Least favourite games per console

[Sky10w10w]

List and / or talk about the least favourite game you remember playing on a console-per-console basis.

Of course, let's be mindful that this is intended to be a purely subjective exercise. To illustrate this point, let's suppose that the only two NES games someone has ever played are Mario 2 and Mario 3. That someone accordingly cites Mario 2 as his least favourite NES game. Mario 2 is anything but a bad game. However, we can't blame that person for neglecting to cite something infinitely worse than Mario 2 (like, say, the NES port of Dragon's Lair) if his exposure to the console's library is so limited.

It might help if you give an estimate as to how many games you've played per console, or to stress a conflict of interest. For instance, if you don't like sports games yet cite a sports title as one of your least favourite games, you should make this conflict of interest apparent to your audience!

Anyway, as the original poster, I will be the first to list my picks:

***NES***

Exposure: Hundreds of games.

Least favourite: Battletoads

There are certainly worse games for the console, like Milon's Secret Castle, but I single out Battletoads because the first few stages were so charming and enticed me to soldier my way through the rest of the game. The majority of the game's levels are infuriatingly difficult. The difficulty is so severe that the game doesn't offer a fair challenge. The only way to advance into the game's later stages is to memorize its sadistic vehicle-driven challenges or use a strategy guide (read: to CHEAT!).

***Atari 2600***

Exposure: I've played every game, but I've only played about 60 of them seriously.

Least favourite: E.T.

Waiting for E.T. to levitate to the top of the pits he keeps falling into is SO tedious!

***Playstation 2***

Exposure: About 25 games.

Least favourite: The Bouncer.

The Bouncer seemed very sluggish for a beat-em up, even if it was a 3D beat-em up. I expected a very stylish and exciting game based on the FMV screenshots that were showcased in magazines, but I'd rather play 8- and 16-bit beat-em ups over The Bouncer!

***Xbox***

Exposure: About 35 games.

Least favourite: Backyard Wrestling 2: There Goes the Neighborhood.

I picked up this game with low expectations. I sought it out despite gamers and critics expressing almost universal contempt for it. I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt, especially since I am a fan of pro wrestling and because the game features several wrestlers who achieved fame in my favourite modern wrestling promotion, Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW). Suffice it to say that I found the gameplay excessively simplistic and repetitive. Unlike Def Jam: Fight For New York (a similar game for the Xbox), nothing felt rewarding about soldiering through matches. Playing the game literally felt like a chore.

[Gnash]

Nes

Hydlide - Made me think it was similar to The Legend Of Zelda, when it was just... crap.

Snes

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest - Not a bad game but again I was tricked after playing Final Fantasy II. And that pissed me off.

Sega Genesis

Hard Drivin' - 3D graphics racing game! Slow as crap with only one track what a piece of...

N64

Yoshi's Story - Wow awesome it looks like Super Mario World... yeah right -_- It's not really bad but I hate being tricked.

Dreamcast

Dragon Riders: Chronicles of Pern - I love the Pern books. So this game was a must get for me. Then I played it, wholy crap what a piece of... oh darn it broke... RESET. Ok maybe it's not that bad I'll just play again... it froze again... WTF.

Playstation

The Contra Adventure - Oh boy a new Contra game after the great Nes and Snes games it must be good, guess not :(

I guess most of the games I hate are the ones that tricked me into thinking they were good or based on a good franchise. Bad games are just bad games, but bad games that make you think "wow" and do not deliver feel my rage.

[skalynuik]

Nintendo Fester's Quest, no save feature, could only get so far where you either died or had to leave the house.

It sucked.

[Areala]

Oh boy, I love me some lists like this!

PRESS START!

Atari 2600

Game everyone always picks: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.

Game I'm choosing instead: Pac-Man

Even gamers who are too young to have even touched a real Atari 2600 in its NES-era revival enjoy spouting off the fact that E.T. is the worst Atari 2600 game ever made, it ruined Atari as a company, caused the crash of the video game industry, and there are millions of copies of it all dumped in a paved-over landfill out in the middle of the desert somewhere because it was THAT bad. Nonsense. E.T. isn't exactly a stunning example of exemplary gameplay, but it's got pretty good graphics for the time, a storyline loosely based on the film, and even features the famous title track. Even if it's not everybody's cup of tea, it's playable and you can enjoy it (I actually did as a kid). What's worse than E.T. in my mind is Pac-Man. I can't code to save my life, and even I could write a better Pac-Man game than the one Tod Frye was given a mere six weeks to program and rush to store shelves. Wanna blame the video game crash on any one game? Don't pick E.T. Pac-Man screwed everybody over with its horrible presentation and seizure-inducing flicker effects.

A few years later, Atari redeemed themselves by releasing a damn good port of Ms. Pac-Man but by then it was too little, too late.

NES

Game everyone always picks: Dragonlance - Heroes of the Lance

Game I'm choosing instead: Total Recall

I don't know what the hell my brother was thinking, renting this abomination one weekend. Being well under the age of 18, neither one of us knew anything about the movie except that Arnold starred in it, and it was supposed to be action-packed or something. Knowledge of tri-breasted hookers was only to come much later in life. Heroes of the Lance is at least marginally playable (there are YouTube videos of people playing through it without dying because they actually read the instruction manual). Total Recall is nothing more than a total piece of crap unless your idea of 8-bit fun is getting the tar beat out of you by midgets or sitting in a dark movie theatre watching the game's credits in order to score a 1-UP (I'm not kidding).

Sega Master System

Game everyone always picks: I've no zarking idea--nobody else I know has ever played one.

Game I'm choosing instead: My Hero

One year before Double Dragon changed the idea of beat-'em-ups forever, Sega unloaded this junky port of an already clunky and lacklustre arcade game. Three stages that repeat forever, featuring lousy enemies and silly bosses, and a protagonist who often wins fights by punching bottles at oncoming attackers, and who never manages to get the girl. Insert fugly graphics and controls that simply refuse to function and you've got My Hero. I'd choose to remain kidnapped.

Sega Genesis

Game everyone always picks: Shaq-Fu

Game I'm choosing instead: Shaq-Fu

I was gonna try and be original and list something different, like "Dark Castle" or "Brutal: Paws of Fury" but no, there's nothing else really to say. Shaq-Fu is easily THE worst Genesis game ever made. No need to swim against the tide.

Super Nintendo

Game everyone always picks: Pit Fighter

Game I'm choosing instead: Lagoon

There's nothing like a good RPG, right? Which is why Lagoon is so terrible. Imagine, if you will, playing Final Fantasy. Only whenever you enter a random battle or even a boss fight the computer controls your actions. You don't get to pick what spell you cast, or what attack to use, or if you maybe want to defend this round or buff up a companion. No, the game takes care of that for you. You might win, you might not win, but either way you can rest assured that you had nothing at all to do with the outcome of the fight. At least with Pit Fighter you could blame the controls when you lost; Lagoon doesn't even give you that.

Sega CD

Game everyone always picks: Night Trap

Game I'm choosing instead: Cliffhanger

It's true that Night Trap helped touch off the whole video game violence and sexuality debate in Congress (albeit because Joe Lieberman had never played it and thus didn't know what he was talking about in his remarks on the Senate floor), and I'm certainly not going to claim it's a great game, but it has a massive advantage over Cliffhanger in that you can actually beat Night Trap. Cliffhanger on the Sega CD is impossible to finish, because you simply cannot make a particular jump at a particular point in a particular level that you absolutely have to make in order to continue the game. FAIL!

Playstation

Game everyone always picks: Bubsy 3D

Game I'm choosing instead: Mortal Kombat: Special Forces

Bubsy is awful, there's no denying it. But to be worse than Bubsy takes special skills. Bubsy never aspired to be anything more than another mascot-wannabe platforming game, period. MK: Special Forces on the other hand played the "What if we were to make a Mortal Kombat game but there wasn't any one-on-one fighting in it?" stupidity card, which made about as much sense as the time your kid sister dropped that 2 on your Ace in "War" and tried to convince you that she beat you because two is more than one. Making a bad game is nothing special; dozens of studios manage to pull it off every year. It takes a spectacular level of incompetence to take what is an otherwise good franchise and run it off the rails into mediocrity, which is what we got with MK: Special Forces.

Nintendo 64

Game everyone always picks: Superman 64

Game I'm choosing instead: Daikatana

Daikatana might be low-hanging fruit on every platform it chose to show its face, but it edges out Superman 64 for one simple reason in my mind. In Superman 64, you can fly. In Daikatana, you can only cry. With poor voice acting to boot. *sigh* Oh, what might have been...

*huggles*

Areala

[paravani]

I liked Pac Man for 2600...

hmm, let's see....

Game Boy

Exposure: 20 games

Least Favorite: Mortal Kombat II

This one is actually a little difficult. I liked all the games I played for gameboy. The thing is, I traded Donkey Kong Country 3 for this. I regretted it so much. The Killer Instinct port I had for gameboy was nothing great and even that made this look pretty weak.

Super NES

Exposure: 40-50 games

Least Favorite: NBA Live 98

I got this game because my friend had it for playstation and I didn't have one, haha. Should have expected it would be nowhere as good. I still logged tons of hours on it, though.

Playstation

Exposure: About 50 games

Least Favorite: Gauntlet Legends

I had heard how popular this game was in arcades, and got the playstation port of it... to my great disappointment. Terrible, terrible game.

[strat]

I don't have as much exposure to bad games as most retro-fans, since I rarely got a game without knowing anything about it. Most of my bad games are limited to Atari 7800. One dopey game on that thing had you skateboarding through an office building to shut off all the lights. Didn't like Choplifter too much, though that's probably not really a bad game. And Pole Position 2 bit.

The only seriously bad game I ever got was X-Men on NES, and just thinking about it induces a migraine. Mappy Land is fun to play for a few minutes to admire how dumb it is.