Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: John Than Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and I love all things tech. It is time
Speaker 1: for a classic episode. This episode originally published on May four.
Speaker 1: It is titled the Worst Video Games of All Time
Speaker 1: parentheses update close parentheses. Um. Obviously, since we've had a
Speaker 1: few more contenders, I know some people would probably put
Speaker 1: Cyberpunk seven way up there. Uh, depending on your point
Speaker 1: of view. They're they're defenders of that game who say
Speaker 1: that there's a very good game there that was marred
Speaker 1: by a rushed release. Um. And there are others who
Speaker 1: disagree with that assessment entirely. So I'm sure I will
Speaker 1: have to do yet another update. So maybe at one
Speaker 1: point I'll do the Worst video Games of All Time
Speaker 1: updated update. But for now, let's listen to this classic
Speaker 1: episode from Enjoy. So there's been this longstanding rumor, elevated
Speaker 1: to almost myth status in the video game industry, that
Speaker 1: that Atari, while it was struggling, dumped thousands of video
Speaker 1: games in this New Mexico landfill. Um. The New York
Speaker 1: Times even ran a short piece on it in September,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a short piece, so I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: read it out because it's a really explains the story
Speaker 1: and is super indicative of what the industry was doing
Speaker 1: at the time. So here we go. With the video
Speaker 1: game business gone sour, some manufacturers have been dumping their
Speaker 1: excess game cartridges on the market at depressed prices. Now,
Speaker 1: Atari Inc. The leading video game manufacturer, has taken dumping
Speaker 1: one step further. The company has dumped fourteen truckloads of
Speaker 1: discarded game cartridges and other computer equipment at the City
Speaker 1: Landfill in Alama Gordon, New Mexico. Guards kept reporters and
Speaker 1: spectators away from the area yesterday as workers poured concrete
Speaker 1: over the dumped merchandise, and Atari spokesman said the equipment
Speaker 1: came from Atari's plant and I'll Passo Texas, which was
Speaker 1: used to make video game cartridges but has now been
Speaker 1: converted to recycling scrap. Atari lust three and ten point
Speaker 1: five million dollars in the second quarter, largely because of
Speaker 1: a sharp drop in video game sales. That's yeah, point
Speaker 1: five million dollars in a word, that's not that's not
Speaker 1: a yearly loss. So yeah, as you can see, this
Speaker 1: was a huge deal for Atari, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different things that went into this.
Speaker 1: We've covered it before, but just as a quick kind
Speaker 1: of refresher, the things that that led to this decision
Speaker 1: involved too many games on the market, too many consoles
Speaker 1: on the market, so you had you had way too
Speaker 1: much product out there, uh, and way too many poor
Speaker 1: video games that had been kind of scrapped together really quickly,
Speaker 1: right and and and then with the the ET cartridge
Speaker 1: in particular, which is often cited as not only the
Speaker 1: worst video game of all time but also the reason
Speaker 1: for a video game crash. That's that's a little too simplistic,
Speaker 1: but it did the big contributor because that license cost
Speaker 1: millions of dollars to Atari, and they produced millions of cartridges,
Speaker 1: something like five million copies of this game. And they
Speaker 1: didn't sell out at all. They had they had millions
Speaker 1: left over, So you just had a no wins scenario.
Speaker 1: I mean, no one wanted the cartridges. They kept getting
Speaker 1: marked down and down and down in the discount bins
Speaker 1: at your local toy stores. I mean, I remember these
Speaker 1: days because I had an I had ET the Extra
Speaker 1: Terrestrial um so, oh, yeah, I've never played. I had
Speaker 1: the two games that are constantly referred to as being
Speaker 1: the ones that led to the video game crash, where
Speaker 1: the the licensed versions of pac Man and ET the
Speaker 1: Extra Terrestrial, and there I had both of those, so
Speaker 1: I can tell you they both were terrible games. They
Speaker 1: were not good representations of their licenses and uh, and
Speaker 1: so they both really did contribute. So uh. Anyway, we
Speaker 1: had this big myth about the you know, this huge
Speaker 1: dumping ground, and there was conflicting information for the longest time,
Speaker 1: like is it actually out there or is it is
Speaker 1: that just urban legend? Well, and since concrete had been poured,
Speaker 1: no one was really sure. It made me think for
Speaker 1: a while that maybe the guy who made that decision
Speaker 1: at Atari used to work for the mafia. I want
Speaker 1: it dead, I want to bury it in the ground.
Speaker 1: I want to concrete foundation board over it. How it
Speaker 1: how it goes off in my head anyway, I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe he just really hated it that much. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we ended up discovering very recently as the recording of
Speaker 1: this podcast, as it turns out that uh, there was
Speaker 1: truth to the yeah myth confirmed. Okay, So in April
Speaker 1: hundreds of old Atari games, including the infamously terrible et
Speaker 1: We're We're found in this landfill in New Mexico. The
Speaker 1: Dick was part of a documentary series. It's being done
Speaker 1: by director Zach Penn in affiliation with a couple of
Speaker 1: media companies, Fuel Entertainment and Lightbox Entertained, along with Microsoft's
Speaker 1: Xbox Entertainment Studios. Yeah, what's what's funny is that Major Nelson,
Speaker 1: who is part of Xbox Lives. He's like one of
Speaker 1: the kind of a community liaison type guy, so a
Speaker 1: lot of information from Microsoft comes through him and then
Speaker 1: as communicated to the fans. He was actually on the
Speaker 1: dig site too. And uh, I'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about that in just a second when we get
Speaker 1: to the super silly part of the story. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure which part is. Yeah, there's so many, but this
Speaker 1: one in particular because it all has to do with
Speaker 1: the way the man wears a construction hat. Okay, alright, So,
Speaker 1: so some interesting interesting little factoids around this dig. The
Speaker 1: AP was out there and they were talking to folks
Speaker 1: um and and according to them, James Heller, a former
Speaker 1: Atari manager who's also on site for the dig. At
Speaker 1: the invitation of the production team, UM said. James Heller
Speaker 1: said that he was charged with finding a cheap way
Speaker 1: of disposing for seven and twenty eight thousand game cartridges.
Speaker 1: That's that's a lot of cartridges. That's more than I
Speaker 1: had by by a long shot. Uh. And he said
Speaker 1: that after a few local kids scavenged games UM and
Speaker 1: he started getting calls from the media about it, that's
Speaker 1: when he decided to pour the concrete, right, because otherwise
Speaker 1: you have you have a recipe for disaster, and that
Speaker 1: kids could be coming out to a landfill get hurt, lawsuits. Yeah.
Speaker 1: No one wants e T on top of being the
Speaker 1: worst game ever to be the most deadly game to
Speaker 1: have caused like tetanus and things like that. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: would have been a terrible, terrible, pr nightmare. Yeah. He's
Speaker 1: also said that he wasn't aware that there was any
Speaker 1: kind of controversy about it, and that he's never come
Speaker 1: out on the record about it because no one ever
Speaker 1: asked him. Huh. Clearly someone who does not go to
Speaker 1: the big video game forums. He's clearly not from the internet. Um. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: so the city that houses the landfill is giving up
Speaker 1: to the cartridges to the team, and we'll be selling
Speaker 1: the rest. So if you like your own, you can
Speaker 1: get some real new Mexico dirt packed in with your
Speaker 1: your various cartridges. They're they're apparently still playable, some of them,
Speaker 1: I mean some of them are crushed. Yeah, I know that.
Speaker 1: When they first found it, they tested one out almost
Speaker 1: immediately and then said, we're not going to tell you
Speaker 1: whether or not it worked. We're going to save that
Speaker 1: for the documentary. But but but these are these are hard,
Speaker 1: hardwired cartridges. I mean they're not they're not optical disks
Speaker 1: or anything like that. So as long as you haven't
Speaker 1: had too much detritus get into the cartridge, which we
Speaker 1: all know how to solve that problem, yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you're good. Yeah, as long as that's not the case,
Speaker 1: then it should work. And I understand that there was
Speaker 1: another person who was talked to about this whole thing,
Speaker 1: a man who may you might say was burdened with
Speaker 1: terrible responsibility. Uh So, the ap for for this article
Speaker 1: that they did also called eat S game designer one
Speaker 1: Howard Scott Warshaw about the entire debak um, and he
Speaker 1: said that he actually doesn't mind his game being called
Speaker 1: the worst game. Ever, he said that he was only
Speaker 1: given five weeks to design, right and test this game
Speaker 1: after legal matters held it up in production of for
Speaker 1: getting that license and the holiday shopping deadlines began looming.
Speaker 1: He said furthermore that it's end I quote a tremendous
Speaker 1: honor that, you know, even though it's the worst video
Speaker 1: game ever, that's still being talked about. Well, he also
Speaker 1: was the guy who made the biggest selling original game
Speaker 1: for Atari, which was Yours Revenge. Uh so, Yours Revenge
Speaker 1: was a kind of crazy little game where it's almost
Speaker 1: impossible to explain. Back then, video games were not nearly
Speaker 1: as simple in a way, like even though the the
Speaker 1: graphics were simple and the gameplay was simple, the concepts
Speaker 1: were really high concept crazy things. And these days, you know,
Speaker 1: when you see video games, they tend to be variations
Speaker 1: on very similar themes, like it's a sandbox game like
Speaker 1: Grand Theft Auto or the Saints Rose series, or it's
Speaker 1: a racing game, or it's a gun game like those
Speaker 1: are poor and adventure. Right back in the days of
Speaker 1: the early arcades, like well, first you play as a
Speaker 1: donkey who's out delivering pizzas. What But that was normal
Speaker 1: So anyway, Ours Revenge hard to explain it easily, but anyway,
Speaker 1: one of the most popular games of atari ever. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting that the same guy was behind
Speaker 1: both titles. Yeah. The other thing I wanted to mention,
Speaker 1: we're going to we're going to have a nice little
Speaker 1: flashback in a minute, but before we do that. Uh,
Speaker 1: something else I think is really entertaining is that there's
Speaker 1: some conspiracy theories around this, Like there were some things
Speaker 1: popping up on the Internet suggesting that perhaps this whole
Speaker 1: dig was a manufactured story, and in fact, no one
Speaker 1: had gone to New Mexico and no one had actually
Speaker 1: found the cartridges because they were never really put there
Speaker 1: in the first place, and the whole thing is just
Speaker 1: to comple cover up. Yeah, there's like a tari truthuris
Speaker 1: now this is great? Yeah. So uh And there was
Speaker 1: a picture of Major Nelson, this is what I was
Speaker 1: referring to earlier in the podcast, who was at the
Speaker 1: site and wearing a hard hat, and the hard hat,
Speaker 1: you know, sat pretty high up on his head, which
Speaker 1: led some people to say, oh, it's been photoshopped on
Speaker 1: top of him. He was clearly this was a picture
Speaker 1: of Major Nelson that's been placed so that it's on
Speaker 1: a desert background, and he's got this hard hat photoshopped
Speaker 1: on because it's not saying flat, you know, snug against
Speaker 1: his head. But here's the thing about hard hats. They
Speaker 1: actually have like a little kind of harness that sits
Speaker 1: on your head and they're raised up over the harness
Speaker 1: so that if something does impact the hard hat, there's
Speaker 1: that shot. Yeah. So it doesn't kill you, you see,
Speaker 1: just having something harding. Yeah, yeah, I mean it doesn't.
Speaker 1: It doesn't help you if you were wearing something hard
Speaker 1: on your head if the force hitting it is still
Speaker 1: enough to cause you injury. So, uh, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it may have been that the little harness part was
Speaker 1: a little small for Major Nelson's noggin. I don't know,
Speaker 1: But I don't know. I'm personally, Yeah, it doesn't I'm
Speaker 1: going to call him a fathead. Neither am I. But
Speaker 1: but it does mean that I think some people mistakenly,
Speaker 1: either mistakenly or perhaps jokingly. It could have been that
Speaker 1: they were joking about it being photoshopped and then other
Speaker 1: proportion in some way. I know the internet is oh
Speaker 1: sure sure. And also some of the very first photos
Speaker 1: that came out of the dig site. Um were taken
Speaker 1: on you know, low quality cell phones, and I think
Speaker 1: that everyone I mean, I mean, I was reluctant to
Speaker 1: believe the story until I clicked a few links through
Speaker 1: and really checked around about it, because I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's fake. Yeah, I mean, well, there's so many stories.
Speaker 1: I assume that everything on is fake on the internet,
Speaker 1: except the hell stuff works where everything is amazing pertly.
Speaker 1: But yeah, no, no, I totally understand what you're where
Speaker 1: you're coming from on that one. So we wanted to
Speaker 1: take this opportunity to actually have a little look back
Speaker 1: on an episode that that was recorded years ago, back
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven. Yeah. So so of course Chris
Speaker 1: Palette is going to be joining us from the vaults
Speaker 1: of history, right. So so this is this is what
Speaker 1: some people would call a rerun because we wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about the discussion that kind of led into this
Speaker 1: whole thing when we asked our listeners. This was the
Speaker 1: crowdsourced episode, which we haven't really we haven't done many
Speaker 1: of those. We've asked for a listener mail and gotten responses,
Speaker 1: and we've done some episodes based upon suggestions, but this
Speaker 1: was purely crowdsourced where I put out the question what's
Speaker 1: the worst video game of all time? And then we
Speaker 1: had our listeners right in and we tabulated all the
Speaker 1: votes and it was it was wide open, and this
Speaker 1: is the result. Uh and spoiler alert, the video game
Speaker 1: that we just talked about being dug Up in the
Speaker 1: Desert ends up being number one. So but it's an
Speaker 1: entertaining episode. Listen to it, and we'll have a little
Speaker 1: bit more to talk about once the episodes over with
Speaker 1: some other kind of bad video game wrap up, So enjoy. So, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: you know you might remember that Chris and I wanted
Speaker 1: to do a crowdsourced episode where we asked our listeners
Speaker 1: to submit to us the worst video game of all time.
Speaker 1: And uh, we didn't give any real parameters about that.
Speaker 1: We said it could be on any platform, it just
Speaker 1: had to be a video game. And because of that,
Speaker 1: it meant that our listeners could literally, uh nominate any
Speaker 1: game ever made. So it's a miracle at all that
Speaker 1: we had enough votes for any particular title to have
Speaker 1: this this podcast, But we actually have the top ten
Speaker 1: or perhaps bottom ten worst video games as voted on
Speaker 1: by you the listener so please keep in mind this
Speaker 1: is not the opinions of Jonathan and Chris, although maybe
Speaker 1: we'll talk about some of the bad games we've played
Speaker 1: in the past two This isn't our opinion, this is
Speaker 1: your opinion. We're just reporting it. Well, I have to
Speaker 1: say that one one person did right in and ask
Speaker 1: us why we would bother recording an episode on this,
Speaker 1: and uh, the simple answer is because it's fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was actually really a lot of fun. It was
Speaker 1: a lot of work because we had to collect votes
Speaker 1: from multiple sources. We collected votes from email, Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: and people left votes on my Google Plus account too,
Speaker 1: so um, I actually did separate out all the votes
Speaker 1: in a big spreadsheet, so I knew how many votes
Speaker 1: came in from which uh particular source and that that
Speaker 1: actually was kind of interesting too, just to see, you know,
Speaker 1: what our listeners prefer to use in order to get
Speaker 1: information to us. That was pretty fascinating. That was not
Speaker 1: my intent, by the way, when I came. I came
Speaker 1: up with this idea on the spur of the moment
Speaker 1: and sprung it on Chris just before we started recording,
Speaker 1: and Chris was like, do I have to I have
Speaker 1: to record all the votes. I said no, he said,
Speaker 1: all right, let's do it. So you know, I'm easy
Speaker 1: like that. Let's let's start off with what would be
Speaker 1: number ten. But actually it was a tie for ninth place.
Speaker 1: So the first two games we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: received the same number of votes. And the first one
Speaker 1: that we're going to talk about is dragons Layer, the
Speaker 1: arcade game specifically, So for those of you who who
Speaker 1: missed out on the early eighties and the great arcade
Speaker 1: culture of the early eighties, you may not be too
Speaker 1: familiar with this game. But it was groundbreaking. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a an innovative way of presenting a video
Speaker 1: game that had not been attempted before Dragon's Layer. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Previously we were talking about the different well the difference
Speaker 1: in in vector and raster graphics, and and you know
Speaker 1: there was there were blocky graphics for the most part
Speaker 1: at the time, and they had limited animation, limited sound. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: but but Dragon's Layer actually featured animation from one of
Speaker 1: the industry giant animators, Don Bluth, former Disney animator who
Speaker 1: has gone on to you know, with his own company,
Speaker 1: to do many many other titles. In fact, I have
Speaker 1: a Don Bluth title on my iPad? Yeah, which one?
Speaker 1: The new version of Tapper features Don Bluth artwork, so yeah,
Speaker 1: because he also you may know some of his work
Speaker 1: from from movies like The Secrets and the Secret of
Speaker 1: Nim Yes, and the Lame Before Time series, Before Time
Speaker 1: it was, was it the Five Old Movies too? Yes? Um,
Speaker 1: those were Don Bluth films, so somewhere out there, yes,
Speaker 1: thank you. So Dragon's Lair was featured animation from Don
Speaker 1: Bluth and it was published by Cinematronics. Yeah. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: but but how you might say, exactly is this great
Speaker 1: leap in graphics and sound? Because the sound was awesome too.
Speaker 1: How how is that possible? Because you know, you're looking
Speaker 1: at other games like Donkey Kong, which you know I
Speaker 1: loved Donkey Kong, but you would not call the epics
Speaker 1: advanced or state of the art for the time, but
Speaker 1: not now crazy. Yeah, well, they they accomplished this by
Speaker 1: using the laser disc video format, which we've talked about before.
Speaker 1: So the entire game was on laser disc, and there
Speaker 1: was an actual laser disc player inside the cabinet of
Speaker 1: this arcade game. Now, the fact that there it was
Speaker 1: on laser disc was both its its biggest strength and
Speaker 1: its biggest weakness. The weakness is that you couldn't create
Speaker 1: too much interactivity for the player and the game. The
Speaker 1: You know, you couldn't have complete control over the main
Speaker 1: character who do you remember? The guy's name Dirk the Daring,
Speaker 1: and he was rescuing a princess Daphne from a dragon
Speaker 1: named Singe. And so you couldn't just control Dirk the Daring,
Speaker 1: You couldn't just make him run around and jump and stuff. Instead,
Speaker 1: what you would do is you would initiate a video sequence.
Speaker 1: Because again this is recorded on laser disc. There's only
Speaker 1: so many variations of Dirk's movements that can be recorded
Speaker 1: on a single laser disc. So what your input into
Speaker 1: the arcade machine would translate to is was that the
Speaker 1: correct button to press or direction on the joystick to
Speaker 1: push in order to trigger the next sequence to further
Speaker 1: the storyline. Yeah, so you for example, you might be
Speaker 1: having to jump, and you did have to jump at
Speaker 1: one point, and if you, you know, move up, that
Speaker 1: might be the right thing to do. If you move left,
Speaker 1: you die. If you do nothing, you die. If you
Speaker 1: if you push the sword button, you die. If you
Speaker 1: push Yeah, so in other words, there'll be one correct
Speaker 1: response to a particular moment in the story, and sometimes, uh,
Speaker 1: there'd be like a little flash that would indicate this
Speaker 1: is when you do something. So for a lot of
Speaker 1: the game, you're you're just watching, You're just you're you're
Speaker 1: watching a movie. And then occasionally in the movie there's
Speaker 1: a moment where you have a chance to put in
Speaker 1: an input, and if you put in the wrong one,
Speaker 1: the movie is over. And so that was probably what
Speaker 1: cost a lot of people to vote for Dragons Layers,
Speaker 1: that it almost feels like less of a game and
Speaker 1: more of a film. It's just a film that you
Speaker 1: don't get to see the end of it unless you
Speaker 1: happen to shift in your seat at just the right
Speaker 1: moment so the film will continue. And also I would
Speaker 1: like to point out this was one of the first
Speaker 1: games I can remember that cost two credits or fifty
Speaker 1: cents to play. And also remember that a lot of
Speaker 1: them had two monitors because they were so popular that
Speaker 1: people would try and gather and cram around the system.
Speaker 1: Because if someone knew how to play it, if someone
Speaker 1: had memorized the sequence of movements they had to do
Speaker 1: to get through a particular part of the game. You know,
Speaker 1: most people didn't have the time or energy or change
Speaker 1: to learn all that, so they just like to watch
Speaker 1: the game because again, it was like a movie. I
Speaker 1: saw a lot of our kades that would put a
Speaker 1: second monit he that was mounted on the top of
Speaker 1: the cabinet so that you could see what was going
Speaker 1: on without having to be right up on whoever is
Speaker 1: playing the game. So anyway, that was tied for ninth place. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the other one was a game on the Nintendo
Speaker 1: Entertainment System which was Back to the Future. And I
Speaker 1: have never played this because I didn't own an any s.
Speaker 1: From what I read, we're going from beautiful graphics and
Speaker 1: and sort of poor gameplay to horrible graphics and gameplay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Back to the Future is just one example of a
Speaker 1: licensed title, and by licensed, I mean it's something that
Speaker 1: already existed that a video game publisher purchases a license
Speaker 1: from the license owner to be able to create a
Speaker 1: game based on that. And as far as Back to
Speaker 1: the Future goes, the basis was really pretty uh difficult
Speaker 1: to spot, especially in that stage. Like in the very
Speaker 1: first stage, you are going down a street and the
Speaker 1: way the view is it's an over the head view. UM.
Speaker 1: The street is laid out so that the top of
Speaker 1: the screen is where you're you're headed to the bottom
Speaker 1: of the screen is where you are, and you're moving
Speaker 1: your your character around Marty McFly. You're moving Marty McFly
Speaker 1: down the street. You're trying to avoid enemies and pick
Speaker 1: up little alarm clocks. And it's only by picking up
Speaker 1: enough alarm clocks that you're allowed to move to the
Speaker 1: next stage. And so you're also you also have a timer,
Speaker 1: so if you don't pick up enough alarm clocks within
Speaker 1: the time limit, then you lose. If you get hit
Speaker 1: by an enemy, you lose. If you run into an obstacle,
Speaker 1: you lose. UM. You would eventually be able to pick
Speaker 1: up a bowling ball, which would let you shoot enemies
Speaker 1: because of course you remember that great scene and Back
Speaker 1: to the future where Marty McFly picked up a bowling
Speaker 1: ball and then shot someone with it. Um, who could
Speaker 1: forget that scene that never happened. Uh. And then you
Speaker 1: can also get a skateboard, which I least that was
Speaker 1: featured in the film. But with the skateboard, what that
Speaker 1: would mean is that you would move through the the
Speaker 1: you would move through the level faster, which meant the
Speaker 1: poor gameplay became excruciating the poor gameplay because you're going
Speaker 1: so fast you can't even react. Um. And then if
Speaker 1: you got through that, you would hit a mini game.
Speaker 1: And some of the mini games included a dinner stage
Speaker 1: where you're behind the counter and Biff and his bullies
Speaker 1: are coming in after you and you have to throw
Speaker 1: milkshakes at them to stop them. But it was really
Speaker 1: hard to line up your character so that you were
Speaker 1: throwing the milkshake at the right plane in order to
Speaker 1: hit the enemy. Like the enemy is coming at you
Speaker 1: from the left side of the screen. You're on the
Speaker 1: right side of the screen, and you've got a bar
Speaker 1: between you and the enemy. You just have to figure
Speaker 1: out exactly where, like vertically you need to align yourself,
Speaker 1: and you you'd be like, oh, that's clearly, that's it.
Speaker 1: That's that's the sweet spot, and you push the button
Speaker 1: and the milkshake flies like three ft over the bully's
Speaker 1: head and he reaches the bar and throws you against
Speaker 1: the wall. Um. It was a little rough. And then
Speaker 1: there was another stage where you had to block kisses
Speaker 1: that were sent to you from Lorraine because you're playing
Speaker 1: Marty McFly and his Marty's mother. You know, he's back
Speaker 1: in time and he's met the teenage version of his mom,
Speaker 1: and so you would have to block her kisses to you.
Speaker 1: And then there was another one where you had to
Speaker 1: position a guitar just right so that you were playing
Speaker 1: music so that Lorraine and George, your your mom and
Speaker 1: dad would actually kiss. And the very final stage involved
Speaker 1: driving the DeLorean, the time travel device, through the street
Speaker 1: at night, dodging enemies, dodging obstacles, trying to get up
Speaker 1: to eighty eight miles per hour um. It looked awful.
Speaker 1: Oh and Bob Gayle, who was a screenwriter for Back
Speaker 1: to the Future, called it one of the worst games
Speaker 1: ever made. Yeah, why do people keep saying this is
Speaker 1: there's some problem with gravity in the future. So that
Speaker 1: moves us up to our eighth worst game. Do you
Speaker 1: wanna unveil what this one is? Well, it certainly has
Speaker 1: a tough road to home, yes it does. But it
Speaker 1: is extremely popular. It's something you may have seen once
Speaker 1: or twice on Facebook, at least once or twice a
Speaker 1: minute on Facebook only if you follow people who play this,
Speaker 1: And how could you not it's Farmville from Zinga. Now,
Speaker 1: Farmville has had a lot of criticism directed toward it.
Speaker 1: It's one of those games. It's a it's a freemium game,
Speaker 1: and that means that you can play the game for free,
Speaker 1: but if you want to have the most advantageous stuff
Speaker 1: in the game, you have to pay real money to
Speaker 1: get it. Um and which is a perfectly valid business plan.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no reason I'm not. I don't want
Speaker 1: to say that that's a bad thing to do. I mean,
Speaker 1: people should be compensated for the work they do in
Speaker 1: order for them to make more work. Otherwise, no one
Speaker 1: has any incentive to do anything. You know, well, you
Speaker 1: know it's it's got millions of fans, yes, um something
Speaker 1: like I once heard a statistic that's something like all
Speaker 1: people who use Facebook play this, and I have. You know,
Speaker 1: I've played. I played it in some of the other
Speaker 1: Zinga games, but I don't It's funny though, I don't
Speaker 1: think of it as a game. I think if it
Speaker 1: is more of a toy because there's no objective that
Speaker 1: you're trying to accomplish to win the game. Basically, you're
Speaker 1: trying to if you've never seen or or played it. Um.
Speaker 1: The point is to grow your farm. So you know,
Speaker 1: at some point you you add little plots of land
Speaker 1: on which you can grow your crops, and you can
Speaker 1: choose which crops to grow. Um. You know, each time
Speaker 1: you plant something, you have several choices to you know,
Speaker 1: you could say corn or tomatoes or you know, you know,
Speaker 1: potatoes or something else. Um. And each crop costs a
Speaker 1: certain amount of money and your you know, your fake
Speaker 1: gold money. Actually it's their their dollars, I think coins
Speaker 1: farm coins and uh you also it's been a while
Speaker 1: since I played. And each crop takes a certain amount
Speaker 1: of time to grow, and if you leave the game
Speaker 1: for more than that amount of time a reasonable amount
Speaker 1: of time. Once it's grown, the crop will wither and die.
Speaker 1: So the point is too, I mean, it's not just crops.
Speaker 1: You also add you know, a fence around your your garden,
Speaker 1: and you add a farmhouse and what kind do you want,
Speaker 1: and you know, bales of hay, and you basically you
Speaker 1: you add in size to the farm, and you add
Speaker 1: different plots, and you upgrade your stuff. And there's also
Speaker 1: a social factor where you can interact with your friends
Speaker 1: farms and they can interact with yours, which is why
Speaker 1: you see like all these notifications pop up on Facebook
Speaker 1: until you get fed up with it and block them.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean you can visit your friends farm
Speaker 1: and fertilizer crops so they grow faster or unwier them
Speaker 1: when they've gone back and help them. You can send
Speaker 1: them gifts and they can send you gifts, and that
Speaker 1: that can be kind of fun. But the thing is, it's,
Speaker 1: like Jonathan pointed out, uh, Zinga is really hoping that
Speaker 1: you'll invest some actual cash into this and you can
Speaker 1: get uh certain kinds of crops or certain kinds of
Speaker 1: decorations for your farm if you fork over some real
Speaker 1: coin um. And that's kind of annoying for people like
Speaker 1: me who are cheap and don't want to give them
Speaker 1: any money. And the thing is, at certain point, the
Speaker 1: game or software toy, it's like like I said, I
Speaker 1: don't like to call it is sort of semi unplayable
Speaker 1: because there's a point at which everything to make it
Speaker 1: fun you really need to give them money for it
Speaker 1: really doesn't change, and it's the point of whe you go, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm really don't want to do this, and
Speaker 1: the game also encourages you to try and loop your
Speaker 1: friends into the games. Yeah, so yeah, that's that's probably
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that's why people voted for it, because it
Speaker 1: feels almost invasive, um when you're on Facebook, unless you
Speaker 1: you go so far as to block it. And we
Speaker 1: had other Facebook games like games that are similar to
Speaker 1: this uh nominated as well, but Farmville was the one
Speaker 1: that actually got the most votes. And also I think
Speaker 1: has been accused of sort of copying earlier game called
Speaker 1: farm Town, Yes, that had very similar game mechanics. Some
Speaker 1: people would say similarity to the point of identity. But well,
Speaker 1: this this model has uh has extended across Facebook and
Speaker 1: and other venues as well. I mean, there are some
Speaker 1: iPad games um that I've you know, tried out on
Speaker 1: my tablet that basically they're the same kinds of things.
Speaker 1: Had your friends otherwise you're not going to get very
Speaker 1: far in this game. I'm like, I don't know anybody
Speaker 1: else who's playing this. Plus I don't want to spam
Speaker 1: everybody with email blasts saying joined my game. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean if Jonathan's playing and I'm playing, then yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: send Jonathan a note, Hey, send me a free chicken, right,
Speaker 1: But I don't want to send that to everybody on
Speaker 1: my list because you know it's annoying. Yes, it would,
Speaker 1: So let's move on to our next nomination. Now, this,
Speaker 1: this next nomination is interesting because it's a terrible, terrible
Speaker 1: game that was designed to be a terrible, terrible game,
Speaker 1: and it's called Desert Bus. Now, Desert Bus was actually
Speaker 1: a mini game that was part of a larger package
Speaker 1: of games for a product that never saw full production.
Speaker 1: It was for the Sega c D system. Gosh, barely
Speaker 1: remember that the whole system was a failure, not just
Speaker 1: this game, but it was a mini game that was
Speaker 1: included in Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors. Um. A
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff that was in Penn and Teller's
Speaker 1: Smoke and Mirrors ended up being used in other Penn
Speaker 1: and Teller products like Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends and
Speaker 1: things like that. But this one idea, which supposedly came
Speaker 1: from Eddie goad det Ski, who is a producer in Hollywood. Uh,
Speaker 1: this one idea was to create an an ultra realistic
Speaker 1: and by that I mean boring game in which you
Speaker 1: drive a bus from Tucson in Arizona to Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: Nevada in real time, and the buses top speed is
Speaker 1: around forty five miles per hour. And there's no scenery,
Speaker 1: there's there's no traffic, there are no passengers on the bus.
Speaker 1: It's just you driving this bus to Las Vegas and
Speaker 1: uh in real time. That takes, by the way, about
Speaker 1: eight hours. And if you get all the way to
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, you get a point and then you have
Speaker 1: to drive back. But what happens if you need to
Speaker 1: you know, stop and eat dinner, go to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: While the game does not have a pause function, so
Speaker 1: the time would just keep going. Also, the bus, you
Speaker 1: might say, why don't you just set it up so
Speaker 1: that the bus drives automatically, like, you know, just put
Speaker 1: something on the up arrow key on the gas pedal. Yeah. Uh, Well,
Speaker 1: the bus also has a problem with its suspension and
Speaker 1: it pulls to the right, so you have to constantly
Speaker 1: adjust the bus so that it will it will be
Speaker 1: on the road. Now, there is a port of this
Speaker 1: game on the web. You can play a web based
Speaker 1: version of Desert Bus if you want to. Now you
Speaker 1: might ask why would you want to, Well, some of
Speaker 1: it's just kind of like grousing slash bragging rights that
Speaker 1: you know you actually bothered to take eight hours of
Speaker 1: your life and get this virtual bus from Tucson to
Speaker 1: Las Vegas. But another group called Loading Ready Run had
Speaker 1: an interesting idea. UM that's a four person comedy group,
Speaker 1: and they decided to hold a desert bus marathon session
Speaker 1: as a fundraising effort to raise money for the charity
Speaker 1: child Child's Play. Child's Plays a charity that gets a
Speaker 1: lot of attention particularly around Penny Arcade Expo or Packs
Speaker 1: because the Packs guys also hold um auctions for Child's
Speaker 1: Play and it's it's providing video games and other kinds
Speaker 1: of stuff like that to kids who are in hospitals
Speaker 1: and who are recovering or suffering from serious illnesses and
Speaker 1: conditions as a nice charity, to do something nice for
Speaker 1: the kids. Right. So, these four members of Loading Ready
Speaker 1: Run took shifts at driving the desert bus UM they
Speaker 1: ended up driving for more than four and a half days.
Speaker 1: The first time, which was in two thousand seven, they
Speaker 1: drove for around four and a half days and they
Speaker 1: scored six points at four and a half days driving
Speaker 1: the bus back and forth. Uh And since then they've
Speaker 1: held the marathon several more times and have raised more
Speaker 1: than four hundred thousand dollars collectively. Yeah for child's play,
Speaker 1: which is pretty impressive. Um. But yeah, the game is online,
Speaker 1: so if you just do a search for Desert Bus,
Speaker 1: you can find a web based version of this game
Speaker 1: and play it yourself. Well, we've got more to say
Speaker 1: about the worst video games of all time, but until then,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to do a little side quest here.
Speaker 1: It looks like our princesses in another castle, so gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break, but we'll be right back. Apparently
Speaker 1: our number six game. It's also a game for people
Speaker 1: who are into really not happy driving experience. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: this game is probably it's amazing to me that this
Speaker 1: game was ever released because it is. It is as
Speaker 1: unfinished a game as I have ever seen. And I've
Speaker 1: seen the reviews for this game, like I've seen video
Speaker 1: reviews of this game that show the problems, and it's
Speaker 1: you can't believe that such a product was ever released
Speaker 1: to the public. I guess we should say what it is. Well,
Speaker 1: racing games are so popular, and you know that you
Speaker 1: can race just about anything in all kinds of video games,
Speaker 1: so you would imagine that one that would allow you
Speaker 1: to race tractor trailers would be fun, but big rigs
Speaker 1: over the road racing for the PC for the PC
Speaker 1: isn't It was a two thousand three third person racing games.
Speaker 1: So you're outside the truck looking at the truck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and let's see if we can figure out where
Speaker 1: some of the problems of this game may reside, shall we?
Speaker 1: What's a racing game in which you don't really race
Speaker 1: anyone else? Right? Well, first, the first problem is that
Speaker 1: it was build as a game where the object was
Speaker 1: that you were transporting illegal goods uh, and you were
Speaker 1: being chased by police. So it was built as a
Speaker 1: game where you had to drive fast and evade the cops.
Speaker 1: What cos right? So when you actually get the game,
Speaker 1: it turns out there's nothing has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: any of that. Instead, it was supposed to be, at
Speaker 1: least once you've got the game going, it was supposed
Speaker 1: to be a racing game where you're racing against other competitors,
Speaker 1: but the game developer never actually bothered to put artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence competitors in there, so they they never leave the
Speaker 1: starting line. It's a race where all the other people
Speaker 1: racing don't do anything. They just sit there. So you're
Speaker 1: you're running and they're behind you and they don't do anything.
Speaker 1: Beyond that, though, it gets worse than that. Well, what
Speaker 1: about the realistic physics. Yeah, there weren't any Um you
Speaker 1: could drive over anything like driving on the road or
Speaker 1: driving off the road, or driving through a building. None
Speaker 1: of that made any difference. You. You traveled at the
Speaker 1: same speed unless you were backing up, in which case
Speaker 1: you would accelerate infinitely until you let off the reverse button. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I understand why. Again I didn't play this one, but
Speaker 1: I understand too that stopping was hyper realistic too, Like
Speaker 1: if you had perfect breaks, you just let up on
Speaker 1: the accelerator and you stop. Yeah, exactly, you just go
Speaker 1: to go to do that. Yeah, there's there's no sense
Speaker 1: of momentum or inertia. You just the universe would would
Speaker 1: would halt around you. Um, you could drive off the
Speaker 1: edge of the map and into gray nothingness. So it
Speaker 1: made it kind of a metaphysical philosophical game at that point.
Speaker 1: I've done that before, and we've known plenty of metaphysical
Speaker 1: philosophical truck drivers, and that's really not a dig. We
Speaker 1: really do know quite a few of them. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just you know, collision detection to speak of. Uh.
Speaker 1: There were five tracks listed in the game, only four
Speaker 1: of them were playable. I don't know how that would
Speaker 1: be a disappointment considering how horrible the game was, Like,
Speaker 1: oh great, you mean I can't play this other terrible
Speaker 1: track that I would never love? And uh ex plays
Speaker 1: Morgan Webb she she refused to rate this game because
Speaker 1: ex Play has a rating system of one to five stars.
Speaker 1: There's no zero, there's no zero, and she refused to
Speaker 1: even give it one star, so she would not review it.
Speaker 1: She played it, she just wouldn't give it a review.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's that's pretty bad. So that was a
Speaker 1: that was a two thousand three game. But we're gonna
Speaker 1: go a little further back for our next one, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a a port of a very popular arcade game. Um,
Speaker 1: and for this is when I've played back on when
Speaker 1: I had an Atariet Wall. Actually I still have an
Speaker 1: Attar when I had it hooked up the TV, but
Speaker 1: I didn't actually own this one. I did, Um, so
Speaker 1: shall we Yeah this is fifth place, by the way,
Speaker 1: for those of you keeping count, So in fifth place
Speaker 1: is pac Man. Yeah, pac Man, so reported the Namco Giant.
Speaker 1: It's often called the worst coin op port ever. Donkey
Speaker 1: Kong wasn't great, Oh no, not, I don't just agree,
Speaker 1: but pac Man was. Honestly, it was terrible. Yeah, At
Speaker 1: least Donkey Kong remotely resemble the game that it was
Speaker 1: based on. Yeah, pac Man. Some people have said that
Speaker 1: if it had not been called pac Man, if it
Speaker 1: if it hadn't been referred to as that, and it
Speaker 1: had a slightly different appearance for the character that you play,
Speaker 1: that people probably wouldn't be quite so hard on it.
Speaker 1: Because the puzzle, the mazes were a little challenging to
Speaker 1: get through, and you know, the gameplay worked properly, like
Speaker 1: you know, you'd press left on the joystick and pac
Speaker 1: Man would go left. You know. It wasn't like, you know,
Speaker 1: Big Rigs what we just talked about, that a game
Speaker 1: that was just pure broken, right. There was no literally
Speaker 1: no way to play that game. It end up being
Speaker 1: like a weird sandbox game, but it wasn't intended to
Speaker 1: be one. Pacman played the way it was supposed to
Speaker 1: more or less. It's just that it was such a
Speaker 1: poor translation of what a game that people were really
Speaker 1: familiar with that it was it could be nothing more
Speaker 1: than a disappointment to anyone who bought it. And in fact,
Speaker 1: pac Man is one of the titles that people often
Speaker 1: will use as an example when they talk about why
Speaker 1: the video game industry collapsed in nineteen in North America. Well,
Speaker 1: they made so many copies of this anticipating that people
Speaker 1: would want to play it at home, but when they
Speaker 1: actually got their hands on it and moved, I mean,
Speaker 1: pac Man is a game where you actually need reflexes
Speaker 1: and you need to pay attention to what's going on
Speaker 1: in pac Man on the move so much more slowly,
Speaker 1: and the graphics were poor. The sound wasn't as good.
Speaker 1: I remember when it came out for the R and
Speaker 1: it looked so much better except non centering joystick, which
Speaker 1: makes playing in a four direction may is very very difficult.
Speaker 1: So that just didn't help anything. Which is such a
Speaker 1: huge flop at home, right, Yeah, it was. It was
Speaker 1: a terrible, terrible game, And I completely agree with this
Speaker 1: being on on a list for bad video games because
Speaker 1: it you know, even if you even if you say
Speaker 1: that the game play was okay, the effect it had
Speaker 1: on the industry was so terrible that by definition it's
Speaker 1: a bad video game because it helped bring the industry
Speaker 1: to its knees in nine and it wouldn't be until
Speaker 1: Nintendo launched the NES in North America that we would
Speaker 1: see a recovery of that market. Um. So now next,
Speaker 1: we have a tie for third place. You know, normally
Speaker 1: we go from fifth to fourth, but we have the
Speaker 1: same number of votes came in for our our third
Speaker 1: and fourth place, so tie for third. And these two
Speaker 1: are more modern. Yeah. We we did an entire episode
Speaker 1: about one of these, Duke Newcombe Forever. Now, we did
Speaker 1: do a full episode about Duke nukemb Forever. So we're
Speaker 1: not going to spend too much time right now talking
Speaker 1: about it because now, Grant, when we did the episode,
Speaker 1: it was before the game had come out hotly anticipated
Speaker 1: for a decade, more than a decade. Yeah, it was round. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was originally announced as a title for the PC.
Speaker 1: It was a a sequel to Duke NUKEMB three d um.
Speaker 1: It was originally announced inn but it didn't launch until eleven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a long time for to wait for a video game, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, award right up there with Dao Sex. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Wired gave it the Vaporware of the Year award multiple
Speaker 1: years in a row. In fact that it got discontinued
Speaker 1: from the voting because and then it was brought back
Speaker 1: because it wasn't just that it was vaporware. It was
Speaker 1: that just when you were prepared to say Duke nukemb
Speaker 1: Forever was never going to come out, there would be
Speaker 1: some sort of rumble from three D Realms. They would
Speaker 1: say no, no, no, no, no, it's really gonna come out.
Speaker 1: And then you'd have to say, well, now we have
Speaker 1: to put it back on the list, because you know,
Speaker 1: we were ready to write it off forever, but they
Speaker 1: say it's coming out, So of course they rights to
Speaker 1: the game passed into other people's hands. Three Realms collapsed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they did. Yeah, they finished it. Um. They did
Speaker 1: not receive wide acclaim when it launched, a lot of
Speaker 1: people panned this game, which of course explains why it's
Speaker 1: on our list and how many people voted for it. Um.
Speaker 1: A lot of the criticisms about the game said that
Speaker 1: it was it just looked dated. It was it was
Speaker 1: like a first person shooter designed for the late nineties.
Speaker 1: You know, it didn't have the elements that you expect
Speaker 1: in the first person shooter today and uh that even
Speaker 1: even for one in the nineties, it would have been
Speaker 1: great because like in the nineties, you would have a
Speaker 1: lot of fast paced action and you would have a
Speaker 1: ton of different weapons at your disposal. Duke Knew Them
Speaker 1: Forever was more plodding and uh, well, there's no way
Speaker 1: for me to word this in a way that's not negative.
Speaker 1: It was a slow, slow game. It could be boring
Speaker 1: at times, it could be ages between one encounter with
Speaker 1: an enemy and another, and you can only carry two
Speaker 1: weapons at a time. So it took away some of
Speaker 1: the stuff that made those games in the nineties so
Speaker 1: much fun and uh, and didn't replace it with anything better.
Speaker 1: And also the juvenile humor in the Duke Newcomb series.
Speaker 1: I think it may have worn a little thin. It's
Speaker 1: just people don't find it as amusing as it used
Speaker 1: to be, partially because we've had other games come out
Speaker 1: that have much more biting satire and uh, and you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're just as edgy as Duke newkemb was, but
Speaker 1: they are more relevant. Like the Grand Theft Auto series
Speaker 1: is known for its dark humor, the Fallout three series
Speaker 1: or the Fallout series in general is known for its
Speaker 1: dark humor, and so you get to do Newcomb and
Speaker 1: you're just like, well, this feels like you're in a
Speaker 1: uh you know, you're in a locker room with a
Speaker 1: bunch of really really immature guys, and that that's the
Speaker 1: level of humor and it just never gets above that.
Speaker 1: And so I think all of those things contributed to
Speaker 1: it being ranked on our list. But what about our
Speaker 1: next game that's also tied for third place? You think
Speaker 1: that a game written by um an Oxford professor of
Speaker 1: bioethics might actually rank up there, But Bennett Foddy's game
Speaker 1: qw O P or wop um got a lot of
Speaker 1: negative votes. Actually, I saw this profiled and wired before
Speaker 1: I ever tried to play it. Um, there's a need
Speaker 1: little article about him. Uh, and I do mean little.
Speaker 1: It's very short, um. But basically, in this game, you
Speaker 1: are using the keys Q W O P hence the name,
Speaker 1: to move the legs of a runner on a track
Speaker 1: ye a runner named quop for a hundreds And that's
Speaker 1: important to know. It's not it's supposed to be a
Speaker 1: limp runner on the hundred meter dash, and the Q
Speaker 1: and W keys control the runners thighs, and the O
Speaker 1: n P keys control the runners calves, and you're supposed
Speaker 1: to try and coordinate these movements in such a way
Speaker 1: as to propel the runner down the hundred meters. By
Speaker 1: the way, this runner has apparently no upper buddy control whatsoever,
Speaker 1: and if if the runner gets even a little bit
Speaker 1: off balance, it's time to tip over. And I have
Speaker 1: seen so many people play this game and get negative
Speaker 1: scores because they would just start tipping backwards almost instantaneously.
Speaker 1: And as soon as you touch the ground, that's where
Speaker 1: you're that's that's your score. And uh, and we'll keep
Speaker 1: in mind it's a hundred meter dash. Um. I've never
Speaker 1: seen anyone complete this in fewer than twenty minutes. But
Speaker 1: the furthest I've gotten is twelve point eight meters. Didn't
Speaker 1: you send me a video somebody who had finished in
Speaker 1: about four minutes. I think they sped it up. What
Speaker 1: they what they ended up doing was they used it
Speaker 1: so that they made Quop do a split, and then
Speaker 1: they just kind of jimmied it. He finally like he
Speaker 1: literally inched down a hundred meters and and at fifty
Speaker 1: By the way, you are you are you encounter your
Speaker 1: first obstacle hurdle, and at a hundred meters there's a
Speaker 1: long jump, but you can go through the hurdle like
Speaker 1: you don't have to. You don't have to actually jump
Speaker 1: the hurdle. You can keep going as long as you're
Speaker 1: able to land on your feet or however you're getting across. Um,
Speaker 1: you can you can pretty much ignore the hurdle and
Speaker 1: the long jump is completely uh optional. Yes, if you
Speaker 1: just have to cross that finish line. If you're if
Speaker 1: your experience with video game running is track and field
Speaker 1: from the nineties where you just had to pound buttons
Speaker 1: as fast as you could. Um, you will not win
Speaker 1: at this game. This game is. This game is really, really,
Speaker 1: really hard, which I think is why it got a
Speaker 1: lot of votes. It's it's frustrating, and it seems it
Speaker 1: seems after you've played it for about a minute, it
Speaker 1: seems completely pointless. Oh, we should say it's web based.
Speaker 1: It's a web based so you can find it on
Speaker 1: Foddy's side. He wrote this in two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: and it's still up, so if you want to give
Speaker 1: it a shot, go ahead. It's it's kind of and
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny. It also gives you an idea
Speaker 1: of how well your brain is controlling your walking movements,
Speaker 1: because if you were trying to walk with your you know,
Speaker 1: control your own legs with your fingers. You I don't
Speaker 1: know that I would do it better, but it takes
Speaker 1: a lot of coordination to be able to Like, even
Speaker 1: when I got twelve point eight meters, it was mostly luck.
Speaker 1: I was timing it just right. But even as I
Speaker 1: was playing, I was like, oh, I should have I
Speaker 1: should have let up on the calf muscle and continued
Speaker 1: on the thigh muscle for a split second longer, and
Speaker 1: I would have been able to get a little further.
Speaker 1: I can never do that when I'm actually playing. Like,
Speaker 1: when I'm actually playing, I'm like, press these two buttons, now,
Speaker 1: switch through these two buttons, now switch back to those
Speaker 1: two buttons. And that's that's my tactic. It's probably why
Speaker 1: I've only gotten twelve points in Maybe you should get
Speaker 1: onto a gurp Oh yeah, I've played that one too,
Speaker 1: which is his mountain climbing game, and apparently it's very
Speaker 1: very similar. It's actually that one I can play really well.
Speaker 1: I've gotten pretty far in girp Um. That one makes
Speaker 1: more sense to me, I've got better coordination with that one.
Speaker 1: But the but yeah, quop is really hard. So um,
Speaker 1: you know who's really good at controlling their legs? Who's
Speaker 1: the he? But someone who doesn't have to use them?
Speaker 1: Is this going into our second place? Yes? Because I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, if you can fly, yeah, then why would
Speaker 1: you need to use your legs? Yes? Talking about our
Speaker 1: second place. Superman the New Superman Adventures. Yeah, also known
Speaker 1: as Superman sixty four sixty four It wasn't its official name, right,
Speaker 1: It's good that it wasn't Superman the New Batman Adventures.
Speaker 1: That would be really confusing. Yeah, like Superman Little Pony
Speaker 1: that it would be weird. It might have been a
Speaker 1: better game then though. This was released in for the
Speaker 1: Nintendo sixty four and probably shouldn't have been. And again
Speaker 1: this we're talking about licensed character you know all we
Speaker 1: talked about with Back to the Future. There we're gonna
Speaker 1: make some money. The history of licensed characters, actually, we're
Speaker 1: gonna get to that again very short. The history of
Speaker 1: licensed characters in video games is a pretty ugly one.
Speaker 1: There are a few games that stand out as being remarkable,
Speaker 1: like truly good games that use licensed characters, but the
Speaker 1: general rule of thumb is that if it's a licensed
Speaker 1: character game, it's it's got a good that the odds
Speaker 1: are against it, right, just based on the number of
Speaker 1: bad games that use licensed characters. Now, there are other games,
Speaker 1: like you know, Arkham Asylum, which are fun. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a Batman game, and that's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to bring up Golden Eye.
Speaker 1: Golden Eye fantastic one of the best games ever made,
Speaker 1: also made for the Nintendo sixty four, one of the
Speaker 1: top first person shooter games of that era. Fantastic game.
Speaker 1: Superman not so much so. The story behind this game,
Speaker 1: the actual story in the game, that is, is that
Speaker 1: you play the part of Superman who has been tricked,
Speaker 1: as he often is, I Lex Luthor to enter into
Speaker 1: a virtual representation of Metropolis, and you have to complete
Speaker 1: these different tasks and puzzles that Lex sets up for
Speaker 1: you in order to escape and beat the tar out
Speaker 1: of him. Tank I needed exit. Yeah, so the first
Speaker 1: test of your skills involves flying through a series of hoops,
Speaker 1: because yeah, I remember his big battle with Doomsday where
Speaker 1: he had to fly through about fourteen hoops before. No,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make any sense and I jumped through hoops
Speaker 1: every day after that, you might have to pick up
Speaker 1: a car and throw it, because again that's what Superman
Speaker 1: would do in Metropolis. Is that you know, you're thinking,
Speaker 1: like you're driving down with your family, You're having a
Speaker 1: nice day out. You might be going to go see
Speaker 1: the Metropolis Museum of Art, and the next thing you know,
Speaker 1: some jerk has just flown over, picked up your car
Speaker 1: and thrown at forty blocks. Yeah, that's that will ruin
Speaker 1: your whole day. But anyway, so you would also have
Speaker 1: to do things I fight famous Superman villains. But the
Speaker 1: controls were really sluggish, the gameplay was incredibly repetitive, and
Speaker 1: it has been ranked as one of the worst video
Speaker 1: games of all time, not just by our listeners, but
Speaker 1: by other publications. I mean it has multiple I hesitate
Speaker 1: to use the word awards, but multiple notifications of it
Speaker 1: being the worst, one of the worst video games, and
Speaker 1: in fact, in one ranking I saw, it was ranked
Speaker 1: as the number one and our number one was number two. Hey,
Speaker 1: we are almost through with our episode about the worst
Speaker 1: video games of all time. Hope you're enjoying it. But
Speaker 1: before we conclude, let's take another quick break so now
Speaker 1: I guess we should move on to what our listeners
Speaker 1: have voted. And I'm sure you've already guessed it based
Speaker 1: upon what has already been listed. But what yourur listeners
Speaker 1: have voted as the worst video game of all time?
Speaker 1: And I should point out this received twenty nine percent
Speaker 1: of the overall votes we received. And keep in mind,
Speaker 1: you could nominate any title at all, and and I'm
Speaker 1: I have a small concern. That's because we've mentioned it
Speaker 1: as a terrible game, that that you all thought that
Speaker 1: we were coaching you to vote for this time, and
Speaker 1: we did. We have talked about this game being a
Speaker 1: terrible game before, but when when we actually asked for votes,
Speaker 1: I made sure we didn't mention any particular title. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to change anyone's mind or put in a suggestion.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that happened anyway based upon some of the
Speaker 1: comments and everything. But our worst video game is of
Speaker 1: all time, Chris, do the honors? E T the Extraterrestrial
Speaker 1: for the R two game published by Atari in about
Speaker 1: ten minutes. Yeah, so keep in mind that Atari went
Speaker 1: the route where they were allowing all sorts of developers
Speaker 1: to create games for there. It didn't have to be
Speaker 1: vetted through Atari, right, Nintendo had the whole certification process.
Speaker 1: Atari did not. But this there's no excuse here because
Speaker 1: Atari was the publisher behind this game in the first place.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, So then this game, you take the role
Speaker 1: of e T. The Extraterrestrial from the beloved Steven Spielberg
Speaker 1: documentary of the same name, and your task was to
Speaker 1: locate three pieces of an interstellar telephone so that you
Speaker 1: could assemble them and phone home, which would summon a
Speaker 1: spaceship that would rescue you. Uh. You did this just
Speaker 1: like in the movie. I mean, we all remember that
Speaker 1: scene in the movie where e T had to walk
Speaker 1: into a field of pits, raise his head up, look
Speaker 1: for the flash, and descend into the pit to retrieve
Speaker 1: a piece of the interstellar phone. I mean you remember
Speaker 1: that scene right, as probably no, that scene did not exist.
Speaker 1: But in them, you would walk into one of the screens,
Speaker 1: actually a couple of the screens would have several pits
Speaker 1: on the screen. You push a button which would raise
Speaker 1: ET's head and he would do a sound like this,
Speaker 1: and then what if you were lucky, one of the
Speaker 1: pits would flash, which would indicate that one of the
Speaker 1: pieces of the phone was in that pit, and you
Speaker 1: would walk over to the pit, fall in, pick up
Speaker 1: the piece of phone, and then you would press the
Speaker 1: button which would raise ET's head wall and you would
Speaker 1: levitate up the pit. Now, most of the game is
Speaker 1: an overhead view, but when you were in a pit,
Speaker 1: it was a side view like a cut and you
Speaker 1: would you would levitate to the top of the pit
Speaker 1: and then immediately fall in again because it was really
Speaker 1: hard that once you got to the top of the pit,
Speaker 1: the screen would change so that you were looking at
Speaker 1: the overhead view again and you had to manipulate ET
Speaker 1: all over to the edge of the pit so that
Speaker 1: you were on the ground again. Right, So you're you
Speaker 1: go from a side view to an overhead view. And
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many times I fell down
Speaker 1: to pit over and over and over again because I
Speaker 1: thought it was clear. But and every time you fall,
Speaker 1: and every time you use your powers, you use up energy.
Speaker 1: You have a limited amount of energy, and after you
Speaker 1: use it all up, you die. Yeah, Well, you have
Speaker 1: to find dots, I mean pieces. He had a little
Speaker 1: square pixel which would be represent one Reese's pieces, and
Speaker 1: you would eat that and that would give you a
Speaker 1: little more energy. They would also had doctors who would
Speaker 1: walk around and if they found you, they'd pick you
Speaker 1: up and move you to a different screen, and you
Speaker 1: would lose a little time, or worse, you would find
Speaker 1: an FBI guy and he would chase you down and
Speaker 1: if he touched you, he would take away your phone
Speaker 1: and he had to start over again. And so you
Speaker 1: would do this over and over again till you had
Speaker 1: the three pieces of phone. Then you could go to
Speaker 1: one part of the game, the one section where there's
Speaker 1: an icon on the screen that tells you you can
Speaker 1: make your phone call here, and you had to find
Speaker 1: it because it wasn't always in the same place. You
Speaker 1: would make your phone call, and then you had to
Speaker 1: make it to a different screen where the space ship
Speaker 1: would actually land because apparently you can't make a phone
Speaker 1: call at the landing site. Oh no, that'd be too easy.
Speaker 1: So then you have to make your way to the
Speaker 1: other screen and get in the little spaceship and you
Speaker 1: would then start the game over at the same difficulty
Speaker 1: level immediately. And this game was awful, terrible, terrible game
Speaker 1: so bad that people the word got out about how
Speaker 1: disappointed this game was. That people stopped buying it, and
Speaker 1: uh Atari had produced thousands of cartridges because the movie
Speaker 1: was so successful. So Atari goes out and makes thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands of copies of ET. The reviews come in,
Speaker 1: people hate it, copies go unsold. Eventually, stores start to
Speaker 1: send their unsold copies of ET back to Atari, and
Speaker 1: Atari grinds them up and then trucks them out into
Speaker 1: New Mexico and aries them. You know, um, you know
Speaker 1: what they did with that? What's up? They used it
Speaker 1: to pave a road and then you drive this bus
Speaker 1: right across the desert and you get one point every
Speaker 1: time you run over ET exactly. Yeah, it was, and
Speaker 1: then you fall in a pit and then physics in
Speaker 1: that game are terrible. But anyway, yeah, so that was.
Speaker 1: This was again just like pac Man. This is another
Speaker 1: one of those games that was pointed to as being
Speaker 1: one of the reasons the video game industry crashed in Now.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of the games that came out
Speaker 1: for they were these games made by independent developers that
Speaker 1: were just terrible. But it was because you know, the
Speaker 1: market was flooded with terrible games and Attari was not
Speaker 1: helping itself out by publishing some of them itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had some of those games too, and I had
Speaker 1: and you know, I've mentioned it before. I was actually
Speaker 1: surprise that nobody voted for the sword Quest series. But
Speaker 1: my guess is that Ataria was in such decline that
Speaker 1: none of our listeners actually bought that but me, since
Speaker 1: they didn't even finish the last game on the series.
Speaker 1: But we didn't. A couple of people did vote for
Speaker 1: some games that were patently offensive. We didn't mentioned that before,
Speaker 1: and we didn't we weren't including those specifically because we
Speaker 1: were talking about games that were just horrible games now
Speaker 1: were offensive. These were games that were meant to be enjoyable.
Speaker 1: They didn't have an ulterior motive, right right, There are
Speaker 1: some of those two. But the games that had an
Speaker 1: ulterior motive where the whole purpose was to perpetuate hatred
Speaker 1: or to make a joke out of uh inhumane acts,
Speaker 1: we didn't include those because really, I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: I refused to give them any more publicity than they've
Speaker 1: already had. And second of all, I I was the
Speaker 1: spirit of the thing was to think of games that
Speaker 1: were meant to be enjoyable, fun, games that just weren't
Speaker 1: for one reason, or another. Um, let's talk about some
Speaker 1: of the really quickly, because we were already getting pretty
Speaker 1: far up there. But we have to talk about some
Speaker 1: of the other games that got on got some votes
Speaker 1: that I was surprised didn't get more votes. But again,
Speaker 1: since you had every single game open to you, you know,
Speaker 1: one of those was Aquaman Battle for Atlantis. This game
Speaker 1: is nigh unplayable. It again had one of the worst
Speaker 1: reviews ever. Explay did an amazing hysterical review of this game. UM.
Speaker 1: I think they called it like Power of the Mullet
Speaker 1: or something like that in their in their review, but
Speaker 1: it was terrible. And games that, um, we're specifically designed
Speaker 1: to be marketing tools for for brands, so stuff like
Speaker 1: I actually had the kool Aid game for the Oh Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh No, and then they had the Avoid the Annoyed
Speaker 1: game for Dominoes. There were all the Burger King games
Speaker 1: that came out for the Xbox. There was a McDonald's
Speaker 1: game as well. We got we got votes for those,
Speaker 1: but they were it was usually like one yeah, like
Speaker 1: one vote for one of those titles, so there wasn't
Speaker 1: a lot of but I think that that deserves mentioned.
Speaker 1: Games that are specifically just marketing employs tend to get
Speaker 1: hate hated by gamers, which you know, that kind of
Speaker 1: makes sense, like gamers won a game that was designed
Speaker 1: just to create enjoyment, be fun and challenging, not a
Speaker 1: game that's designed to make you want to go out
Speaker 1: and buy a pizza. Teenager Ninja Turtles also falls into
Speaker 1: that category. I'm just kidding. So and then there were
Speaker 1: some of the games that were on the list that
Speaker 1: we were a little surprised to see votes for. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in some cases, I think it's what people were
Speaker 1: voting on games that either they're just tired of seeing
Speaker 1: or they don't they are not particularly good at that
Speaker 1: game and they find it frustrating, and other people like it,
Speaker 1: and that's why they hate it, because it's a game
Speaker 1: that they personally just don't get. Um. But some of
Speaker 1: those titles include things like Angry Birds, which I think
Speaker 1: probably that's a saturation thing, right, It's just because it's everywhere,
Speaker 1: people are going to be tired of it. I think
Speaker 1: that was farm built. Yeah, Uh, we fit, we fit.
Speaker 1: I don't even think if we fit as a game,
Speaker 1: And that's why I didn't really like that. That's not
Speaker 1: really a game so much I mean, there's a game
Speaker 1: element to it, but it's not I don't call it
Speaker 1: a game. Halo, which I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: would argue as one of the better first person shooters
Speaker 1: for a console system, keeping in mind that PC based
Speaker 1: first person shooters are much more sophisticated and require a
Speaker 1: totally different skill set than a console one. I've heard
Speaker 1: computer first person shooter players refer to console first person
Speaker 1: shooters as kind of dumbing down the whole thing, and
Speaker 1: I kind of get that, but it's it's a different,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of different mode. And I personally love
Speaker 1: the Halo series. I can see your Halo. Thank you
Speaker 1: Pitfall for the ad. That was a classic title like that,
Speaker 1: along with River Radar, two of my favorite DRED titles,
Speaker 1: But there were people who didn't like it because it
Speaker 1: had a repetitive gameplay activisions early days there Super Mario
Speaker 1: sixty four another game that got great review US, but
Speaker 1: we got some votes for that Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator,
Speaker 1: which again I don't really think of as a game.
Speaker 1: Flight simulator and flight simulators, by their very nature tend
Speaker 1: to be very, very complex, and sometimes overwhelmingly so because
Speaker 1: they are trying to be so true to life, and
Speaker 1: yet you're using a different interface to control that vehicle
Speaker 1: than you would if you were in the cockpit, So
Speaker 1: there's an extra layer of complexity, you know. So that
Speaker 1: the votes also we got some votes for Call of
Speaker 1: Duty and Modern Warfare, which that was kind of interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: so not everybody agrees obviously on what is the worst
Speaker 1: game of all time? Although overwhelmingly ET ran away with
Speaker 1: this Like it was, there wasn't even close. ET have
Speaker 1: way more votes than all the others combined. But like
Speaker 1: I said, all the votes that were we received for
Speaker 1: everything went to ET galloped everywhere he walked, did you Yes,
Speaker 1: it's true, Yeah, that's true. Did you have any game? Well?
Speaker 1: You mentioned the what was the sword Quest series? That
Speaker 1: was a pretty bad There was supposed to be a
Speaker 1: contest if he solved all four parts of it, and
Speaker 1: the fourth part never came out in the third one
Speaker 1: got limited distribution. But I couldn't see the point of
Speaker 1: doing what you were supposed to be doing, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: I just really couldn't follow the sequence. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I have to say that out of all the ones
Speaker 1: I've I've mentioned, e T is probably the the one
Speaker 1: I think of as the worst that I've ever personally played.
Speaker 1: I've played a lot of really bad games, but I
Speaker 1: tend to forget them because I have access to more
Speaker 1: games now, so if I play a really bad one,
Speaker 1: I just switch and go to a good one so
Speaker 1: it doesn't leave as big an impression on me. Back
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, my options were somewhat limited,
Speaker 1: and so I would play a bad game over and
Speaker 1: over because it's what I had. Ah, you poor thing.
Speaker 1: I know here I am complaining about video games. Poor me,
Speaker 1: I have played a game. Um, don't cry for me, Argentina.
Speaker 1: Did you enjoy? That was what I told you to do? So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was our episode on the worst video Games of
Speaker 1: All time. You guys pick some doozies. Maybe someday we'll
Speaker 1: do another like follow up to that, because of course,
Speaker 1: there have been lots of video games releas since two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, certainly, and some of you may have very
Speaker 1: strong opinions, like, wait, there was this other game that
Speaker 1: was even worse than all the ones you mentioned, and
Speaker 1: you didn't talk about it, so, uh, we might try
Speaker 1: it again, I said at the time. Maybe we'll do
Speaker 1: a more concentrated approach, because when you leave it wide open.
Speaker 1: You get you know, five people responding, and a hundred
Speaker 1: of them all give a vote for an obscure title.
Speaker 1: But that's one vote per obscure title, so they don't
Speaker 1: amount to anything. So we'll figure something out. But we
Speaker 1: want to talk a little bit about some of the
Speaker 1: worst video games we've ever played. So, Lauren, you know,
Speaker 1: since you weren't available to talk about the video games
Speaker 1: of all time, did you have any that you wanted
Speaker 1: to add to the discussion? Yeah, okay, So, so there
Speaker 1: were two that I've played personally that stand out in
Speaker 1: my mind as being particularly terrible. Um. The first is
Speaker 1: Back to the Future parts two and three for the
Speaker 1: n S. That's the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Um and okay,
Speaker 1: both of the things that I'm going to mention our
Speaker 1: uh film or otherwise, you know, other media titles that
Speaker 1: have been ported over, which is never really a recipe for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's only a few examples of ones like Batman Arkham Asylum,
Speaker 1: Like that's an example of a great licensed game, but
Speaker 1: there's so few of those. Oh yeah, yeah, and okay,
Speaker 1: So so this one was developed by Beam Software and
Speaker 1: released by l j N and it was rated unforgiving
Speaker 1: in game facts. Um, it was. It was just basically
Speaker 1: impossible to play. The music was terrible, the graphics were terrible.
Speaker 1: There were some parts of it that were just just meaningless. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's see other one. The other one is the
Speaker 1: X Files game that's for the PC and or the
Speaker 1: PS one or PS X. Uh. Yeah, I remember seeing
Speaker 1: video reviews of that. I never played it myself. I
Speaker 1: want to hear more about your experience here, all right.
Speaker 1: So so this one was developed by UM and I
Speaker 1: think this is how you pronounce it, Hyperbowl Studios, not hyperbole.
Speaker 1: Not hyperbole, Yeah, hyper bowl that's how it's spelled. Um.
Speaker 1: It was released by Fox Interactive. Makes sense of the
Speaker 1: twenty century Foxes doing the X Files in and or nine,
Speaker 1: depending on which system you bought it for. Um. So
Speaker 1: this was largely an f m v A full and
Speaker 1: and it wasn't even starring Molder and Scully. Is the problem, Like,
Speaker 1: because the actors were busy, you know, doing their TV show,
Speaker 1: so they had to get this other dude to kind
Speaker 1: of interact very occasionally with Molder and Scully, and the
Speaker 1: puzzles were just terrible, Like it wasn't it wasn't thought
Speaker 1: out very well in terms of game design. Like I
Speaker 1: think the first puzzle in the game was you sit
Speaker 1: down at your office being you, being this this this
Speaker 1: other agent character, and the first thing you have to
Speaker 1: figure out is what your computer passport is, as though
Speaker 1: you wouldn't know what your own computer I mean, actually,
Speaker 1: to be fair, I guess I forget my own passwords
Speaker 1: about once a week. But that's still that's I mean,
Speaker 1: how you can't be more secure, right, like you know
Speaker 1: your you know your system secure, when even you are
Speaker 1: not aware of what your passworts are. Wow. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was trying to think of any others I want to add,
Speaker 1: because again, we recorded that first episode back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eleven, and you know, I've played games since then.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing is that the way I tend
Speaker 1: to play games these days, I tend to buy them
Speaker 1: well after they've had their initial run, simply because I
Speaker 1: don't have a whole lot of time on my hands.
Speaker 1: So I'm often playing a game that came out, you know,
Speaker 1: a year earlier earl or somewhere around that time. Uh
Speaker 1: still while other games are coming out, and because I
Speaker 1: haven't finished that game, I don't just immediately jump on
Speaker 1: the other. So like Skyrim, I didn't get that till
Speaker 1: almost a year after it had come out, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: seven or eight months, and people have perhaps vetted the
Speaker 1: fact that it's worth your while by the time you purchase,
Speaker 1: and yeah, by that time people have played it, I've
Speaker 1: seen reviews, I've heard buzz about it, and I've decided
Speaker 1: whether or not it's for me. It's very rare when
Speaker 1: I'll go out and get a game like the day
Speaker 1: it comes out. One of the examples of one where
Speaker 1: I did do that was a Grand Theft Auto of five,
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't go the worst game of all time
Speaker 1: or anything close to that. The actual single player experience
Speaker 1: is pretty phenomenal if you like those kind of games.
Speaker 1: If you don't like those kind of games, obviously, obviously
Speaker 1: you're not going. But I really enjoyed the game. I
Speaker 1: enjoyed the story, I like the characters. I didn't think
Speaker 1: it was necessarily groundbreaking. It wasn't nearly as dark as
Speaker 1: Grand Theft Auto four was, but uh, I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: But the online part, which was released two weeks after
Speaker 1: the game came out, you know, they had a lot
Speaker 1: of of promises of what was going to come, and
Speaker 1: some of those promises as of the recording of this
Speaker 1: podcast have yet to be delivered upon, like being able
Speaker 1: to do heists in multiplayer. Heists in the single player
Speaker 1: game were fantastic. They were you had to coordinate between
Speaker 1: three different characters. You could swap between the characters during
Speaker 1: the highest each one is doing something specific, really kind
Speaker 1: of complicated stuff like you could actually determine which of
Speaker 1: two pathways you would want to take, whether you wanted
Speaker 1: to go the subtle route or just kick the doors
Speaker 1: open exactly. So it was really a fun, dynamic thing
Speaker 1: in the single player game. So everyone's really looking forward
Speaker 1: to it, but it hasn't come out for multiplayer again
Speaker 1: as of the recording of this podcast, and that has
Speaker 1: been a pretty big disappointment. So the single player fantastic
Speaker 1: multiplayer was one of those things where people got tired
Speaker 1: of it. In fact, I don't know how many people
Speaker 1: are still playing multiplayer. I know there are, but I
Speaker 1: don't know how many of them there are because a
Speaker 1: lot of people just got they were able to do
Speaker 1: everything you could do, and you're like, well, between the
Speaker 1: promise in the follow through and it was it was
Speaker 1: because it was really an ambitious project and just didn't
Speaker 1: quite live up to it when it launched. Not to
Speaker 1: say that they won't eventually get there. I just wonder
Speaker 1: how big a population they'll have once they finally do.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't have sadly don't have a whole
Speaker 1: lot of stories about terrible video games I've played. I mean,
Speaker 1: even that's not really sad, that's that's kind of okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that wraps up that classic episode of the worst video
Speaker 1: Games of All Time. Something to always keep in mind
Speaker 1: is that pretty much every case, no matter how bad
Speaker 1: a video game might turn out to be, we should
Speaker 1: remember typically there are people who are working very hard
Speaker 1: on those games, and sometimes stuff just doesn't work out
Speaker 1: for any number of reasons. But that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: those people who are working on it were in the
Speaker 1: wrong or weren't skilled. Sometimes stuff just doesn't go well.
Speaker 1: And uh, I wanted to put that out there because
Speaker 1: a lot of the times when I talk about like
Speaker 1: the worst of all time stuff, it sounds like I'm
Speaker 1: slagging off on the people who are responsible for it.
Speaker 1: But that's not always you know, merited. Sometimes it is
Speaker 1: if people are like running a scam or something. But
Speaker 1: in the case where people are genuinely setting out to
Speaker 1: do something and they just fall short, I feel like
Speaker 1: we should give them a little compassion. So just reminding
Speaker 1: myself as well as you nice folks out there, that
Speaker 1: compassion can go a long way. Well, speaking of compassion,
Speaker 1: if you feel like that there's an episode I should
Speaker 1: be covering, you know, maybe there's an update I need
Speaker 1: to do, maybe there's a technology you want to know
Speaker 1: more about, you should reach out to me, but nicely
Speaker 1: over on Twitter the handle I use as tech stuff
Speaker 1: h s W. Now I'll tell to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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