For me, it has to be Alien: Colonial Marines as it’s terrible due to inconsistent frame rate (moments the game ran smooth and times where lag was insane, even with the best hardware). Both player & enemy AI is crap since the combat wasn’t even that immersive plus Xenomorph AI isn’t as intimidating due to it being poorly implemented.
Too many to name as the 80s through to early 2000s was full of them. Star Wars on the original Gameboy comes to mind though.
My siblings and I have a bunch of the movie/TV based games for the Gameboy. The problem was you couldn’t tell if the game was bad or just not intuitive. Some games you would eventually figure out and could beat, but fuck some you were stuck on the first level forever.
The Avatar game from 2009. Honestly, it was only fun because it was so buggy you could basically get anywhere on the map and do anything you wanted.
It was from an era where a good story driven game was not only possible, but common, and it managed to be the worst story and the worst game of the year.
Shit, that game was pretty bad too. It’s nice to have bending, but the entire tone was off and it’s clear they didn’t have people who cared working on it.
Wait, is this talking about the movie game for M Night’s AtLA game? Or is it talking about the movie game for James Cameron’s Avatar?
James Cameron’s Avatar.
So many good ones already listed I’ll add a unique one.
Street Fighter: The Movie
It was a game, based on the movie, based on the original games.
Blues brothers.
Ghostbusters on NES.
I was a kid that inherited an NES from a family member, so they already had a ton of good games. Double Dribble, Super Mario Bros, Adventure Island. A lot of hits.
But there were also a bunch of cool games, or so I thought. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? That looks cool. Ah, this is kinda advanced for a kid. It must be a me problem. Well, let’s check out this Ghostbusters game.
That’s when I realized that games could be dogshit. The whole game’s music is a 30-second loop. The gameplay doesn’t even make sense, and to this day I have not tried to learn it. Nay, I refuse to.
I felt so vindicated when I found the AVGN as I got older.
Good call on this one. Ghostbusters was such a shitty game.
and this is all you get for beating it:
There’s certainly dogshit nowadays, but I don’t think modern gamers understand that NES games set the price standard that is just now changing. A $50 game, I believe, is around $180 adjusted for inflation. You buy Forspoken, you get your refund, and then you buy Halo on sale for $4 instead. You buy Ghostbusters, and that’s your game. That’s the game you have. Play it, or don’t.
Thank goodness for rentals.
Yeah, a single NES game was tough for a kid to save up for. I was usually able to do various chores around the neighborhood and be able to buy a game every few months. I distinctly remember that Zelda II was $52 and Metal Gear was $48 and I earned the money myself as a little kid. Those two games specifically were worth the effort. I’d have been pissed if I spent that hard earned money on Ghostbusters.
I am going to try something different.
Godfather, from the pantheon of one of the greatest movies ever, to one of the greatest forgotten GTA clones, one of the worst game adaptations of a movie…well, relatively.
Chronicles of Riddick and Scarface are all abandonware now, those are good games being…vanished.
Practically anything made in the 90s
This sort of question has come up many times, and my knee jerk reaction is to always say E.T. for the Atari 2600, but I have actually played a worse licensed game that could arguably be said was an adaptation of a movie. It was Superman 64 for the Nintendo 64. It is just an utter failure of a game. It is boring, buggy, and frustrating. It looks bad, controls bad, plays bad. At no point does that game approach “fun”.
In the spirit of the post, one could argue that this isn’t specifically about the Superman movie and could be more about the comic books. I never read them, so I can’t say. Honestly, the game was so bad it was hard to tell which inspired it.
Well… it’s based on the 90s cartoon…
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0115378/
But in reality it was “inspired” by cash grab money and bad management.
Ah fair enough, I guess that technically disqualifies it from the post. Regardless, I feel it was good to spread awareness of what a piece of shit it was!
It really was so bad. In that egregious way that just shits on your childhood. It came out during the rise of popularity of the animated Batman and Superman shows that were top notch productions and I remember being excited that it was a game and fortunately I got to play a demo at toys r us before I wasted money on it.
The one silver lining is watching humorous YouTubers do long plays of it now.
I watched this years ago. I think. There are a lot of videos on this subject.
I genuinely think that Superman 64 is more entertaining and fun to play than E.T. .
Not a high bar, but perhaps you’re right. I played a LOT more E.T. so I am for sure biased.
We are all biased. :-) There is no other way to judge games for your personal taste or experience.
It also depends on the context. I assume you was a E.T. fan and you was young, didn’t have many games and really wanted to like it and played it a lot overlooking its flaws, until you got a bit the hang of it. I am assuming a lot here! Then decade later you have so much experience, filter out good from bad games and then comes Superman 64, maybe you don’t even care about Superman (Just assuming here, let’s put anyone in this role, not just you). And then “oh yeah shitty game, no one cares”.
I think you misunderstood the context actually. I was indeed young when I played E.T., but I wasn’t a fan of the game (or movie really) ever. The game was very very frustrating to basically everyone that played it and I hate it so very much. I was actually glad to see that the rest of the human race hated it once the internet became common, it made me feel more in tune with the rest of society. All that being said, I think Superman 64 is a worse game and I consider that almost an accomplishment in itself.
Right, I assumed too much here.
Oh wow I forgot about that game. I couldn’t figure out any of the mechanics or even the goals.
There were a lot of absolutely awful ones when I was kid, so many I just forget them all. Back then we had a ZX Spectrum and the games cost like £2.99 each so you can imagine how much effort was put into them. I understand why the studios keep cranking out crappy movie tie-ins and why they keep selling well, because when I was a kid if there was a movie I loved I’d jump at the chance to buy the video game for it. Back then there was no internet to instantly check reviews so you just bought whatever had good box art.
I remember the Jaws game being particularly depressing. It was one of those classic games where it just drops you in an environment with no instructions on how to complete the game or anything. It was just a maze with loads of moving things that instantly killed you. I generally just moved around until I ran out of lives then tried again.
Charlies Angels on the Gamecube. I worked at a blockbuster at the time and just used it as a free rental as I was curious. god damn it was by far the worst game I had ever played.
I haven’t played it, but man, that screams “bad game”.
Honestly, I think I lucked out with movie licensed games. Spiderman, Star Wars, X-men origins wolverine, I’m struggling to think of a bad one that I’ve played outside of displays in stores.
Okay, I looked it up to make sure there was a movie for this and easily the worst one I’ve played is Bionicle. I literally beat it the night I got it and was so disappointed. If it wasn’t so short, it could’ve been pretty good.
it’s still crazy to me how good Spider-Man 2 was back in the day. because of that and the original GoldenEye, I have forgotten any bad adaptations as well.
NES, Back to the future. That was a video game rental that wasted a whole weekend but at least it was just a rental.
Madagascar on Nintendo Game Cube.
I learned to avoid those early on, so I haven’t played many games based on mives.
Of the ones that i actually played, it must’ve been Batman Forever on SNES. I never figured how to get past that part in the first fucking level, where you’re expected to press up + select at a very specific spot
Back to the Future on Atari
