I originally had this on my Wasted Seconds blog, but I decided to put it on here, though it is modified a bit. This is mainly just my personal thing, but I'm sure there are other people like this too. And yes I bleep out my curse words. I don't know why. :)

You've seen them before. You walk into Wal-Mart or Target or whoever you go to, and you see this on the shelf for (usually) 20 bucks.



But I got it anyway just out of sheer morbid curiosity. And God was it horrible. I could not find ONE redeeming game out of this. And I tried. I really did. And all it is is just they stuffed a bunch of their previous game collections into one.

You know for a FACT going in when you buy this, there's going to be maybe ONE game that's merely "bad" instead of "Oh God, I'd rather rip out my spleen than play this". Most people complete ignore these, but not me. For some reason I have it in my head just to see how utterly f***ing HORRIBLE these are. Sometimes it's multiple LEVELS counted as seperate games of some horrid Galaga ripoff shooter with graphics that look like they were done by a 5 year old, all counting as the seperate games. Others are light versions of Flash games. Not to mention thousands of Sudoku variations and hundreds and thousands of other stuff I personally could give two sh*ts less about.

I don't know what the hell is wrong with me in getting these. One of the Sega Genesis games I'm thinking about getting is Action 52. Yeah, I have the ROM with the emulator and blah blah blah but it's just not the same. I want to play this crap on the real thing. The cheapest Buy it Now on eBay I could find was 26.95 plus whatever shipping is, and that's just for the cartridge itself. Next up is a factory sealed version of the game for about 60 bucks, but I'm not spending that much. And I'm not enough of a collector to really give a rat's ass one way or the other if it's factory sealed. But this game ... even the packaging. I wish to God I would've seen this in the store back in the day. With my young mind at the time, I would've bought into the advertising for it. "Holy cow, 52 games? I want!" But if you look at the back of the box, you'll notice a strange lack of screen shots for any of the games ...



The front of the box.



Hmm ... looks kinda fishy to me.

Now back in the day, you didn't really have much power to find screenshots. I'm sure that magazines didn't cover this, or if they did they probably ripped it apart. But thanks to today, you have the ability to find screenshots of a few of the games. Maybe even Youtube videos. Now the Sega Genesis and Sega CD has some GORGEOUS games. Some of them, they REALLY pushed what that limited color palette could do. A total of 512 colors to choose from, and can display 64 of them on the screen at once. Look at games like Outrun, Comix Zone, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Beyond Oasis. The Sega CD version of Eternal Champions somehow managed to push it up to 256 colors on the screen at once with trickery, and whether you like the game or not ... it looks great and really showed what the hardware could do. You can see a review of the game and an interview with the designer Michael Latham at Sega-16.com.

Here's a few screenshots from Action 52 (courtesy of Sega-16 of course) :



The game select screen ...


This actually looks pretty cool, obviously an After Burner ripoff though.


In this still shot, the car actually looks pretty good. Even though everything else looks like crap. And I'm sure there's a catch somewhere.

Now I know probably NONE of these games are going to be any good because they've stuffed so much into it that there aren't going to be any full fledged games on there. I'm guessing it's probably the monotonous endless mess that keeps going and going. But I could be wrong ... there could be endings for them. But it's probably like the ending for Rampage on the NES. *shudder*

I'm not going to do an opinion of Action 52 as a whole because I don't have the physical cart. But I decided to snag the ROM because that racing game had my somewhat curious. And I played it. It's called Daytona ... and it's quite possibly the worst racing game I've ever had the chance to play. The sense of speed is ... gone. Period. I've seen Tiger LCD games moves faster than this. The car itself has a total of 3 frames of animation. What you're seeing in the screen shot is what's there.

A PC game that I snagged recently is another bad game that, for some reason, I have a guility pleasure to play. Even though for some odd reason I have NEVER gotten past the damn .... I think it's the 3rd race. Here's the game.



Yes. The title is that long. Midnight Outlaw : 6 Hours to Sunup. Though it doesn't quite have the title like "Midnight Outlaw Illegal Street Drag Nitro Edition"

Here's an overall synopsis of the game :

"Push the pedal to the limit; make your powerful engine tear up the night air; let your rubber burning; speed over the streets to win money and respect. Get big bucks for your skill. Cash all your experience in to alter your machine for higher rate performance."

"This race simulator injects adrenaline to your blood like nitrous to the booster of your car. You are expected by 11 realistic 3D locations. Midnight Outlaw: 6 Hours to Sun Up takes you through the Pacific coast, mountains, commercial district, highways and more. When the sun goes down and up to it rises you can free an outlaw inside of you to subdue more than 50 tracks, plus all the 1/4 mile challenges. And remember all this time adrenaline is in your blood."

And the following features that I ripped from Amazon:

* Experience an adrenaline rush as you accelerate through 11 realistic 3D locations, including the Pacific coast, mountains, commercial district, highways and more.
* When the sun goes down, unleash your inner outlaw and tame morethan 50 tracks, plus all the 1/4 mile challenges you can handle.
* Cash in your skill. Go ahead, put your wallet where your reputation is. Earn big to customize your street machine for peak performance.
* Live the dream. Raceto win then watch 55+ cut scenes and nearly 30 minutes of cinematic movies unfold your next mission and racing victim.
* Rule the night streets in Adventure Mode, 1/4 Mile Challenges, Chase Mode, Escape Missions, 'Go To' Competitionsand Wild Races where any street is yours for the taking.
* From midnight 'til dawn the adrenaline is on! Tear up the night with 8 hot vehicles.
* You build 'em from scratch then race 'em for cash.
* You've gotnitrous in your veins. Fuel your need for speed as you outmaneuver cops determined to bust up your race.
* Tune your car for maximum street performance. Explore thousands of wicked after-market engine and body combinations. Now you've got it all-speed and style.


Regarding the cutscenes, the game is from a company called Babylon Software distributed by Valuesoft. The cutscenes are just pre-rendered characters who move stiffly with horrible voice acting. It tries so hard to be like Need for Speed Underground 2 and fails miserably.

And the driving mechanic in the game isn't even THAT bad, though the cars feel kinda like elephants on roller skates. Even the tiny little hatchbacks.The music is .... passable. Nothing to make me turn the volume up or down either way. There are a total of 3 different car sounds, and while they don't sound great they're just kinda "meh".

Graphically, it looks like a high resolution Playstation 1 game. Which, a lot of PS1 games still impress me today, so that's not exactly a BAD thing to me. Here's a quick screenshot.



One thing I do like about it ... you can just go into free run and just tear through the city, which isn't HUGE, but it does give you enough to do. If you're into bad games, pick this one up. I picked this up on Amazon for $4. And you wanna know the sad thing, shipping was $3.99.

For some reason, I've always GOT to play the games that get completely bashed just to see how bad they really are. Same thing with movies. I have probably close to a hundred of those Digiview dollar DVDs ... and there's some crap there. Now, mind you, I do play the good ones too. I play Quake Live and Quake 3 Arena. I'm getting ready to delve into Final Fantasy 9, I love Katamari Damacy and Beautiful Katamari. I play Gears of War once in a blue moon ... I just bought Outrun Arcade on Xbox Live recently and played it for HOURS.

There are SOME games that are just merely bad PORTS. Take Galaxy Force 2 for the Genesis as an example. It's NOT a bad game by any means to me ... I love it. It's just a train wreck of a port from the arcade because consoles back then just didn't have the power. The same thing with After Burner, Super Monaco GP, Altered Beast, Mortal Kombat, T2 : The Arcade Game etc etc all for the Genesis. Let's not kid ourselves, GREAT games, horrible ports. Then there are horrible ports of horrible games that are in a category all their own. Time Killers on the Genesis anyone? The NES and Super Nintendo had their train wreck ports too (anyone remember the SNES version of Final Fight? Or the original Mortal Kombat? Or maybe Rise of the Robots? Okay, Rise of the Robots ... I don't think that's a port ... but damn was it a disappointment.), but the Genesis is my system of choice.

I'm going to keep playing these dead horrible games, or sit down front of a movie like "Shaolin Deadly Kicks" or "Dual of the Tough", down a few 40's of King Cobra, laugh and say "What the F*** were they THINKING?!?!"