Amstrad Nightmares?

[Nich]

Outrun was slow and sluggish and on tape, it was a real bad multiload nightmare. But I don't think it's fair to call it unplayable.
I definitely got my moneys worth out of it in 1988 but it was disappointing, but it was a flop on all the major 8bit computers.

You got your money's worth out of Out Run? I'm sure I recall you telling me on more than one occasion about how you received the game as a gift! Then again, maybe I've forgotten some small details...

Personally, I also got Out Run as a gift - as part of the Coin-Op Hits compilation. I begged my father to buy it because I really wanted Road Blasters after playing it at an amusement arcade on a day out one summer. Thankfully I had four other games on the compilation to play, so I wasn't totally disappointed!

[Nich]

Like I said in the initial post, the Nightmare books have four main sections...

Patience of a Saint - this is for really difficult games, the ones that made you throw your joystick in frustration or were badly flawed and needed more game testing.

Abu Simbel Profanation springs to mind. The 2017 sequel, Profanation 2: Escape from Abu Simbel, is arguably even worse in terms of difficulty.

They Did What? - this is for really unusual ideas or game mechanics, or something with a touch of controversy about it.

Explorer - it boasts 40 billion locations, but all it involves is wandering around a huge landscape looking for nine pieces of your spaceship. To quote my own review: "While technically impressive, it feels as if the programmers added a game merely as an afterthought."

Simply Awful - the worst of the worst, the truly diabolical.

I give you Atomik - a truly diabolically bad Breakout clone from France. The graphics are terrible and it looks like it's a BASIC type-in listing - but it isn't written in BASIC!

[Nich]

Loathsome Licences - this covers film and TV tie-ins, arcade conversions and any other type of licenced character/property. Think some of those terrible toy tie-ins, or Super Gran.

I thought of Badlands after posting my previous reply. My brother bought this game when we visited London while on a summer holiday, without seeing any reviews or screenshots beforehand. He had to wait a few days until we got back home before we could play it. Imagine the disappointment upon loading it for the first time... ugly Spectrum port graphics and almost no sound effects on the CPC464.

[Nich]

Another game for the "They Did What?" list - The Experience by Players. A GAC text adventure that takes place in a single room and can be completed in just five turns - yes, really!

The late John Wilson (Zenobi Software) did the single-room adventure concept much better with his Behind Closed Doors series of games.

[lmimmfn]

Outrun was slow and sluggish and on tape, it was a real bad multiload nightmare. But I don't think it's fair to call it unplayable.
I definitely got my moneys worth out of it in 1988 but it was disappointing, but it was a flop on all the major 8bit computers.

You got your money's worth out of Out Run? I'm sure I recall you telling me on more than one occasion about how you received the game as a gift! Then again, maybe I've forgotten some small details...

Personally, I also got Out Run as a gift - as part of the Coin-Op Hits compilation. I begged my father to buy it because I really wanted Road Blasters after playing it at an amusement arcade on a day out one summer. Thankfully I had four other games on the compilation to play, so I wasn't totally disappointed!

When I was in secondary school I used to order CPC games for mates, this was a time where I had to get a postal order, order from the UK and would take a month for delivery.

When I got Outrun(and honestly Turbo Outrun) delivered, I played them for 1 minute(after 5 mins or so loading) saw complete crap, didn't even bother copying them before handing over.

I'm struggling to find an awful full price gsme that I bought, maybe Thunderblade but even though its Tiertex I can't honestly say it was terrible on the CPC as I think they did the best they could(the faces on the in game panel were completely awful though)

I didn't personally buy many full price CPC games, I bought:
Robocop
Batman
Operation Wolf
Operation Thunderbolt
Chase HQ
Forgotten Worlds
Thunderblade

Out of the above, Thunderblade and OP Thunderbolt are the weakest, but I faired well snd most of those were bought prior to reviews.

[Shaun M. Neary]

Outrun was slow and sluggish and on tape, it was a real bad multiload nightmare. But I don't think it's fair to call it unplayable.
I definitely got my moneys worth out of it in 1988 but it was disappointing, but it was a flop on all the major 8bit computers.

You got your money's worth out of Out Run? I'm sure I recall you telling me on more than one occasion about how you received the game as a gift! Then again, maybe I've forgotten some small details...

Personally, I also got Out Run as a gift - as part of the Coin-Op Hits compilation. I begged my father to buy it because I really wanted Road Blasters after playing it at an amusement arcade on a day out one summer. Thankfully I had four other games on the compilation to play, so I wasn't totally disappointed!

Hah nope! I bought it with my Confo money in 1988.

I'd forgotten about the Coin Op Hits compilation. My duplicate of Outrun ended up on Giants which was another compilation full of turkeys. Road Blasters was in my local arcade as well so really wanted it for the CPC too. I made it to screen 49 after hours of playing a few years back and lost. I don't have the motivation to attempt to play it again for that long these days. Maybe someday...

[Shaun M. Neary]

Loathsome Licences - this covers film and TV tie-ins, arcade conversions and any other type of licenced character/property. Think some of those terrible toy tie-ins, or Super Gran.

I thought of Badlands after posting my previous reply. My brother bought this game when we visited London while on a summer holiday, without seeing any reviews or screenshots beforehand. He had to wait a few days until we got back home before we could play it. Imagine the disappointment upon loading it for the first time... ugly Spectrum port graphics and almost no sound effects on the CPC464.

That speccy port is so bad, it actually included the colour clashing as well! 

[Shaun M. Neary]

Outrun was slow and sluggish and on tape, it was a real bad multiload nightmare. But I don't think it's fair to call it unplayable.
I definitely got my moneys worth out of it in 1988 but it was disappointing, but it was a flop on all the major 8bit computers.

You got your money's worth out of Out Run? I'm sure I recall you telling me on more than one occasion about how you received the game as a gift! Then again, maybe I've forgotten some small details...

Personally, I also got Out Run as a gift - as part of the Coin-Op Hits compilation. I begged my father to buy it because I really wanted Road Blasters after playing it at an amusement arcade on a day out one summer. Thankfully I had four other games on the compilation to play, so I wasn't totally disappointed!

When I was in secondary school I used to order CPC games for mates, this was a time where I had to get a postal order, order from the UK and would take a month for delivery.

When I got Outrun(and honestly Turbo Outrun) delivered, I played them for 1 minute(after 5 mins or so loading) saw complete crap, didn't even bother copying them before handing over.

I'm struggling to find an awful full price gsme that I bought, maybe Thunderblade but even though its Tiertex I can't honestly say it was terrible on the CPC as I think they did the best they could(the faces on the in game panel were completely awful though)

I didn't personally buy many full price CPC games, I bought:
Robocop
Batman
Operation Wolf
Operation Thunderbolt
Chase HQ
Forgotten Worlds
Thunderblade

Out of the above, Thunderblade and OP Thunderbolt are the weakest, but I faired well snd most of those were bought prior to reviews.

Outrun and Turbo Outrun were developed by ICE hence the similarities. I actually enjoyed Turbo Outrun in late 89 early 90 but it's a bit easy now. I don't think Operation Thunderbolt was weak, just the lack of crosshair made it quite difficult to play, a major misfire on what could have been a great sequel, but just ended up being a good sequel.

I really do try not to tar Tiertex with the same brush as not all their games were bastardised Speccy ports done by Don Campbell and John Prince. Thunderblade was done by the late Mark Haigh Hutchinson who gave us the awesome Paperboy, Alien Highway, Highway Encounter and Italy 1990. It was overambitious and the controls were fiddly, so I gave that a pass for effort.

[Gryzor]

So today I watched this, two years after its release by @Xyphoe . A few good ideas on there...

[andycadley]

Surely the absolute worst has to be Count Duckula 2. It's already a terrible port of an abysmal Speccy game, one that ranks amongst the all time worst on that machine. But they broke it during the conversion, preventing Duckula from jumping higher than the top of the screen, which makes a whole slew of screens impossible to complete without just using the superhero screen bypass power up thing.

I don't think you could get worse unless you ported Sqij, kept all the bugs in it and added some more as well.

[Shaun M. Neary]

Play Deathkick, @andycadley It doesn't excuse the abortion of CD2, but it's close second!

[ago]

Like I said in the initial post, the Nightmare books have four main sections...

Patience of a Saint - this is for really difficult games, the ones that made you throw your joystick in frustration or were badly flawed and needed more game testing.

Abu Simbel Profanation springs to mind. The 2017 sequel, Profanation 2: Escape from Abu Simbel, is arguably even worse in terms of difficulty.

I honestly don't understand why Abu Simbel is considered as one of the most difficult games for CPC. I think it is a fair game, you only need practice and memorization as the game is always the same, the only random element in the game is the color of the diamond.

What fails in the second part is, in my opinion, that they added an extra animation to the character which adds an extra layer to the things your mind have to process when developing your strategies. In the first part the character moves as soon as you press a key, but in the second part it has a small delay due to the mentioned extra animation. Maybe not noticiable for those who didn't play the first part too much, but it breaks my focus (and patience) as I am too used to the original profanation.

[merman]

Great suggestions from Nich there, and Count Duckula 2 is definitely under consideration.

[dodogildo]

And what games would you include?

What about including a chapter like "masters of the nightmares", featuring companies with reputation on sucking (such as Tiertex)
 

[Shaun M. Neary]

And what games would you include?

What about including a chapter like "masters of the nightmares", featuring companies with reputation on sucking (such as Tiertex)
 

Tiertex weren't the worst. Software Studios and Software Creations did far worse, giving us gems such as Super Hang On, Peter Pack Rat, Enduro Racer.

From what I can see, Tiertex tried to get their shit together after 1989, but by then the damage was already done especially with a lot of the Capcom conversions (although I did enjoy Strider and Strider II). 

I get it though, between 87-89, Tiertex really did produce a stream of crap, and I won't defend that. I'm just saying that there was actually worse, WAY WORSE out there than Tiertex.

[Anthony Flack]

I swear I actually wrote a game in BASIC that was like Death Kick but not as bad. I would have been about 10 years old. Sprites drawn on graph paper and entered in with the SYMBOL command, and despair at how slow it all was.

I remember playing Outrun on the CPC at my parents' friend's house (they had a 664) and I thought it was awful at the time. We got the Sega Master System version years later; I thought that was acceptable and played it to completion.

Freescape games don't deserve to be on any worst-of list; they were innovative and widely appreciated at the time.

Thunder Blade does look dreadful, but that's hardly Mark Haigh-Hutchinson's fault. The arcade game was rubbish to begin with. Imagine being given that and told to port it to the CPC... it's basically a guaranteed fail.

Operation Thunderbolt was ugly and disappointing after Op Wolf, but so was the arcade game. Still better than Predator 2. Impossible Mission was disappointing only because on the C64 it's one of my favourite 8 bit games.

I just want to reiterate for those who never had the misfortune of owning it and trying to extract some value from it, that Beach Head II SUUUUUCKS.

[cwpab]

Most of these games look terrible... Here's a couple of good lucking bad games!

Asterix and the Magic Carpet:

Gorgeous raphic adventure that doesn't make sense because the only thing you can do (besides playing some Pac-Man style minigames) is to randomly click on the comic book characters while they travel to India on a magic carpet hoping that someone doesn't get angry too many times to avoid falling into the sea.

Pink Panther

How fun can it be to "clean" the path of a sleepwalker in a house, and doing it super-fast, so that he keeps walking and you can stel objects? Exactly how it sounds: nothing, especially because you must clean his path every 10 seconds or so, so you can't explore the beautiful house.

Also, why should earlier simpler games be spared? I say, let's include Grand Prix Driver! The Game Over screen can really traumatize a child (or give him an epilepsy attack).

[Gryzor]

About Pink Panther's concept: Brat on the Atari ST (and Amiga?) was the same concept and was actually pretty fun.

[cwpab]

I checked the game and... not the same! Brat was a simple concept with a quick, instinctive execution. You only placed some arrows on some simple isometric platforms as the guy walks "south" (sometimes down-left, sometimes down-right). In Pink Panther, you must move the panther to a place the sleepwalker is going to be in a few seconds. Then you must press some action button to make some "stop" sign with the arms, which will make the guy turn over once he reaches you. But that's only one of the things you must do: you also need to place some kind of inflatable dolls or other objects that will make him change direction. And simultaneously, you need to steal objects placed around. As a kid, I was always dead after 20 seconds. Commando was more relaxing!

[Nich]

Surely the absolute worst has to be Count Duckula 2. It's already a terrible port of an abysmal Speccy game, one that ranks amongst the all time worst on that machine. But they broke it during the conversion, preventing Duckula from jumping higher than the top of the screen, which makes a whole slew of screens impossible to complete without just using the superhero screen bypass power up thing.

I owned a copy of Count Duckula 2 that didn't have the bug on the second screen. I dumped a CDT file of it and it's available on CPC-POWER, so not all copies of the game are bugged. Unfortunately the bugged version has been around for so long that it's become the accepted story that the game has always been bugged (leaving aside the obvious point that the rest of the game is atrocious in every way).

[merman]

Surely the absolute worst has to be Count Duckula 2. It's already a terrible port of an abysmal Speccy game, one that ranks amongst the all time worst on that machine. But they broke it during the conversion, preventing Duckula from jumping higher than the top of the screen, which makes a whole slew of screens impossible to complete without just using the superhero screen bypass power up thing.

I owned a copy of Count Duckula 2 that didn't have the bug on the second screen. I dumped a CDT file of it and it's available on CPC-POWER, so not all copies of the game are bugged. Unfortunately the bugged version has been around for so long that it's become the accepted story that the game has always been bugged (leaving aside the obvious point that the rest of the game is atrocious in every way).

That's a cool piece of information Nich, thanks!

[Shaun M. Neary]

I just want to reiterate for those who never had the misfortune of owning it and trying to extract some value from it, that Beach Head II SUUUUUCKS.

Oh dear lord! I had actually forgotten about this. I had it as part of the History In The Making compilation. I think I've loaded it about twice in my entire life and the second time was to note the tape count between Beach Head and Raid! (Over Moscow). Stickman sprites, sluggish and some of the worst music the AY has ever produced should you ever win the game.

[MartinJSUK]

Winter Sports and Outrun are two I had on the Spectrum. I think I did wrestle some fun from Outrun, but I'm not sure how. Horrendously slow. I think I enjoyed the ice hockey in Winter Sports, but that's about it. Explorer always struck me as a daft idea.

As a fan of American Football, Grid Iron 2 is my nomination. CPC Games Reviews sums it up perfectly, but its one of the laziest, shallowest, most unrealistic, ghastliest, most utterly offensive insulting cash-ins ever.

[eto]

Winter Sports

still makes me angry. I actually wanted to buy Winter Games but no store had it. I found Winter Sports and thought "well, that sounds good". Nope. A pure piece of sh*t. DM50 wasted.