Worst Ever Amstrad CPC Games

[MiguelSky]

Well, as child we all had our idols and this also controlled us to buy CPC games.

Oh yes !! I have this one. The worst game with difference !! Please, don't try


I want to mention too text adventure games with wrong spelling or translations that make them unfinishable. An example? Pharaon Spanish version (this will be fixed in the next days ).

[ervin]

Atom Smasher.

What a truly dreadful "game" that was.
Very difficult to control, and way too fast to be anything approaching a playable state.

And it was the first game I ever bought (way back in 1985).

Yeah, thanks a whole lot for that one Amsoft!

Incidentally, I don't understand all the hatred towards Commando.
Yes yes, I know that the framerate suffers in the later levels when you need to cross the black stretches of road (runway?), and the later levels are amazingly difficult, but the first 5 or so levels are very playable.
By this logic of course, yes it is very flawed, but it still seems to receive far more venom than I think it deserves.

The scrolling was really bloody good too! (apart from the black runway bits  ).

[AMSDOS]

Count Duckla 2
Elite
Commando
Myth - History in the Making
Howard the Duck
One Man and his Droid
Super Scramble Simulator
Defenders of the Earth
Famous Five
HiJack
Marsport
Dragontorc
Tir Na Nog
Heavy on a Magick
Hercules
3D Stuntrider
Techician Ted


I remember my brother having heaps of fun with Flight Path 737 and completing it a few times!    Obviously I'm going to upset a few people who like those games, but what can you do! 

[Xyphoe]

Blimey!!!

Are you serious about Elite, Commando, and Myth??

Famous Five was a pretty decent text adventure for it's type, I thought 3D Stuntrider was OK too.

Some of the others I haven't played, but GOOD CALL on Howard The Duck - that was abysmal!!!

That reminds me ... Big Trouble In Little China was DREADFUL, shame as it's one of my favourite movies of all time!

[tastefulmrship]

Don't know...What ? jet Set Willy 2 was good...

It was the cut-down JET SET WILLY I was having a problem with, THE FINAL FRONTIER was excellent... even if the ENTERPRISE levels were a little tough to negotiate.

Elite
One Man and his Droid
Marsport
Tir Na Nog
Techician Ted
Obviously I'm going to upset a few people who like those games, but what can you do! 

I liked all those games, especially ONE MAN AND HIS DROID and TECHNICIAN TED, although ELITE wasn't as fun as it was on the BBC-B for some reason.

[AMSDOS]

Quite Serious - those games do nothing for me, though I'd have to be biased!

I also wasn't impressed with Super Space Invaders or Dynamite Dan, finding the right games for me isn't easy!    For example I love City Slicker for all the wrong reasons - blowing up Parliament is great fun! 

[MiguelSky]

Commando
Howard the Duck
Dragontorc
Tir Na Nog

Hey !! I had these four too (well, Tir Na Nog no, I had Dun Darach) These are GREAT games, except Howard but this last one is not so bad, only strange and hard... Try L.A. Swat and say then

[AMSDOS]

Hey !! I had these four too (well, Tir Na Nog no, I had Dun Darach) These are GREAT games, except Howard but this last one is not so bad, only strange and hard... Try L.A. Swat and say then

Well I don't know Dun Darach and it's probably better for you that I don't know Dun Darach. I can't wait for them Elite game Fans come breathing down onto my post!   

Tried L.A. Swat, do you really want to know what I think about it?

[MiguelSky]

I'm able to guess you could say about it 

[AMSDOS]

I'm able to guess you could say about it 

Hmmm. 

[redbox]

It must have been a prototype or something that was just released.


Just played it again and it is truly terrible.  The only slightly good thing about it is the big eyes on the characters when you shoot someone[nb]If you can actually manage to do this because of the terrible collision detection![/nb].

[mahlemiut]

I remember playing LA Swat back in the day... not exactly the most polished game ever, but for some reason I kept playing it.  I don't know why, it was a buggy mess. 

[Xyphoe]

What in the hell??

LA Swat crashed in game after about 20 seconds for me!!! 

[MiguelSky]

I warned you: don't try !! 

[Cholo]

Well, Using the "worst" label is a bit hard to put on some games as they came with different price tags as well. Like a game like Kane was just £1,99 .. so i recall being happy just seeing the colourfull screen loading on that one

Also there is the age to consider. Like most of the early Amsoft games are quite horrible now but when they came out they technically also the best ones (being the only ones of their game-type).

Then there is text adventures .. they all look fairly plain to the naked eye but is really only limited by your own fantasy producing brainpower.

I still remember coming home with Explorer (Electronic Dreams) thinking it had to be a awesome spaceship shooter. Alas it wasnt. Imagine Lawnmover Simulator .. and then remove the lawnmover too. Basicly its more like a "lets go into the backyard where the grass is 3 foot high because your hippie parents didnt bother to clear it, and thus greatly annoy the rich neighbours"-game. But unlike the real life backyard-search-for-lost-toy game that could probably be covered in 4 screens .. this game is more like "oh look .. more jungle" in 40 billion screens. Point being: not everyone like stategy games but that dosnt make em bad either.

So having all that in mind what is there any games left that could earn a "worst" title?

Sure there must be 100th of full priced games after 87-ish that didnt live up to your expectations. Like a lot of movie, cartoon, ninja, vendetta, subway and arcade-games Back to the future 2 is definately one of the games that has dissapointed the most (in general on all system versions). And the amstrad version dont impress either showing up in 90' with the first part of the game in 2 colours black and white.

Like:
Pit fighter
1942
Mario Bros
Thundercats
Vixen
Airwolf 2
Cabal
Dynasty Wars
Blastroids
Zynaps

Also trying really hard to remember any good pinball, pool/snooker or golf game (it may be a bit unfair i guess as these are really hard to pull off on a 8bit i know .. other types of sport games like darts is much easier to do).

Anyways, i hope i havnt offended any game programmers (or anyone else) .. remember its just a bit of fun

[Xyphoe]

I thought 1942 and Cabal played 'ok' .... just not very spectacular

[Xyphoe]

You've reminded me about Airwolf 1 though - that was so hard it was unplayable

[sigh]

I feel the need to also mention Renegade 3. If this was a £1.99 game, then it wouldn't of achieved the heights of disappointment that it welcomed with open arms. Honestly - I was P I S S E D ! ! !

Ninja Hamster was pretty bad too!

[awergh]

Air wolf isn't that bad, I still enjoyed playing it even though it was really hard. At least you felt like you achieved something Star Ranger I couldn't really say I'd achieved anything cause you had to be soooooooo accurate to even get to the second level. I would be happy to play Air Wolf again, if a game is a never play again ever then you no it maybe should be on the list.

I couldn't seem to get anywhere with turbo boat simulator but I might have been doing it wrong somehow.

[tastefulmrship]

Like:
Pit fighter
1942
Mario Bros
Thundercats
Vixen
Airwolf 2
Cabal
Dynasty Wars
Blastroids
Zynaps

- PIT FIGHTER was awful, however the original arcade machine was pretty dire to start with, so the home computer versions didn't really have much chance! Nice rendition of the horrible title-music, though.
- 1942 was great fun, though it quickly got boring as the levels were all pretty similar!
- THUNDERCATS will always be remembered as one of Rob Hubbard's greatest tunes... that had nothing to do with the original franchise! The game was pretty lame on CPC, which was a shame!
- VIXEN, yeah! Not good! Sorry, Corinne Russell!
- I quite liked AIRWOLF 2, especially the 5 minute Mark Cooksey soundtrack (a lot like his GREAT GURIANOS tune). The game was very Speecy-port, but I used to get quite far in it!
- ZYNAPS, as I mentioned earlier, suffered from bad collision-detection. Other than that, it was a decent game.


I'd like to say that LA SWAT is every bit as dire as you've all been saying. Congratulations on finding something worthy enough to compare against CHOPPER SQUAD or VAMPIRE KILLER! Two games I paid full price for and wished I hadn't!

[AMSDOS]

Naturally I forgot to pop Mario Brothers in my list - once you've played it on an Atari 2600, there's just no looking back.

I had no Crashing Issues with LA Swat at all.

[Xyphoe]

I had no Crashing Issues with LA Swat at all.

It happened after I accidentally shot the civilian on the left who appears first. Sadly I didn't record the footage

[Metr]

I like a lot to play Airwolf 1, but despite we have a magazine in Spain with an article explaining how to finish the game, it's not complete unless they had a version that was not released or keep for themselves . I wouldn't put it in a list as worst ever anyways, the main idea was great and addictive but I think they did not finish the job and just released it doing it almost impossible to realize

If I have to choose a bad game (or conversion), ¡Galivan is in the top position of my list!

[MacDeath]

1942 wasn't that bad...


Many of those awfull games were also released in compilations...
So it wasn't that bad.


A bad "full price" game could actually be a decent addition to a compilation.

Dynasty Wars

oh yep... was this some shit-tier TierTex stuff again ?

Airwolf 2

As you know, licensed games are rarely good.
But this one is shamefully shamefull as they could have simply put the sprites and Backgrounds in 2 different colours... so the game would be a bit more playable or even better looking.

Intro page is quite decent though...



But still the classical speccy pork lazyness :

=Masked sprites yet no 3 colours Sprites on CPC.
=Probably direct 1bpp conversion into 2bpp.... fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu...


Many if not most if not all Speccy ports from a monocolour but with masked sprites Speccy games were quite ruined by this.

They sticked to the 1bpp mask instead of using a proper ink to perform this.

Was this technic not available nor known before 1992 ?

[sigh]

- PIT FIGHTER was awful, however the original arcade machine was pretty dire to start with, so the home computer versions didn't really have much chance! Nice rendition of the horrible title-music, though.

Regarding PitFighter - although it was bad, it did have realtime scaling which I thought was very interesting.