Biggest Video Game Trainwrecks: The Ten Worst

10 worst – From an open-world dream that became a linear revenge slog to licensed disasters plagued by glitches and unplayable controls, these ten games are remembered for being nearly impossible to enjoy—and often shocking in what they got wrong.

Some games vanish quietly. Others leave a trail of broken mechanics, brutal glitches, and baffling design choices you can still see years later. These are the ten worst video games of all time—ranked by how completely they fail at delivering the basic promise of fun.

At number 10 is ‘Ride to Hell: Retribution’ (2013), a game built on a pitch that looked ambitious in the early stages. It originally planned to be a vast open world with grueling roads and biker gangs. including two bikers riding motorcycles while aiming revolvers at each other in the game’s imagery. In the end, the final product abandoned that idea and instead delivered a basic, linear story of revenge. Whatever the original plan was, the execution couldn’t carry it. The game is described as plagued by lackluster visuals, bad shooting mechanics, and awful writing and voice acting. Its only real enjoyment is framed as “unintentional so-bad-it’s-good comedy,” but the experience doesn’t last. Disastrous glitches hinder the player from progressing. and the game includes tasteless. abrupt sex scenes featuring fully clothed characters—turning whatever brief amusement might have existed into something easier to walk away from.

Number 9 is ‘The Lord of the Rings: Gollum’ (2023), a licensed game that lands in a particularly harsh spotlight. The list points out that licensed games can vary massively in quality. even naming great examples like Spider-Man from Insomnia and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic as potential successes. But Gollum is positioned as a disaster. with one striking difference: it’s the only game on the list released within the past 10 years. It’s also called out as an outlier in what it asks players to do—imagining fun while controlling Gollum. “the meek. shifty creature. ” became hard for players to picture as release approached. The execution, described as laughably bad, includes terrible visuals worse than the decades-old movies and terrible stealth mechanics. Glitches on release are presented as making the game nearly unplayable. with a buggy mess that constantly crashed and left the whole experience “extremely unstable.”.

Moving to number 8. ‘Shaq Fu’ (1994) is treated as one of the most uncomfortable and sluggish fighting game experiences of all time. Shaquille O’Neal’s celebrity star power is noted as being near-inescapable in the 90s. translating into a wide array of pop culture appearances. In gaming. ‘Shaq Fu’ is singled out as one of the worst games of the 90s. especially during an era when fighting games were arguably at their peak thanks to releases like Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat. The critique is blunt: difficulty doesn’t come from balancing—it comes from struggling to make sense of the controls and then trying to play anyway. The chaos doesn’t stop with gameplay flow; the game’s premise is described as Shaq fighting a bunch of interdimensional warriors to save a child from an evil mummy.

At number 7 comes ‘Bad Rats’ (2009). a title that the piece frames as having an unusually well-known legacy for all the wrong reasons. It’s described as one of the most infamously well-known and surprisingly successful terrible games of the digital era. especially because it became popular as a gag gift for people to send to each other on Steam. That popularity is tied to its reputation for overwhelming lack of quality. “shocking offensive material.

” and bloody violence—plus its low price point of $2 and the way it frequently went on sale. The game is also said to fail at the structural elements of its core gameplay. It’s a physics-based puzzle game where the physics often don’t work at all. and the criticism continues: without puzzles that function. the only fallback becomes visuals and presentation. Even that “ironically” underperforms, with low-quality 3D visuals and racist caricature rats. The result,

in this telling, is a cheap gag whose comedy wears off quickly.

Number 6 is ‘Bubsy 3D’ (1996). where the jump from 2D to 3D is presented as a leap that wasn’t handled with success. The game takes what’s described as an already middling platformer franchise and turns it into one of the absolute worst platformers of all time. The problems start with controls: it’s described as having a sluggish. unintuitive method of character and camera control. making even basic movement an “arduous” task. The piece also adds a timeline pressure point—if Bubsy 3D had been one of the earliest attempts at 3D platforming. maybe it could get more slack. but it’s said to be completely blown out of the water by Super Mario 64. which released in North America two months before Bubsy 3D. That direct comparison makes Bubsy 3D’s tank controls and “laughably bad visuals” sharper in the eyes of the players of the era.

At number 5 comes ‘E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial’ (Atari). The article frames the game as a go-to example of one of the worst video games ever made—so disastrous in execution that it nearly killed the entire video game industry. It’s described as one of the biggest commercial failures in video game history and as the defining cautionary tale of rushed development and studio interference. The failure is said to have been so large-scale and infamous that

it inspired its own documentary. detailing how unsold copies were buried in the desert to save space. The irony is addressed too: E.T. is an adaptation of a famously amazing movie. and that beloved original is part of why the game’s failure is described as more catastrophic. The piece points to confusion in execution and a departure from the simpler fun games that made Atari successful in the first place. with only five weeks of

development time and all expectations placed on it—portrayed as dooming it for failure.

Number 4 is ‘Superman: The New Superman Adventures’ (1999), more commonly known as Superman 64. The game is described as one of the most glaring and annoying games to play. almost as if it was designed specifically to annoy and enrage players. For Superman fans expecting the high-flying action associated with Superman in comics and animated series. the issue is described as an overwhelming amount of content that boils down to flying through rings in a barren. lifeless city full of fog. The critique then turns mechanical. Unresponsive controls and overwhelming glitches make the game near-unplayable at times. It’s described as the absolute worst licensed video game ever made. with the failures constantly in the player’s face and frequently getting in the way of progressing—turning the whole experience into what the article calls a repetitive nightmare.

At number 3 is ‘Action 52’ (1992), tied to the era’s multicarts—cartridges with files for multiple games. The article explains that multicarts sometimes contained previously released games and, for unlicensed carts, often pirated games. It says Action 52 grew infamous because all 52 of its attempted video games failed at function and quality. In the “best” cases, games are described as incredibly generic vertical shooters indistinguishable from one another. In the worst cases, many are said to be completely unplayable and to crash within minutes of booting up. The piece also includes one pricing detail: when it was released. it cost $199. a staggering amount compared to other NES games of the era.

Number 2 is ‘Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing’ (2003). presented as an incomplete. bare-bones disaster that creates “one of the cheapest. most non-existent” racing experiences possible. The article says every aspect screams incompletion—basic text graphics. a lack of any physics. and some of the worst graphics possible. Initial releases are described as not even featuring real racing because the opponent truck driver didn’t begin driving to race and left the player driving as they pleased on the track. The lack of penalty for going out of bounds and the absence of collision detection are both highlighted. The only fun described is abusing the lack of fundamental features, including infinitely increasing speeds by going backwards. And after all of that, the finish line delivers an inept message: “You’re winner.”.

Finally. at number 1 is ‘Custer’s Revenge’ (1982). described as the go-to example of a terrible video game—but for more than just gameplay and graphics. The piece argues the real factor that makes it the worst is its overwhelming offensive and disgusting content. to the point where the article says the concept feels vile to even talk about. It calls the game pornographic: the player controls General Armstrong Custer in the nude. with the goal being to dodge obstacles to rape a Native American woman tied to a post. The article frames it as a relic of an early. unfiltered era where it was “allowed to be made. ” but says even for the 80s this type of gross. offensive content was too much for critics and players. It also notes that the game helped ban many X-rated video games from many regions across the U.S.

Across these ten titles. the pattern is stark: ambition that collapses under poor mechanics. licensed worlds that break under glitches. controls that don’t work. and—at the most extreme end—content that turns a game into something that should never have been. In the worst cases, the failures aren’t just bad design. They’re the kind of mistakes that linger, remembered long after the credits.

worst video games Ride to Hell: Retribution The Lord of the Rings: Gollum Shaq Fu Bad Rats Bubsy 3D E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial Superman 64 Action 52 Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing Custer's Revenge