When you play video games long enough you get to experience the kind of crap that can plague any industry. We’re talking about something that is carefully planed, meticulously developed, and thoroughly tested. Yet somehow we get ET, Daikatana, Superman 64, etc.

In an effort to make a personal bad-games list, Last Dojo and I have developed this joint venture into mediocre programming, poor judgment, and just plain stupidity. Of course, we’re ignoring the fact the world needs our opinion like it needs James Blunt and his fucking song.

So, as best as I can remember, these are the worst video games I’ve played:

Karate Kid (NES)

I was looking through worst-games-ever lists and noticed that Karate Kid for the NES came up often. I believed I had played it but couldn’t remember what the game was like. I must have been about six, and I loved the movie. The game remained vague in my memory, though. Then I saw this screenshot and I shat blood.

If you feel masochistic, click here.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)

This is the first game I have a good memory of it sucking. And this was at the time I absorbed anything that had to do with TMNT. I went through the entire TV show about 8 times, had a few of the toys, and watched the movie on opening day. If I could’ve smoked those goddamned turtles, I would have.

Then came this game. It was hard and boring. You could play as all four turtles, but they were really unbalanced. You had to use Leonardo until he died and then the game was pretty much over. The other characters were just useless.

Thankfully, the sequel was a good game, and later Turtles In Time for the SNES became one of my favorites. Sadly, modern TMNT games are back to sucking.

Do you want to see a trainwreck? Click here.

Karateka (NES)

The game were a kick in the crotch ends your life. The premise: You are a man. A karate man. A Karateka if you will. You are in a coast. Someone fights you. If you win you move forward.

Then you see a cinematic of another man in a dojo sending other fighters to try and defeat you. You keep going forward. He keeps sending fighters. Just make sure you are in the fighting stance when they attack or a single kick will kill you. A kick in the crotch and you’re sent to the main menu.

Eventually, you fight the man. Well, I’m assuming that, because you are likely to say “fuck-it” before you ever get there. The screeching music doesn’t help it either.

Protect your crotch here.

SuperScope (SNES)

Ok so this isn’t a game, it’s a peripheral. But still, it sucked. I mean it looked cool, so of course I had to ask for it for Christmas. What I got was a bulky thing I had to put on my shoulder and hold up the other end. Then I had to look through a “scope”, which was nothing more than a tube with a tiny hole on one end and a sight in the other.

Eventually my arms got tired of holding it up so I had to support my elbows with something. That was kind of complicated in my small room, and that piece of shit was asking too much from me. On top of that, the only game I know that supported it was the cartridge it came with.

People say the Power Glove was worse. They don’t know that the Power Glove was never meant to be used as a controller. You just wore it to school. That was before that sort of thing would get you an ass-kicking.

Robocop vs Terminator (SNES)

I liked Robocop. I liked Terminator. So when I went to Blockbuster Video and saw this SNES game I got giddy. It had a black plastic cover with the titles of both franchises beveled on it like it was forged on Mount Doom. Yes I rented it. And what I got was a difficult and repetitive piece of nice-looking crap.

Shenmue (Dreamcast)

I have this friend who got me to buy a Dreamcast off eBay after Sega killed it. His favorite game was Shenmue and he swore by it. It looked gorgeous and in the way he described it, this was a technical achievement. It was an RPG/fighter/adventure in an open and complex environment, inhabited by all sorts of characters, and had it’s own real-time clock. I found it used at an EB Games.

I really wanted to love it.

The opening cutscene began and it told the story of a dojo’s master who is murdered, leaving a son behind. The son is called Ryo and he wants to find his father’s murderer so he can… do something. He’s kind of vague on that part. So he goes out on his town to find clues, meeting all sorts of characters who vary between uninteresting, creepy and annoying. There’s also a girl. She wants Ryo to… well… fuck her. But their interactions are as follows:

Nozomi: Ryo!
Ryo: Oh… Nazomi.
Nozomi: Hmmm… Hi.
Ryo: Yes. Hello.
Nozomi: I… hmmm… Is everything alright?
Ryo: Yes.
Nozomi: Oh… What are you doing?
Ryo: I’m waiting here to meet someone at 3:00PM. You see, this game has a sort of pseudo-real-time, so I have to wait about 12 real minutes doing whatever.
Nozomi: Oh… Well, I’ll go back to work at the flower shop now, where I’ll secretly pray that you’re not gay.
Ryo: Oh, ok. I’ll go look for some sailors.

Yes, the dialog is quite terrible. It’s pretty amazing how someone can develop a story where there is not a single likeable character. Actually, it was one of them that made me drop the game entirely: Fuku-san, the dojo’s retard. That guy is as annoying as Ashton Kutcher’s career.

This game is the sort of thing you just have to make fun off.

Well, that’s it for me. Go to Last Dojo’s site for more god-awful games.