
The man who made 'the worst video game in history' - otoolep
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35560458
======
SeanDav
Talk about screwed up priorities. Atari spent $21 million on ET video game
rights, $5 million on an advertising campaign and gave 1 programmer, 5 weeks
to deliver something that would justify that cost. No wonder they went
bankrupt!

~~~
Nutmog
In fairness, what else could they have done, given the time constraints? They
even hired support staff to make sure he got fed! They surely didn't have
source control or other systems to make it safe/easy for multiple programmers
to work on it together. I imagine the code is some monolithic thing full of
complicated Atari hacks that's best managed by being all together in one
person'd mind.

Perhaps they could have made two games in parallel so if one failed, they'd
still have a spare.

~~~
cornholio
Instead of force feeding the genius, how about giving him a competent team of
10 average programmers, and 15 testers / players ? This way, the genius if
free to imagine great games, not fiddle with screenbuffer bits and lose all
contact with reality.

~~~
kabdib
Well, adding people to a project that's already impossibly late will make it
even later.

Atari had plenty of people imagining great games; they didn't ship much
content that was compelling, and were generally held in contempt by the "real"
game programmers (e.g., the folks in the coin-op division).

Also, the 2600 has no screen buffer. It's all real-time raster generation with
the CPU in cycle-by-cycle lockstep with the beam. Game design on the 2600 is
_very_ tightly bound to what the hardware is capable of. For instance, you
can't just say "I want this game to have a spinning blue cube that defends
against enemy fire," you have to see if you can make one. If you're a Real
Programmer, maybe you can (and you might ship a killer game).

If you're a poser in marketing or management who's wondering what all the fuss
about this programming stuff is about and why the hell people are complaining
about those blue cubes you demanded, you run the company into the ground doing
design that way.

~~~
kabdib
One fine day someone in the Home Computer marketing division decided that
"Games involving shooting things are bad, we're going to stop making them."

Six months later there were massive purges in marketing.

Not soon enough, IMHO. I might respect a moral position, but mayyyybe you
should have a business plan to back up your moral stance (if that plan is
"We're going to go out of business because our resolve is strong" then, okay,
I'll respect that too -- but _say_ it so we can at least have a discussion
about your continued employment). The games that resulted from that decision
were horrible and never even paid for their development.

------
mrspeaker
Anyone who is in to Atari 2600 knows that ET is verrrrrry far from the worst
game available on that system! And it's so sad making it a great game would
have take so few tweaks!
[http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/](http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/)

~~~
knieveltech
This. I played the hell out of that game when it came out. I mean, who in
their right mind would rank "Skiing" or "Combat" higher that this game?

~~~
VonGuard
Combat is, frankly, one of the greatest videogames ever made. Easily in the
top ten. If you don't understand why, you've missed out on a great deal of
history.

The Atari 2600 was designed, almost exclusively, to play Combat. It has the
ability to animate only 3 sprites: player 1, player 2 and "ball". There are
many hacks to get around this, but we're talking about the pre-release period
of the Atari Video Computer System, AKA VCS, the Atari 2600.

The only other game in mind for the system was Pong, which actually come out
for the system in the form of Video Olympics, and it was created by one of the
2600's TIA chip designers, Joe Decuir. That chip literally synced up the
processor with the television's refresh rate, and had each scan line drawn out
of processing exactly when the electron beam was moving over the proper
position on screen. The 2600 has no frame buffer. Essentially, when it's in
the CPU, it's drawn on the screen. The machine only had 1024 bits, not bytes,
of RAM.

But that's neither here nor there. For more info on the fascinating hardware
that was the Atari 2600, read Racing the Beam by Ian Bogost and Nick
Montefort. [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/racing-
beam](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/racing-beam)

Video Olympics could be considered to be the 100-in-1 of Pong games, with
dozens of variants on the Pong theme. Combat takes the same sort of approach,
with lots of game modes, but the actual gameplay was based on another arcade
game. Rather than just recreating the arcade game, however, Combat expands on
the theme, as Video Olympics did.

Combat is, to my mind, the only game on the 2600 that really holds up to this
day. It's still fun, despite it's graphical limitations. For its day, it was
the Super Mario Brothers of the Atari: that cart you could always turn to for
fun.

It's elegant in its simplicity, extremely deep in its variations on a theme,
and even offers a few asymmetrical playing options: one player can be given a
different set of planes from the other.

Combat is the Go of computer games. Oh, and all the graphics are drawn in 1's
and 0's. Same for the numbers on screen: big binary sprite maps. Here, look!
[http://benfry.com/distellamap/150dpi/combat-
illus-150dpi.png](http://benfry.com/distellamap/150dpi/combat-
illus-150dpi.png)

~~~
spdustin
I played combat ... With my _mother_. The day we got our 2600. It was
accessible, simple, and as a child, made me see my mom in a whole new light.
I'm 40 now, but feel like a little boy realizing that his mom is _fun_
whenever I see that game come up.

Thanks for the memory :)

~~~
bluedino
>> I played combat ... With my mother.

80's kid here. My mom could always kick my butt in a small set of video games.
Galaga, Ms. Pacman, Tetris. But she can't beat the first couple levels in
Super Mario Brothers to save her lift.

------
moonshinefe
It's a cool story. I'm actually really amazed he managed to make a game that
sold 1.5 million copies (@ $40 per unit that'd be $60mil) in _5 weeks_. As the
sole programmer. In an era when programming was far more tricky and low level.

It isn't his fault the managers were being unreasonable in the timeline, and
the company grossly over-manufactured the cartridges.

If I made something in just 5 weeks that sold 1.5 million units, I'd be proud
of myself! hehe, and as others have pointed out, it isn't actually the worst
game.

~~~
hartpuff
> As the sole programmer. In an era when programming was far more tricky and
> low level.

In the same era, early 80s, kids across the UK were single-handedly writing
games packed into 1-16k, some of which (Manic Miner being a prime example)
sold in their hundreds of thousands in the UK market alone.

There was some pretty amazing programming skill going on back then.

~~~
moonshinefe
That sounds pretty interesting. Do you know if anyone has written on that
history yet? It sounds like it'd make a great article in one of the tech
magazines.

~~~
vidarh
Lots and lots. There are and have been any number of Kickstarters for whole
books covering various older game developers.. Also another source that
springs to mind is the Llamasoft blog [1] - Jeff Minter behind Llamasoft fits
the profile above perfectly.

There's also a number of magazines devoted entirely to retro gaming, such as
retroGAMER [2] that regularly have articles and interviews with the people
involved.

[1] [http://minotaurproject.co.uk/](http://minotaurproject.co.uk/)

[2] [http://www.retrogamer.net/](http://www.retrogamer.net/)

------
purpled_haze
If you want to learn much more about this, watch the movie, "Atari: Game
Over":
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3715406/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3715406/)

~~~
otobrglez
Let me save you some time. Atari: Game Over on Netflix ~>
[http://www.netflix.com/title/80042198](http://www.netflix.com/title/80042198)

------
joeax
If we're going to rate Atari games adjusted by the level of effort and time
put into them, I'd say this is one of its better games. This is one developer
coding non-stop for five weeks straight, and he had the temerity to push back
on Spielberg's ideas. I wouldn't say he caused Atari's demise, but rather he
almost saved the company.

~~~
raverbashing
Yes, I'm not blaming someone with a limited time and very limited hardware for
not putting up an all-star game

Of course, not all of the time was coding, there was a lot of hand-drawing
stuff, converting it to numbers, paper calculations, testing, etc

------
freditup
A couple of comments based off of the first ET poster/ad in the article:

* Atari games like this cost $40? That seems expensive!

* Why did Pennsylvania residents have to call a different number?

* Funny that a point of advertising was getting the game before everyone else. It reminds you that these were real games people wanted and not just nostalgic blasts, how I view them now.

(Link to poster:
[http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/1972/production/_...](http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/1972/production/_88241560_976_etposter.jpg))

~~~
sehugg
It sometimes blows my mind that this would be $100 in today's dollars, or
$12.50 per kilobyte.

~~~
voltagex_
$100 is a normal (Xbox One/PS4) game price in Australia.

~~~
coke12
100 AUD is 71 USD.

~~~
junto
Wow. That's really expensive.

Is it a 95% fun tax?

~~~
Buge
Where did you get 95% from? The normal new game price on Amazon seems to be
$60. The Division and Far Cry Primal are both $60 for both systems.

It's an 18% "fun tax".

~~~
junto
It was just an observation that Ozzies seem to get screwed by both
corporations and their own government these days.

95% I plucked out of my head, as an extreme percentual screwing value! :-)

------
Animats
What, not "Desert Bus"?[1][2] (Now available for IoS and Android.)

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/desert-bus-the-
very-w...](http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/desert-bus-the-very-worst-
video-game-ever-created) [2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBr7EhL6Jpg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBr7EhL6Jpg)

~~~
purpled_haze
Played that game for a good hour and a half at least. Fun for the whole
family.

Also, Desert Bus for Hope raises money for charity:
[https://desertbus.org/](https://desertbus.org/)

At time of writing, they've raised $3,112,329.72.

More info here: [https://desertbus.org/about/](https://desertbus.org/about/)

------
pmiller2
Let's not forget, the same person also created the best-selling original title
for the Atari 2600:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yars'_Revenge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yars'_Revenge)

~~~
krapp
...or that his biggest failure still sold over a million copies.

~~~
maaku
We can all aspire to fail that badly!

~~~
krapp
I certainly do.

------
kqr2
Another contender for the title of worst video game:

    
    
      Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing was critically panned. 
      The game's criticism is largely directed at its 
      "blatantly unfinished"[2] state: lack of collision 
      detection and frequent violation of the laws of 
      physics, frequent and major software bugs, poor 
      visuals, and severe lack of functionality. As a result, 
      the game is now widely regarded as one of the worst 
      video games of all time.
    
    

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rigs:_Over_the_Road_Racing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rigs:_Over_the_Road_Racing)

~~~
louprado
There's a long list on Wikipedia
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_notable_fo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_notable_for_negative_reception)

A close friend of mine worked on PaintBrawl, which made the list (#2.11).
PaintBrawl is a first person shooter but used paintball guns since WalMart
wouldn't carry violent video games in the 90s.

~~~
softawre
Every play Splatterball on AOL? That game was great for the time.

~~~
pram
i loved splatterball. iirc it had an hourly charge too, well worth it ;D

------
TheAndruu
This guy's job is what originally attracted me to software engineering... the
idea you could be so good and important to a company that they just pay you to
pump out something awesome and let you do it. Granted this focuses on a
failure, but he had many successes and the failure is Atari's fault for
pushing an impossible deadline.

Of course times have changed and this isn't a practical scenario anymore, and
likely for good reason. But it still reminds me of how a simple DOS game that
a man could do on his own was state of the art. Sure there's the odd app like
Flappy Bird that goes viral and garners success, but that's the luck of the
lottery, really. It's different from back then.

I miss that simplicity.

------
Patrick_Devine
Custer's Revenge has to be the worst Atari 2600 game ever created. Overt
racism and sexism combine with bad game play in one rape-y package.

~~~
pmarreck
Except that it was never really distributed per se and mainly became available
via illegal ROM downloading channels. So whatcha been up to?

~~~
detaro
Wikipedia claims 80,000 sold copies...

~~~
pmarreck
damn, i should have checked.

Found out there are some other games in that genre, some quite a bit more
shocking. :O

------
alblue
There was an interesting write up in 2013 of someone who reverse engineered
the game to develop a fix for the main flaws in the gameplay:

[http://hackaday.com/2013/04/06/fixing-the-worst-video-
game-e...](http://hackaday.com/2013/04/06/fixing-the-worst-video-game-ever-e-
t-for-atari-2600/)

It's quite an interesting read and exposes some of the concerns that must have
been present in designing games for incredibly limited memory at the time,
including where to put the patched instructions.

------
kstenerud
I still don't get why this game is so maligned. It was one of my favorite 2600
games! The only game I liked better was pitfall.

~~~
cozuya
Since E.T. fell in pits over and over this comment makes a lot of sense..

------
ctdonath
My wife remembers that game quite fondly. May be hip to dis it now, but a lot
of people did enjoy it.

~~~
gyardley
I also remember really enjoying it as a six or seven year old. I remember how
excited I was when I figured out how the forest and the government linked to
the various screens with the wells, and which directions would guarantee you
fell into a well and which didn't. Bouncing in my chair excited.

Then again, I had weird taste in video games when I was a kid.

------
CM30
Personally, while I'd say ET was a disaster in a lot of ways, I've always
thought the talk of being the 'worst game ever' is just ridiculously
overblown.

I mean, for the time it was moderately impressive on a technical level, and as
dull as it ended up being, it wasn't really all that broken as far as bugs go.

No, if you want something a bit more worthy of the title, try Big Rigs
(mentioned below), Action52, Superman 64 or Sonic 2006. Something that is
literally broken beyond the point you can easily repair it, and which were a
lot less impressive for the time they were released in.

~~~
DanBC
Burnout for DS was laughably bad.

Rise of the Robots was extensively hyped, but was a terrible game. (Winnable
by mashing A.)

------
gillianseed
Of course this game did not lead to the 'videogame crash' of 83, other
videogame areas like the arcades was doing just fine, and home computers as
well.

The problem was that the console games of the time were incredibly poor in
graphics/sound, and typically also in game play.

Consumers wanted better games than what the console hardware at the time could
produce, once something came along which was a technical leap compared to the
Atari, Coleco etc, it did fantastically well, this was the NES.

------
mschaef
Here's a great piece on how E.T. can be fixed with a few relatively minor
changes:

[http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/](http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/)

As much grief as Warshaw has gotten for E.T., it really is an amazing
accomplishment that he put it together in five weeks. (This is particularly
true, considering the extreme resource impoverishment of the 2600 platform.)

------
gozur88
Hah! The worst? Penn & Teller's _Desert Bus_ is the worst. By design. From the
wiki page:

>The bus contains no passengers, there is little scenery aside from an
occasional rock or bus stop sign, and there is no traffic. The road between
Tucson and Las Vegas is completely straight. The bus veers to the right
slightly, and thus requires the player's constant attention. If the bus veers
off the road it will stall and be towed back to Tucson, also in real time. If
the player makes it to Las Vegas, one point is scored. The player then has the
option to make the return trip to Tucson for another point, a decision which
must be made in a few seconds or the game ends. Players may continue to make
trips and score points as long as their endurance lasts. Although the
landscape never changes, an insect splats on the windshield about five hours
through the first trip, and on the return trip the light fades, with
differences at dusk, and later a pitch black road where the player is guided
only with headlights

------
JacobAldridge
To be described as 'the worst' in any genre on an international site does, of
course, warrant a degree of scale that separates you from those who are,
really, probably no better than you.

The worst movie ever made probably doesn't have enough Rotten Tomato or IMDB
reviews to be considered. I was once told I had hosted the "worst program on
television"[1], but being community tv there were probably 100 people watching
each week and as far as I know no extant copy has survived - we'll never
appear on a "worst TV shows of all time" list.

So almost by definition on a site like BBC.com, 'the worst video game in
history' means 'which also sold tens of thousands of copies [2]', which is a
measure of success and recognition most genuine failures won't achieve.

[1] Someone actually called the station and left a voicemail to that effect. I
took it as a compliment - it meant he'd watched the whole show, because nobody
calls to complain if they just changed the channel. [2] Or, in ET's case, 1.5
million.

~~~
CM30
That's a good point about any list. Best game ever, worst game ever, hardest
level/boss/game ever, you name it. The percentage of works or parts of works
that ever become popular enough to get noticed is dwarfed by the (couple of
hundred) times larger number that simply fall off the radar or never get any
attention in the first place.

I mean, what's the hardest game ever made? Probably if you're really picky,
some ultra obscure shoot em up or kaizo esque Mario ROM hack. But the average
list will only name titles like Battletoads, Dark Souls and I Wanna Be the
Guy, because those are the ones many people (including the authors) have
actually heard of.

~~~
Grishnakh
I would think that a "worst [item] ever" list would generally be limited in
sensible ways, such as with a video game, having the requirement that it
actually be commercially sold. Obviously, any amateur could make some crappy
little game and give it to his friends and no one would ever know or care
about it; when we think of "the worst video game in history", we're going to
naturally assume that it's a commercially-sold game. So some Mario ROM hack
would not qualify, IMO. Even better would be to limit it to games with some
decent amount of distribution.

Same goes for movies: a "worst movies" list would probably be limited to
movies that actually made theatrical release, not someone's home movie, or
even a straight-to-DVD movie.

~~~
CM30
To be fair, that doesn't actually limit the number all that much:

[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Horrible/VideoGameGene...](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Horrible/VideoGameGenerations)

And much of:

[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Horrible/VideoGamesOth...](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Horrible/VideoGamesOther)

And everything on Hardcore Gaming 101's Weekly Kusoge series here:

[http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/kusoge/kusoge.htm](http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/kusoge/kusoge.htm)

There's also the fact a lot of games are distributed pretty well (and
sometimes even sold), legality be damned. Is there any more legitimacy to a
bad (and likely illegal) app store game featuring characters from Mario or
Pokemon than a game mod or fan game featuring the same thing? People sold Doom
Wad collections in boxes in shops at one point, does that count?

Even assuming only legal retail games, there's an awful lot of somewhat
obscure shovelware that could fill up an entire (very long) list. Like the
tons of PS2 and Wii shovelware (the latter's games were often ported from the
former) by companies like Data Design and Phoenix Games.

Like:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8QzQp57oI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8QzQp57oI)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk8qbSISQI4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk8qbSISQI4)

A worst game ever list would be incredibly hard to make to any decent degree,
simply because you have so many possible choices to include on it, especially
if you go looking outside the most popular titles.

~~~
Grishnakh
You've got a point. Maybe the worst-of list should be limited to games that
achieved a certain amount of sales, to keep the obscure stuff out. Also,
personally I'd be more interested in worst-of lists if they were restricted to
certain years, or perhaps even certain platforms. For instance, a worst-of-
NES-games list would be much more interesting than a list that comprised all
video games ever, since I stopped paying attention to games after the
mid-1990s. Or a list of worst-of arcade games from the 80s.

------
nkozyra
The narrative has always been about hubris, to some degree, but shifting the
blame to E.T. was always a distraction from some of the bigger lessons.

Atari had reached a point where it thought it could print money in perpetuity
regardless of what it did. And that was true for a while. But you can't screw
customers over forever. Eventually they bail, and that's what the big "video
game collapse" was all about. Poor quality products being pushed at absurd
prices. The lesson here is for startups with lock-in or few competitors: it
doesn't take much to have it all fall apart. Make the best product you can.

I mostly marvel at the fact that this was done in 5 weeks. That's absurd. And
while it was, objectively, a "bad" video game, there were far worse. They just
weren't as high-profile. The second lesson is for developers: always
appreciate the fact that you live in a world where patches, releases, and
iterative development allow you to retroactively fix the things you had to do
in a hurry.

------
krylon
I only recently watched the episode of Code Monkeys that tells this story. I
did not know this was based on a true story. (I would not have suspected that
a company would only assign a single programmer to such a big title, and on
such a crazy schedule. Although, now that I think of it, I guess game industry
veterans can tell lots and lots of these stories...)

------
harel
To be fair, people have made worst games in recent times. The fact we are
hanging on to ET as The Worst of all, is a bit unjust. If someone can screw up
a game with today's technology they deserve the title even more than a game
created in 5 weeks on very limited tech.

------
alecsmart1
There is a very nice documentary if anyone wants to hear from the actual game
developer -
[http://m.imdb.com/title/tt3715406/](http://m.imdb.com/title/tt3715406/)

It's on Netflix as well.

~~~
Swannie
I enjoyed this a lot. Especially the bits from the developer! And the comments
about how technically unique the game was at the time.

------
tomphoolery
I remember learning about this game on a G4 special, and seeing Warshaw's
spots talking about how it was made. I wasn't alive when this game was
released, but it seems to be very frustrating to play. But hey, that's what
you get on the first try when you rush things ( _cough_ JavaScript _cough_ ).
I'm glad to see someone's "fixed" it just to see what it would have been like
had Warshaw been able to get the time needed to really complete the project.
It looked like a great idea, just a terrible execution.

------
chvid
Some amazing takeaways from the article:

\- 5 weeks development time, one person.

\- 5 mio 1980-USD marketing budget.

\- 4 mio units produced

\- 1.5 mio units sold

The units probably listed at 15-20 USD (corresponding to 50-60 USD at today's
prices) and cost around 5-6 USD to produce.

Amazing facts if you have any idea on how the game industry work today.

In particular the little resources spent at development stands out. Showing
that video game development back then probably was more akin to making a board
game or a toy than the huge software development projects it is today.

~~~
softawre
It sold at 40$, according to the image in the article.

------
kintamanimatt
> "It's awesome to be credited with single-handedly bringing down a billion-
> dollar industry with eight kilobytes of code. But the truth is a little more
> complex."

Eight kilobytes?! How do you build anything meaningful, especially a game,
with just eight kilobytes?

~~~
theandrewbailey
Quite a lot, turns out. The demoscene does miracles in 4k.
[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938)

~~~
userbinator
Might be better to show some actual Atari 2600 demos:

[http://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?platform%5B0%5D=Atari+VCS](http://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?platform%5B0%5D=Atari+VCS)

Here's one of the higher-ranked 8k demos:

[http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=32203](http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=32203)
(YouTube:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WogMZn87hkk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WogMZn87hkk)
)

------
rplnt
This is a great video review of the game
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DTjLG3usQo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DTjLG3usQo)
(if you want skip the intro the actual gameplay starts at around 2:00)

------
dudul
The guy single-handily coded, in 5 weeks, a video game that sold 1.5 million
copies! I'd like to be responsible for this kind of screw up any day :)

Granted that the sales were probably mostly due to intense marketing and ad
campaign.

------
dsmithatx
I was 8 years old when the game out and I actually enjoyed the game, bugs and
all.

------
danatkinson
I can't imagine any sane person actually blames him for his work and not the
company that decides to put one developer in charge of writing such an
important game in such a short space of time.

------
linagee
ET from Atari had a better cover than game. (But that was actually true with
most games from the era. Just double true with this "game".)

------
rangibaby
I would like to read the story of "Big Rigs"!

------
jmadsen
I didn't remember people still being that hairy in '82\. I thought we were
mostly cleaning up by then, unless you were in a band.

------
nielsencfm123
So Atari spent $21,000,000 to buy the rights and $5,000,000 on marketing but
having more than 1 developer on the project was too much...

~~~
Sharlin
To be fair, I don't think multi-programmer gamedev teams really existed back
then. You can't divide work very meaningfully when your whole application
consists of eight kilobytes of assembly with zero room for abstraction or good
coding practices.

------
jvoorhis
Gotta say, ET was not all that bad. But my expectations were low after playing
too much Big Bird's Egg Catch.

------
rado
Anyone else remember the "E.T. Comes Back" text/graphic adventure for Apple
II?

------
JoeAltmaier
Well, the tale grew in the telling. Howard used to say that nobody else would
take the project because the deadline was so short. He thought it was worth a
try. Now the story is, he was hand-picked by Spielberg. Ok, Howard.

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unsupak
I used to like this game.

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grillvogel
that is not Beat Takeshi

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ai_maker
Worse is better [1].

[1] [https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-
better.html](https://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html)

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cjslep
Here I thought I Wanna Be The Guy was the worst video game.

~~~
minimaxir
Of all the memes IWBTG has created, "bad game" is not one of them. (the
deliberate difficulty of that game has in fact created a new _genre_ of games,
leading to things like Super Meat Boy)

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nickpsecurity
No, the man who made the worst video game in history was Hideo Kojima with
Metal Gear Solid 2. Hardcore fans of prior game(s) felt a combination of let
down, shock, and anger at the details. Imagine my surprise when I find out it
very well could've been an ingenius plot to screw with the players. As others
noted, the games overall plot against the protagonist was what he was doing to
the players. Start here on a nice analysis here if you're curious why MGS2 had
the effects it did:

[http://www.deltaheadtranslation.com/MGS2/DOTM3.htm](http://www.deltaheadtranslation.com/MGS2/DOTM3.htm)

~~~
tadfisher
MGS2 is quite possibly the best example of a postmodern video game:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-2YuPGYabw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-2YuPGYabw)

~~~
eropple
I had a feeling that link would be George Weidman before I clicked on it. Was
not disappointed. =) Metal Gear Solid 2 is one of the more amazing things I've
ever played, and George's video about MGS2 is awesome, if a little bit
overwrought. I was a big fan of Metal Gear (I'd emulated an MSX to play the
originals), loved MGS, and liked MGS2 when it came out, but that might have
been because it was _more Metal Gear Solid_. Despite being a "hardcore fan",
as the OP would put it, I never felt disappointed or betrayed by MGS2. And, in
retrospect, I've learned to like it more by what it tried to do. Ambitious
games deserve respect for their ambition insofar as attempts to push outward
and expand gaming as an art form, and MGS2 pulls off its goals better than it
probably should have.

Today, I find it's one of the better popular-gaming litmus tests for whether
or not somebody treats games as experiences to which critical analysis can be
applied. (One doesn't have to like the game, there are lots of reasons not to
even if I happen to, but does one get the thrust of it?)

