See-Kah of Assiah was pretty bad just cos of the sound and the one off messages that popped up quite quickly, and if you missed them then you didn't have a clue what was happening.
Kentilla because you couldn't finish it, and almost everything that wasn't inanimate killed you (and even then I'm sure some inanimate objects killed you as well).
I don't think I ever bought this, but I know my best mate had a copy of it "Supergran", absolute bollocks.
What? Turok: Dinosaur Hunter is a great game, even today! Although yes, the original ?60 price tag, plus an extra ?15 for a controller pak (gamesave pak), without which you couldn't save your game* was extortionate. Of course, there weren't too many games out for the N64 then (or since, sadly), so you at the time you either bought Turok, or replayed Mario 64 for the hundreth time.
* Before Turok: DH, all N64 games had saved to their own cartridges, I believe, but Acclaim wanted to save a bit of cash on the cartridge :x
* Before Turok: DH, all N64 games had saved to their own cartridges, I believe, but Acclaim wanted to save a bit of cash on the cartridge :x
The solution to that was to buy third party hardware, my friend got a rumble pak/Memory Expansion/Memory block thing in one.
It's just like the memory upgrades for the Sega Saturn, at first there was the official one that came with Marvel Super heroes for an extra 15 quid or whatever that was only 1 Meg, then within a month or so there were 32 Meg ones which doubled up as an external battery backup system and a converter for playing import titles.
I was gonna say Super Soccer but Spector beat me to it, that was dire. But another one was Ghostbusters, I bought that on the strength of the digitized sound, what a mistake...
I was gonna say Super Soccer but Spector beat me to it, that was dire. But another one was Ghostbusters, I bought that on the strength of the digitized sound, what a mistake...
Awesome game......and a great first generation example of karaoke ...who didn't sing along to the words and beepy music...
Worst Speccy game I bought: Thing Bounces Back. I entered the shop with the intention of buying Hydrofool, but for some bizarre reason got this unplayable annoying rubbish instead.
Worst game bought on any platform: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS2). After about an hour of intro and cutscene the game is revealed to be a pale shadow of the earlier MGS2:Sons of Liberty, and embarrassingly poor compared to the rival Splinter Cell series. I took it back to the shop.
And special mention to CodeMaster's HoverSprint for the Amiga. Not especially dire, but very unpolished and disappointing for a Codies game.
I've generally managed to avoid the real bad ones by reading many reviews and playing demos...
Have you ever seen 'School for Scoundrels' that scene where they sell Ian Carmichael the car then quickly shut up shop, well that was like WH Smiths after they sold my brother Flak
Well, I didn't do the buying, but it was bought for me - Jack and the Beanstalk.
An appauling mess of a game, getting up the beanstalk was one thing, you could usually do it within a couple of goes, the following screen was impossible tho, usually you were dead within a split second. I assume you needed to plot pixel perfect path on the black screen parts to get through it, and after 3 deaths within 10 seconds you were back at the bottom of the beanstalk again, with very little desire to try again.
Worst game I actually bought? I am sure there were a few duff ones one the speccy, but the only one that springs to mind was Dr Who Dalek Attack on the ST - twas drivel!
Flight Path 737. I'm sure I've mentioned it before - but it was an utter howler. Written entirely in BASIC (which is too slow for a flight simulator - remember, Psion's flight simulator, only the menus were in BASIC, the actual flight sim bit was in machine code).
It started off badly, because the cassette box showed a picture of something that definitely was not a 737 - it was a T-tailed aircraft with engines at the back, like a Trident or a 727 (the 737 has two under-wing engines). Curiously, the one bit of machine code the program had was a routine to play an intro tune, which was a bit of a novelty at the time as it played two notes at once through the Speccy's beeper.
The game didn't give you any visual clue that you were actually lined up with the runway - you looked straight then it would tell you that you crashed as soon as you reached 100 knots. If you did get airborne, the in flight pictures were mostly just static images. Not a patch on the Psion flight simulator!
(On the flip side, one of the best flight simulators I played on the Speccy was Digital Integration's Fighter Pilot, which was for the F-15. The flight model seemed to model things like angle of attack - you could even do knife-edge flight by using top rudder, something that many PC sims wouldn't be able to do a decade later)
Someone else mentioned Ghostbusters. I'll second that, too.
Someone else mentioned Ghostbusters. I'll second that, too.
Yeah great shout. I SOO wanted to like that game as obviously the film was huge and every kid was made on Ghostbusters. This is one game for sure which i thought was excellent on the C64 but the Speccy version was very poor.
Looking back it was a very boring game but i think most kids were caught up in the hype and enjoyed the game when it was pretty dull. I mean the driving sequences were a joke unless you had that 'hoover' item but even then it was boring.
I was gonna say Super Soccer but Spector beat me to it, that was dire. But another one was Ghostbusters, I bought that on the strength of the digitized sound, what a mistake...
I thought Ghostbusters was quite good. It's still worth an occasional play on a rainy afternoon.
Just watch out for the marshmallow man!
Los Angeles S.W.A.T. was a terrible game. Maybe not the worst game ever made but as an impressionable pre-teen spending ?1.99 at the newsagent that promised urban battles it left me cold. It maybe taught me the value of value for money.
On a side note 'Ghostbusters' cost me the same money and bought around the same time. It looked and played cheap but had quite a broad range. A mix of mild strategy, action and timing at least made it stand out. The character and feel of the film, whilst a little diluted, was at least emphasised.
You can find a re-make at this website that really improves the graphics whilst sticking strictly to the gameplay of the spectrum.
The Adventures of St Bernard from Mastertronic, stupid linear gameplay and awfull colour clash.
Although Chiller is ugly, it's still playable and worth the dime.
Seriously, Devils of the Deep -- the only Richard Shiturd Software title I ever bought (the others, thank goodness, found their way into my collection by mysterious means;)); it cost me 20p at a Microfair. What a rip-off. :)
I never make misteaksmistrakesmisyaleserrurs — oh, sod it.
Well, I didn't do the buying, but it was bought for me - Jack and the Beanstalk.
An appauling mess of a game, getting up the beanstalk was one thing, you could usually do it within a couple of goes, the following screen was impossible tho, usually you were dead within a split second. I assume you needed to plot pixel perfect path on the black screen parts to get through it, and after 3 deaths within 10 seconds you were back at the bottom of the beanstalk again, with very little desire to try again.
I got this with Softaid ... I never ever ever managed to get off the first screen , i always fell off the beanstalk. :(
I tried it a couple of years ago too and still never managed it. It seemed that the pixels of the beanstalk didnt relate to the actual position you needed to be in...
Yeah I had both JotB & DotD - both stinkers. Graphics looked great on JotB but the frustration factor was waaay too high :x
Warlork of Firetop Mountain anyone? I loved those old 'turn to paragraph 264' fantasy/sci-fi books but this was just uninspiring. The way the creatues suddenly appeared on the scream made me jump out of my skin - no fun at all. The only game I've ever played which has been actually psychologically painful to play.
A couple of the early games were a bit naff. Slippery Sid, Orbiter and Gobble a Ghost spring to mind. Especially when I had games like Snapper, Meteors & Defender on my beeb :lol:
Zig-Zap by Imagine. The school library ran a computer club where you took some money in now and then to save for games. Was £5.95, club price £4.50. I saved for weeks, then waited weeks for it to arrive. Oh man that game sucked. It sucked so bad I'm going to dig it out and have another go.
Did anyone buy Pedro? I didn't but I was wondering... :)
EDIT:
Oh btw, I bought Ghostbusters and played it enough times to think it wasn't THAaaat bad! It was better money spent than on Top Gun and Bazooka Bill (oh dear!) at any rate.
Does anybody else think that the attitude for games has come full circle? With the Spectrum you had games for between ?4-?7 till around 1987 when budget games were introduced.
You then had either original, average quality games for ?1.99 or budget/higher quality games for ?2.99. Then you had high quality/licensed games for ?9.99-?12.99 that were generally coin-op conversions or taken from 16bit machines.
Games for the Atari ST/Amiga were often ?24.99 or higher! Then during the demise of the spectrum games were dropped to the new price of ?3.99 which in hindsight was excellent value...RoboCop, Rainbow Islands, Chase H.Q and Turrican all fell under this price.
So when the consoles began their rise games would go from ?20 to ?30 and so forth...we are now seeing games approaching ?60 and maybe ?70. Yet a quick look in HMV or Morrisons and you can pick up FIFA 06 for ?9.99, Resident Evil 4 for ?12.99 and G.T.A. San Andreas for ?14.99. Of course these games arent new as such, but for a casual console gamer like myself I am effectively paying the same prices I paid nearly 20 years ago for a much higher quality product (no offense.) I am not an avid gamer and I don't even know what Halo 3 is all about.
There is also a lot of games around specifically made for the PS2 for the budget market. ?4.99 for puzzle, card, board games as well as simple arcade games reminisant of the more obscure games released for the spectrum. Casino Challenge lets you play blackjack, slots, poker and horse racing all for the above price. Yet with excellent graphics, speech and FX...
This is a far cry from the Japanese obsessed and small minded optimism of the Super Nintendo from the 90's. Is the PS2 the last great universal games machine?
Don't you all miss losing ?1.99, lol
I wish we could go back to the ?1.99 era, lol
Ahh they were the days. The first game i every bought was a ?1.99er. It was a budget copy of Ghostbusters. Some budget games were better than full pricers.
Ahh they were the days. The first game i every bought was a ?1.99er. It was a budget copy of Ghostbusters. Some budget games were better than full pricers.
Comments
Crash Smash? I think not..
Kentilla because you couldn't finish it, and almost everything that wasn't inanimate killed you (and even then I'm sure some inanimate objects killed you as well).
I don't think I ever bought this, but I know my best mate had a copy of it "Supergran", absolute bollocks.
What? Turok: Dinosaur Hunter is a great game, even today! Although yes, the original ?60 price tag, plus an extra ?15 for a controller pak (gamesave pak), without which you couldn't save your game* was extortionate. Of course, there weren't too many games out for the N64 then (or since, sadly), so you at the time you either bought Turok, or replayed Mario 64 for the hundreth time.
* Before Turok: DH, all N64 games had saved to their own cartridges, I believe, but Acclaim wanted to save a bit of cash on the cartridge :x
The solution to that was to buy third party hardware, my friend got a rumble pak/Memory Expansion/Memory block thing in one.
It's just like the memory upgrades for the Sega Saturn, at first there was the official one that came with Marvel Super heroes for an extra 15 quid or whatever that was only 1 Meg, then within a month or so there were 32 Meg ones which doubled up as an external battery backup system and a converter for playing import titles.
Awesome game......and a great first generation example of karaoke ...who didn't sing along to the words and beepy music...
....errr anyone else?
Worst game bought on any platform: Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS2). After about an hour of intro and cutscene the game is revealed to be a pale shadow of the earlier MGS2:Sons of Liberty, and embarrassingly poor compared to the rival Splinter Cell series. I took it back to the shop.
And special mention to CodeMaster's HoverSprint for the Amiga. Not especially dire, but very unpolished and disappointing for a Codies game.
I've generally managed to avoid the real bad ones by reading many reviews and playing demos...
An appauling mess of a game, getting up the beanstalk was one thing, you could usually do it within a couple of goes, the following screen was impossible tho, usually you were dead within a split second. I assume you needed to plot pixel perfect path on the black screen parts to get through it, and after 3 deaths within 10 seconds you were back at the bottom of the beanstalk again, with very little desire to try again.
Worst game I actually bought? I am sure there were a few duff ones one the speccy, but the only one that springs to mind was Dr Who Dalek Attack on the ST - twas drivel!
It started off badly, because the cassette box showed a picture of something that definitely was not a 737 - it was a T-tailed aircraft with engines at the back, like a Trident or a 727 (the 737 has two under-wing engines). Curiously, the one bit of machine code the program had was a routine to play an intro tune, which was a bit of a novelty at the time as it played two notes at once through the Speccy's beeper.
The game didn't give you any visual clue that you were actually lined up with the runway - you looked straight then it would tell you that you crashed as soon as you reached 100 knots. If you did get airborne, the in flight pictures were mostly just static images. Not a patch on the Psion flight simulator!
(On the flip side, one of the best flight simulators I played on the Speccy was Digital Integration's Fighter Pilot, which was for the F-15. The flight model seemed to model things like angle of attack - you could even do knife-edge flight by using top rudder, something that many PC sims wouldn't be able to do a decade later)
Someone else mentioned Ghostbusters. I'll second that, too.
uuhmmm.... who you gona call????
another terrible game: ITALIA 90 for Mega Drive!!!worst football game ever made!
Yeah great shout. I SOO wanted to like that game as obviously the film was huge and every kid was made on Ghostbusters. This is one game for sure which i thought was excellent on the C64 but the Speccy version was very poor.
Looking back it was a very boring game but i think most kids were caught up in the hype and enjoyed the game when it was pretty dull. I mean the driving sequences were a joke unless you had that 'hoover' item but even then it was boring.
I bought it at the same time as Arcadia, the first two games I ever bought for the Speccy. It made me wish I had bought a Commode instead.
ADJB
I thought Ghostbusters was quite good. It's still worth an occasional play on a rainy afternoon.
Just watch out for the marshmallow man!
On a side note 'Ghostbusters' cost me the same money and bought around the same time. It looked and played cheap but had quite a broad range. A mix of mild strategy, action and timing at least made it stand out. The character and feel of the film, whilst a little diluted, was at least emphasised.
You can find a re-make at this website that really improves the graphics whilst sticking strictly to the gameplay of the spectrum.
http://www.remakes.org/comp2006/screenshots.php?page=4
They still couldnt sample that cool proton pack sound though.
Although Chiller is ugly, it's still playable and worth the dime.
Seriously, Devils of the Deep -- the only Richard Shiturd Software title I ever bought (the others, thank goodness, found their way into my collection by mysterious means;)); it cost me 20p at a Microfair. What a rip-off. :)
misteaksmistrakesmisyaleserrurs— oh, sod it.I got this with Softaid ... I never ever ever managed to get off the first screen , i always fell off the beanstalk. :(
I tried it a couple of years ago too and still never managed it. It seemed that the pixels of the beanstalk didnt relate to the actual position you needed to be in...
I have seen the rzx though since.
Yeah I had both JotB & DotD - both stinkers. Graphics looked great on JotB but the frustration factor was waaay too high :x
Warlork of Firetop Mountain anyone? I loved those old 'turn to paragraph 264' fantasy/sci-fi books but this was just uninspiring. The way the creatues suddenly appeared on the scream made me jump out of my skin - no fun at all. The only game I've ever played which has been actually psychologically painful to play.
A couple of the early games were a bit naff. Slippery Sid, Orbiter and Gobble a Ghost spring to mind. Especially when I had games like Snapper, Meteors & Defender on my beeb :lol:
I wish we could go back to the ?1.99 era, lol
EDIT:
Oh btw, I bought Ghostbusters and played it enough times to think it wasn't THAaaat bad! It was better money spent than on Top Gun and Bazooka Bill (oh dear!) at any rate.
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.
You then had either original, average quality games for ?1.99 or budget/higher quality games for ?2.99. Then you had high quality/licensed games for ?9.99-?12.99 that were generally coin-op conversions or taken from 16bit machines.
Games for the Atari ST/Amiga were often ?24.99 or higher! Then during the demise of the spectrum games were dropped to the new price of ?3.99 which in hindsight was excellent value...RoboCop, Rainbow Islands, Chase H.Q and Turrican all fell under this price.
So when the consoles began their rise games would go from ?20 to ?30 and so forth...we are now seeing games approaching ?60 and maybe ?70. Yet a quick look in HMV or Morrisons and you can pick up FIFA 06 for ?9.99, Resident Evil 4 for ?12.99 and G.T.A. San Andreas for ?14.99. Of course these games arent new as such, but for a casual console gamer like myself I am effectively paying the same prices I paid nearly 20 years ago for a much higher quality product (no offense.) I am not an avid gamer and I don't even know what Halo 3 is all about.
There is also a lot of games around specifically made for the PS2 for the budget market. ?4.99 for puzzle, card, board games as well as simple arcade games reminisant of the more obscure games released for the spectrum. Casino Challenge lets you play blackjack, slots, poker and horse racing all for the above price. Yet with excellent graphics, speech and FX...
This is a far cry from the Japanese obsessed and small minded optimism of the Super Nintendo from the 90's. Is the PS2 the last great universal games machine?
I did buy Back to the Future on budget but I managed to offload that onto someone, in exchange for MegaBuck$. I think I got the best deal there ...
I cannot edit the thread title :(
Ahh they were the days. The first game i every bought was a ?1.99er. It was a budget copy of Ghostbusters. Some budget games were better than full pricers.
Most were better, :D