May Together Retro: Bad to the Bone!

[prfsnl_gmr]

Join us!

I’m playing Extreme Sports with Bernstein Bears this weekend. Should be a good time!

[Michi]

Perhaps I should finally give Voyeur a try...

On the CDi...

Yes, that seems like a sound decision.


Here's hoping the disk and CDi still work

[BoneSnapDeez]

You guys are killing me. You're only a couple pages in and already this thread could be the basis for a hilarious article about the worst Atari 2600 games

I love the "Wild West" feel the Atari 2600 library has. Pick a random game and you have no idea what to expect. Could be a good game. Could be a horribly broken game. It could even be a game you've already played/owned but with a different title & artwork!

I'm taking a (well-deserved) break from the Atari, though I've singled out four other titles I might try before the month wraps up.

As for now, I'm playing Makai Hakkenden Shada, a Data East PCE ARPG with an ancient Japanese setting.

However... Stop me if this sounds familiar...

You boot the game and the first thing you see is a naked "goddess" who resembles a young woman. The game begins with no fanfare, you just instantly materialize in a grassy town. Head north to an overworld to battle scattered foes that must be bumped into.

Yes, this game is a notorious Ys rip-off. I doubt I'll finish it but I'll goof off a bit more.

I had found an online walkthrough at some point in my life... But it was in Japanese and the website is now gone, so, yeah...

[pook99]

I'm loving these write ups. I wonder if all of these atari games were bad on their release or is it just that Atari has aged terribly.

I know first hand that double dragon is trash, but not gonna lie, I played the shit out of atari pacman when I was a kid, but wouldn't touch it now, same could be said for just about every atari game I ever played. I mean even the "good" ones are more or less unplayable today.

I have tomorrow off so I may indulge in a trash game and contribute to this thread, I'm just not sure what to play. I'm trying to decide between games that are actual trash that I can laugh at, or games that are percieved as trash that I really enjoy(ie: Double Dragon 3, Festers quest, the original TMNT, stuff like that)

[prfsnl_gmr]

Join us!

Double Dragon 3, Fester’s Quest, and TMNT are all weird, but pretty good, games. Play something really bad and trash it.!

[pook99]

The worst game I have ever played in my life is Largo Winch for ps1. I'm sure nobody here has ever played it or even heard of it, so maybe I will give that a go tomorrow to refresh my memory on why it was so bad.

I remember one night I played it with a group of friends for about an hour and it gave us inside jokes for weeks so it definitely had a comedic element(for all the wrong reasons) to it. The memories are pretty vague so I may take the plunge and let you all know how it goes

[BoneSnapDeez]

I probably didn't make this clear earlier (or perhaps it was implied given the thread theme), but Makai Hakkenden Shada isn't simply an Ys rip-off, it's a substandard Ys rip-off. The combat is infuriating, progression is nonsensical, and the game is cryptic as all hell. I did manage to track down the Japanese-language walkthrough I mentioned earlier, using the Wayback Machine. It's helped me through some trickier parts, but now I'm stuck in what appears to be the final dungeon.

As the walkthrough wasn't helping me here, I decided to look for a YouTube longplay, but was unsuccessful. Unless it dawned on me that I should search using the Japanese title instead (魔界八犬伝SHADA) and I did indeed find a complete video of the entire game. Nice. It only took this particular YouTuber 15 minutes to complete the final dungeon. I anticipate dying much more often but still...... maybe I have 30-40 minutes left? Assuming I can stick it out. No guarantees.

Oh, here's the HG101 "Your Weekly Kusoge" piece on the game, which is where I first heard about it.
https://hg101.kontek.net/kusoge/kusoge-mhshada.htm

[prfsnl_gmr]

Awesome work, Bone. Stick it out. I know there’s no Ys clone too bad for you!

[BoneSnapDeez]

I did it.


Final dungeon feels like an attempt to recreate a Darm Tower (of Ys), except a half-ass version. Even the mirror maze is simplistic to the point of being unnecessary. Guess what the final boss is like? It's a big "demon" who flies around the screen, periodically rendering certain sections of the floor unusable. He's pretty easy to beat though.

I kinda "cheated" throughout the final dungeon. I discovered that, like many of these old save-anywhere RPGs, saving and loading resets the screen and thus clears out nearby enemies. Did that whenever I saw a big group. No need to fight anyone anyway, I had max experience and gold.

Ultimately, I'd say that Shada is to Ys as Golden Axe Warrior is to Zelda. They're both insulting cheap imitations of a beautiful experience.

I'm loving these write ups. I wonder if all of these atari games were bad on their release or is it just that Atari has aged terribly.

The Atari 2600 is a great consoles with mounds of fantastic games.

Here's the thing.

The 2600 dominated the second generation. I mean, crushed it. 30 million consoles sold. In contrast, runner-up is the Intellivision with 3 million.

This means that most developers of the era turned their eye towards the 2600.

If you look at the libraries of the Odyssey 2, Intellivision, ColecoVision, etc. you'll see primarily first-party games, arcade ports, and heavily-ported titles from the "big" publishers (Activision, Imagic, Parker Brothers). And that's generally it.

However, the Atari was so popular it resulted in these pop-up developers who existed only to quickly and cheaply crank out 2600 games. Mythicon, Apollo, Data Age, Telesys, Zimag, Froggo, and more. Plus you had random companies like Quaker Oats creating video game divisions, Zellers literally cloning games, and so on. The console ending up with tons of barely playable crap as a result. Tons. It made people mad. See the video game crash.

If you're playing the 2600, best to stick to the well-known publishers like Atari, Sears, Activision, Imagic, CBS, Parker Brothers, Sega, 20th Century Fox, Coleco... Of course, it is fun to venture out into the netherworld, occasionally...

[Jagosaurus]

Mentioned in the poll thread, I'm going to check out the first 2 Bubsy games. Likely via Genesis emulation.

According to Nemoide, they deserve the rep if you can make it to later levels.

We'll see!