Jun 10, 2008

The Worst Atari 2600 Games

Since the last article (the BEST Atari 2600 Games) went over SO well - and all the great comments we had... all the screen caps, videos, history and all that... We've decided to have a second, although a little smaller version.

Here are my WORST Atari 2600 Games
  1. ET - This game is blamed for the Game Crash of 1983. The game is you're ET falling in holes. That's the game. The CEO of Warner paid Spielbergo 20 million for the rights to do the game. They stuck the guy who made Yars Revenge - Howard Scott Warshaw - in a closet for 6 weeks in order to get 'something' out before Christmas. You fall in holes. They manufactured more games than they had consoles because they were convinced that they would sell more consoles simply because they had ET... The excess games (3 million) were buried in the desert. No, really.
  2. Pac Man - wasn't Pac Man. Not even close. It made kids cry it was so bad.
  3. Rubix Cube - (Name changed to Magic Squares... or something) Here's the $40 video game of a $5 dollar puzzle. Remember the crash of 1983? Yeah, it was Atari thinking that games like this were good ideas that brought down the tent.
  4. Custer's Revenge - X rated pixels. Poor taste, graphics and Atari's lack of control over who could make games for their VCS contributed to Atari's demise. Nintendo learned from examples like this by having rigidly tight control over their suppliers.
  5. Donkey Kong by Coleco. Where do I begin? All kinds of Suck! 2 levels. Graphics so bad you want to puke. Many think that Coleco made it bad on purpose to sell more Colecovision consoles. Is it a coincidence that Donkey Kong was the pack in game for Colecovision? 
  6. Superman - it's an RPG, I think?
  7. Chase the Chuck Waggon - Wilson Purina - When DOG FOOD companies are making video games, start selling your stock. Hell, sell it to short.
  8. SwordQuest (all of them) - Remember Journey the game? This is like that, but even less fun.
  9. Sssnake - Data Age. All of the graphics consist of blocks. They're equivalent to the old Pong games, except I can tolerate Pong much longer than Sssnake. Your character (a small block) movement is restricted to the center of the playfield (blocks evenly spaced out with a gap in the middle). The score rolls over at a whopping 100 points. The snakes (more blocks connected together) can be easily avoided, and the other monsters (slightly misshapen blocks) are never a threat. Shoot one monster (with fast-moving blocks) and the rest die too. There is one round, one screen, and one life per game.
  10. Skeet Shoot - Apollo. Terrible, just terrible.
  11. Runner Up Sneak 'n Peek - US Games. This is the video game of two kids playing hide and seek. Seriously. You have to have your opponent turn around or hide their eyes while you hide in the game. If I remember there was only a 2 player version... and even if there wasn't, you'd be on your honor to NOT WATCH where the computer hid.... Dude, turn it off and just play the bloody thing for real. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I dunno.....that pixelated native girl looks quite alluring to me....