The 10 Worst Movie Video Games in History

Posted by Danny Gallagher (danny@filmschoolrejects.com) on June 15, 2007

Just like Uwe Boll movies, reruns of “Becker” and Jenna Jameson in a slurpee drinking contest, you can be guaranteed video game movies are going to suck hard.

Sure there are some exceptions to the rule like Rockstar’s remake of the Walter Hill classic “The Warriors,” Rare’s Nintendo-64 take on the James Bond flick “Goldeneye” and Lucasarts’ immortal first person shooter “Star Wars: Dark Forces.” But in the narrow gaze of the Hollyweird elite, video games are just another way to get dumb movie audiences to buy more than just a ticket to their dumb movies like Take Two’s “The Da Vinci Code,” Activision’s “Fantastic Four” and just about every other “Star Wars” game created since then.

So in honor of the sure-to-suck $50 bajillion jiggle fest that is (or will be) the upcoming “DOA” movie and just about every other video game movie that’s sure to follow, here’s a look at the 10 worst movie video games that made your console want to spit the cartridge right back in your stupid face.

10. “Enter the Matrix” (2003)

No one can be told how bad “Enter the Matrix” was, you have to play it for yourself. The Wachowski Brothers tried to do something revolutionary with video games and movies through the “Matrix” franchise: provide a seamless link between the first and second movies with a video game that told a cohesive story and immersed the gamer and the audience in the world they created. Somewhere along the line, the seams get ripped in half like a cheap Goodwill store sweater. The game featured Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Ghost (Anthony Wong) in scenes that looked like they were taken straight of the movie, but just about everything with the gameplay, the special features and the graphics made the scenes the game’s only redeeming quality. The developers of “Enter the Matrix” can shove this game right up their rabbit holes.

9. “Evil Dead: Hail to the King” (2000)

All of the “Evil Dead” movies are cult classics. They’re everything every movie should strive to be: funny, scary, violent, completely original and starring Bruce Campbell. So naturally a video game based on the “Evil Dead” trilogy where the player gets to control one of the greatest horror movie heroes of all time should be just as good? Good, bad, I’m the guy with the…ok, it’s bad. Sure, Ash himself voices the game is chocked full with one-liners that would make the pickiest movie buff giddy, but the game tries to be a graphic adventure and action game all at once and fails miserably at both. Ash’s chainsaw constantly needs to be refilled with gas, which for some reason can be made from magic red mushrooms. The controls are hard to master when it comes to simple tasks like turning while walking and running. The bosses, with the exception of Evil Ash, are downright silly and unimaginative. Fortunately, the game was followed by two superior sequels that didn’t suck as much.

8. “Back to the Future” (1989)

This pixilated remake of the Bob Zemeckis classic hit the NES console store shelves nearly a decade after the original theatrical release and its not only one of the worst NES titles of all time, but also one of the hardest NES titles of all time. You start out in Hill Valley trying to get to Lou’s Caf© and beyond that, I can’t tell you what happens. I could never get past the first level and neither could anyone else I knew who owned it. It also has nothing to do with the movie. You spend your time trying to dodge “deadly” hula hoop girls and guys carrying glass and when you get to the caf©, you have to ward off your enemies by throwing milkshakes at them. Great Scott did this game suck.

7. “Jaws Unleashed” (2006)

When Majesco and Appaloosa, creators of the underwater adventure Ecco the Dolphin, announced they were making a “Jaws” game where the player would control the man-eating shark, the world united in sheer joy. The concept for this game had so much going for it. Even the trailer had a scare as big as the ones in Steven Spielberg’s immortal classic, which should have ensured a flawless movie game. Unfortunately, instead of being “Jaws,” it ended up being “Jaws 2-4” combined. The game plays like a “Grand Theft Auto” title in the ocean. You swim around eating swimmers and sinking boats looking for mission areas and when you do run the missions, you wish you were back in the main ocean area eating swimmers, which gets boring after the first 20 swimmers. This thing isn’t worth shoveling into the dark seas as shark chum.

6. “Star Wars: Bounty Hunter” (2002)

The “Star Wars’” product mine has just about been picked clean. There’s “Star Wars” toys, “Star Wars” books, “Star Wars” clothes, “Star Wars” food, “Star Wars” figurines, “Star Wars” key chains, “Star Wars” posters, “Star Wars” bobbleheads, “Star Wars” Christmas ornaments, “Star Wars” coasters, “Star Wars” underwear and even oversized “Star Wars” belt buckles for the rarely seen “nerd/redneck.” “Star Wars” has become such a merchandising bonanza that they even have their own underground dictatorship…I mean, video game company. But for every good “Star Wars” game, there are about 10 bad ones and “Bounty Hunter” is the worst because it screws up one of the coolest characters in the “Star Wars” universe. Players control the bounty hunter Jango Fett, well, control is a loose word. It moves clunky and the camera gets very annoying very quickly and it just ruins the whole game. The force is weak with this one, this and “Phantom Menace.”

5. “Tomorrow Never Dies” (1999)

Nintendo 64’s “Goldeneye” was awesome. Everything about it worked: graphics, gameplay, challenge, weaponry, ties to the actual movie. It’s a game every kid on the block owned and played for hours both alone and on multiplayer long after they’d beaten the game because it never got boring. I even remember back in college, the student run TV station had an hour long show called “The ‘Goldeneye’ Hour” where the hosts just played the game on camera and I watched almost every episode. I was drunk a lot in college. All the makers of the next James Bond game franchise had to do was duplicate the success of the N64 game and they would at least have made an above average game. Instead, they went with a mediocre third person shooter that barely resembled the film and played horribly. It’s too bad Q didn’t give James a pen that carried a suicide pill in this version.

4. “Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker” (1990)

What’s the worst thing than a movie starring Michael Jackson? No, not a wacky family sitcom. No, not an animated series set at Neverland Ranch. No, not a children’s show, well, OK, a children’s show would be much worse, but this Sega Genesis video game narrowly beats it. You play the gloved one as he tries to save a flood of kidnapped children from the clutches of evil with the deadly weapon… OF DANCE! That’s right, your weapon of choice is your bad moves. Then when you find all the children on each level, you’re guided to the location of the level boss with a monkey who magically appears on your shoulders. The only way this game could be more unintentionally funny is if you could use his lawyer as a smart bomb.

3. “The Blues Brothers” (1992)

The franchise for this series of crappy games have been spun off on every major console since the NES and each time it’s worse than watching the opening act of a Boy George concert. “The Blues Brothers” movie has everything a game could want: car cashes, colorful characters and a bitching soundtrack that would sound halfway decent as a MIDI remake. These games don’t have any of these things. The games just leave you scratching your head. The music’s horrible, the main characters look completely different and instead of angry country singers, Illinois Nazis and the entire Chicago police force, Jake and Elwood’s enemies are lawnmowers, flies and bear traps. The fact that it went from the NES to the Super Nintendo to the N64 still has me scratching my head.

2. “Street Fighter: The Movie” (1995)

There’s nothing worse than a bad video game, except the extremely rare bad video game that’s based on a crappy movie that’s based on a great video game. “Street Fighter: The Movie The Game” tried to capture some of the magic from the big screen remake of the “Street Fighter” series. The only problem is “Street Fighter: The Movie” did not have an ounce of magic in it, according to guidelines set by the U.S. Department of Weights and Measures for measuring magic. Not only did the movie fail to capture what was great about the game, but the game commits the same sin and manages to commit a few more of them along the way. The control isn’t anywhere near as good as the original game. The animation uses motion capture of the film’s actors, which looks grainy and fuzzy. The voice-overs are even worse. Jean Claude Van Damme has such a horrible grasp over the English language that even digitally enhanced computer audio technology can’t clean it up.

1. “ET” (1982)

“ET” isn’t just the worst movie video game of all time. It’s the worst video game of all time period. It’s biggest flaw? What the hell are we supposed to do? You’re Spielberg’s loveable little alien thrown into this badly-pixelated world and there’s no discernable goal or purpose. Once you read the instruction manual and you realize you’re supposed to build a phone if you haven’t burned the packaging out of sheer frustration, it’s nearly impossible to do because you keep falling in invisible pot holes that you have to float your way out of. This game is so bad that it’s spawned an urban legend about a mysterious landfill created just to bury the leftover unsold Atari cartridges. That’s an appropriate way to dispose of s*$&.

Tune in next week when we turn the tables and list the definitive list on The 10 Worst Video Game Movies of All Time. Yes, Uwe Boll will be there at least twice.

Danny Gallagher is a freelancer writer, humorist, reporter and critic living in Texas where video games involved a busted VCR, an open field and a shotgun.

Read more articles by Danny Gallagher