Thank you, system_hoser and mouthbreather.
Yes, the good old days were mighty weird. How about the Atari Mindlink. Play video games with the power of your … um … eyebrows.
Again, from the Classic Gaming site. This Page. Scroll down a bit.
I have to second Deadly Towers for the NES. Yes, I actually owned it. Now, don’t ever speak of it again.
Oh, if you go back to Atari 2600 the Swordquest games were pretty bad too. I think I had Swordquest:Waterworld but I think there were three others. Now those were bad.
HUGS!
Sqrl
I remember renting Rygar. I beat the stupid thing in about 4 hours, and was bored the whole time I was playing it. Yuck.
Narrowing things down a bit: Worst RPG I’ve ever played (and I like almost any RPG) is 7th Saga for the SNES. Raise your hand if you’ve played it <a few hands go up>. Now raise your hand if you’ve finished it <hands go down; crickets chirp>. It’s full of endless levelling just so the monsters 10 steps away won’t flatten you, and levelling doesn’t help against the apprentices (the boss-type enemies). They level with you, and seem to gain more by doing so than you do. As a result, fighting them is an exercise in insane patience: Save, start fighting, heal (repeat ad nauseum as you wait for them to miss), hit them when they miss you, get slammed with a critical hit and die, reset. You’re waiting for them to miss several times in a row, so you can kill them. Plus, there’s no interesting plot, the graphics blow, and the music sucks. I can’t imagine any way to write a worse RPG for the platform. Mystic Quest (a game I refuse to associate with FF) was better <ducks flung refuse>–OK, it was cheesier, but it was still better! At least it kept my little nephew occupied–7th Saga, on the other hand, made him throw things (notably the cartridge).
Sorry this was so long. I just felt it deserved a thorough bashing.
God, don’t even get me started. I’ll throw out a couple of NES games off the top of my head:
[ul][li]Shadowgate - Take the classic text-based adventure model, add graphics and a cumbersome interface, and voila: A low rent version of Adventure with crappy graphics that you interact with at 1/10th the speed. Oh, and so what if you have been playing for hours…pick the wrong lever and you die. Game over. Please try again.[/li][li]Dungeon Magic - see above.[/li][li]John Elway’s Quarterback - I’m throwing a bomb 50 yards downfield. Whaddaya mean, the linebacker picked it off? He was only 10 yards away, but he was on the same vector as the pass? Pathetic game programming.[/ul][/li]And for the SNES:
Balance, you hit the nail on the head. 7th Saga is the worst RPG I have ever played. I got about halfway through before I gave up in sheer boredom. All you do is walk around fighting monsters to gain experience so you can then fight tougher monsters. That’s it. The game offers nothing more. And beside that, the graphics sucked for a SNES game. God, I’m still pissed I wasted hours playing that thing waiting for it to get better.
Trojan for NES. 'Nuff said.
Gawd, I really liked Rygar and Trojan. Must’ve finished em a couple dozen times each.
My worst of list?
-To the Hoop for Turbografix 16. The singe mark on the corner of the cartridge where someone tried to set it on fire should’ve been enough to warn me off. Instead, it was the worst $2 I ever spent.
-Reactor for Atari 2600. If someone knows how to actually play this game, please fill me in.
-Tail of the Sun for Playstation. Your caveman character would take naps at random times in the game. So would I.
-Charles Barkley’s Shut Up And Jam for any system. I defaced my cart so it read “Charles Barkley- Shut Up”.
-Mad Dog McCree for 3DO. It may have been because I didn’t have the light gun (which was almost impossible to find) but this game was completely unplayable.
-Any Make Your Own Music Video With… for Sega CD. Kriss Kross, anyone? In fact, I’ll add all Full-Motion Video games to this list.
And thoseare just the ones that spring to mind. I’ve probably got some buried in my psyche somewheres.
Does anyone remember that stupid “interactive” robot that came with some NES consoles? I think the game it was used with was “Robotron” or something like that, can’t remember. All I know is that the game was unplayable and stupid. The robot would make these little tops spin and you had to keep them spinning while playing the video game. AAARRRGGG!!!
Also, “Days of Thunder” was the worst driving game ever made. Period!
But even with all the wasted money on bad games, I still love 'em.
SoE was made by Square of America, not Square of Japan. While it had some amusing bits (I particularly liked the evil twins running throughout the game) finding elements was SOOOO boring. The dog sniffs. OK, is he sniffing to sniff, or is he actually on the trail of something? I did like the robot dog with the toast, though. Try some Square games again.
FF: Mystic Quest. OK, they shouldn’t have put the FF name on this. However, most people seem to overlook the fact that this is a BEGINNER’S RPG. It’s meant to introduce people to the genre. It teaches the player, among other things, about leveling up, searching for stuff, and the importance of using the right weapon/item for the task at hand. Plus there’s some minor puzzle solving. I’d give this game to a preteen who was mildly interested in the genre. I have to admit that I will still dig it out and play it every now and then.
Myst: What Lesa said. Sure, the scenery was pretty. However, I don’t play a game for the scenery (unless it’s that guy in Return to Zork)(or Squall Leonhart, yeah, I know, he’s just a bunch of pixels, but he’s put together in a VERY interesting way). And the puzzles had absolutely NO logic to them. I sold this game. I think that this is the ONLY game I’ve ever sold.
The Mindlink: Actually, I think that this might be a good accessory. A player with a broken arm or hand might find this to be just the thing to alleviate boredom. And it might be even more useful for those who are permanently disabled in one or both hands.
These games are called text adventures or interactive fiction, and I love them. The best of them can still bring a smile to my face. However, this is very much a matter of one’s particular taste. Some people love hack’n’slash, some love puzzles. Some love both. Some text adventures are very bad, the puzzles can’t be logically solved. But the best ones are absolutely fantastic.
I have only one game that I’ve started and haven’t beaten, which is Final Fantasy Tactics. I did a bit of research, found out where I went wrong, and as soon as I completely finish Chrono Cross (that is, when I’ve got all the characters from all the paths, and beat the game in different spots) I’m going to give it another try.
Lynn
Who clearly takes games WAAAAAY too seriously.
Ah, Lynn, nobody takes games seriously like I do…
In the good games I play (Diablo II, Quake3, etc.), I really get attached to my characters. For example, my D2 Sorceress, Zippy… sometimes, I stay up nights talking to her, 'cuz she listens… 
Anyway, back to crappy games…
Anyone remember Tiger Heli? It was an insanely fun game to play (you were a helicopter with an unlimited supply of missiles, and you blew up tanks and houses and trains for some reason), except IT NEVER FUCKING ENDED!!! We (me and my seemingly-billions of siblings) spent more than eight hours playing it through (it had an unlimited-continues “secret”… press A and Start), and after a while we began to get convinced that it had begun repeating itself level-wise somewhere in there… Other than the never-ending nature, it was a very fun game.
Myst: The best description I ever heard for this game (and it’s sequel) is “glorified slide-show”.
Ultima Ascension: I was really jazzed about U9. I mean, REALLY jazzed. And when you first start playing, it looks nice. You think, “Cool, this game is going to rock”. But then you actually get to Britannia. The whole world is TINY! Freakin’ TINY, man! They compensate for this by making your character run REALLY SLOOOOOOOW… Then, combat is nonexistent, the characters are boring (except the gay guy who looks like you :D… “My name’s Evidious, and I’m your bi-i-i-i-i-iggest fan!!”), the plot is utterly ridiculous and painfully linear, and even after trying five times, nobody in our family has been capable of passing the game because of game glitches. And these glitches never manifested until after we’ve spent twenty hours or so going through the game. BAH!! It pisses me off so much!!
Ultima 8: You remember this one… Pagan? The first hint that the Ultima series was going down the tubes? Ultima 7 and Serpent Isle were a little odd (especially SI, where EVERYBODY dies), but were extremely immersive game environments. Pagan was just plain HORRIBLE. Gameplay was nonexistent, it was impossible to get around… BAH!! In fact, double-BAH!!
Dune 2000: It’s essentially Command & Conquer with sandworms. There’s practically no tie-in with the movie or books, the playability is practically nil… in fact, the only thing cool about it is the box cover (which my brother displays oh-so-proudly on his wall… it IS pretty cool lookin’). I give this game the dreaded Triple-BAH!!
The Spoofster says:
ehm - I believe I can tell you why: It’s because it’s basically a graphically updated version of C&C’s precursor, Dune II, which AFAIK was one of the first real-time strategy games. And while Dune II lacked a lot of C&C’s finesses, it was still quite a timesink back in its day. Sheesh, any game that calls me “Scourge of Dune” will have me stay up nights.
One of the major drawbacks was that you couldn’t group your units, so a massed attack ment giving orders to 25 units, one by one. The first ones would be massacred by the time the last ones joined the battle. But for its time, Dune II was COOL.
SNorman
Just slightly worse was the Indiana Jones game for the 2600. Unplayable, and the world most annoying music.
I got zero entertainment out of MYST Masterpiece Edition.
Dull as zweibach, and only half as crunchy.
7th Saga was the one I was trying to think of when I wrote the OP and couldn’t remember. Gods, that game sucked. Your description of it was dead-on.
Did you ever play Drakkhan? It was the same, only with worse graphics and a harder-to-follow plot. Gah.
HA! When I first got FF8 (one of the few games I ever managed to pick up the moment it came out), I was showing the intro to all of my friends. My friend Kay, who has never played a video game in her life, looked at Squall and said, “Damn, he’s HOT!” I think all of my female friends agreed with that summation.
On a side note, I used to date a guy who looked just like Irvine Kinneas. Freaked me out.
So I’m probably gonna get takin out back and beat for saying what I’m about to say. I think that pretty much any game thats out or is going to come out on the playstation 2 is the worst game ever. wwweeeeeeewwwwwwwwww… That felt wonderful.
Boiwunder - you are entitled to your opinion and I for one will not take you out back for it. But considering your opinion is “based in part on theory and conjecture”, I’ll just laugh.