SLEDGE HAMMER AWARDS!

[Omega-TI]

Okay all you classic gamer's, you've played numerous machines over the decades, you've built up vast experience and a wealth of knowledge, so, in your opinion, what is the worst video game machine you've ever played on and why?

 

Is one game machine out there SO BAD that it's worthy of just being smashed to bits?

 

The top 10 nominations will go into a poll for later voting.

 

[CatPix]

Worst machine? Vaaast question.

And very subjective too. There are good/average machines that got crappy game, lowerign their "gaming value" (like the 3DO...).

There are weak machines that received many great games and even improved more than the originals designer ever though so (well, the VCS come to mind... It was planned to be just an improved Pong machine... but boy, that succes!).

 

There is no mainstream machine that I can thing that deserve a smashing - from the Channel F to the Wii U, they all have their cons and pros.

 

If we delve into the obscure side of gaming, then I know of two machines that really, never brought anything to gaming, and probably more brought tears for the owners of those machines.

 

The Hanimex HMG 7900 :

This pile of <insert insult here> appeared on the European markets around 1983. It's clearly targeted to people that wanted a cheap machine.

There is about 8 games released, all mediocre copies of common games of the era, except they are mushed on a whopping 60*52 pixel screens with 8 colors. Sound is a beeper. The machine come with one pad only. A second pad port exist, but there is no 2 players games, neither they are separate gamepads to be found.

 

Hmmm yummmyyy!

 

 

And the Game Master :

 

It seems to appears on the European markets (why, what have we done to the video game Gods??) in 1990. Clearly aimed to rip off kids wanting a Game Gear, this pile of crap of a game system offers nothing but pain and sadness.

The games are displayed on a black and white 64*64 grid. And by black and white, it means that a pixel is on or off. No shades of grey for this baby.

This could be forgiveable... If all games weren't utter junk. They all, except for one (of the dozen that appears to have been released) doesn't even bear any programmer or company copyright. The only one I saw was a Bon Treasure copyright; a name that might be familiar to Watara Supervision owners; for the others, Bon Treasure was a Taiwanese company that made games so shitty they made Sachen/Van Joy/Commins/Thin Chen (it's the same company) games looks like masterpieces. I am not joking.

 

 

To make thing worse, this rubbish system was probably one of the first complete "buy it and name it" video game system; it exist in different colors, branding (Hartung in Germany, Videojet in France) and even shape :

 

[omegadot]

Personally, Game Gear. I mean, there are out of the gate failures and just terribly designed devices but for a successful mainstream device device I thought the Game Gear was one of the worst. Mostly due to the screen, battery life and size. I owned one and actually liked a lot of games on it but it was just such a pain to lug around, keep powered, and see that it ended up being a pointless machine with some great games on it.

[TheObscureGamer]

Out of all the consoles and handhelds that I have played(and I have played almost all of them), there are only 2 that have no good games. The R-zone and Action Max. The Game.com for example, although not the best handheld, it does have some good games like Duke Nukem 3D, Lights Out, Monopoly, Quiz Wiz, Scrabble, Frogger, Wheel of fortune/2, Centipede, and Tiger Casino. The CD-I as we know is not the best console but atleast it does have some good games. The Apprentice, The lost ride, Tetris, Burn:cycle, Dragon's Lair, Game oldies 2, Hotel Mario, Mutant Rampage etc. The amount of good games the CD-I has may not warrant a purchase for you, but it definitely does have some good games.The R-zone and Action Max on the other hand has NO good games.

Who in the fat fishes of a phenomenal Fahrvergnügen(excuse my language but) fuck thought that a Videogame console where games are on VHS was a good ideal?. I mean anybody with a brain and over the age of 10 could tell that this was crap after the 1st playthrough, hell even during the 1st playthrough. The same goes for the R-zone. After the 1st 3 seconds, you've already done and seen everything in the game and unlike the Game & Watches, these are no fun whatsoever. Every other console and handheld has atleast 1 good game but these have none...

Edited July 16, 2015 by TheObscureGamer

[Skippy B. Coyote]

Of the game systems I've played and worked on, none can hold a candle to unspeakable fury that the original toaster model NES has caused me. I've been through three NES systems and every one of them has made me want to smash it with a sledgehammer at one point or another.

 

The majority of this consternation has been caused by the abysmally bad 72 pin connector, which even when brand new is about as trustworthy as a crack addled prostitute. It's the only system that I've ever had to spend 20 minutes fiddling with the alignment of a perfectly clean cartridge just to get it to play, and then when it finally does work there is no telling when the game is going to decide to spontaneously freeze on you (and it's usually at the worst possible time).

 

Speaking of games, the average difficulty level of most NES games tends to be set to "Balls of Steel". Never before have I encountered a system with more infuriatingly hard games than the NES. I almost have trouble imagining how people found the games on this system fun to play back in the day, because I've yet to find more than a couple NES games that didn't make me want to throw my controller at the TV screen or break it over my knee on more than one occasion.

 

Suffice it to say the original toaster model NES wins my Sledgehammer Award.

Edited July 16, 2015 by Jin

[krslam]

R-zone, VIS, Action Max, and Studio II are all stinkeroos. Everything else I've played has at least a few enjoyable games, but not those four.

[Pixelboy]

Great, now I have the theme from Sledge Hammer (the TV show) stuck in my head. Thanks a lot.

[dendawg]

Studio II. The end.

[Omega-TI]

Great, now I have the theme from Sledge Hammer (the TV show) stuck in my head. Thanks a lot.

 

HA HA! Yeah, that one can dig into your brain and stay stuck for a while!

BTW - You can watch all those old episodes on You Tube!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQl6r0fqRAI

In these politically correct times, a show like that would never make it to TV!

[omegadot]

Studio II. The end.

 

Perfect thread for your avatar.

[7800fan]

Really hard to pin one bad system. I haven't played any of the above mentioned system other than Studio II.

 

Of those I've played, a few stands out from could really use improvement department.

 

#1 Atari 5200: non centering joystick and many games were designed to be played with digital joystick like Pac Man makes this one a tricky system to play properly and enjoy well. I've lost too many lives in 5200 Pitfall because the I couldn't get the joystick centered manually. I eventually built a PC joystick adapter to use the old analog controllers with 2 fire buttons, and pass through connector to use the number pad on original controller.

 

#2 Colecovision: they blow very easy. Touch the joystick the wrong way, look at the console the wrong way, or die in game the wrong way and one chip burns out. This meant more work on keeping CV system working and intact.

 

#3 NES: blinking screen of death, nuff said. There's a reason no other console has used ZIF design, and never again since then. ZIF is designed for easy insertion but it's meant to be very rarely used like CPU swap, not used 100's time a month like NES did.

 

Fortunately I am usually "slow" on new game consoles so I never got XBox 360 or PS3 and never had to suffer their frequent failures. Based on what I heard, YLoD and RRoD both points to hardware design issue that Sony and Microsoft never discovered until long after the release.

[CatPix]

Fortunately I am usually "slow" on new game consoles so I never got XBox 360 or PS3 and never had to suffer their frequent failures. Based on what I heard, YLoD and RRoD both points to hardware design issue that Sony and Microsoft never discovered until long after the release.

For the PS3 it might be true, but it's a know fact that Microsoft knew there was a design flaw in the first batch of Xbox360, before the console release, and they decided to go on anyway and release the first batch of consoles with the design flaw to get early on the market and provide heavy customer service rather than delaying the Xbox 360 for 6 more months.

Edited July 17, 2015 by CatPix

[+frankodragon]

The Hyperscan. And you thought the Commodore 64 disk drives were slow! You also have to scan cards which sometimes don't work. Then you have to wait for it to load, scan more cards, wait for even more loading times, and on and on.

 

I was even going to recommend microwaving it besides using a sledgehammer but it'll emit toxic fumes of cheap plastics from China.

 

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

RCA Studio ii! The End! All the reasons are shown here. And it sounds like a chicken masturbating.

 

http://youtu.be/AFHq84gtpsU

Edited July 18, 2015 by Retrogamer81081

[BydoEmpire]

 

 

And very subjective too.

Sure, I think that's the nature of the question and pretty well understood by everyone.

 

I don't know, there's always something worthwhile, but if I were to pick... I'm going to say Game.com, if we're including portables. If not, then the Bally Astrocade is the console I've owned that I had the least fun with. Not that there aren't some good games, but I don't like the controllers and most of the games are weak (imho). Never played the R-Zone, Studio II or others that have been mentioned.

Edited July 18, 2015 by BydoEmpire

[+5-11under]

I never played a Studio II, otherwise I would vote for that, for sure.

 

I've gotta go with the Virtual Boy. I had virtually (no pun intended) all the NA games. A couple of games were okay, I thought, but I could only play the system for 5-10 minutes at a time.

[Jess Ragan]

Game.com's gotta take the prize for this one. Nearly illegible screen, lousy games, poor hardware... it's the trifecta of terrible. "Honorable" mentions go to the AdventureVision (aren't you glad you spent $5000 for this caveman ancestor of the Virtual Boy?), the 32X (yes Sega, we wanted yet another piddling system upgrade), and the CD-i (the crown turd of gaming's mercifully short-lived multimedia era).

[BassGuitari]

Any console is only as good as its games. To that end, here are my nominees:

-RCA Studio II: I personally think it's kind of a neat system in spite of itself. It's quirky and nothing if not a period piece. But even the best games are only mildly amusing, and only for so long. Its user interface is incomprehensible and for such a primitive system, it's remarkably user unfriendly. (Of course, it's 2015 and there's no excuse for not being able to track down a transcription--or better yet, a scan--of the owner's manual.) Still, *some* fun can be had with the Studio II for gamers with inclinations toward the early days of video games, and it's good for a round of Squash, Bowling, or Blackjack every now and then, so I hate to put it among the worst of the worst, but the fact remains that even in its time it was incredibly limited, and there's just not much here for most people.

-Tiger R-Zone: I don't even consider this a console, but rather a fancy member of the LCD/handheld family. Even among Tiger handhelds, the R-Zone's games were forgettable, to put it charitably. If the R-Zone had received "ports" of Baseball, Karate King, or Pinball, and had Tiger foregone the headset design from the start, this might be a slightly different conversation. Slightly.

 

-Mattel Hyperscan: I don't even know what to say about this one, other than it achieves the Herculean task of making the Studio II seem like fun. Seriously; were I given the option of playing either the Hyperscan or the Studio II, the Studio II is a legitimately attractive proposition. Virtual Boy, CD-i, and Game.com don't even approach the level of shit that is the Hyperscan. I honestly don't know if I have a single nice thing to say about it. I guess the controller's kind of neat-looking? Eh, screw it, I'm calling it: the Hyperscan is my Worst Console Of All Time.

[Rhomaios]

It'd be too easy to say what everyone else has said, but I'll nominate the CD-i. Worthless system.

 

Even though I sold mine and don't care about it at all, I don't think the 32X should be on this list. Had a couple decent titles. It wasn't nearly as bad as everything else in this thread.

[CatPix]

the CD-i (the crown turd of gaming's mercifully short-lived multimedia era).

Short lived?

What is it now with consoles linked to Internet, able to even record video or livestream, and to play BlueRays and all?

The CD-i launched the multimedia era, but it certainly didn't ended with it.

The 3DO had play features on the pad, the PS1 selling point outside of gaming was the CD player, the PS2 had his DVD player (that at the time, a PS2 cost less than DVD players) and the PS3 have Blue Ray.

 

You're probably more thinking about the FMV craze; but that's about half of the games on the CD-i.

 

If you wanna bash useless multimedia players, I'd more look for the Commodore CDTV or the Tandy VIS

 

I'll defend the CD-i only because it is considered a video gaming system, but in Philips' mind, it was never meant to be, not as much as a DVD player can be considered a gaming system (and you can, with games like Dragon's Lair released on DVD).

The public asked for games, and Philips provided. But that would be like buying a Smart ForTwo and complaining that you can't pull your 20m boat and can't carry your group of 12 friends with this car; it's not what it was designed for.

[VIRTUALboy]

R-zone, VIS, Action Max, and Studio II are all stinkeroos. Everything else I've played has at least a few enjoyable games, but not those four.

The RCA studio ii was made in an era when almost all consoles were pong consoles with one game. It used cartriges.

 

[mbd30]

Most consoles have at least a few games that seem interesting. Like the Jaguar has "Tempest 2000", "Rayman", "Raiden" and what looks like a solid port of "Doom".

 

Was the CD-I the worst in terms of value for money? Even if it has some decent games, no way would I have paid $700.

 

The RCA Studio II is often called the worst console ever and it does look horrible. It was obsolete when it came out.

[jhd]

I only played the in-store demo systems, but I would have to vote for the Virtual Boy.

 

In my case, I do not see 3D in real life (I have very limited vision in one eye), so the VB had just a very low contrast screen from my perspective.

 

Honourable mention goes to the Nintendo 3DS -- for the very same reason. The screen was not so much 3D as just fuzzy.

[omegadot]

My 3DS is basically never in 3D mode. I can see it just fine I just don't care for it, even when it's lined up well and working.

[CatPix]

Just because you're physically unable to experiment the 3D effect or you do'nt care for doesn't make the whole system atrash - there is the 2DS if you really don't wanna bother with the 3D effect.

Sledgehamming the 3DS for the 3D would be like sledgehamming the Dreamcast because most games doesn't use the VMU screen.