10 Most Despised Games Ever Released

Everyone loves video games, as they’re made for pure entertainment, and many offer countless hours of enjoyment. It’s been like this since the industry’s founding, and in the decades since the first video game’s creation, there have been thousands upon thousands of amazing titles. There are also plenty of duds that fail commercially and critically. Still, for the most part, the bad games aren’t despised so much as they’re avoided or discarded. That said, numerous games utterly infuriate anyone who plays them. This can be due to terrible programming, horrific controls, bad concepts, or anything really. We’ve compiled ten of the most despised games ever released, though we aren’t looking at collections, so no Action 52 or the like.

1) E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

If you know anything about retro games that suck from the ‘80s, you probably figured that E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600 would be on here. The game is legendary for how much it sucked, and if you’ve never played it, don’t. I still remember the utter disappointment I felt when I got this so-called game and had no idea how to play. It was coded in five weeks to make it ready as a movie tie-in game, and while Howard Scott Warshaw did his best with the limited time available, Atari should have never released it. Because of the hype, it sold millions of copies to an angered gaming population. Most copies ended up in a landfill, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial became the ‘face’ of the Video Game Crash of 1983.

2) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1988)

The Nintendo Entertainment System is well-known for featuring some awful adaptations, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of the worst. Conceptually, it does a fair enough job of adapting the book into a playable game, but it gives “Nintendo Hard” a run for its money. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is incredibly frustrating to play, thanks to terrible controls, an inability to hit opponents, and the ease with which the player character takes damage. This significantly ups the difficulty curve, making it less of a video game and more of a retro torture device released upon an unknowing populace. If you want to know just how awful it is, check out The Angry Video Game Nerd’s video on the game here.

3) Night Trap (1992)

Early game developers made several attempts at creating fun, interactive movies once CD-ROMs became commonplace. While some were enjoyable, most weren’t, and Night Trap for the Sega CD is easily one of the worst. It’s basically a B-movie focusing on teenage girls having a sleepover, but the house is infested with vampires. Gameplay involves switching camera views while eavesdropping and listening for clues. Conceptually, it’s not a terrible idea, but in practice, it wasn’t fun to play. The violence in the game prompted a Senate hearing, decrying video games for depicting violence and sexual assaults against women. Despite its terrible reputation, Night Trap is something of a cult classic, having been re-released on numerous consoles, though most consider it to be one of the worst games of the 1990s.

4) Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties (1993)

The interactive movie genre persisted despite multiple failures, culminating in the much-despised Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties for the 3DO. It’s a romantic comedy that leans into adult themes as John and Jane are pressured to find a spouse. The goal is to get the two together, but the whole thing is a mess of epic proportions. The production quality of the movie is awful, the storyline doesn’t make any sense beyond the trite premise, and the actors who play the characters might as well have been performing a skit during their first day in an acting class for failed actors. It’s widely loathed, but like Night Trap, it’s been re-released for some reason and is available on ninth-generation consoles.

5) Hotel Mario (1994)

In what was one of Nintendo’s worst ideas of the 1990s, the company licensed Mario and The Legend of Zelda for several titles developed for the Philips CD-i. Frankly, they’re all worse than terrible, taking beloved characters and destroying them, one frame at a time. The Legend of Zelda games are easily the worst in the franchise, but they’re thankfully not canon. Hotel Mario is similarly bad, and even for a puzzle game, it’s just beyond words that are appropriate here. It suffered from the CD-i’s most prevalent problem: terrible controls. I had one, and it was a nightmare to play anything on; Hotel Mario was easily one of the worst examples.

6) Shaq Fu (1994)

Back in the ‘90s, Shaquielle O’Neill could do no wrong, so his name and likeness were plastered on everything. He regrettably starred in some terrible movies, including Steel, and he also found himself in a fighting game called Shaq Fu. It was released on all available consoles at the time, and it’s neither a good fighting game nor a well-coded game. Its graphics were exceptional for the period, but it’s one of those games you’d buy and immediately trade in for something else, angry that you bought it in the first place. Despite all the hatred towards Shaq Fu, a sequel was released in 2018, which was equally poorly received.

7) Superman: The New Superman Adventures (1999)

If there’s one thing a game publisher should never do, it’s release a game starring one of the most beloved comic book superheroes of all time and make it suck. If you played Superman: The New Superman Adventures, more commonly known as Superman 64, Titus Interactive owes you an apology. The game is based on Superman: The Animated Series, but it’s as loose an adaptation as possible. Its gameplay is utterly difficult, repetitive, and wholly boring. The first stage is one of the hardest levels in all of gaming, and it’s the gaming equivalent of burning garbage. For anyone who played it, there’s little doubt that Superman 64 is one of the worst games ever made.

8) Batman: Dark Tomorrow (2003)

There have been some fantastic Batman games released over the years, and while many are exceptional, Batman: Dark Tomorrow isn’t. Initially, it was meant to be an action-adventure with an open-ended adaptation of the comics, but as development continued, ideas were scrapped, the game was scaled down, and it suffered as a result. It features a terrible control scheme, a camera that could only be described as an interactive torture device, and repetitive missions that weren’t nearly as exciting as they were boring. Batman: Dark Tomorrow may have been awful, but it helped show what not to do with an adaptation of the Dark Knight, so, in a way, it contributed to the development of better games in the future.

9) Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing (2003)

These days, it’s not unusual for a game to release with some bugs, resulting in patches at launch. It’s not as big a problem now as it used to be, but in the case of Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, the bugs were more of a feature. The game was unfinished upon release, which begs the question, ‘Why was it released?’ A bug is one thing, but this game is utterly unplayable, making it a cautionary tale of how not to make and release a video game. It’s often cited in articles like this one, as it’s well-known for the awful gameplay, its plethora of bugs, and its ridiculously low review score on sites like Metacritic, which gave it a 6 out of 100.

10) Final Fantasy XIV (2010)

There were many other games released over the years to consider, but in the 2010s, the worst was Final Fantasy XIV. This was meant to be a new, mainline title in the popular franchise, but when the game was released in 2010, nobody liked it. Everything from the game’s interface to its relatively unfinished or unrefined state upon release to its overall gameplay was derided by critics and players. Final Fantasy XIV was so bad that Square Enix had to pull it and completely rework it into something new. What followed was dubbed A Realm Reborn, and it’s as different a game as possible, making the original 2010 edition something of a mulligan for Square.

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