TechStuff Classic: The Worst Video Games of All Time (Update)

Cyberpunk seven way up there. Uh, depending on your point of view. They're they're defenders of that game who say that there's a very good game there that was marred by a rushed release. Um. And there are others who disagree with that assessment entirely. So I'm sure I will have to do yet another update. So maybe at one point I'll do the Worst video Games of All Time updated update. But for now, let's listen to this classic

episode from Enjoy. So there's been this longstanding rumor, elevated to almost myth status in the video game industry, that that Atari, while it was struggling, dumped thousands of video games in this New Mexico landfill. Um. The New York Times even ran a short piece on it in September, and it's it's a short piece, so I'm just gonna read it out because it's a really explains the story and is super indicative of what the industry was doing

at the time. So here we go. With the video game business gone sour, some manufacturers have been dumping their excess game cartridges on the market at depressed prices. Now, Atari Inc. The leading video game manufacturer, has taken dumping one step further. The company has dumped fourteen truckloads of discarded game cartridges and other computer equipment at the City

Landfill in Alama Gordon, New Mexico. Guards kept reporters and spectators away from the area yesterday as workers poured concrete over the dumped merchandise, and Atari spokesman said the equipment came from Atari's plant and I'll Passo Texas, which was used to make video game cartridges but has now been converted to recycling scrap. Atari lust three and ten point five million dollars in the second quarter, largely because of

a sharp drop in video game sales. That's yeah, point five million dollars in a word, that's not that's not a yearly loss. So yeah, as you can see, this was a huge deal for Atari, and um, you know, there are a lot of different things that went into this.

We've covered it before, but just as a quick kind of refresher, the things that that led to this decision involved too many games on the market, too many consoles on the market, so you had you had way too much product out there, uh, and way too many poor video games that had been kind of scrapped together really quickly, right and and and then with the the ET cartridge in particular, which is often cited as not only the worst video game of all time but also the reason

for a video game crash. That's that's a little too simplistic, but it did the big contributor because that license cost millions of dollars to Atari, and they produced millions of cartridges, something like five million copies of this game. And they didn't sell out at all. They had they had millions left over, So you just had a no wins scenario. I mean, no one wanted the cartridges. They kept getting marked down and down and down in the discount bins

at your local toy stores. I mean, I remember these days because I had an I had ET the Extra Terrestrial um so, oh, yeah, I've never played. I had the two games that are constantly referred to as being the ones that led to the video game crash, where the the licensed versions of pac Man and ET the Extra Terrestrial, and there I had both of those, so I can tell you they both were terrible games. They were not good representations of their licenses and uh, and

so they both really did contribute. So uh. Anyway, we had this big myth about the you know, this huge dumping ground, and there was conflicting information for the longest time, like is it actually out there or is it is that just urban legend? Well, and since concrete had been poured, no one was really sure. It made me think for a while that maybe the guy who made that decision at Atari used to work for the mafia. I want it dead, I want to bury it in the ground.

I want to concrete foundation board over it. How it how it goes off in my head anyway, I mean, maybe he just really hated it that much. But yeah, we ended up discovering very recently as the recording of this podcast, as it turns out that uh, there was truth to the yeah myth confirmed. Okay, So in April hundreds of old Atari games, including the infamously terrible et We're We're found in this landfill in New Mexico. The

Dick was part of a documentary series. It's being done by director Zach Penn in affiliation with a couple of media companies, Fuel Entertainment and Lightbox Entertained, along with Microsoft's Xbox Entertainment Studios. Yeah, what's what's funny is that Major Nelson, who is part of Xbox Lives. He's like one of the kind of a community liaison type guy, so a lot of information from Microsoft comes through him and then as communicated to the fans. He was actually on the

dig site too. And uh, I'll talk a little bit more about that in just a second when we get to the super silly part of the story. I'm not sure which part is. Yeah, there's so many, but this one in particular because it all has to do with the way the man wears a construction hat. Okay, alright, So, so some interesting interesting little factoids around this dig. The AP was out there and they were talking to folks um and and according to them, James Heller, a former

Atari manager who's also on site for the dig. At the invitation of the production team, UM said. James Heller said that he was charged with finding a cheap way of disposing for seven and twenty eight thousand game cartridges. That's that's a lot of cartridges. That's more than I

had by by a long shot. Uh. And he said that after a few local kids scavenged games UM and he started getting calls from the media about it, that's when he decided to pour the concrete, right, because otherwise you have you have a recipe for disaster, and that kids could be coming out to a landfill get hurt, lawsuits. Yeah. No one wants e T on top of being the worst game ever to be the most deadly game to have caused like tetanus and things like that. Yeah, that

would have been a terrible, terrible, pr nightmare. Yeah. He's also said that he wasn't aware that there was any kind of controversy about it, and that he's never come out on the record about it because no one ever asked him. Huh. Clearly someone who does not go to the big video game forums. He's clearly not from the internet. Um. Uh. So, so the city that houses the landfill is giving up to the cartridges to the team, and we'll be selling

the rest. So if you like your own, you can get some real new Mexico dirt packed in with your your various cartridges. They're they're apparently still playable, some of them, I mean some of them are crushed. Yeah, I know that. When they first found it, they tested one out almost immediately and then said, we're not going to tell you whether or not it worked. We're going to save that for the documentary. But but but these are these are hard,

hardwired cartridges. I mean they're not they're not optical disks or anything like that. So as long as you haven't had too much detritus get into the cartridge, which we all know how to solve that problem, yeah, and then you're good. Yeah, as long as that's not the case, then it should work. And I understand that there was another person who was talked to about this whole thing, a man who may you might say was burdened with

terrible responsibility. Uh So, the ap for for this article that they did also called eat S game designer one Howard Scott Warshaw about the entire debak um, and he said that he actually doesn't mind his game being called the worst game. Ever, he said that he was only given five weeks to design, right and test this game after legal matters held it up in production of for getting that license and the holiday shopping deadlines began looming.

He said furthermore that it's end I quote a tremendous honor that, you know, even though it's the worst video game ever, that's still being talked about. Well, he also was the guy who made the biggest selling original game for Atari, which was Yours Revenge. Uh so, Yours Revenge was a kind of crazy little game where it's almost impossible to explain. Back then, video games were not nearly as simple in a way, like even though the the graphics were simple and the gameplay was simple, the concepts

were really high concept crazy things. And these days, you know, when you see video games, they tend to be variations on very similar themes, like it's a sandbox game like Grand Theft Auto or the Saints Rose series, or it's a racing game, or it's a gun game like those are poor and adventure. Right back in the days of the early arcades, like well, first you play as a donkey who's out delivering pizzas. What But that was normal So anyway, Ours Revenge hard to explain it easily, but anyway,

one of the most popular games of atari ever. So it's kind of interesting that the same guy was behind both titles. Yeah. The other thing I wanted to mention, we're going to we're going to have a nice little

flashback in a minute, but before we do that. Uh, something else I think is really entertaining is that there's some conspiracy theories around this, Like there were some things popping up on the Internet suggesting that perhaps this whole dig was a manufactured story, and in fact, no one had gone to New Mexico and no one had actually found the cartridges because they were never really put there in the first place, and the whole thing is just

to comple cover up. Yeah, there's like a tari truthuris now this is great? Yeah. So uh And there was a picture of Major Nelson, this is what I was referring to earlier in the podcast, who was at the site and wearing a hard hat, and the hard hat, you know, sat pretty high up on his head, which led some people to say, oh, it's been photoshopped on

top of him. He was clearly this was a picture of Major Nelson that's been placed so that it's on a desert background, and he's got this hard hat photoshopped on because it's not saying flat, you know, snug against his head. But here's the thing about hard hats. They actually have like a little kind of harness that sits on your head and they're raised up over the harness so that if something does impact the hard hat, there's that shot. Yeah. So it doesn't kill you, you see,

just having something harding. Yeah, yeah, I mean it doesn't. It doesn't help you if you were wearing something hard on your head if the force hitting it is still enough to cause you injury. So, uh, it's you know, it may have been that the little harness part was a little small for Major Nelson's noggin. I don't know, But I don't know. I'm personally, Yeah, it doesn't I'm going to call him a fathead. Neither am I. But but it does mean that I think some people mistakenly,

either mistakenly or perhaps jokingly. It could have been that they were joking about it being photoshopped and then other proportion in some way. I know the internet is oh sure sure. And also some of the very first photos that came out of the dig site. Um were taken on you know, low quality cell phones, and I think that everyone I mean, I mean, I was reluctant to believe the story until I clicked a few links through and really checked around about it, because I was like, oh,

that's fake. Yeah, I mean, well, there's so many stories. I assume that everything on is fake on the internet, except the hell stuff works where everything is amazing pertly. But yeah, no, no, I totally understand what you're where you're coming from on that one. So we wanted to take this opportunity to actually have a little look back on an episode that that was recorded years ago, back in two thousand eleven. Yeah. So so of course Chris Palette is going to be joining us from the vaults

of history, right. So so this is this is what some people would call a rerun because we wanted to talk about the discussion that kind of led into this whole thing when we asked our listeners. This was the crowdsourced episode, which we haven't really we haven't done many of those. We've asked for a listener mail and gotten responses, and we've done some episodes based upon suggestions, but this was purely crowdsourced where I put out the question what's

the worst video game of all time? And then we had our listeners right in and we tabulated all the votes and it was it was wide open, and this is the result. Uh and spoiler alert, the video game that we just talked about being dug Up in the Desert ends up being number one. So but it's an entertaining episode. Listen to it, and we'll have a little bit more to talk about once the episodes over with

some other kind of bad video game wrap up, So enjoy. So, hey, guys, you know you might remember that Chris and I wanted to do a crowdsourced episode where we asked our listeners to submit to us the worst video game of all time. And uh, we didn't give any real parameters about that. We said it could be on any platform, it just had to be a video game. And because of that, it meant that our listeners could literally, uh nominate any

game ever made. So it's a miracle at all that we had enough votes for any particular title to have this this podcast, But we actually have the top ten or perhaps bottom ten worst video games as voted on by you the listener so please keep in mind this is not the opinions of Jonathan and Chris, although maybe we'll talk about some of the bad games we've played in the past two This isn't our opinion, this is

your opinion. We're just reporting it. Well, I have to say that one one person did right in and ask us why we would bother recording an episode on this, and uh, the simple answer is because it's fun. Yeah, this was actually really a lot of fun. It was a lot of work because we had to collect votes

from multiple sources. We collected votes from email, Facebook, Twitter, and people left votes on my Google Plus account too, so um, I actually did separate out all the votes in a big spreadsheet, so I knew how many votes came in from which uh particular source and that that actually was kind of interesting too, just to see, you know, what our listeners prefer to use in order to get information to us. That was pretty fascinating. That was not

my intent, by the way, when I came. I came up with this idea on the spur of the moment and sprung it on Chris just before we started recording, and Chris was like, do I have to I have to record all the votes. I said no, he said, all right, let's do it. So you know, I'm easy like that. Let's let's start off with what would be number ten. But actually it was a tie for ninth place. So the first two games we're going to talk about

received the same number of votes. And the first one that we're going to talk about is dragons Layer, the arcade game specifically, So for those of you who who missed out on the early eighties and the great arcade culture of the early eighties, you may not be too familiar with this game. But it was groundbreaking. Yeah, it was. It was a an innovative way of presenting a video game that had not been attempted before Dragon's Layer. Yeah. Yeah.

Previously we were talking about the different well the difference in in vector and raster graphics, and and you know there was there were blocky graphics for the most part at the time, and they had limited animation, limited sound. Yeah. Um, but but Dragon's Layer actually featured animation from one of the industry giant animators, Don Bluth, former Disney animator who has gone on to you know, with his own company, to do many many other titles. In fact, I have

a Don Bluth title on my iPad? Yeah, which one? The new version of Tapper features Don Bluth artwork, so yeah, because he also you may know some of his work from from movies like The Secrets and the Secret of Nim Yes, and the Lame Before Time series, Before Time it was, was it the Five Old Movies too? Yes? Um, those were Don Bluth films, so somewhere out there, yes, thank you. So Dragon's Lair was featured animation from Don

Bluth and it was published by Cinematronics. Yeah. Yeah, But but but how you might say, exactly is this great leap in graphics and sound? Because the sound was awesome too. How how is that possible? Because you know, you're looking at other games like Donkey Kong, which you know I loved Donkey Kong, but you would not call the epics advanced or state of the art for the time, but

not now crazy. Yeah, well, they they accomplished this by using the laser disc video format, which we've talked about before. So the entire game was on laser disc, and there was an actual laser disc player inside the cabinet of this arcade game. Now, the fact that there it was on laser disc was both its its biggest strength and its biggest weakness. The weakness is that you couldn't create

too much interactivity for the player and the game. The You know, you couldn't have complete control over the main character who do you remember? The guy's name Dirk the Daring, and he was rescuing a princess Daphne from a dragon named Singe. And so you couldn't just control Dirk the Daring, You couldn't just make him run around and jump and stuff. Instead, what you would do is you would initiate a video sequence.

Because again this is recorded on laser disc. There's only so many variations of Dirk's movements that can be recorded on a single laser disc. So what your input into the arcade machine would translate to is was that the correct button to press or direction on the joystick to push in order to trigger the next sequence to further the storyline. Yeah, so you for example, you might be having to jump, and you did have to jump at one point, and if you, you know, move up, that

might be the right thing to do. If you move left, you die. If you do nothing, you die. If you if you push the sword button, you die. If you push Yeah, so in other words, there'll be one correct response to a particular moment in the story, and sometimes, uh, there'd be like a little flash that would indicate this is when you do something. So for a lot of the game, you're you're just watching, You're just you're you're

watching a movie. And then occasionally in the movie there's a moment where you have a chance to put in an input, and if you put in the wrong one, the movie is over. And so that was probably what cost a lot of people to vote for Dragons Layers, that it almost feels like less of a game and more of a film. It's just a film that you don't get to see the end of it unless you happen to shift in your seat at just the right

moment so the film will continue. And also I would like to point out this was one of the first games I can remember that cost two credits or fifty cents to play. And also remember that a lot of them had two monitors because they were so popular that people would try and gather and cram around the system. Because if someone knew how to play it, if someone had memorized the sequence of movements they had to do

to get through a particular part of the game. You know, most people didn't have the time or energy or change to learn all that, so they just like to watch the game because again, it was like a movie. I saw a lot of our kades that would put a second monit he that was mounted on the top of the cabinet so that you could see what was going on without having to be right up on whoever is playing the game. So anyway, that was tied for ninth place. Uh. And the other one was a game on the Nintendo

Entertainment System which was Back to the Future. And I have never played this because I didn't own an any s. From what I read, we're going from beautiful graphics and and sort of poor gameplay to horrible graphics and gameplay. Yeah, Back to the Future is just one example of a licensed title, and by licensed, I mean it's something that already existed that a video game publisher purchases a license from the license owner to be able to create a

game based on that. And as far as Back to the Future goes, the basis was really pretty uh difficult to spot, especially in that stage. Like in the very first stage, you are going down a street and the way the view is it's an over the head view. UM. The street is laid out so that the top of the screen is where you're you're headed to the bottom of the screen is where you are, and you're moving your your character around Marty McFly. You're moving Marty McFly

down the street. You're trying to avoid enemies and pick up little alarm clocks. And it's only by picking up enough alarm clocks that you're allowed to move to the next stage. And so you're also you also have a timer, so if you don't pick up enough alarm clocks within the time limit, then you lose. If you get hit by an enemy, you lose. If you run into an obstacle,

you lose. UM. You would eventually be able to pick up a bowling ball, which would let you shoot enemies because of course you remember that great scene and Back to the future where Marty McFly picked up a bowling ball and then shot someone with it. Um, who could forget that scene that never happened. Uh. And then you can also get a skateboard, which I least that was

featured in the film. But with the skateboard, what that would mean is that you would move through the the you would move through the level faster, which meant the poor gameplay became excruciating the poor gameplay because you're going so fast you can't even react. Um. And then if you got through that, you would hit a mini game. And some of the mini games included a dinner stage where you're behind the counter and Biff and his bullies are coming in after you and you have to throw

milkshakes at them to stop them. But it was really hard to line up your character so that you were throwing the milkshake at the right plane in order to hit the enemy. Like the enemy is coming at you from the left side of the screen. You're on the right side of the screen, and you've got a bar between you and the enemy. You just have to figure out exactly where, like vertically you need to align yourself, and you you'd be like, oh, that's clearly, that's it.

That's that's the sweet spot, and you push the button and the milkshake flies like three ft over the bully's head and he reaches the bar and throws you against the wall. Um. It was a little rough. And then there was another stage where you had to block kisses that were sent to you from Lorraine because you're playing Marty McFly and his Marty's mother. You know, he's back in time and he's met the teenage version of his mom, and so you would have to block her kisses to you.

And then there was another one where you had to position a guitar just right so that you were playing music so that Lorraine and George, your your mom and dad would actually kiss. And the very final stage involved driving the DeLorean, the time travel device, through the street at night, dodging enemies, dodging obstacles, trying to get up to eighty eight miles per hour um. It looked awful. Oh and Bob Gayle, who was a screenwriter for Back to the Future, called it one of the worst games

ever made. Yeah, why do people keep saying this is there's some problem with gravity in the future. So that moves us up to our eighth worst game. Do you wanna unveil what this one is? Well, it certainly has a tough road to home, yes it does. But it is extremely popular. It's something you may have seen once or twice on Facebook, at least once or twice a minute on Facebook only if you follow people who play this,

And how could you not it's Farmville from Zinga. Now, Farmville has had a lot of criticism directed toward it. It's one of those games. It's a it's a freemium game, and that means that you can play the game for free, but if you want to have the most advantageous stuff in the game, you have to pay real money to get it. Um and which is a perfectly valid business plan. You know, there's no reason I'm not. I don't want

to say that that's a bad thing to do. I mean, people should be compensated for the work they do in order for them to make more work. Otherwise, no one has any incentive to do anything. You know, well, you know it's it's got millions of fans, yes, um something like I once heard a statistic that's something like all people who use Facebook play this, and I have. You know, I've played. I played it in some of the other Zinga games, but I don't It's funny though, I don't

think of it as a game. I think if it is more of a toy because there's no objective that you're trying to accomplish to win the game. Basically, you're trying to if you've never seen or or played it. Um. The point is to grow your farm. So you know, at some point you you add little plots of land on which you can grow your crops, and you can

choose which crops to grow. Um. You know, each time you plant something, you have several choices to you know, you could say corn or tomatoes or you know, you know, potatoes or something else. Um. And each crop costs a certain amount of money and your you know, your fake gold money. Actually it's their their dollars, I think coins farm coins and uh you also it's been a while

since I played. And each crop takes a certain amount of time to grow, and if you leave the game for more than that amount of time a reasonable amount of time. Once it's grown, the crop will wither and die. So the point is too, I mean, it's not just crops. You also add you know, a fence around your your garden, and you add a farmhouse and what kind do you want, and you know, bales of hay, and you basically you you add in size to the farm, and you add

different plots, and you upgrade your stuff. And there's also a social factor where you can interact with your friends farms and they can interact with yours, which is why you see like all these notifications pop up on Facebook until you get fed up with it and block them. Well yeah, I mean you can visit your friends farm and fertilizer crops so they grow faster or unwier them when they've gone back and help them. You can send them gifts and they can send you gifts, and that

that can be kind of fun. But the thing is, it's, like Jonathan pointed out, uh, Zinga is really hoping that you'll invest some actual cash into this and you can get uh certain kinds of crops or certain kinds of decorations for your farm if you fork over some real coin um. And that's kind of annoying for people like me who are cheap and don't want to give them

any money. And the thing is, at certain point, the game or software toy, it's like like I said, I don't like to call it is sort of semi unplayable because there's a point at which everything to make it fun you really need to give them money for it really doesn't change, and it's the point of whe you go, yeah, you know, I'm really don't want to do this, and the game also encourages you to try and loop your

friends into the games. Yeah, so yeah, that's that's probably I'm guessing that's why people voted for it, because it feels almost invasive, um when you're on Facebook, unless you you go so far as to block it. And we had other Facebook games like games that are similar to this uh nominated as well, but Farmville was the one that actually got the most votes. And also I think has been accused of sort of copying earlier game called farm Town, Yes, that had very similar game mechanics. Some

people would say similarity to the point of identity. But well, this this model has uh has extended across Facebook and and other venues as well. I mean, there are some iPad games um that I've you know, tried out on my tablet that basically they're the same kinds of things. Had your friends otherwise you're not going to get very far in this game. I'm like, I don't know anybody else who's playing this. Plus I don't want to spam

everybody with email blasts saying joined my game. Yeah. I mean if Jonathan's playing and I'm playing, then yeah, I'll send Jonathan a note, Hey, send me a free chicken, right, But I don't want to send that to everybody on my list because you know it's annoying. Yes, it would, So let's move on to our next nomination. Now, this, this next nomination is interesting because it's a terrible, terrible game that was designed to be a terrible, terrible game,

and it's called Desert Bus. Now, Desert Bus was actually a mini game that was part of a larger package of games for a product that never saw full production. It was for the Sega c D system. Gosh, barely remember that the whole system was a failure, not just this game, but it was a mini game that was

included in Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors. Um. A lot of the stuff that was in Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors ended up being used in other Penn and Teller products like Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends and things like that. But this one idea, which supposedly came

from Eddie goad det Ski, who is a producer in Hollywood. Uh, this one idea was to create an an ultra realistic and by that I mean boring game in which you drive a bus from Tucson in Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time, and the buses top speed is around forty five miles per hour. And there's no scenery, there's there's no traffic, there are no passengers on the bus. It's just you driving this bus to Las Vegas and uh in real time. That takes, by the way, about

eight hours. And if you get all the way to Las Vegas, you get a point and then you have to drive back. But what happens if you need to you know, stop and eat dinner, go to the bathroom. While the game does not have a pause function, so the time would just keep going. Also, the bus, you might say, why don't you just set it up so that the bus drives automatically, like, you know, just put

something on the up arrow key on the gas pedal. Yeah. Uh, Well, the bus also has a problem with its suspension and it pulls to the right, so you have to constantly adjust the bus so that it will it will be on the road. Now, there is a port of this game on the web. You can play a web based

version of Desert Bus if you want to. Now you might ask why would you want to, Well, some of it's just kind of like grousing slash bragging rights that you know you actually bothered to take eight hours of your life and get this virtual bus from Tucson to Las Vegas. But another group called Loading Ready Run had an interesting idea. UM that's a four person comedy group, and they decided to hold a desert bus marathon session as a fundraising effort to raise money for the charity

child Child's Play. Child's Plays a charity that gets a lot of attention particularly around Penny Arcade Expo or Packs because the Packs guys also hold um auctions for Child's Play and it's it's providing video games and other kinds of stuff like that to kids who are in hospitals and who are recovering or suffering from serious illnesses and conditions as a nice charity, to do something nice for

the kids. Right. So, these four members of Loading Ready Run took shifts at driving the desert bus UM they ended up driving for more than four and a half days. The first time, which was in two thousand seven, they drove for around four and a half days and they scored six points at four and a half days driving the bus back and forth. Uh And since then they've held the marathon several more times and have raised more than four hundred thousand dollars collectively. Yeah for child's play,

which is pretty impressive. Um. But yeah, the game is online, so if you just do a search for Desert Bus, you can find a web based version of this game and play it yourself. Well, we've got more to say about the worst video games of all time, but until then, we're gonna have to do a little side quest here. It looks like our princesses in another castle, so gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back. Apparently our number six game. It's also a game for people

who are into really not happy driving experience. Oh my gosh, this game is probably it's amazing to me that this game was ever released because it is. It is as unfinished a game as I have ever seen. And I've seen the reviews for this game, like I've seen video reviews of this game that show the problems, and it's you can't believe that such a product was ever released

to the public. I guess we should say what it is. Well, racing games are so popular, and you know that you can race just about anything in all kinds of video games, so you would imagine that one that would allow you to race tractor trailers would be fun, but big rigs over the road racing for the PC for the PC isn't It was a two thousand three third person racing games.

So you're outside the truck looking at the truck. Yeah, and and let's see if we can figure out where some of the problems of this game may reside, shall we? What's a racing game in which you don't really race anyone else? Right? Well, first, the first problem is that it was build as a game where the object was that you were transporting illegal goods uh, and you were being chased by police. So it was built as a game where you had to drive fast and evade the cops.

What cos right? So when you actually get the game, it turns out there's nothing has nothing to do with any of that. Instead, it was supposed to be, at least once you've got the game going, it was supposed to be a racing game where you're racing against other competitors, but the game developer never actually bothered to put artificial intelligence competitors in there, so they they never leave the starting line. It's a race where all the other people

racing don't do anything. They just sit there. So you're you're running and they're behind you and they don't do anything. Beyond that, though, it gets worse than that. Well, what about the realistic physics. Yeah, there weren't any Um you could drive over anything like driving on the road or driving off the road, or driving through a building. None of that made any difference. You. You traveled at the same speed unless you were backing up, in which case

you would accelerate infinitely until you let off the reverse button. Yeah, I understand why. Again I didn't play this one, but I understand too that stopping was hyper realistic too, Like if you had perfect breaks, you just let up on the accelerator and you stop. Yeah, exactly, you just go to go to do that. Yeah, there's there's no sense of momentum or inertia. You just the universe would would would halt around you. Um, you could drive off the

edge of the map and into gray nothingness. So it made it kind of a metaphysical philosophical game at that point. I've done that before, and we've known plenty of metaphysical philosophical truck drivers, and that's really not a dig. We really do know quite a few of them. Um, but yeah, it was just you know, collision detection to speak of. Uh. There were five tracks listed in the game, only four

of them were playable. I don't know how that would be a disappointment considering how horrible the game was, Like, oh great, you mean I can't play this other terrible track that I would never love? And uh ex plays Morgan Webb she she refused to rate this game because ex Play has a rating system of one to five stars. There's no zero, there's no zero, and she refused to even give it one star, so she would not review it. She played it, she just wouldn't give it a review.

So yeah, that's that's pretty bad. So that was a that was a two thousand three game. But we're gonna go a little further back for our next one, right right, Yeah, this is a a port of a very popular arcade game. Um, and for this is when I've played back on when I had an Atariet Wall. Actually I still have an Attar when I had it hooked up the TV, but I didn't actually own this one. I did, Um, so shall we Yeah this is fifth place, by the way, for those of you keeping count, So in fifth place

is pac Man. Yeah, pac Man, so reported the Namco Giant. It's often called the worst coin op port ever. Donkey Kong wasn't great, Oh no, not, I don't just agree, but pac Man was. Honestly, it was terrible. Yeah, At least Donkey Kong remotely resemble the game that it was

based on. Yeah, pac Man. Some people have said that if it had not been called pac Man, if it if it hadn't been referred to as that, and it had a slightly different appearance for the character that you play, that people probably wouldn't be quite so hard on it. Because the puzzle, the mazes were a little challenging to get through, and you know, the gameplay worked properly, like you know, you'd press left on the joystick and pac

Man would go left. You know. It wasn't like, you know, Big Rigs what we just talked about, that a game that was just pure broken, right. There was no literally no way to play that game. It end up being like a weird sandbox game, but it wasn't intended to be one. Pacman played the way it was supposed to more or less. It's just that it was such a poor translation of what a game that people were really familiar with that it was it could be nothing more

than a disappointment to anyone who bought it. And in fact, pac Man is one of the titles that people often will use as an example when they talk about why

the video game industry collapsed in nineteen in North America. Well, they made so many copies of this anticipating that people would want to play it at home, but when they actually got their hands on it and moved, I mean, pac Man is a game where you actually need reflexes and you need to pay attention to what's going on in pac Man on the move so much more slowly, and the graphics were poor. The sound wasn't as good.

I remember when it came out for the R and it looked so much better except non centering joystick, which makes playing in a four direction may is very very difficult. So that just didn't help anything. Which is such a

huge flop at home, right, Yeah, it was. It was a terrible, terrible game, And I completely agree with this being on on a list for bad video games because it you know, even if you even if you say that the game play was okay, the effect it had on the industry was so terrible that by definition it's a bad video game because it helped bring the industry to its knees in nine and it wouldn't be until Nintendo launched the NES in North America that we would

see a recovery of that market. Um. So now next, we have a tie for third place. You know, normally we go from fifth to fourth, but we have the same number of votes came in for our our third and fourth place, so tie for third. And these two are more modern. Yeah. We we did an entire episode about one of these, Duke Newcombe Forever. Now, we did

do a full episode about Duke nukemb Forever. So we're not going to spend too much time right now talking about it because now, Grant, when we did the episode, it was before the game had come out hotly anticipated for a decade, more than a decade. Yeah, it was round. Yeah, it was originally announced as a title for the PC. It was a a sequel to Duke NUKEMB three d um. It was originally announced inn but it didn't launch until eleven. Yeah, that's a long time for to wait for a video game, right,

I mean, award right up there with Dao Sex. Yeah, Wired gave it the Vaporware of the Year award multiple years in a row. In fact that it got discontinued from the voting because and then it was brought back because it wasn't just that it was vaporware. It was that just when you were prepared to say Duke nukemb Forever was never going to come out, there would be some sort of rumble from three D Realms. They would say no, no, no, no, no, it's really gonna come out.

And then you'd have to say, well, now we have to put it back on the list, because you know, we were ready to write it off forever, but they say it's coming out, So of course they rights to the game passed into other people's hands. Three Realms collapsed. Yeah, and they did. Yeah, they finished it. Um. They did not receive wide acclaim when it launched, a lot of people panned this game, which of course explains why it's

on our list and how many people voted for it. Um. A lot of the criticisms about the game said that it was it just looked dated. It was it was like a first person shooter designed for the late nineties. You know, it didn't have the elements that you expect in the first person shooter today and uh that even even for one in the nineties, it would have been great because like in the nineties, you would have a lot of fast paced action and you would have a

ton of different weapons at your disposal. Duke Knew Them Forever was more plodding and uh, well, there's no way for me to word this in a way that's not negative. It was a slow, slow game. It could be boring at times, it could be ages between one encounter with an enemy and another, and you can only carry two weapons at a time. So it took away some of the stuff that made those games in the nineties so much fun and uh, and didn't replace it with anything better.

And also the juvenile humor in the Duke Newcomb series. I think it may have worn a little thin. It's just people don't find it as amusing as it used to be, partially because we've had other games come out that have much more biting satire and uh, and you know, they're they're just as edgy as Duke newkemb was, but

they are more relevant. Like the Grand Theft Auto series is known for its dark humor, the Fallout three series or the Fallout series in general is known for its dark humor, and so you get to do Newcomb and you're just like, well, this feels like you're in a uh you know, you're in a locker room with a bunch of really really immature guys, and that that's the level of humor and it just never gets above that. And so I think all of those things contributed to

it being ranked on our list. But what about our next game that's also tied for third place? You think that a game written by um an Oxford professor of bioethics might actually rank up there, But Bennett Foddy's game qw O P or wop um got a lot of negative votes. Actually, I saw this profiled and wired before I ever tried to play it. Um, there's a need little article about him. Uh, and I do mean little.

It's very short, um. But basically, in this game, you are using the keys Q W O P hence the name, to move the legs of a runner on a track ye a runner named quop for a hundreds And that's important to know. It's not it's supposed to be a limp runner on the hundred meter dash, and the Q and W keys control the runners thighs, and the O n P keys control the runners calves, and you're supposed to try and coordinate these movements in such a way

as to propel the runner down the hundred meters. By the way, this runner has apparently no upper buddy control whatsoever, and if if the runner gets even a little bit off balance, it's time to tip over. And I have seen so many people play this game and get negative scores because they would just start tipping backwards almost instantaneously. And as soon as you touch the ground, that's where you're that's that's your score. And uh, and we'll keep in mind it's a hundred meter dash. Um. I've never

seen anyone complete this in fewer than twenty minutes. But the furthest I've gotten is twelve point eight meters. Didn't you send me a video somebody who had finished in about four minutes. I think they sped it up. What they what they ended up doing was they used it so that they made Quop do a split, and then

they just kind of jimmied it. He finally like he literally inched down a hundred meters and and at fifty By the way, you are you are you encounter your first obstacle hurdle, and at a hundred meters there's a long jump, but you can go through the hurdle like you don't have to. You don't have to actually jump the hurdle. You can keep going as long as you're able to land on your feet or however you're getting across. Um, you can you can pretty much ignore the hurdle and

the long jump is completely uh optional. Yes, if you just have to cross that finish line. If you're if your experience with video game running is track and field from the nineties where you just had to pound buttons as fast as you could. Um, you will not win at this game. This game is. This game is really, really, really hard, which I think is why it got a lot of votes. It's it's frustrating, and it seems it seems after you've played it for about a minute, it

seems completely pointless. Oh, we should say it's web based. It's a web based so you can find it on Foddy's side. He wrote this in two thousand and eight and it's still up, so if you want to give it a shot, go ahead. It's it's kind of and it's kind of funny. It also gives you an idea of how well your brain is controlling your walking movements, because if you were trying to walk with your you know,

control your own legs with your fingers. You I don't know that I would do it better, but it takes a lot of coordination to be able to Like, even when I got twelve point eight meters, it was mostly luck. I was timing it just right. But even as I was playing, I was like, oh, I should have I should have let up on the calf muscle and continued on the thigh muscle for a split second longer, and I would have been able to get a little further.

I can never do that when I'm actually playing. Like, when I'm actually playing, I'm like, press these two buttons, now, switch through these two buttons, now switch back to those two buttons. And that's that's my tactic. It's probably why I've only gotten twelve points in Maybe you should get onto a gurp Oh yeah, I've played that one too, which is his mountain climbing game, and apparently it's very very similar. It's actually that one I can play really well.

I've gotten pretty far in girp Um. That one makes more sense to me, I've got better coordination with that one. But the but yeah, quop is really hard. So um, you know who's really good at controlling their legs? Who's the he? But someone who doesn't have to use them? Is this going into our second place? Yes? Because I mean, you know, if you can fly, yeah, then why would you need to use your legs? Yes? Talking about our

second place. Superman the New Superman Adventures. Yeah, also known as Superman sixty four sixty four It wasn't its official name, right, It's good that it wasn't Superman the New Batman Adventures. That would be really confusing. Yeah, like Superman Little Pony that it would be weird. It might have been a better game then though. This was released in for the Nintendo sixty four and probably shouldn't have been. And again this we're talking about licensed character you know all we

talked about with Back to the Future. There we're gonna make some money. The history of licensed characters, actually, we're gonna get to that again very short. The history of licensed characters in video games is a pretty ugly one.

There are a few games that stand out as being remarkable, like truly good games that use licensed characters, but the general rule of thumb is that if it's a licensed character game, it's it's got a good that the odds are against it, right, just based on the number of bad games that use licensed characters. Now, there are other games, like you know, Arkham Asylum, which are fun. I mean, that's a Batman game, and that's a lot of fun. I thought you were going to bring up Golden Eye.

Golden Eye fantastic one of the best games ever made, also made for the Nintendo sixty four, one of the top first person shooter games of that era. Fantastic game.

Superman not so much so. The story behind this game, the actual story in the game, that is, is that you play the part of Superman who has been tricked, as he often is, I Lex Luthor to enter into a virtual representation of Metropolis, and you have to complete these different tasks and puzzles that Lex sets up for you in order to escape and beat the tar out

of him. Tank I needed exit. Yeah, so the first test of your skills involves flying through a series of hoops, because yeah, I remember his big battle with Doomsday where he had to fly through about fourteen hoops before. No, that doesn't make any sense and I jumped through hoops every day after that, you might have to pick up a car and throw it, because again that's what Superman would do in Metropolis. Is that you know, you're thinking, like you're driving down with your family, You're having a

nice day out. You might be going to go see the Metropolis Museum of Art, and the next thing you know, some jerk has just flown over, picked up your car and thrown at forty blocks. Yeah, that's that will ruin your whole day. But anyway, so you would also have to do things I fight famous Superman villains. But the controls were really sluggish, the gameplay was incredibly repetitive, and it has been ranked as one of the worst video games of all time, not just by our listeners, but

by other publications. I mean it has multiple I hesitate to use the word awards, but multiple notifications of it being the worst, one of the worst video games, and in fact, in one ranking I saw, it was ranked as the number one and our number one was number two. Hey, we are almost through with our episode about the worst video games of all time. Hope you're enjoying it. But before we conclude, let's take another quick break so now I guess we should move on to what our listeners

have voted. And I'm sure you've already guessed it based upon what has already been listed. But what yourur listeners have voted as the worst video game of all time? And I should point out this received twenty nine percent of the overall votes we received. And keep in mind, you could nominate any title at all, and and I'm I have a small concern. That's because we've mentioned it as a terrible game, that that you all thought that we were coaching you to vote for this time, and

we did. We have talked about this game being a terrible game before, but when when we actually asked for votes, I made sure we didn't mention any particular title. I didn't want to change anyone's mind or put in a suggestion. I'm sure that happened anyway based upon some of the comments and everything. But our worst video game is of all time, Chris, do the honors? E T the Extraterrestrial for the R two game published by Atari in about

ten minutes. Yeah, so keep in mind that Atari went the route where they were allowing all sorts of developers to create games for there. It didn't have to be vetted through Atari, right, Nintendo had the whole certification process. Atari did not. But this there's no excuse here because Atari was the publisher behind this game in the first place.

Uh yeah, So then this game, you take the role of e T. The Extraterrestrial from the beloved Steven Spielberg documentary of the same name, and your task was to locate three pieces of an interstellar telephone so that you could assemble them and phone home, which would summon a spaceship that would rescue you. Uh. You did this just

like in the movie. I mean, we all remember that scene in the movie where e T had to walk into a field of pits, raise his head up, look for the flash, and descend into the pit to retrieve a piece of the interstellar phone. I mean you remember that scene right, as probably no, that scene did not exist. But in them, you would walk into one of the screens, actually a couple of the screens would have several pits

on the screen. You push a button which would raise ET's head and he would do a sound like this, and then what if you were lucky, one of the pits would flash, which would indicate that one of the pieces of the phone was in that pit, and you would walk over to the pit, fall in, pick up the piece of phone, and then you would press the button which would raise ET's head wall and you would

levitate up the pit. Now, most of the game is an overhead view, but when you were in a pit, it was a side view like a cut and you would you would levitate to the top of the pit and then immediately fall in again because it was really hard that once you got to the top of the pit, the screen would change so that you were looking at the overhead view again and you had to manipulate ET all over to the edge of the pit so that you were on the ground again. Right, So you're you

go from a side view to an overhead view. And I can't tell you how many times I fell down to pit over and over and over again because I thought it was clear. But and every time you fall, and every time you use your powers, you use up energy. You have a limited amount of energy, and after you use it all up, you die. Yeah, Well, you have to find dots, I mean pieces. He had a little square pixel which would be represent one Reese's pieces, and you would eat that and that would give you a

little more energy. They would also had doctors who would walk around and if they found you, they'd pick you up and move you to a different screen, and you would lose a little time, or worse, you would find an FBI guy and he would chase you down and if he touched you, he would take away your phone and he had to start over again. And so you would do this over and over again till you had

the three pieces of phone. Then you could go to one part of the game, the one section where there's an icon on the screen that tells you you can make your phone call here, and you had to find it because it wasn't always in the same place. You would make your phone call, and then you had to make it to a different screen where the space ship would actually land because apparently you can't make a phone call at the landing site. Oh no, that'd be too easy.

So then you have to make your way to the other screen and get in the little spaceship and you would then start the game over at the same difficulty level immediately. And this game was awful, terrible, terrible game so bad that people the word got out about how disappointed this game was. That people stopped buying it, and uh Atari had produced thousands of cartridges because the movie was so successful. So Atari goes out and makes thousands and thousands of copies of ET. The reviews come in,

people hate it, copies go unsold. Eventually, stores start to send their unsold copies of ET back to Atari, and Atari grinds them up and then trucks them out into New Mexico and aries them. You know, um, you know what they did with that? What's up? They used it to pave a road and then you drive this bus right across the desert and you get one point every time you run over ET exactly. Yeah, it was, and then you fall in a pit and then physics in

that game are terrible. But anyway, yeah, so that was. This was again just like pac Man. This is another one of those games that was pointed to as being one of the reasons the video game industry crashed in Now. You know a lot of the games that came out for they were these games made by independent developers that were just terrible. But it was because you know, the market was flooded with terrible games and Attari was not

helping itself out by publishing some of them itself. Yeah, I had some of those games too, and I had and you know, I've mentioned it before. I was actually surprise that nobody voted for the sword Quest series. But my guess is that Ataria was in such decline that none of our listeners actually bought that but me, since they didn't even finish the last game on the series. But we didn't. A couple of people did vote for

some games that were patently offensive. We didn't mentioned that before, and we didn't we weren't including those specifically because we were talking about games that were just horrible games now were offensive. These were games that were meant to be enjoyable. They didn't have an ulterior motive, right right, There are

some of those two. But the games that had an ulterior motive where the whole purpose was to perpetuate hatred or to make a joke out of uh inhumane acts, we didn't include those because really, I mean, first of all, I refused to give them any more publicity than they've already had. And second of all, I I was the spirit of the thing was to think of games that were meant to be enjoyable, fun, games that just weren't

for one reason, or another. Um, let's talk about some of the really quickly, because we were already getting pretty far up there. But we have to talk about some of the other games that got on got some votes that I was surprised didn't get more votes. But again, since you had every single game open to you, you know, one of those was Aquaman Battle for Atlantis. This game is nigh unplayable. It again had one of the worst

reviews ever. Explay did an amazing hysterical review of this game. UM. I think they called it like Power of the Mullet or something like that in their in their review, but it was terrible. And games that, um, we're specifically designed to be marketing tools for for brands, so stuff like I actually had the kool Aid game for the Oh Yeah, oh No, and then they had the Avoid the Annoyed game for Dominoes. There were all the Burger King games that came out for the Xbox. There was a McDonald's

game as well. We got we got votes for those, but they were it was usually like one yeah, like one vote for one of those titles, so there wasn't a lot of but I think that that deserves mentioned. Games that are specifically just marketing employs tend to get hate hated by gamers, which you know, that kind of makes sense, like gamers won a game that was designed just to create enjoyment, be fun and challenging, not a game that's designed to make you want to go out

and buy a pizza. Teenager Ninja Turtles also falls into that category. I'm just kidding. So and then there were some of the games that were on the list that we were a little surprised to see votes for. Uh. And in some cases, I think it's what people were voting on games that either they're just tired of seeing or they don't they are not particularly good at that game and they find it frustrating, and other people like it, and that's why they hate it, because it's a game

that they personally just don't get. Um. But some of those titles include things like Angry Birds, which I think probably that's a saturation thing, right, It's just because it's everywhere, people are going to be tired of it. I think that was farm built. Yeah, Uh, we fit, we fit. I don't even think if we fit as a game, And that's why I didn't really like that. That's not really a game so much I mean, there's a game element to it, but it's not I don't call it

a game. Halo, which I think a lot of people would argue as one of the better first person shooters for a console system, keeping in mind that PC based first person shooters are much more sophisticated and require a totally different skill set than a console one. I've heard computer first person shooter players refer to console first person shooters as kind of dumbing down the whole thing, and I kind of get that, but it's it's a different, you know, kind of different mode. And I personally love

the Halo series. I can see your Halo. Thank you Pitfall for the ad. That was a classic title like that, along with River Radar, two of my favorite DRED titles, But there were people who didn't like it because it had a repetitive gameplay activisions early days there Super Mario sixty four another game that got great review US, but we got some votes for that Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator, which again I don't really think of as a game.

Flight simulator and flight simulators, by their very nature tend to be very, very complex, and sometimes overwhelmingly so because they are trying to be so true to life, and yet you're using a different interface to control that vehicle than you would if you were in the cockpit, So there's an extra layer of complexity, you know. So that the votes also we got some votes for Call of

Duty and Modern Warfare, which that was kind of interesting. Um, so not everybody agrees obviously on what is the worst game of all time? Although overwhelmingly ET ran away with this Like it was, there wasn't even close. ET have way more votes than all the others combined. But like I said, all the votes that were we received for everything went to ET galloped everywhere he walked, did you Yes, it's true, Yeah, that's true. Did you have any game? Well?

You mentioned the what was the sword Quest series? That was a pretty bad There was supposed to be a contest if he solved all four parts of it, and the fourth part never came out in the third one got limited distribution. But I couldn't see the point of doing what you were supposed to be doing, right, I mean,

I just really couldn't follow the sequence. Yeah, I think I have to say that out of all the ones I've I've mentioned, e T is probably the the one I think of as the worst that I've ever personally played. I've played a lot of really bad games, but I tend to forget them because I have access to more games now, so if I play a really bad one, I just switch and go to a good one so

it doesn't leave as big an impression on me. Back when I was a kid, my options were somewhat limited, and so I would play a bad game over and over because it's what I had. Ah, you poor thing. I know here I am complaining about video games. Poor me, I have played a game. Um, don't cry for me, Argentina. Did you enjoy? That was what I told you to do? So, yeah, that was our episode on the worst video Games of

All time. You guys pick some doozies. Maybe someday we'll do another like follow up to that, because of course, there have been lots of video games releas since two thousand eleven, certainly, and some of you may have very strong opinions, like, wait, there was this other game that was even worse than all the ones you mentioned, and you didn't talk about it, so, uh, we might try it again, I said at the time. Maybe we'll do a more concentrated approach, because when you leave it wide open.

You get you know, five people responding, and a hundred of them all give a vote for an obscure title. But that's one vote per obscure title, so they don't amount to anything. So we'll figure something out. But we want to talk a little bit about some of the worst video games we've ever played. So, Lauren, you know, since you weren't available to talk about the video games of all time, did you have any that you wanted

to add to the discussion? Yeah, okay, So, so there were two that I've played personally that stand out in my mind as being particularly terrible. Um. The first is Back to the Future parts two and three for the n S. That's the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Um and okay, both of the things that I'm going to mention our uh film or otherwise, you know, other media titles that

have been ported over, which is never really a recipe for. Yeah, there's only a few examples of ones like Batman Arkham Asylum, Like that's an example of a great licensed game, but there's so few of those. Oh yeah, yeah, and okay, So so this one was developed by Beam Software and released by l j N and it was rated unforgiving in game facts. Um, it was. It was just basically impossible to play. The music was terrible, the graphics were terrible.

There were some parts of it that were just just meaningless. Yeah. Yeah, so let's see other one. The other one is the X Files game that's for the PC and or the PS one or PS X. Uh. Yeah, I remember seeing video reviews of that. I never played it myself. I want to hear more about your experience here, all right. So so this one was developed by UM and I think this is how you pronounce it, Hyperbowl Studios, not hyperbole. Not hyperbole, Yeah, hyper bowl that's how it's spelled. Um.

It was released by Fox Interactive. Makes sense of the twenty century Foxes doing the X Files in and or nine, depending on which system you bought it for. Um. So this was largely an f m v A full and and it wasn't even starring Molder and Scully. Is the problem, Like, because the actors were busy, you know, doing their TV show, so they had to get this other dude to kind of interact very occasionally with Molder and Scully, and the puzzles were just terrible, Like it wasn't it wasn't thought

out very well in terms of game design. Like I think the first puzzle in the game was you sit down at your office being you, being this this this other agent character, and the first thing you have to figure out is what your computer passport is, as though you wouldn't know what your own computer I mean, actually, to be fair, I guess I forget my own passwords

about once a week. But that's still that's I mean, how you can't be more secure, right, like you know your you know your system secure, when even you are not aware of what your passworts are. Wow. Yeah, I was trying to think of any others I want to add, because again, we recorded that first episode back in two thousand and eleven, and you know, I've played games since then.

But here's the thing is that the way I tend to play games these days, I tend to buy them well after they've had their initial run, simply because I don't have a whole lot of time on my hands. So I'm often playing a game that came out, you know, a year earlier earl or somewhere around that time. Uh still while other games are coming out, and because I haven't finished that game, I don't just immediately jump on

the other. So like Skyrim, I didn't get that till almost a year after it had come out, maybe maybe seven or eight months, and people have perhaps vetted the fact that it's worth your while by the time you purchase, and yeah, by that time people have played it, I've seen reviews, I've heard buzz about it, and I've decided whether or not it's for me. It's very rare when I'll go out and get a game like the day

it comes out. One of the examples of one where I did do that was a Grand Theft Auto of five, and I wouldn't go the worst game of all time or anything close to that. The actual single player experience is pretty phenomenal if you like those kind of games. If you don't like those kind of games, obviously, obviously you're not going. But I really enjoyed the game. I enjoyed the story, I like the characters. I didn't think

it was necessarily groundbreaking. It wasn't nearly as dark as Grand Theft Auto four was, but uh, I enjoyed it. But the online part, which was released two weeks after the game came out, you know, they had a lot of of promises of what was going to come, and some of those promises as of the recording of this podcast have yet to be delivered upon, like being able to do heists in multiplayer. Heists in the single player game were fantastic. They were you had to coordinate between

three different characters. You could swap between the characters during the highest each one is doing something specific, really kind of complicated stuff like you could actually determine which of two pathways you would want to take, whether you wanted to go the subtle route or just kick the doors open exactly. So it was really a fun, dynamic thing

in the single player game. So everyone's really looking forward to it, but it hasn't come out for multiplayer again as of the recording of this podcast, and that has been a pretty big disappointment. So the single player fantastic multiplayer was one of those things where people got tired of it. In fact, I don't know how many people

are still playing multiplayer. I know there are, but I don't know how many of them there are because a lot of people just got they were able to do everything you could do, and you're like, well, between the promise in the follow through and it was it was because it was really an ambitious project and just didn't quite live up to it when it launched. Not to say that they won't eventually get there. I just wonder how big a population they'll have once they finally do.

But yeah, I don't have sadly don't have a whole lot of stories about terrible video games I've played. I mean, even that's not really sad, that's that's kind of okay. Yeah, that wraps up that classic episode of the worst video Games of All Time. Something to always keep in mind is that pretty much every case, no matter how bad a video game might turn out to be, we should remember typically there are people who are working very hard on those games, and sometimes stuff just doesn't work out

for any number of reasons. But that doesn't mean that those people who are working on it were in the wrong or weren't skilled. Sometimes stuff just doesn't go well. And uh, I wanted to put that out there because a lot of the times when I talk about like the worst of all time stuff, it sounds like I'm slagging off on the people who are responsible for it. But that's not always you know, merited. Sometimes it is

if people are like running a scam or something. But in the case where people are genuinely setting out to do something and they just fall short, I feel like we should give them a little compassion. So just reminding myself as well as you nice folks out there, that

compassion can go a long way. Well, speaking of compassion, if you feel like that there's an episode I should be covering, you know, maybe there's an update I need to do, maybe there's a technology you want to know more about, you should reach out to me, but nicely over on Twitter the handle I use as tech stuff h s W. Now I'll tell to you again really soon.

Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H