Allie
10. Golden Axe
I really liked playing this game with my brother as a kid. You walked left to right, you tried to punch things, you got your ass beat, but there were skellingtons. I look back on it now, and yeah, it kinda wasn’t great.
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| Before Star Wars Kid there was Tyris Flare. |
Not to be confused with the original GBA version Warioware Inc. Mega Microgame$ which is of course a diamond of a game, this cheapskate gamecube port offered hardly anything new, except a couple gimmicky multiplayer modes tacked on, and without even a straight up 2-player version of classic warioware! But the thing is, it has just a couple multiplayer modes that I STILL play with my friends every single year. When we run out of juice on all our other games, this one is still here.
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| It's not the fall that gets you, it's that those turtles gon be piiiissed. |
08. Pokemon Snap
This game is about an hour long, and you just photograph pokemon. But I really liked pokemon, and you could throw shit at them and piss them off and that is PRETTY GREAT.
Haters gonna hate
Aww yee dawg. Pokémon Snap is a horribly disappointing, on-rails game that is totally not what you hope it would be. Taking pictures is not for everyone, but the niche that IS into that would be pumped by the concept. It’s the roller coaster rails that ruins it for most people, since it means you can’t take your time and line up the perfect shot. What should be a nice relaxing time-wasted quickly becomes a stressful time management game.07. Oddballz
This I believe was a total bomba spinoff to the groundbreaking ‘Petz’ franchise (before Ubisoft turned them into true shovelware!) Where instead of breeding cute kittens and making them wear hats, you had a bunch of fuzzy Cronenbergs that constantly made weird noises and ate live worms and would have allergic reactions (I am not kidding) to toys and food. You can probably see why I loved it.
How do you have ideas when you don't even have a cranium?
Kind of amazed that someone could make an uglier version of Tamagotchi. That stuff had 2-bit graphics and the resolution of a postage stamp. Knowing your fondness for weird monsters, I do understand what attracted you to it though.06. Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life
AWL is faaaar from the worst Harvest Moon game, which is kind of a depressing thought. This game promised to be a real ultimate Harvest Moon 3D next-gen experience to live out your whimsical second life. What we got instead was a small herb garden next to an unfinished-feeling town and meadow with frankly a really weird vibe about it. And the end goal of the game wasn’t so much to get all the unlocks and have heaps of cash, no the game ends when you die of old age. Wow, Right? While this game would LITERALLY put me to sleep, I kind of really like it. Note the ‘weird vibe’, the unnecessary theme of mortality and even though it was unfinished, it was addictively serene. I guess it really was that relaxing second life after all.
Whore.
Never played this one too much. Harvest Moon games tend to be rather samey, so you pick one you like and stick with it I guess. This one has a bad rep for coming right after very polished and feature-rich entries. Compromises were made in this one to make it all pretty I think, which I guess it mostly succeeded at. 05. Ken’s Labyrinth
Of all the Doom-alikes to choose from that could easily be argued are some pretty gnarly games, Ken’s Labyrinth by Ken Silverman is probably the least.. great. The best description I could think of would probably be ‘Wolfenstein on acid’. You have to rescue your dog, and if it dies I guess you are fucked. I guess I’m a sucker for doom-alikes though.
What really happens when you give chocolate to dogs.
This game will always feel like a ROM hack to me. It plays identically to the game it was ripping off and it looks absolutely terrible.04. Space Station Silicon Valley
This game was brutally unfair and had nasty as heck controls. It’s a 3d platformer from the N64 generation, which is already like… just the worst combination of things. But the premise… you’re a microchip that controls any animal you can jump into, and all the animals have their own special abilities like floating, biting, swimming, laying mines, rocket jets… oh right did I mention they are cyborg animals? Yeah I don’t know. As you can imagine, the goofy premise is the games entire appeal, it’s buggy as all fuck and like I said it’s insanely hard in all the wrong ways.
Artists: Just fuck it, ya know?
This game seems like it just oozes potential. Potential that still feels untapped. Considering these developers went on to become one of the biggest names in video game studios, I think they could totally do it justice nowadays. 03. Creatures 3
Another pet simulator, but this time it's kind of like got an advanced genetics angle and you have to educate your creatures, make them breed and teach them not to eat poison and defend them from getting bitchslapped to death by grendels. I was never really precocious enough to get into measuring hormone levels and brain maps, but the game had a cult following in germany, and a pretty good mod scene where I could get candy cane vending machines and cages to put the grendels in. I guess what it really was was an inexpensive doll house with AI.
Not sure I can even explain what's going on here.
You and your weird monster tamagotchis, Allie… 02. Sonic R
CAN YOU FEEL THE SUNSHINE? DOES IT BRIGHTEN UP YOUR DAY? DON’T YOU FEEL THAT SOMETIMES YOU JUST NEED TO RUN AWAY? REACH OUT FOR THE SUNSHINE FORGET ABOUT THE RAIN! JUST THINK ABOUT THE GOOD TIMES, AND THEN THEY’LL COME BACK AGAIIIINNNNNNNN!!
GOTTA GO FAST BUT AT 15FPS
To this day I still can’t believe you aren’t trolling me with this game. It’s irredeemably bad and I just don’t understand how it can bring you such joy. It’s a racing game where everyone is on foot, but they control like lorries on ice.01. Chrono Cross
Chrono Cross is so goddamn beautiful, moving, breathtaking, unforgettable, magical aaaand I can’t recommend this game to anyone. The main reason is that it doesn’t tell you where the fuck to go at any point in the game and it literally expects you to just decide to backtrack through a dungeon you just beat and use an item you may have got from some npc in town, or discover an invisible thing on the overworld map. It’s got like 30 totally inspired playable characters for you to not figure out how to recruit, and an epic emotional story that goes completely off the rails about ⅔ of the way through and just has way too many ideas without any sort of satisfying conclusion. Infact, if you are able to follow it at all you deserve a medal. But that soundtrack is the shiz.
I'm so stuck I'll just drown myself.
I totally feel you with this one. It’s kind of hard for me to admit this is not a good game, because in my eyes it is. It’s easy to get blinded by all the things it does right to notice all the bad decisions it makes along the way. It’s nonsensical, slightly pointless, but it sure is beautiful and inspiring.Tobi
10. Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
Remember a time when the Wii Remote was new and developers were still messing around with what they could do with it? While most of them bailed, some of them released those games with mixed successes. Zack & Wiki is one of those games centred around Motion Control implementations akin to a Wario Ware, except they didn’t figure out yet at the time that individuals do the same gestures differently. This ended up making a motion controlled puzzle game that just simply did not work for a lot of folks, and you had to resort to guides to see how you had to perform the same gestures you were making all your life. To make things worse, it’s also one of those adventure games where you can mess up and have to restart. I really like a lot of what they were going for but… yeah.
Brr! Cold enough to freeze the balls off a br- oh, sorry man.
I can’t really vouch for the quality of this game, I saw it looking pretty interesting on the release but I never picked it up. I think people I know got fed up with it pretty fast and felt it was short and shallow. I’m actually not sure what it is you like about this game, but I imagine it’s got pretty decent puzzles and it’s kind of a cute little adventure.09. Pandora’s Tower
I’m one of those people that thinks Konami never really made a 3D Castlevania game yet. Well if Konami wasn’t going to do it, Gambarion will. Featuring a cast with the charisma of a vending machine, heavy use of motion controls and IR cursors, you can guess where this one went wrong. Polish was pretty much absent from every single aspect as well. They wanted to make a game that was simply way beyond their means and talent. As someone that really wanted an actual 3D Castlevania, this game just had its heart in the right place.
I'll break up with her after one more dungeon...
I really liked this game as well. This game doesn’t even really have an fatal flaws and it has some charm, but somehow I know in my heart that it’s not a great game that most people would turn their nose up at it and for good reason. Well, ok I know some pretty good reasons. Wiimote action combat, those haircuts, and that cringeworthy moe housewaifu the game centers around. ITS SO CRAY THOUGH NOBODY ELSE UNDERSTANDS US, T.08. Metroid Other M
Trying to correct the lame first person course the Metroid series took on the Gamecube, the series creator decided to bring the series back to where he left off. Following the style of Metroid Fusion, Samus is back to being the awesome speedy and agile cyborg ninja we used to know… in gameplay. In a bold move, they decided to finally fill in the blanks of her personality, and boooooy howdy the personality they chose could not be more different from what the audience imagined all this time. Samus seems socially stunted, fragile, easily swayed by authority figures and WHINY. What they intended to be a big emotional moment in the series ended up being a slap in the face to a lot of fans. For god knows what reason they made the game more linear than ever, and expected you to play a 3D game like an NES game. Icing on the cake is that this title had the pixel-huntiest pixel hunts that would make Sierra games blush in embarrassment. I still liked how Samus played though, which felt pretty badass and faithful to the character.
A little past its......... prime ;-]
Yeah I guess what this game had going for it was it actually works out as a pretty not bad 3d interpretation of the original games, as opposed to Metroid Prime being more like a straight up FPS spinoff (even if it was the absolute shiz niz). This game had so many really frustrating little bad design decisions though that it wasn’t just the awkwardly misogynistic cutscenes that put me off. I can see why you’d consider it slightly underrated, but I definitely like this game less than you do.07. Freddi Fish 3: The Case of the Stolen Conch Shell
This is an adventure game series for children age 3-8. I was not 3-8 when I first played this and I’m still not. It’s a point and click game where most of your interaction with the screen amounts to what is basically virtual keys dangling in front of your face. You are tasked to find who stole the conch shell, and free your wrongfully imprisoned uncle. There’s multiple endings to this one, where the clues you find are different each time, resulting in a different culprit. I got all the endings.
Predators of the sea.
I can only guess these games are whack as fuck for them to have this weird cult following. I will have to play these games one day. That said, Tobi does just like things for babies like Blue’s Clues and vegetable puree, so who knows.06. Disaster: Day of Crisis
Disaster is a game based on action movie clichés and Roland Emmerich disaster flicks. Every large scale thing that can go wrong in the world does, at the same time. Earthquakes ripping open roads, tsunamis flooding everything, fires breaking out, gas leaks infesting caved in tunnels, wild animals escaping,... the whole works. They made a game around all these things that were quite popular at one point. I’m not sure if they had a good idea on how to mix all these elements though, because the gameplay keeps changing constantly and does a really bad job of explaining stuff to you. It’s the total lack of polish or cohesion that really makes this one a hard sell. It’s its unpredictability, unintentional camp and ability to systemise the strangest things that makes me love it though.
Grizzlys are known to hunt salmon and excessive HUD elements.
I won’t lie, this game sounds amazing. I’m actually kind of sad that I hadn’t heard of it until recently.05. ActRaiser
Ever wanted a game that combined fast-paced, and difficult action gameplay with slow Sim City building? No? Well here it is anyway. ActRaiser is a game with an identity crisis that tried to turn religion into exciting video game mechanics. You sometimes play as an avatar of the lord that purges the lands of false-gods with your sword, and sometimes an angel trying to help your followers expand and spread your influence across the region. Neither of the two different styles of gameplay are particularly well-thought out, or well-done. I still give them points for originality though. Most of the game’s problems would easily be fixed had they had more time, or perhaps in a sequel. Going by the fact that it’s a launch title for the Super Nintendo gives me a sneaking suspicion it was simply rushed out the door.
When u accidentally spawn in hell and erryone laugh at u
I think the sim/strategy angle of this game is its strong point, as a platformer though its one of.. thoooooooose platformer games. One of those ‘find the exploitable corner where the boss can’t hit you thats probably the only way to beat this game’ games. See also: Altered Beast. That was almost on my list actually! But turns out I don’t like it that much.04. Winnie The Pooh Home Run Derby
OK here my out, guys. I know fully well this is a shitty throwaway browser game. It’s completely free because no one would pay for it. It simply exists because someone was all HEY MAKE A GAME STARRING WINNIE THE POOH. HAVE IT DONE BY FRIDAY. All you do in this game is click at the right time to swing the bat. If you hit enough home runs, you proceed to the next challenger. Completely fine for the first few, but the difficulty climbs up so dramatically. No human child could do this. I consider myself to be far superior to any stupid kid, so when a kids game absolutely crushed me in the most humiliating fashion, I had to restore my manly honour by getting even and beating it. I never did. Looking up the correct title brought me straight to the game again, and I must admit I am struggling to not give it another go.
Seriously just you goddamn wait till you get to tigger.
If you don’t know about this game’s reputation, its really worth looking it up. Actually hilarious. I’d love to watch you try and beat the game. I hate baseball games though and I think it looks like a tedious fuckin browser game, but you go girl.03. NieR
NieR is a gnarly looking game about a gnarly looking dude that plays like he’s swatting flies on rollerskates. The game’s quite obviously low budget, and once you get into its plot and subject material you’ll immediately see why. NieR was destined to be sales chart poison, as its sole reason of existence is to depress the living hell out of the player. Having become too old and ugly to still prostitute himself, the titular NieR becomes increasingly frustrated and desperate to pay for his dying daughter’s medical needs. You drudge through boring and frustrating gameplay to see just how much sadder it can get. Even thinking back to it bums me out. In order to fully beat the game, you are expect to not only beat the game three times, but also 100% complete all its nonsense side quests. The pay-off is about the biggest middle finger you can get. I found myself strangely compelled by its quest to make me sad though, and ultimately I got one of my more memorable gaming experiences by sticking with it to the end.
Starring Gary Busey as the Witcher.
I feel ya. Your description actually sounds a bit like 9hours9persons9doors, but that game was actually awesome. I guess cool ideas can be ruined by horribly flawed gameplay though. Still, sounds like it was worthwhile. 02. Soul Blazer
If I had to describe Soul Blazer is one word, it would be “basic”. I don’t mean basic in the sense that it does what every other game at the time was doing. No, it’s basic in the sense that it sort of did what much older other games were doing, but somehow simpler and worse. Dialogue reads like it was written in a fortune cookie factory and it’s pretty heavy on backtracking for a relatively short game. The gameplay mostly consists of finding certain spots on a map where monsters spawn from, standing still there and mashing the button until they all die. Doing so makes an unimportant rando, building or plant appear that don’t really do anything. Grinding to unlock a single flower is one of the most bizarre form of rewards and progression I’ve seen in ages, but I must admit that I fell for its charm.
Well this guy knows something I don't
I think really this is kind of a decent enough game, but it does sorta have the look and feel of some sorta amateur RPGmaker type game. Mechanically though, it’s a little more original than that. Kind of a bit similar in its appeal to ActRaiser actually, but.. better than ActRaiser I reckon because it wasn’t SHITTY PLATFORMING.01. Deadly Premonition
I’ll not mince words. Deadly Premonition is a freeaboo* video game rip-off of Twin Peaks. It just straight up lifted the bulk of Twin Peaks’ ideas and characters, and tried to pass it off as their own. These guys were clearly in way over their heads when they wanted to make an open world game, because they did not have the time, money, experience or even a vague clue on how modern games worked. Cutscenes feature some atrocious terribad Troll 2 level writing and acting, and the actual production behind it is just as bad. Animations look uncomfortably unnatural and place holders are still all over the place. Everything feels like it could break apart any second, but it miraculously never does. It’s a game whose gameplay is so bafflingly poor that you’ll want to crank down the difficulty as low as possible so you have to play it the least. The worst thing is that the creators are clearly unaware of how bad they did, and in fact seemed incredibly proud. In a sick and twisted way, I kind of do think they can be proud. I couldn’t look away from this train-wreck and was able to see through all the disaster. What’s there is indescribable and life-affirming.
(*Freeaboo: Someone who is obsessed with America/American Culture/Cartoons/Food/.. etc. and attempts to act as if they were American. Derived from the similar word “Weeaboo”.)
I'm no fuddy-duddy, Zach. I can bust a rhyme or two.
Yeah this is sort of an obvious pick really, its the ultimate so-bad-its-good perfect Let's Play fodder from a time before Let’s Plays. I kind of already associate you with this game since you told me about it. I feel like it’s hard to tease you about any of these picks, they’re kind of widely accepted as flawed but much appreciated cult classics. I look forward to playing this myself some day and seeing how much I can even.So that’s 20 whole games that we just can’t recommend to you. On behalf of HYTIB we accept no responsibility for you trying to play these games, and realising they may in fact be awful games because we warned you. Some people just like the taste of a sinner's sandwich.
