Games that make you say "What were they thinking ?"

[Anubis]

There were couple of topics like this before, and every time I've think WTF Were They Thinking I remember game called Sleepwalker. Nice looking game with shitty gameplay. I never menaged to finish first level. Not sure if it was me or the game, I guess other might tell.

[Legerdemain]

I agree on Sleepwalker. Although I've managed some levels, it really felt like they were overdoing it. At least there should have been some smaller introductionary levels which held a rather reasonable easy difficulty, but no... at once the levels were extremely big and hard to navigate through. I don't consider Sleepwalker being a bad game, in itself, but it is just that it is too much too soon.

With Kid Chaos I think the same is awfully apparent. In the second world there is this level which one should rush through, with little time and many flowers to break to be able to exit the stage. I know my Sonic. I really do. I've played them through many times and never had this kind of trouble... but with this particular level in Kid Chaos I haven't even managed to reach the end WITHOUT bothering about the flowers. How am I then supposed to reach the end while breaking the necessary amount of flowers? Maybe it is just me... but the game feels damn impossible because of this.

Oh, I then we also have Shadow of the Beast II. I it hadn't been for the extremely loooooong game over scenes and the extremely looooooong intro, one could maybe learn how to navigate through the game just by simply doing it again and again and again. I borrowed the original from a friend... back in the days when I had the patience to play games until I managed to beat them, no matter how hard they where, but I didn't get long at all. By the third or fourth time I got so fed up with having to wait like 10 minutes to be able to play for three minutes, that I just handed the game back to my friend and never bothered again (until a couple of months ago, when I just had to confirm that I hadn't been dreaming).

[ungi]

Rocket Ranger

I know, it is a great game, but the floppy loading times are awful. When I read the manual, they wrote that the game is not harddisk installable but that this is no problem because their custom disk loader is faster than any harddisk anyway. I felt a bit kidded and thought WTF were they writing? How could they write such crap?

[Ironclaw]

What were they thinking when they made Captive??? never played it though. :P

[dirkies]

Rocket Ranger: was my main reason buying an A1010 ext drive!

But once I got more memory, I just put the 1 game floppy in the RAD ramdrive and that was a lot better! And once I had the A4000, it was even more easy, independant of the 040/060 CPU, instant next scenes (did the same for another Cinemaware classic: It Came From The Desert I & II, making it much more fun to play the instant way, moreover merging the two games into a 3x 880K ramdrive with a simple hex editor, was only a few files difference between the original & sequel)

But if I think of the advantages, I remember Sinbad & The Throne of the falcon was not really useful to put into RAD, although that worked and made it extremely fast in loading, it caused the last text balloon after a scene to disappear immediately because it already loaded the next scene instantly; seemingly the programmers used the slow drive loading to actually control the in-game scene timing...maybe realistic in 1987, but not a few years later!

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by dirkies

Rocket Ranger: was my main reason buying an A1010 ext drive!

Yeah, I loved Rocket Ranger and It Came from the Desert (and Defender of the Crown and The Three Stoogers and TV Sport Basketball and TV Sports Football)

The other Cinemaware games were good but the above stood out IMHO

[Dastardly]

Ruff n Tumble

Now this is a great game but the fact that when you shoot diagonally while standing on a slope, the bullets dont fire at the same angle as the slope, just ruins it for me. If youre standing on a slope facing downwards (or upwards) and trying to shoot an oncoming baddie, your bullets shoot into the ground a short distance in front of you. This means that you have to wait until the baddie is virtually on top of you before you hit it.

This was either a major oversight by the developers or a stupid decision.

Such a shame, I think it'd be in my top 5 if not for this one annoyance.

[DDNI]

@Kodoichi, as I am too lazy to type all the issues that I had with Amiga Outrun back then, these reviews kinda sum things up....

http://amigareviews.classicgaming.ga...com/outrun.htm
http://www.angusm.demon.co.uk/AGDB/DBM1/OutRun.html

[Legerdemain]

Actually, I can't come up with one single game that U.S. Gold have converted that held some kind of quality... (considering OutRun)

[BippyM]

each to their own!

I get bored of saying this! some like some games, others like other games. Alot like exceptional games blah blah blah!

[Ironclaw]

Originally Posted by Ironclaw

What were they thinking when they made Captive??? never played it though. :P

Damn, was hoping to annoy bippym ... seems like not...

What I meant anyway was that I wonder what they would think about then they made the game.. where they took ideas from... what they in general was thinking, maybe like "ahh, can't wait til we finish this game guys... we'll be famous and then later we can start on our next hobby; to worship Ironclaw"

Who knows what they were thinking.. hmmm.

[Magno Boots]

Did Psygnosis really think X-It would sell well?
The old 'pushing the blocks' format was already dead and buried thanks to some great PD releases way earlier.

Talking of Psygnosis, what about Cliffhanger?
An awful game trying to cash in on the release of an awful film.

Mind you, most film title games were poor.

[Magno Boots]

"What I meant anyway was that I wonder what they would think about then they made the game.. where they took ideas from... what they in general was thinking, maybe like "ahh, can't wait til we finish this game guys... we'll be famous and then later we can start on our next hobby; to worship Ironclaw"

No... I think you were just trying to get on his tits...it obviously didn't work

[Ironclaw]

Originally Posted by Magno Boots

"What I meant anyway was that I wonder what they would think about then they made the game.. where they took ideas from... what they in general was thinking, maybe like "ahh, can't wait til we finish this game guys... we'll be famous and then later we can start on our next hobby; to worship Ironclaw"

No... I think you were just trying to get on his tits...it obviously didn't work

And I'm

[Photon]

Originally Posted by marco pedrana

any Kick Off episode. the last episodes are even uglier: players are too big for the size of the screen, that gives me the impression of claustrophobia and less understanding of the actions and schemes, i can't get well what is happening. fields look like they are waxed and polished, slick and the menus are a bright exemple of designing laziness. crappy sound too. my 2 cents of course

Kick Off 2 was buggy, but I had a hell of a lot of fun playing my mates.

I'd say the top 3 are

1. Shadow of the beast
2. Shadow of the beast 2
3. Shadow of the beast 3

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Photon

Kick Off 2 was buggy, but I had a hell of a lot of fun playing my mates.

I'd say the top 3 are

1. Shadow of the beast
2. Shadow of the beast 2
3. Shadow of the beast 3

Agree on the first two, the 3rd Beast is very good.

[Ironclaw]

Indeed, Beast 3 is the best in the series imo. Don't like the other 2.

[blade002]

Human Killing Machine

[Legerdemain]

Originally Posted by Dastardly

Ruff n Tumble

Now this is a great game but the fact that when you shoot diagonally while standing on a slope, the bullets dont fire at the same angle as the slope, just ruins it for me. If youre standing on a slope facing downwards (or upwards) and trying to shoot an oncoming baddie, your bullets shoot into the ground a short distance in front of you. This means that you have to wait until the baddie is virtually on top of you before you hit it.

This was either a major oversight by the developers or a stupid decision.

Such a shame, I think it'd be in my top 5 if not for this one annoyance.

Oh, well, yes, that... and the fact that the game has the choppiest scroll EVER (considering how well polished the game is its other areas). I am aware of the fact that I might be rather extreme when it comes to scrolling. If the game runs in 50Hz, well, then the game shall update with 50FPS (and preferably also not scroll the screen with too many pixels each frame)... not 25FPS like all the Bitmap Brothers games... and especially not like Ruff'n Tumble which have the choppiest screen update / scrolling of all the quality games out there for the Amiga (that I can think of, well, maybe the Chaos Engine comes pretty close since it also suffers from major slowdowns at times). But, if there is one thing I can't understand it must be the fact that I've never seen someone comment on this... with this very game... doesn't people bother? Doesn't people see the choppy scrolling? I'm amazed. To say, the least...

I think it is such a shame, because I do REALLY think that this game shows extreme potential. But, as it plays right now... I couldn't bother less about playing the game.

[ungi]

Originally Posted by Legerdemain

Oh, well, yes, that... and the fact that the game has the choppiest scroll EVER (considering how well polished the game is its other areas)...

... understand it must be the fact that I've never seen someone comment on this... with this very game... doesn't people bother? Doesn't people see the choppy scrolling? I'm amazed. To say, the least...

I think it is such a shame, because I do REALLY think that this game shows extreme potential. But, as it plays right now... I couldn't bother less about playing the game.

i couldn´t agree more!!! the scrolling is so bad, my eyes begin to hurt after a few minutes playing, so i cannot really play this game!!! really awful and a pity, cause the game looks otherwise rather cool. the only game even worse worth mentioning in this respect was magic pockets from the bitmaps.