The 11 worst video games of all time

For every awesome game, there are many, many other mediocre ones – and some truly bad ones as well. Some of those offenders have cost us time and money, and scarred us with their awfulness. Crummy gameplay, janky controls, all flash and no substance? Been there, done that. And yet some games even sink below those common problems to become legendarily horrific. Enjoy. Or rather, don’t.

E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982)

Ah, E.T. – brilliant movie, but horrendous, nearly-unplayable game. It’s the game so terrible that it not only helped crash the video game industry in the early ’80s, but it also created the long trend of awful, licensed movie game cash-ins. E.T. was conceptualised and coded in less than six weeks to make a Christmas cut-off, and it showed in every way in this incomprehensible Atari adventure. In fact, thousands upon thousands of unsold copies were buried in the New Mexico desert: it’s really that bad.

SUPERMAN: THE NEW SUPERMAN ADVENTURES (1999)

It’s the Superman game so super they put “Superman” twice in the title – right? Nope, it’s actually pretty horrendous. This Nintendo 64 trash heap is the worst superhero game ever created, and that’s already a pretty rough category to begin with. Krypton is covered in a thick haze of fog to try and mask the game’s visual shortcomings, but it actually made things worse. And that’s in addition to the terrible controls, dull gameplay, loads of bugs and glitches, and busted flying action.

INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996)

This PS1 number had an F18 Hornet chasing down a UFO on the box – so it had to be good, right? Turns out, this sorry excuse for a combat flight sim is flat-out terrible. It was barely possible to finish the first two levels because the controls were so clunky, graphics so bland, and objectives so repetitive.

RISE OF THE ROBOTS (1994)

Rise of the Robots was billed as a next-generation fighting game that would vastly surpass Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat, with dazzling 3D graphics and artificial intelligence to enhance the combat experience. Instead, Mirage’s game ended up being incredibly clunky: the gameplay was dull and simplistic, the controls were unreliable, and the choppy animation ruined those admittedly pretty fighter models. We feel for anyone who dropped a bundle on this game back in ’94, duped into thinking they would be playing the future of fighting games.

BIONIC GRANNY (1984)

If you weren’t alive in the mid-1980s, you might be unaware some 8-bit games were sold on tape for the princely sum of two quid. Most were garbage. Queen of the trashcans was Bionic Granny on the C64. You controlled a deranged granny, whacking fleeing children with her cane while avoiding lollipops hurled by a furious lollipop lady. You moved left; you moved right; you stared aghast at a gaming abomination, dreaming of a brighter future – and how you might have put those two coins to better use.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA CD-I GAMES (1993-4)

One listing, three games, and untold amounts of suffering. Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon both had tolerable side-scrolling action levels, but the hammy, hand-drawn cut-scenes almost singlehandedly ruin the entire franchise. They’re that terrible. And final entry Zelda’s Adventure is an even worse play experience, despite its classic Zelda overhead perspective, due to janky controls and an awful frame rate.

GRAND THEFT AUTO IV (2008)

Games are about escapism, right? Well, our memories of GTA IV mainly involve answering the phone and being told to go and pick up someone from the airport. Or being told to take my girlfriend bowling. Or being told to collect the sodding laundry. The tagline should have been: GTA IV – Even more mundane than your life.

STREET FIGHTER: THE MOVIE (1995)

Street Fighter: The Movie still had most of the classic fundamentals intact, but something happened along the way: using digitized images of the actors from the film killed the speed of the game, with long load times compounding the frustration. It’s a total misfire: a tremendously bad plan then executed horribly.

NO MAN’S SKY (2016)

No Man’s Sky promised the world – no, endless worlds. This was championed as an epic adventure in a procedurally-generated universe, something no developer has previously dared. Sadly, in the end it turned the most exciting concept ever into one of the most tedious games of all time. Endlessly exploring deserted planets and discovering oddball critters, it turns out, isn’t endlessly interesting.

BIG RIGS: OVER THE ROAD RACING (2003)

Chances are good that you’ve never heard of Big Rigs, a low-budget PC title. But spend a few minutes with Big Rigs and it’s sure to make a strong impression. It’s awful, of course – but that’s because it’s clearly unfinished, like a quick demo built in a couple days and somehow released as a full retail experience. In the initial version, the A.I. controlled opponent didn’t move, plus without collision detection or seemingly any kind of realistic physics model, you could just drive your massive truck freely through walls, up mountains, and outside of the terrain map.

CRUIS’N (2007)

Nintendo’s original Cruis’n USA was a pretty entertaining arcade racer, and the follow-ups were fine – but Cruis’n is something else. This Wii exclusive, cobbled together from chunks of The Fast and the Furious arcade games, offers only a nightmarish jaunt. From the intensely over-sensitive motion steering to the constant bugs, Cruis’n seemed like it was quickly slapped together and then never quite completed.