It's time to take a look at one of the less fun topics of this challenge. It's a challenging topic for sure. In my case I tend to often just forget the bad games and don't dwell to much on them. I was still able to put together this list. It sort of combines the games I was the most disappointed with which in return makes them into the worst games I played in the retro age.
If you haven't already you should check out the Retro Gaming Blogging Challenge that's going on. It's a great chance to reminisce on those early days that made us love gaming. Gaming has been a huge part of my childhood and life in general since I got my first console around 20 years ago.
In no particular order, let's get to it.
Source: ExtremeTech
Digimon World
This game makes the list due to the disappointment it was. As a kid I was a huge Pokemon fan and I really digged Digimon as well. I watched the TV manga and I collected the cards. It was quite the big hit in my social circle.
What made Pokemon great was that it was fun in every medium. The TV manga was great, collecting cards were tons of fun and the Game Boy games were awesome. It was the same with Digimon but it was missing that awesome game. It should go without saying that I jumped on this game as soon as I found out it existed.
I was disappointed. Not necessarily because it was a straight up bad game but it was just so boring. So far from what I hoped it would be. While Pokemon had a great world to explore, many Pokemon to catch and train and a sweet battle system, Digimon did not. It was mainly a monster raising game. You could almost go as far as to call it a glorified Tamagotchi game. The game pretty much gave you chores every now and then. Having to find a restroom for your Digimon to relax, feeding it and so on.
While the gameplay mechanics were disappointing there were other problems. The world wasn't interesting. Quests were mediocre and more or less tedious. Combat was the worst. Monsters were pretty much automatically battling and you could only activate their special ability once it was charged. I tried to stay away from battling as much as possible.
I'm sorry Digimon World but your fate was to end up on this list.
Source: Wikipedia
Bubsy 3D
A huge weakness for gaming back in the day, that was in favor of the publishers, was that reviews weren't all that accessible. If they were I likely wouldn't have to list this game as I would have stayed far away from it. I had only heard that this was similar to Super Mario 64 and if it was then it had to be awesome. It wasn't.
I wouldn't call myself a picky gamer, at least not when I was a kid. There were probably many games that by others standards were really bad that I instead found to be great. At the time I didn't know what unresponsive controls were but in hindsight I can safely say that this game suffered from it. Button presses wouldn't register properly and jumps and movement had to be so inch perfect that they bordered on impossible. This was rough coming from Super Mario 64 which had great and responsive controls.
One thing that I can safely say I wasn't picky on back then was graphics and visuals. Still I couldn't stand to look at this game. The textures and colors were so bland. Another rough aspect of the game seeing how lively and colorful the worlds of Super Mario 64 were. It was really rough on the eyes.
I looked up the game while writing this and turns out it's rated as one of the worst games of it's era. Turns out I wasn't so picky after all. Just look at this.
Source: Polygon
Tony Hawk's Underground 2
This is the game on my list I can see people disagreeing with the most. Choosing the last worst game on this list was hard as there weren't really any that stood out. I guess this game just sort of receives the short end of the stick from me in this blog post.
The disappointment factor is what gets this game a spot on the list. I absolutely loved the first game and I was a fan of the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series from the start. The Pro Skater series had awesome levels with a lot of great challenges. Underground was something else and immensely fun. The huge list of playable characters was great. You could even play as the members of Kiss.
Tone Hawk's Underground 2 was pretty much just more of the same from the first game. What disappointed me was that it felt over the top. Some challenges were ridiculous and I didn't find the levels and locations to be interesting either. I felt they were more annoying than fun to traverse.
All of these points factored together lead to a big disappointment and I ended up never finishing the game. Not because I couldn't but I just didn't want to.
I guess this game is unlucky to end up on this list, but that's how it be sometimes. Life's not fair.
Source: Tony Hawk's Games Wiki
That's 6 out of 14 posts out of the challenge done. It's been really fun reminiscing about all this. Today's topic maybe not so much but it's still important to touch on.
Remember to check out the #retrogamingchallenge tag to stay updated on all posts being made in the challenge.
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