Well over a hundred games get released across mobiles, consoles and computers every single day, which is no mean feat considering that designers, artists and coders have to work in unison to createsuch large scale products. It makes sense that things end up going wrong during production occasionally, but sometimes these happy accidents can create aunique piece of artthat showcases creative ideas.
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Or it could just be that tight deadlines and limited budgetscreate funny products that leave an impression. No matter how these games came to be, they all make for great ‘so bad it’s good’ experiences that unconventional gaming fans should appreciate. Here are some of the best examples.
8Wanted: Dead
Team Ninja, the folks behind Dead or Alive, Nioh and Ninja Gaiden, quietly released a shoddy hack and slash game at the start of 2023. Reviewers and users were turned off by the underwhelming combat, which was a huge departure from the studio’s previous titles, but fans of simplistic swordplay were treated to a flawed but ambitious experience featuring a ton of gameplay styles with over the top characters.
Wanted: Dead strives for the same kind of silly humor as theYakuza seriesbut sometimes pushes jokes further with its unique janky presentation. The addition of stilted dialogue, strange background elements, nonsensical minigames and random anime cutscenes adds a weird charm to the package that constantly questions how intentional each design decision is.
7Shadow The Hedgehog
Sonic Team has a surprising amount of poorly optimizedgames under its belt, from the infamous Sonic 06 reboot to Sonic Boom. These titles have a ton of glitches to laugh at, but the bugs affect the precision needed for a fast-paced platformer to feel fun. Shadow The Hedgehog ditches the focus on 3D platforming in favor of gunplay, which solves this issue in the goofiest way possible.
Shadow’s edgy take on the Sonic formula is probably most well known for its absurd branching narrative surrounding the death of Dr. Robotnik’s daughter. Upon the completion of each level, a choice of two climactic stories can be chosen based on previous choices in the narrative path. This over-ambitious mechanic often results in a story that feels disjointed, but the tradeoff is that each dramatic moment also feels unexpected. There’s a lot to enjoy in this package, including firefights with Sonic and dialogue between Shadow and the President of the United States.
6Spider-Man: Web of Shadows
Insomniac’s Spider-man games are some of the best-selling andhighest rated superhero games of all time, and it’s easy to see why. Sony’s exclusivity deal gave the development team the time and money required to develop a polished experience. However, Web of Shadows was made in an era where licensed games were made to profit off a shoestring budget.
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One choice made this game infamous in the eyes of fans, the ambitious non-linear story. It was bafflingly inspired by the plot of Spider-Man 3, a take on the Venom storyline which was panned by critics and audiences alike.
Web of Shadows takes this already bad idea up to eleven with a morality system that allows people to make corrupt choices in the shoes of Spider-man. Every mission has a comically evil bad ending alongside a mix of witty dialogue and stilted voice acting that only add to the hilarity.
5Sneak King
Sometimes it just takes a simple idea to be entertaining and Sneak Kingdelivers this on a silver platterwith a stealth game revolving around the elaborately goofy Burger King mascot.
The king, with his uncannily large head and limited animations makes for a unique stealth protagonist that feels out of place lurking in the shadows. The contrast between the protagonist and his objective is played up in different ways. During cutscenes the king is presented as a creepy stalker, but gameplay shows a delightfully campy side to his majesty with the inclusion of dance sequences through the innovative flourish meter.
4Snow White And The 7 Clever Boys
Snow White and the Seven Clever Boys embodies comically bad rip-off media with infamous box art that enticed the internet through morbid curiosity. Obvious imitations of existing IP are exceedingly rare in the console space, but Phoenix Games decided to push their luck by releasing a ton of low quality titles that resembled Disney’s adaptations of public domain stories.
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The content of these games consists of a movie and some sliding block puzzles to break up the riveting animated action. The movie, created by subsidiary Dingo Pictures, is the star of the package as scenes are filled with lines that were badly translated from German, unique voice acting, stiff animation and a completely nonsensical story.
3Qwop
Qwop is a simple and silly game deliberatelydesigned around awkward controls. Users take control of a runner though the use of his leg muscles, which are separately controlled using the Q, W, O and P keys. Getting these muscles to work in unison is the main challenge, as balancing the runner while projecting the body towards the finish line is a surprisingly difficult task.
The use of physics makes Qwop captivating as the protagonist often bends in strange ways before falling flat on their face. This surprising Flash hit was made by Bennett Foddy, who would go on to make other strange and difficult physics-based games including another popular title,Getting Over It, which ditches the keyboard in favor of the mouse.
2Counter-Strike Neo: White Memories
Counter-Strikehas a strange history outside the mainline series. Neo is a Japanese arcade game that adds a story mode which eventually ends up in space. White Memories is a flash-basedvisual novelsequel to the arcade game that is split into twelve different downloads. Like many other visual novel spin-offs, this is indeed a dating simulator, but this one is set in an internment facility where a rescuer and hostage find common ground.
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The absurdity of the idea is pushed further in the presentation. From the offset there’s an anime-like opening and theme song to each character’s profile. The visual novel itself is relatively normal outside the premise, but the occasional shooting sections are the real star of the show. Intense action-packed parts of the story are played out like a Counter-Strike game with recognizable weapons and accuracy focused gameplay. But the limitations of Flash Player give an amateurish feel to the high stakes firefights with cardboard cutout-like enemies and stodgy movement that feels closer to Wolfenstein 3D than an esports game.
1Super 3D Noah’s Ark
Super 3D Noah’s Arkwas a Christian takeon Doom that replaced death with sleep and feeding as Noah uses a variety of weapon-like tools to calm the rambunctious animals on his expansive ark. On its own, the game can get quite boring; the level design and aesthetics are repetitive and bland, weapons don’t have a reticle which makes them hard to aim, and there’s edutainment sections that test your bible knowledge. But in comparison to the hellish world of its inspiration, the levels of censorship are fun to appreciate.
But the fun doesn’t end there, as the story behind the game’s unlicensed development gives a lot of irony to the wholesome branding presented on-screen. The original SNES cartridge circumvented copyright by using a game adapter to trick the console into reading it as an official title which, many years later, gave the game a small cult following which inspired modern re-releases.
