GameCola’s Top 50 Worst Games Ever Made (Part 1)

34. Santa Claus Saves the World (GBA)

Pretend you’re an independent game company who has just created a mediocre platformer with hideous graphics. There’s no way that you’ll be able to sell this game, unless you slap a licensed character on top of it. The problem is that you can’t afford to pay royalties to anyone. What do you do? Use a public domain character like Santa Claus!

The plot of the game is that Santa has been kidnapped by the evil witch Nilam, who hates presents. Santa needs to escape by collecting jewels and coins, which he keeps in test tubes and…you know what? Forget the plot. Forget this game. The gameplay isn’t that fun, the controls could use improvement, and the bad 3D graphics are eyesores that remind you why the GBA doesn’t have many 3D games.

If you find this game in your stocking this Christmas, it’s because Santa is trying to punish you.

—Michael Gray

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33. Seaman (DC)

Seaman is what happens when a company wants to make a pet-raising simulation, but accidentally spills goat’s blood onto the game when it’s in the development stage. The game has you playing through the life of some sort of unholy man-fish hybrid creature, which looks to be the end result of Aquaman’s long, torrid affair with a carp. Seaman is rated Teen for comic mischief, suggestive themes, and irreparable damage to one’s eternal soul. You play the game by conversing with your abomination, which is about as fun as it sounds. He asks you questions, and you answer into the mic—surprisingly, asking “Who did I wrong in my life to have to spend my time talking to a fish?” has no effect. Somewhere along the line the developers forgot to put in any actual gameplay, so the end result feels less like an actual game and more like an awkward dinner date with someone asking you disjointed questions as they desperately try to keep the conversation going.

—Nikola Suprak

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32. Campaign ’84 (Coleco)

Do presidential campaigns fill you with mirth? Do lawyer and mother-in-law jokes really tickle your funny bone? If you answered “yes” to either of those questions, then you are a robot, and we are on to your plan to assimilate into and subsequently destroy mankind.

Campaign ’84 is played by choosing your stance on “hilarious” joke issues, walking around a political map of the USA, going into each state and collecting voters by walking in front of stick figures, and then repeating this for just about every state while occasionally getting to hear piss-poor jokes. Between the groan-inducing humor and the snore-inducing gameplay, Campaign ’84 is like if Henny Youngman and C-SPAN conceived a child, and then aborted it in a truck stop bathroom.

—Christian Porter

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31. The Smurfs Dance Party (Wii)

Hollywood is after all of our childhood memories, and if they’re making a movie, you can bet your ass they’re making a game about that movie. I’m still wondering: Who the hell was supposed to be the targeted audience for this crap? Kids don’t give a damn about The Smurfs, and the movie was so fucking awful that I can’t imagine any sensible adult trying to embrace it.

Now, let’s talk about the game itself. It has only 23 songs (parodies of other songs, like Smurf this Way and We Like to Smurf It), and some of them contain sexual references, so it’s not as kid friendly as you might think. But the weirdest part of this game is that it was released BEFORE the movie premiered in theaters. It’s like they knew the movie was gonna tank, and they hoped they could still scrape up some profit while the Smurfs franchise remained hot.

—Daniel Castro

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30. Darkened Skye (GC)

Ever imagine what Final Fantasy IV would be like if you found out the crystals were special-cut diamonds from Kay Jewelers, and only through their superior clarity and sparkle could the world be saved? Darkened Skye answers that question by making Skittles the requisite macguffin needed to save the world. For the love of Arceus, they even use clips from the commercials! C’mon, game designers, I don’t mind if you try to sell me stuff. Hell, I’ve played my share of games starring corporate mascots. But don’t try to sell me what looks like a typical third-person adventure then turn it into a damn candy promo an hour in.

—Michael Ridgaway

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29. Wii Music (Wii)

What can I say about this horrible thing, which isn’t even supposed to be a game in the first place? It doesn’t have a score system or goals, and you can’t fail at all while playing it, as long as you keep waggling that Wii-mote. I still remember the statement Shigeru Miyamoto (you know, the man behind Mario, Zelda, and many others) made when he was asked if this was more a “musical toy” than a videogame.

Miyamoto’s answer was: “Yes, that’s right, and that’s why it’s more interesting than a videogame.” Did anybody really listen to what the man just said? People were actually cheering up until that atrocious statement, and every game site and magazine was trying so hard not to make fun of Miyamoto because…he’s freaking Miyamoto! In the end, I can’t say that the game sucked…it’s just not a videogame at all. It’s an expensive child’s noise box that finally cemented the idea that the Nintendo we all knew was long gone.

—Daniel Castro

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28. Elf Bowling 1 & 2 (DS)

I can’t properly express my hated for this game in a mere four paragraphs or less. Each member of the unholy duo included in this game started off as a free Flash game, and when I first played them I still thought they were overpriced.

In Elf Bowling, you play as a sociopath Santa Claus, using a bowling ball to murder elves that have gone on strike and are demanding better wages, which means the only possible demographic that could find this game interesting (children under the age of four and the elderly—the coveted “always in diapers” demographics) would be too emotionally scarred to play through the entire thing. Perhaps if you were a child who really, really hated unions you might enjoy this game, but I have a feeling the two kids who fit that description are too busy in their cult in Montana to have time for any leisure activity. And while the DS seems to have an interface that would be suited for this sort of thing, the game opts instead to ignore this entirely, and you just click on the screen when a scrolling bar goes to the area you want to roll the ball in.

The sequel to Elf Bowling isn’t even bowling, and is instead a shuffleboard-type game, meaning Elf Bowling 2 didn’t even manage to get its own name right. In fact, shuffleboard is the only activity so damn boring that people would try to hide it behind the moniker of bowling. When you ask someone to go bowl with you, they usually sigh, delete you on Facebook, and then resignedly comfort themselves by muttering, “At least he didn’t ask me to play shuffleboard.” The game is ugly, boring, repetitive, and somehow manages to make bowling even worse.

In the next remake of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the Grinch will spoil the Whos’ holidays not by taking their gifts, but by bringing them each a copy of Elf Bowling 1 & 2. No amount of singing would be able to save Christmas then.

—Nikola Suprak

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27. Action 52 (NES)

52 games for the price of one! Too bad they’re all steaming piles. A wise man once said, “The whole is often greater than the sum of its parts.” This man was also quite wise for not ever playing Action 52, since it would turn his philosophical standing right on its head. The game’s intro starts with the Rob Base song It Takes Two, and then welcomes you to Action 52. It’s actually not bad, in case you’ve lost your vision and are fumbling around inserting random NES carts into your system; follow it like a Soviet air-raid warning.

—Mark Freedman

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26. Sentient (PS1)

Sentient is a game about a wave of radiation sickness that is ravaging a space station. You’ve been sent aboard to determine the cause of the problem, though you end up encountering more than you bargained for and must basically save the entire space station from crashing into the sun. The developers succeeded in one area: All the characters have been rendered so poorly that they DO look likely they have been exposed to radiation…for several years. Their faces have been sucked into strange shapes, and identifying what is actually a human being is a task of its own.

Aside from looking like crap, it controls like hell, too. Just figuring out how to play and how to interact with your environs is like learning Chinese by phone: It could be possible, but why would you want to even try? We should have expected more from the legendary company that also brought us the innovative Lemmings, but instead, all we get is a case of dead lemmings. Avoid at all costs, even if they are extremely low costs.

—Jeff Day

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Hey, don’t you know that too much garbage is bad for your health? GameCola’s insurance coverage forbids us from releasing this whole list at once, to prevent our readers from having a crap overdose. Come back tomorrow for the conclusion to this cavalcade of rubbish.

Click here to read Part 2!