Pepsi Invaders / Coke Wins

Posted on April 1, 2019 by Cassidy

“Atari Goes Better with Coke.”

“You Can’t Beat the Real Thing.”
Poster image by yours truly.

Before we get started with today’s regularly scheduled article, I just wanted to make an important announcement: Henceforth, the “Bad Game Hall of Fame” is to be rebranded as the “Big Dumb Hall of Lame.” I thank you all for understanding during this transitionary period, and haha I’m just kidding; April Fool’s on you! Prank Master Cass is back in full effect, baby!

Now that we have the obligatory “more confusing than actually funny prank” section of the article out of the way, here’s the part where I reiterate a thing I said in last year’s April Fool’s Day post: Changing up the entire look and theming of your website for a one-day gag is honestly kind of obnoxious, and so I choose not to do it on the Bad Game Hall of Fame. Instead, I like to use this day to cover games that are sort of like “jokes” themselves: Deliberately bad, never actually intended for release, or designed as something along the lines of a novelty item. As it turns out, the subject of this article kind of covers both of those last two bullet points. For today, we’re covering 1983’s Pepsi Invaders — alternatively known as Coke Wins.

Yes, my friends; we are returning once again to the heady days of Atari’s heyday, to examine another cartridge of questionable design. We’ll be giving the landscape of ‘83 a quick survey, figuring out how exactly this brand deal came to be, playing the dang game for ourselves, and speculating as to why exactly copies of it go for so dang much at auction nowadays. And hey, we might even settle on what the game’s actual title was intended to be while we’re at it! But first, let me crack open a can of my own personal favorite soft drink: Hubba Bubba® Original Bubble Gum Soda! Now you can enjoy the sweet taste of chewing gum as a refreshing carbonated drink. And as an added perk, they’re the proud new sponsors of the Big Dumb Hall of Lame, so I’ll be getting paid in crates of pop for every article I mention them in. Cheers, friends!

… Hmm, that doesn’t taste great. It’s all gone completely flat. Actually, I feel like I’m getting a little sick to my stomach now oh no it’s coming back uuuppprrrrggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

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Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine

Posted on March 16, 2019 by Cassidy

“Tully, You’re a Worthless Weenie!”

“A strong but fair competitor and the best damn trucker in the system.”
North American PC box art.

By all accounts, the shortcomings of the full-motion video fad in early 90s game design should have been apparent from the very beginning. With the trade-off made in presenting visuals that were “as good as real life” being crippling limitations placed on gameplay, it’s astounding just how many developers still went and staked their futures on going all-in on the format. And with the dawn of true 3D graphics just on the horizon, the idea of a studio debuting in as late as 1994 to make that very same gamble should sound like the most disastrous business plan imaginable. Clearly, it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure all this out… And yet, if you were to take this particular studio’s name at face value, you might figure we’re looking at a whole team of supposed aerospace engineers, here!

The story of Rocket Science Games might be that of one of the all-time biggest blunders in the history of the games industry. Lasting only four years and managing to release just five games before folding, the tale told by their brief existence should serve as something like a parable for the dangers of trying to meet impossible expectations. Or, maybe it’s more of a treaty on the downfalls of hubris? Hell, there are some who might just come away with the conclusion that they were simply a studio in the wrong place at the wrong time. The truth of their demise is probably a combination of all three of those factors, plus maybe a hundred more too nuanced to mention here. What’s certain though is this much: Their failure as a games developer was as inevitable as it was absolute.

In centering this article around the release of Loadstar: The Legend of Tully Bodine for the Sega CD [and its subsequent DOS conversion], I won’t deny that I’m anchoring a larger examination of the studio behind it to one of their “least-acclaimed” titles. That said, there’s certainly plenty to be said of the game itself, and I’ll most definitely be taking the time to do so. In many ways, the design of Loadstar is emblematic of Rocket Science Games’ approach to game design as a whole, and makes for as good as case study as any into why they were doomed to fail. I also feel I’d be remiss not to spend a fair chunk of time covering the actual game in question, considering that it’s another title in our series of Patreon-requested articles (courtesy of @BillyMaysR1P). And so, with all that being said, I reckon it’s time for me to recount this whole sorry legend.

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Top Five: Games That Are Inadvertently Impossible to Beat

Posted on February 28, 2019 by Cassidy

There’s this rough statistic that’s floated around since 2011, which claims that 90% of players who start a video game won’t actually see it through to completion. Admittedly, the data backing this particular percentage appears to never have been made transparent, and I reckon it’s high time someone took a fresh look at more recent numbers. All that being said – and regardless of exact accuracy – the takeaway here is still clear: Most games go unbeaten by the bulk of their players. Between the necessary time investments, overwhelming number of constant new releases, and general public fickle; it’s honestly a wonder that there’s anyone left who can still find the time to finish video game campaigns.

It’s not as if developers can just use that as an excuse to not bother including endings to their games, though. The expectation when a player begins a narrative-driven [or otherwise “end goal” motivated] game should naturally be that there’s some goal they’re working towards, or a finish line they’re intended to cross. And if a player should find themselves so compelled by the story or engaged by the gameplay, they should be treated to some sort of conclusion or congratulation for their commitment to it. I’m realizing now that I’m over-explaining what is a pretty basic design concept here, in that “players should be able to get to the end of a game.” But wouldn’t you know it: Some developers occasionally forget to double-check their work before release!

In this list, we’re looking at a selection of titles that are unintentionally impossible to beat; whether thanks to programming errors, poor design, or other manner of perfunctory oversights. While there are a handful of game releases out there in the world which have actually been confirmed to have been developed with deliberately impassible points – whether to hide unfinished work or to simply spite players – I’m gonna call that a list for another day. And so, we’re running under the assumption here that these titles were simply not sufficiently playtested, rather than their intentionally being made impossible to finish. Or maybe one day, it’ll come out that one of the games on this list actually was purposefully sabotaged as part of some cruel joke on players, and I’ll have to eat crow? Only time will tell.

Obviously, we’re discounting arcade-style games that aren’t meant to end / be “beaten” in the traditional sense, here.

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Elf Bowling 1&2

Posted on December 11, 2018 by Cassidy

“An Internet Christmas Story.”

“C’mon, rack your fat brain!”
Festive doodling by yours truly.

Christmas-themed video games suck. I should honestly just induct every one of them ever made to the Bad Game Hall of Fame all at once, and save myself the chore of having to write about any of them individually. But I reckon that’s not really in the spirit of the site here, is it? No, it feels like my duty is to take on the worst of them one-by-one on an annual basis, until such time as the abolition of all December holidays or the heat death of the universe. Well, as long as we’re in it for the long haul here, I may as well get what is largely considered to be “the worst of the worst” out of the way nice and early.

Elf Bowling 1&2 was launched concurrently on Nintendo’s Game Boy Advance and DS on November 28th, 2005, to what can only be described as a overwhelmingly negative critical response. I may as well mention right upfront that they are almost identically the same game, with only minimal differences in terms of presentation between them. I should also mention that these retail products serve as conversions of a pair of freeware PC games, which were nearly six years long in the tooth prior to their consolization treatment. Oh, and to top it all off; the current owner to the Elf Bowling trademark once waged a Wikipedia edit war to condemn the “unauthorized” releases of these games — a trademark he only owns because his company bought the rights second-hand for themselves, right out from under the original creators’ noses.

Well, to hell with my plans for the holidays, I guess! It looks like I’m gonna have to put in the hours getting down to the bottom of this incredibly stupid mystery. You know, I really thought I was just picking out an easy little game for myself this month at first? I seriously had no idea what I was getting myself into. But now that I know what I know, I feel obligated to share it with the rest of the world. So, here we go folks: It’s time to thoroughly examine the circumstances and history behind a novelty Flash game from the late 90s, and to dissect its cheap cash-in of a cartridge conversion. Let the festivities begin!

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X-COM: Enforcer

Posted on November 30, 2018 by Cassidy

“Crop Circle Surprise.”

“Aliens, prepare to be enforced.”
North American PC box art.

The return of X-COM in 2012 was certainly one of the most pleasant surprises of that year. It had been something like an uncertain decade for the property leading up to the release of XCOM: Enemy Unknown; with rights to the franchise stuck in limbo for a time, the announcement of a first-person shooter side project being met with much skepticism, and a struggled development cycle that dragged on over the course of nearly nine years. None of this is even to mention the tumultuous times for the property leading up to its initial hiatus period — stuck under a publisher facing financial turmoil, struggling to establish a new identity for itself, and seeing the cancellation of several of its intended entries. And so, the comeback story that saw the franchise return to its tactical, turn-based, alien-stomping roots rates as a truly compelling tale.

I could probably sit here and gush for a hundred pages about how great the recent run of Firaxis-developed titles have been, but we’re not really in the business of writing at length about “critical darlings” on this website. And besides: I don’t think the developers really need me stepping up to bat for them at this stage, seeing as they’re already plenty successful and well-loved enough as is. That being said, I reckon there are a pair of X-COM titles that feel better suited for my style of examination. We’ll get to the other in due time, but the subject of today’s article feels like the perfect starting point, seeing as it was the game credited as nearly killing the X-COM brand entirely. Oh, and the fact that it’s another one of our Patreon “pledger requests” is a pretty major motivator as well. (Thanks ruderubik!)

2001’s X-COM: Enforcer represented MicroProse’s last-ditch effort at making the X-COM brand appeal to a broader audience. With Enforcer’s failure marked the end of an era for the franchise, and the beginning of that aforementioned decade-long slumber. It has come to be seen as a game that nobody asked for, eschewing the time-tested traditions that had come to define the series, the likes of which had built up and brought in its audience to begin with. Behind the scenes, it was a project born of utter desperation, cobbled together from the pieces of projects previously cancelled. But having said all that, the questions still remain: Is it really all that bad a game, and was it wholly to blame for the franchise falling off the face of the earth? That’s what this document aims to declassify.

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