpipes, accordions, coffee cups, disco ball, and headbangers. Poor story line alone does not necessarily automatically place a game in the “bad” list. Unfortunately, boring levels, unwieldy controls and sheer monotony do. Oh, and should you choose to play it yourself, it will probably take you all of ten minutes to come to agreement with us on this one. 6. Muscle (NES)The NES had a myriad of decent wrestling games under its belt including “Pro Wrestling” and “Wrestlemania”. It also held the worst wrestling game ever made, none other than “Muscle”. The biggest reason why Muscle is a terrible game is because of how boring it is. There are no moves, no real characters, and no dialogue. You start off the game by choosing between 9 ostensibly different players, who in reality are all exactly the same, except a slight discrepancy in the color of outfits and shape of face. The game is completely silent. You would think that if a wrestling game is going to be made, at least include some tension and excitement by adding crowd noise and an announcer, albeit an 8 bit incoherent announcer. You get none of this with “Muscle”. You get no music, no crowd noise, 2 or 3 boring moves with no choice of different characters unless your duped into thinking changing masks makes a wrestler completely different. It took about 3 minutes of playing this game to realize that you wasted 3 dollars on renting this soporific excuse for a wrestling game. Bring on “Pro Wrestling” where I can bash “Amazon” on the head with a steel chair and can use a character with a giant star in the middle of his head (Hint: When making games, use your fucking imagination!). 5. Paperboy (NES)When you first see this game, you see the cover with a munificent, happy-go-lucky paperboy delivering papers. You think to yourself, well, a game about being a paper boy can’t be that much fun…but maybe it’s some sort of super-hero paperboy and that’s the reason why he’s so happy on the front cover! The game is opposite of the cover. After you play this game for 10 minutes, you realize the front cover should be a paperboy irritable beyond all bounds and maybe even sticking his middle finger up at the street dancers who have nowhere to dance except right in the middle of the fucking street you have to deliver on.

It’s 8 o’ clock on a Monday morning and what does the entire neighborhood you deliver to do? They get up 2 hours early to conspire against you and make it impossible to get through half the street before you’re either run over, beat with a spatula, or have a myriad of dogs chasing you. If this game is going to be as difficult as it is, at least have an option of changing routes. At least be able to tell off your boss for giving you such a shitty route where you cant get half way down the street without your life being threatened with people who have nothing better to do than to try to dominate the paper boy. If they really don’t want their paper, then fuck them. Even if you’re able to evade the infinite obstacles towards delivering to 1 house, finding the accuracy to throw a paper into a mailbox is just as tendentious. Most of the time you lose points because your papers gravitate towards breaking the glass of the houses with people who spend their waking lives trying to destroy the paperboy.

This game is tedious, grossly difficult, and absolutely no fun. To rent a game and not be able to get half way through the first level no matter what you do is lugubrious to say the least. This may be the worst game ever released for a platform system. 4. Big Rigs: Over the Road RacingSo yeah, we are talking about the worst games ever conceived by human beings right? There are probably some pretty horrible games trapped under the methane ice of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, but let’s not get off the subject of just how shitty this game really is. Now normally, we here at Old Wiz don’t take the opinions of others too seriously. You know the saying, “They are like assholes, and everybody has them”. Well the word over many news wires is that we are not the only ones who think this is worthy of the moniker of “one of the worst games of all time”. One thing for sure is that the production team is for Big Rigs should have been beaten into submission for violating the cardinal rule of gaming; creating a game that doesn’t just waste time but makes you want to punch someone after playing it. Let’s go over some of the finer points that Big Rigs offers to its lowly participants…

First, the idea of this game even being a race is sketchy at best. When the contest first begins your opponents don’t really put too much effort into making this a worth while venture. That’s because the creators forgot to give them any type of functions and they drive straight…for the entire race…

Rather beat…

Let’s get even more stupid now shall we…

There is nothing to have to avoid during the race. There is nothing on the side of the road that might interfere with your driving ability. Don’t get me wrong, there are buildings, and bridges, and various other obstacles, but unlike in psuedo-reality racing games in Big Rigs you can drive right through them without even slowing down. These rigs must have such a powerful hemi under that hood that they can just drive vertically without losing speed, let alone crashing! These things can jump through the screen for crying out loud!

Let’s continue shall we…

The gears don’t really work…at all. But it doesn’t matter since you basically can’t lose. If you do, contact Old Wizard immediately and we’ll fly our chopper over to pick you up and bring you in for testing. No matter what happens in each “race” the words “You’re a Winner stick up on the screen to signify truck racing glory. The list goes on forever and ever, and maybe even some more. Frankly, this game sucks so bad that we don’t even care about writing down everything that is wrong with it. The “winners” that made this game should just be banished to eternity in a truck stop bathroom. End of story on this one. 3. Top Gun (NES)Top Gun for the NES is probably the most boring, hackneyed game to ever be released for the great 8-bit system. It’s a flight simulator with no extra features, no stirring sounds, and no control to do anything but move forward and sometimes shoot planes that look more like computer speakers. All is well though you think because a game this easy and boring will surely be conquered in no time, but then after 50 attempts of trying to land your plane in an aircraft carrier, you realize that this game is not only odiously trite, but is impossible to end because it’s basically impossible to land your plane. When landing your plane on an aircraft carrier, you are given terse directions from your “command screen” which you follow. If you follow the directions 100% perfectly, you will have about a 5% chance of landing the plane. I have personally seen the plane landed once. I remember that eventful day. I was at a friend’s house and four of us were watching my friends’ father trying to overcome this insuperable task. The first time we saw it land, we had a party. I remember looking over at one of my friends who may have been crying out of joy, that the annoyingly impossible task could be circumvented. The excitement lasted until the end of the next level where we all knew it couldn’t happen again, and it didn’t.

How is it possible for programmers to make such a monumental mistake in making a task to finish a level so impossible? You make the game for months on end, you have testers testing it out for months on end. Who let this one slip by? This banal attempt at a flight simulator combined with poor programming make this one of the worst games of all time. 2. Shaq Fu (Sega Genesis)Shaq Fu for the Sega Genesis is probably the worst conceived game ever to come out for any platform system. The story line is so abominable that you almost wish for a completely incoherent one was substituted as to give the idea of the storyline being more enigmatic. You are Shaq, somehow in Tokyo, where you are discovered by some zen karate master who says that you have come from some distant planet to save the world (I wonder if Shaq himself ever played this, or maybe even wrote this story line?). After you endure the blatantly uninspired storyline, you have to endure the worst 2 player fighting game of all time. The controlling in this game is incomprehensible. The best thing you can do is just hammer the buttons of your controller with your hands and watch the screen, hoping your capricious hammering of the controller will cause a victory against the most banal of opponents. Looking at the screen doesn’t help the cause either because how dumb it looks to see hackneyed monsters fighting a big dude in basketball shorts. Once you lose because the controlling is so irritating, you have to endure more uninspired dialogue from enemies with 80 times more skill than you have as Shaq. Your opponents can basically throw the elements at you, they can throw fucking planets at you, while you’re left to a high kick and a low kick depending on which buttons your randomly smashing. With a name like “Shaq Fu”, you had to know this game was going to be bad, but you were not in store for how bad it was until you actually played it for yourself. 1. E. T. (Atari 2600)As a child in the 80’s, E. T. was a HUGE part of my life. It was the first, second, and third movie I saw in a theater. It made Reese’s Pieces my favourite candy. It forced me to ride my Star Wars Huffy off of small ledges in hopes of flying my chubby silhouette in front of the moon. Maybe the greatest of all, it took away all fear of aliens I may have had. You could imagine my excitement when my father came home with this game, his face lit up like he was my age, and led me by the hand to the beloved Atari 2600.

The point of this game is to find pieces of your ship in order to get home. The pieces are located in what can only be described as pits that ET falls into periodically. I have never made it out of the first pit. It’s been rumoured that there are 5 levels of almost identical game play. I’ve heard there are also enemies, and that eating Elliott gives you power ups…I have seen none of these things. I start the game, fall in a hole, and never get out.

This game single-handedly destroyed Atari and its legacy. They had produced so many cartridges of this game that were never sold they actually had to buy land in New Mexico and create an E. T. landfill in the desert, ouch. They tried to follow on the coat tails of Tron and capitalize on the E. T. brand, but all they ended up doing was starting a long tradition of crappy games based on movies. Thanks E. T. , you crushed my childhood and gave me a reason to go outside to play in traffic.