Top 20 Worst Video Games of All Time

Top 20 Worst Video Games of All Time

Written by Zeromage 108 Comments
Last Updated:: May 1, 2008

10. Ghosts n’ Goblins

A reoccurring theme for the top 20 worst games of all time has been when games have been so difficult that you had to buy a new tv from smashing your controller against it too much. There is no game that exemplifies this upshot from sheer difficulty like Ghosts ‘n Goblins. 1/8th through the first level you’re surrounded by mounds and mounds of enemies. As you’re walking as your character, you’re basically surrounded by a force field of enemies coming at you from every possible angle. Okay, maybe if you had a lot of energy or someone decent armor, you could take the level one onslaught of nefarious enemies. As you walk, you see you do have armor, looks like pretty strong armor, until a weak ass looking bird swoops down, barely hits you, and your armor comes flying off. Not even faux-Halloween armor is this poor. I’m pretty sure that if a bird touched a plastic armor suit that you wore for Halloween, it wouldn’t come flying off. As your worthless armor comes flying off, you’re left with an almost-naked character who is left with nothing on except underwear. Q: Who wears nothing under armor? Am I inept to mid-evil tradition or is there something completely untenable about someone wearing nothing under armor? Your basically left naked running around in the wild with a force field of petulant enemy’s surrounding you at every second. This stultifying game play leads you to give up after 1 to 2 minutes making you feel like shit and making you retire to much more germane games with more sane difficulty levels. When programmers make these games, don’t they realize these most obvious setbacks for the player? Setbacks so large, that they stop playing the game after 5 minutes?

9. Jurassic Park (Sega Genesis)

Jurassic Park was one of the best selling books of all time and was subsequently made into one of the highest grossing movies of all time. You’d think they would attempt to design a game of similar stature, right? You obviously have never played this boring as paint drying game. One would think that when a certain storyline is created, that most subsequent recreations of the story would follow a similar pattern. Jurassic Park though just kind of meanders through the jungle and leaves the game player feeling dejected and hurt in the end. After a rather weak opening scene of the T-Rex roaring at you in low-def, the game simply starts. There is Dr. Grant standing in the jungle, armed with a dart gun and a few grenades, waiting to be brought through the jungle to a destination. And that’s about it. You need to do some jumping, a little hopping over rocks, and maybe maneuver to avoid little creatures trying to drain your life bar. You come across a dinosaur that will simply fall over for about a minute after you hit it with a dart. The grenades of course make them not get up anymore. A little more jumping and hopping along through the jungle and maybe stomp on a baby raptor while doing so. And then….TA DA! You reach the end of level one. Maybe level two will have something more exciting? But sorry, it may be a different scene, but the same general premise level after level. You go into substations, go back into the jungle, and maybe drive a motor boat through another low-def scene. This is all happening with the final goal being to get back to the Visitor Center. The second to the last scene is going through the ventilation system with raptors running around below you. Once you jump through a final hatch, you land on top of the large bones setup in the Visitor Center main hall. With a simple flick of the thumb and the toss of a grenade in between the skeleton setups, they crash onto the raptors waiting below. And the game ends…

With one simple grenade the last “boss” is defeated. In the most simplistic and moronic way, the game is over. Sorry Sega, but this blockbuster movie just doesn’t translate into your silly little black cartridges. That T-Rex is a pussy too!

8. Joust (NES)

Joust is unbearably boring. Same screen, same enemies, same poor sounds, no music. If one were looking for a legal soporific agent, Joust would be your best treatment. Who could possibly think this idea would keep the attention of the player beyond 30 seconds? When designing this game, who thought that this 1 screen sleep fest would be enough to justify its place in an entire cartridge? At least have a 2nd game packaged along with this garbage. At least have some weak ass side scroller with your jouster (who looks more like a flying ostrich) killing medieval enemies. Speaking of the enemies, what exactly are these things? How come all the players and enemies in “Joust” look like poorly designed birds? In Joust, you’re enveloped with one boring game, controlling something that looks like a bird, fighting against things that may or may not be more birds. Yes, the controls are simple; yes the concept is simple, but so simple that you don’t know why you should be playing this game after 30 seconds. That this ever retained a place in an arcade is beyond me. The sight of this NES cartridge at a used video game store induces the largest of yawns.

7. Wayne’s World (SNES)

It is quite ironic that Wayne’s World begins with Wayne and Garth reviewing their “Top Ten Worst Arcade Games List” since it is the only Super Nintendo game to make our worst ever video games list. Being fans of the SNES, a game released on that console needs to reach inordinately bad marks to be considered for inclusion on our list, but Wayne’s World did just that. Usually, video games based on movies don’t turn out very well, and games based off BAD movies turn out even worse. This game is no exception. As you might expect from a game based on Wayne’s World, the story line is less than stellar: an evil purple putridosity called Zantar has kidnapped Garth, and you have to guide Wayne as he tries to rescue his hapless sidekick. Wayne is armed with a guitar that helps him defeat various enemies inhabiting Kramer’s Music Store, Stan Mikita’s Donut Shop, the Gasworks nightclub, and suburbia. In each location, the assailants include monster bagpipes, accordions, coffee cups, disco ball, and headbangers. Poor story line alone does not necessarily automatically place a game in the “bad” list. Unfortunately, boring levels, unwieldy controls and sheer monotony do. Oh, and should you choose to play this game yourself, it will probably take you all of ten minutes to come to agreement with us on this one.

6. Muscle (NES)

The NES had a myriad of decent wrestling games under its belt including “Pro Wrestling” and “Wrestlemania”. It also held the worst wrestling game ever made, none other than “Muscle”. The biggest reason why Muscle is a terrible game is because of how boring it is. There are no moves, no real characters, and no dialogue. You start off the game by choosing between 9 ostensibly different players, who in reality are all exactly the same, except a slight discrepancy in the color of outfits and shape of face. The game is completely silent. You would think that if a wrestling game is going to be made, at least include some tension and excitement by adding crowd noise and an announcer, albeit an 8 bit incoherent announcer. You get none of this with “Muscle”. You get no music, no crowd noise, 2 or 3 boring moves with no choice of different characters unless your duped into thinking changing masks makes a wrestler completely different. It took about 3 minutes of playing this game to realize that you wasted 3 dollars on renting this soporific excuse for a wrestling game. Bring on “Pro Wrestling” where I can bash “Amazon” on the head with a steel chair and can use a character with a giant star in the middle of his head (Hint: When making games, use your fucking imagination!).

5. Paperboy (NES)

When you first see this game, you see the cover with a munificent, happy-go-lucky paperboy delivering papers. You think to yourself, well, a game about being a paper boy can’t be that much fun…but maybe it’s some sort of super-hero paperboy and that’s the reason why he’s so happy on the front cover! The game is opposite of the cover. After you play this game for 10 minutes, you realize the front cover should be a paperboy irritable beyond all bounds and maybe even sticking his middle finger up at the street dancers who have nowhere to dance except right in the middle of the fucking street you have to deliver on.

It’s 8 o’ clock on a Monday morning and what does the entire neighborhood you deliver to do? They get up 2 hours early to conspire against you and make it impossible to get through half the street before you’re either run over, beat with a spatula, or have a myriad of dogs chasing you. If this game is going to be as difficult as it is, at least have an option of changing routes. At least be able to tell off your boss for giving you such a shitty route where you cant get half way down the street without your life being threatened with people who have nothing better to do than to try to dominate the paper boy. If they really don’t want their paper, then fuck them. Even if you’re able to evade the infinite obstacles towards delivering to 1 house, finding the accuracy to throw a paper into a mailbox is just as tendentious. Most of the time you lose points because your papers gravitate towards breaking the glass of the houses with people who spend their waking lives trying to destroy the paperboy.

This game is tedious, grossly difficult, and absolutely no fun. To rent a game and not be able to get half way through the first level no matter what you do is lugubrious to say the least. This may be the worst game ever released for a platform system.

4. Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing

So yeah, we are talking about the worst games ever conceived by human beings right? There are probably some pretty horrible games trapped under the methane ice of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, but let’s not get off the subject of just how shitty this game really is. Now normally, we here at Old Wiz don’t take the opinions of others too seriously. You know the saying, “They are like assholes, and everybody has them”. Well the word over many news wires is that we are not the only ones who think this is worthy of the moniker of “one of the worst games of all time”. One thing for sure is that the production team for Big Rigs should have been beaten into submission for violating the cardinal rule of gaming; creating a game that doesn’t just waste time but makes you want to punch someone after playing it. Let’s go over some of the finer points that Big Rigs offers to its lowly participants…

First, the idea of this game even being a race is sketchy at best. When the contest first begins your opponents don’t really put too much effort into making this a worth while venture. That’s because the creators forgot to give them any type of functions and they drive straight…for the entire race…

Rather beat…
Let’s get even more stupid now shall we…
There is nothing to have to avoid during the race. There is nothing on the side of the road that might interfere with your driving ability. Don’t get me wrong, there are buildings, and bridges, and various other obstacles, but unlike in pseudo-reality racing games in Big Rigs you can drive right through them without even slowing down. These rigs must have such a powerful hemi under that hood that they can just drive vertically without losing speed, let alone crashing! These things can jump through the screen for crying out loud!

Let’s continue shall we…

The gears don’t really work…at all. But it doesn’t matter since you basically can’t lose. If you do, contact Old Wizard immediately and we’ll fly our chopper over to pick you up and bring you in for testing. No matter what happens in each “race” the words “You’re a Winner stick up on the screen to signify truck racing glory. The list goes on forever and ever, and maybe even some more. Frankly, this game sucks so bad that we don’t even care about writing down everything that is wrong with it. The “winners” that made this game should just be banished to eternity in a truck stop bathroom. End of story on this one.

3. Fatal Fury (Sega Genesis)

Fatal Fury was fun to play for 2 seconds because of how obvious of a rip off it was of Street Fighter. It was the poor man’s Street Fighter, literally and figuratively. The characters were poorly conceived, the after-fight dialogues were a monstrosity of Van Damnesque platitudes, and the final boss was about as scary as a 4th grade trick or treater in a Wonder Woman outfit. Your friend bought this game when he couldn’t afford the real Street Fighter which would go anywhere from $40-$50 dollars. Fatal Fury was a $20 dollar game and it showed. This, however, did not stop your friend from calling you up and saying “I got this game Fatal Fury that may be better than Street Fighter”, much to your laughter as you realize your friend made a competition out of who had the better video games (These are the people you would often find with books lying around entitled “How to start a conversation and make friends”). Fatal Fury remains one of the more poor attempts at a two player coin-op style fighting game. Combine goofy characters with derivative moves and conspicuous hopes of being “the next Street Fighter”, and you will get this impoverished piece of crap.

2. Shaq Fu (Sega Genesis)

Shaq Fu for the Sega Genesis is probably the worst conceived game ever to come out for any platform system. The story line is so abominable that you almost wish that a completely incoherent one was substituted as to give the idea of the storyline being more enigmatic. You are Shaq, somehow in Tokyo, where you are discovered by some zen karate master who says that you have come from some distant planet to save the world (I wonder if Shaq himself ever played this, or maybe even wrote this story line?). After you endure the blatantly uninspired storyline, you have to endure the worst 2 player fighting game of all time. The controlling in this game is incomprehensible. The best thing you can do is just hammer the buttons of your controller with your hands and watch the screen, hoping your capricious hammering of the controller will cause a victory against the most banal of opponents. Looking at the screen doesn’t help the cause either because how dumb it looks with hackneyed monsters fighting a big dude in basketball shorts. Once you lose because the controlling is so irritating, you have to endure more uninspired dialogue from enemies with 80 times more skill than you have as Shaq. Your opponents can basically throw the elements at you, they can throw fucking planets at you, while you’re left to a high kick and a low kick depending on which buttons your randomly smashing. With a name like “Shaq Fu”, you had to know this game was going to be bad, but you were not prepared for how bad it was until you actually played it for yourself.

1. E.T. (Atari 2600)

As a child in the 80’s, E.T. was a HUGE part of my life. It was the first, second, and third movie I saw in a theater. It made Reese’s Pieces my favourite candy. It forced me to ride my Star Wars Huffy off of small ledges in hopes of flying my chubby silhouette in front of the moon. Maybe the greatest of all, it took away all fear of aliens I may have had. You could imagine my excitement when my father came home with this game, his face lit up like he was my age, and led me by the hand to the beloved Atari 2600.

The point of this game is to find pieces of your ship in order to get home. The pieces are located in what can only be described as pits that ET falls into periodically. I have never made it out of the first pit. It’s been rumoured that there are 5 levels of almost identical game play. I’ve heard there are also enemies, and that eating Elliott gives you power ups…I have seen none of these things. I start the game, fall in a hole, and never get out.

This game single-handedly destroyed Atari and its legacy. They had produced so many cartridges of this game that were never sold they actually had to buy land in New Mexico and create an E.T. landfill in the desert, ouch. They tried to follow on the coat tails of Tron and capitalize on the E.T. brand, but all they ended up doing was starting a long tradition of crappy games based on movies. Thanks E.T., you crushed my childhood and gave me a reason to go outside to play in traffic.

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108 Comments

#1 s says:
March 17th, 2010 at 6:09 pm

sorry – worst game ever – ghostbusters on nes – i still dont know what that was about or if that was a working game even

#2 s says:
March 17th, 2010 at 6:59 pm

oh yea and joust – cmon thats a classic – esp if you were all about ataris

#3 Aaron says:
March 17th, 2010 at 6:28 pm

I can land the top gun plane easily. Now, you seem to have forgotten Time Lord. Very, VERY bad game. It consists of this guy who has to run around different periods of the past and collect these little orbs. I don’t know why; the game never explains itself.

#4 Josh Haskins says:
March 17th, 2010 at 2:53 am

this made me laugh until i cried. i agree with everything except joust.

#5 jon says:
March 17th, 2010 at 5:57 am

WTF where’s E.T.???

#6 Fraught says:
March 17th, 2010 at 3:10 pm

@jon: On the #1 spot, you dim-witted lump of fuck?

#7 Matt says:
March 17th, 2010 at 3:09 am

Elevator Action is exactly like Mappy, except Mappy was actually popular.

#8 Dusty Loads says:
March 17th, 2010 at 11:53 am

Asshole.

#9 Manny Dont says:
March 17th, 2010 at 6:39 am

Wayne’s World was fun if you put in the cheat code and started at a different level, otherwise it got boring pretty fast. I still can’t belive that I used to enjoy festers quest as a child *groan.

#10 Richard says:
March 17th, 2010 at 6:52 pm

As far as worst games ever, Star Voyager for the NES should be considered. The game consisted of you drifting in space to fight several flotillas of ships and getting obliterated if you got in battle. My brother beat Top Gun, though it admittedly took forever. Many NES games were near impossible though because of lack of saves, checkpoints or continues.

#11 Richard says:
March 17th, 2010 at 6:53 pm

Oh, and we land the Top Gun plane about 99% of the time. Refueling is just as annoying.

#12 Burga says:
March 17th, 2010 at 5:47 am

Beetlejuice on nintendo should be on this list, it was a horrible game. So should Bubsy 3D, that game makes me want to kill myself

#13 Waffles says:
March 17th, 2010 at 10:28 pm

I love this list. And I love waffles. Does that make me gay?

#14 dreamer says:
March 17th, 2010 at 12:07 am

you forgot dr jekyll and mr hyde, what? avgn did that already? oh ok.

#15 Andrew says:
March 17th, 2010 at 3:12 pm

O.K. There are several problems with this list:

1. Where is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the NES?
2. Where is Custer’s Revenge for the 2600?
3. Where is Sewer Shark for the Sega CD?
4. Why is Jurassic Park for the Genesis up there? Playing as either Grant or the Raptor is a blast.
5. Finally, why isn’t Superman 64 higher on the list than Paperboy for the NES?

#16 Cyntac says:
March 17th, 2010 at 1:09 am

I have to disagree with Joust being on the list.

That game was awesome! I played it on the Atari for hours just to get the pteradactyl which was a bast to kill.

I really did love that game.

#17 avi says:
March 17th, 2010 at 9:08 pm

Battletoads should not be there, sorry.

#18 avi says:
March 17th, 2010 at 9:16 pm

10 worst games 10.Shaq-Fu (SNES, Genesis) 9.Paperboy (NES) 8.Custer’s Revenge (Atari) 7.White Men Can’t Jump (Jaguar) 6.Bible Adventures (NES) 5.Bubsy 3D (PS1) 4.Superman 64 (N64) 3.Action 52 (NES) 2.Big Rigs (PC) 1.ET (Atari).

#19 Brandon says:
March 17th, 2010 at 5:58 am

wow… your list lost all credibility from me when i saw joust and paperboy on the list.

#20 avi says:
March 17th, 2010 at 10:03 pm

Andrew:I actually didn’t think dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was that bad, I did get further than you probably did cause for some reason the lightning didn’t hit me. It isn’t the best game ever, but I wouldn’t call it 1 of the worst. it was kind of weird, but I would actually rather play it than quite a few of the 3rd-party, and even some 1st-party games on wii and 360, b4 you call me a sony fanboy all ps3 games I have played r sony, dats y i didn’t mention the 3rd-party ps3 games.

#21 Vectorben says:
March 17th, 2010 at 6:48 pm

Fatal Fury doesnt belong on there, it is an SNK (Metal Slug) classic in the arcades!

#22 Vectorben says:
March 17th, 2010 at 6:52 pm

MUSCLE was based off a cartoon, and its not like they had very many games with real characters anyway.

#23 aaa says:
March 17th, 2010 at 4:54 am

paperboy was a sweet game.

#24 Mark says:
March 17th, 2010 at 7:09 am

C’mon man, you obviously must have been terrible at paper boy to not make it past the first level. That should be on the best games list, not the worst.

#25 avi says:
March 17th, 2010 at 4:03 pm

uh, after playing paperboy again, ur right, paperboy rox.

#26 MrHerb says:
March 17th, 2010 at 11:41 am

Fatal Fury on the list?

GTFO….

#27 Avi says:
March 17th, 2010 at 6:57 pm

they’re talking about Fatal Fury on Genesis, not arcade.

#28 PANCAKE says:
March 17th, 2010 at 7:10 am

Yes, waffle, that makes you gay. And why isn’t the incredible hulk (the one with the wimpy final boss) on there? It sucked.

#29 Avi says:
March 17th, 2010 at 8:50 pm

I 4got Ghosts ‘N Goblins, Universal Combat and Guns ‘N’ Generals.

#30 Magnus says:
March 17th, 2010 at 6:14 pm

Fester’s Quest was great.
Not really hard at all.

#31 where o where.... says:
March 17th, 2010 at 8:41 pm

How is Action 52 not here? It has to be the worst ever.

#32 CrustyOatmeal says:
March 17th, 2010 at 9:26 pm

no no no no no. this is the worst game of all time. there is no debate. its is like all the horrible points from soft porn mixed with the playability of a DVD menu

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/52921.html

#33 Avi says:
March 17th, 2010 at 2:45 pm

I loved Paperboy.. but I can’t name 20 games that are worst.

#34 Does Not Give A Crap says:
March 17th, 2010 at 1:26 am

ghoust’s in goblins and elevator action don’t belong there

#35 Freeloader says:
March 17th, 2010 at 3:56 am

Cosmic Carnage for the 32x almost made me quit video Games forever. I am still pissed, to this day, I saved for who knows how long to get a 32x and get that game only to see it suck as bad as it did.

Superman 64 is like 10 slots too low. That game was AWFUL. That was such a fuckin botchjob.

#36 RogersRoyal says:
March 17th, 2010 at 5:18 pm

Sorry dude. But your list is very flawed and missing the point of a worst games of all time list. You have average ports like Joust and Paperboy on a list when there are dozens of worse games easily on any system. Are we talking about worst games of ALL TIME or just boring ports of games that you didn’t particularly care for. I didn’t see Pac Man (Atari 2600 version) which is credited to contributing to the downfall of video games in the early 1980’s. Last Action Hero for the SNES is worse than a lot of games you mentioned. Heck the Genesis version is even worse than that. I realize you had your own experiences with games but Paperboy on the NES, while not arcade perfect wasn’t a bad port of the game. I just think this list is flawed and not deserving of the title 20 worst video games. If anything it should be called “Games that I, myself, didn’t particularly care for after playing them.” list. Elevator Action? I mean come on. This list is bogus. Right away I knew something was off when you had Superman at 12. That already tells me you don’t get it. You found 10 games better than that? You would rather play Superman on the N64 than Fatal Fury? Fatal Fury at number 3? Is this for real? You seem to put ET there just because you felt you had to to make the list official but I don’t think you even get why that game stunk. Nah this list is no good. Sorry man. Good try but nope.

#37 Tony says:
March 17th, 2010 at 4:48 pm

No Jaws? That game pisses me off to this day just thinking about it.

#38 nick says:
March 17th, 2010 at 8:32 pm

Well I agree with the list, except for fatal fury. That game sucked, but it wouldn’t even be in my top 20.

#39 no says:
March 17th, 2010 at 9:23 pm

Well atleast everyone agrees on E.T. i wish i had my copy still. it would be nice to hold the stone that took down a giant.

#40 Alberto says:
March 17th, 2010 at 5:35 pm

Hahahahahahahaha

E.T. poop home

#41 robert hernandez says:
March 17th, 2010 at 6:42 pm

good games on this list:

paperboy
skate or die
fester’s quest

conspicuously missing:

dr jekyll
action 52
bible buffet
california games
etc etc etc

#42 JW82 says:
March 17th, 2010 at 5:16 am

Joust is one of the greatest games ever made. This is ridiculous. And paperboy? If you were going to pick a game that was bad because it was hard you should’ve picked Hydlide.

#43 CaptainAustralia says:
March 17th, 2010 at 4:47 am

Man, these guys clearly have ZERO idea what they’re talking about half the time…

…Desert Strike is a classic, and Jurassic Park for the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis is just awesome and spawned two sequels on the same console.

I can’t stand it when noobs like these guys say sh** about “Low def” on systems that were made in the the early nineties. :S

Sorry Old-Wiz.com, but this list fails.
Hard.

(PS: It’s hard not to agree with the number 1 spot, though. ;D)

#44 Akiba says:
March 17th, 2010 at 3:04 am

I can see from this list that you love the NES but you what was with the Sega hating?
Seriously, Jurassic Park for the Genesis is NOT one of the worst games ever made. If you didn’t have such horrendous bias towards Sega you might have been able to enjoy it a bit more. What was with the constant “low def” references? Of course it’s low def the game was made in 1994.
Also Shaq Fu was released for the SNES AND the Genesis.
Fatal Fury? Wtf? You cannot be serious. It wasn’t intended to be the next Street Fighter it was intended to compete AGAINST Street Fighter. SNK designed it as an offbeat, slightly outlandish Fighter. Just because a Fighter was released after Street Fighter doesn’t mean it was simply a cheap Street Fighter clone.

Etc. Etc.

#45 Bonk84 says:
March 17th, 2010 at 4:20 am

You guys want really bad games, go to youtube and check out angry video game nerd. He only rates the completly horrible games with the vulgaraty they deserve.

#46 james smith says:
March 17th, 2010 at 1:59 am

fuck you u stupid video game dorks

#47 Mark S. says:
March 17th, 2010 at 5:47 am

I’m surprised the 3 stooges made the list… actually once you figured out what you were supposed to do (admittedly, that was a pain in the arse), the game actually made some sense in a “slapstick” kind of way.

I don’t remember all the parts, but they were based on some of their show episodes… I remember the hospital corridor (“Ditzy Doctors” – Paging Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine) and the pie throwing (“Pies and Guys”), the “Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup” routine was based on “Punch Drunks”.

You had to know your stooges shows to understand the purpose behind some of the games.

But figuring out what some of the objectives were, was very aggravating at times.