The Worst Shovelware Video Games You've Ever Played -

[SavorySheikah]

Shovelware. Cheaply made, budget bullshit shat out onto the most popular consoles, preying on casuals who clearly couldn't give a rat's ass about the quality of the games they (and more commonly, their children) will end up playing. The unlucky majority of us have fallen victim to the warm, sweaty grasp of the shovelware plight. The question is, which is the worst?

That's right. This thread is THE place to share the stories of the worst shovelware games you've ever played.

I've always done pretty good at deliberately avoiding shovelware, but that doesn't mean I haven't had run-ins with some quality crap over the years. The worst shovelware game I've ever played? My Little Riding Champion for the Nintendo Switch. Bad graphics, jank gameplay, horrid voice acting. Basically your standard shovelware fare, only somehow worsened by the fact it's on the Nintendo Switch, of all consoles. I rented this trash from my local library, which means I dodged a bullet by refraining from paying the retail price of 40 FUCKING DOLLARS the E-Shop wanted for it, which further magnifies its shittyness.

Beat that. Really, do. I know there's worse out there

NOTE: This thread is for discussing bad shovelware games. It would be best if we refrain from discussing any large budget first party games in this thread.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Always been pretty good at avoiding shovelware even as a dumb kid. Worst I've ever played was Rugrats in Paris for the GBC. It was playable, but not by much. Remember the platforming being very stiff.

 

[PhoBingas]

The Captain Comic games on the NES. They had weird, baby blue carts, the platforming was hot garbage, and had the respawning enemy problem some NES platformers have. I could never get very far in the game even as an adult. Not sure if they're shovelware but it for sure reminds me of some shovelware I've seen for the wii and ps move.

 

[Maude Snew]

That depends do Derek Smart games count? If not I'd say the third of both Sacred and Overlord. Maybe Dungeons.

 

[The Real Me]

Bart Simpson's Escape From Camp Deadly released at peak Simpsonsmania on the Gameboy and is a game that I still own to this day.

Some people dislike Bart vs the Space Mutants or Bart Simpson vs the World but at least you didn't have to play those on a screen only a few inches wide with a shitty glare from a 3rd party torch/magnifier.

It did not play well and the music was ear bleeding. It's a bad sign when the best part of your game's soundtrack are the brief seconds in which it is interrupted by the highly compressed voice lines of Bart and Lisa Simpson.

 

[Slamerella]

Challenging my self by not naming any "easy outs" like Data Design and LJN. I think one of the worst Shovelware titles I've ever played was Rugrats Scavenger Hunt, which is probably one of, if not, the WORST Mario Party clone I've ever played. It's aimless, confusing, convoluted, and cluttered. It was also on the N64, and released AFTER Mario Party's first installment. Would you rather get the game with cartoon babies, or Super Mario?

 

[OfficerBagget]

I remember buying this for like 50 cents when Block Buster was going out of Business.

 

[Coolio55]

The fucking Horrid Henry DS game. Even as a child I mused on how it managed to look and sound worse than most unlicenced SNES games despite being on vastly superior hardware.
It's gameplay rivalled some of the crappest bad C64 games. Utter poo on all levels.

There was also "Garfield: The Search for Pooky" on the GBA which legitimately looks like a bootleg but it's music is soul so I shall forgive the horrible "have to collect everything" gameplay.

Bart Simpson's Escape From Camp Deadly released at peak Simpsonsmania on the Gameboy and is a game that I still own to this day.

Some people dislike Bart vs the Space Mutants or Bart Simpson vs the World but at least you didn't have to play those on a screen only a few inches wide with a shitty glare from a 3rd party torch/magnifier.

It did not play well and the music was ear bleeding. It's a bad sign when the best part of your game's soundtrack are the brief seconds in which it is interrupted by the highly compressed voice lines of Bart and Lisa Simpson.

View attachment 1718869

Even better, some retard proposed to his wife in that game:

 

[Crustyguy]

As someone who grew up with younger sisters, during the wii/ds era, we had absolute fucktons of shitty shovelware "girly" games-Hannah montana, mlp, some Disney Princess game, any pet game besides nintendogs. As for shovelware stuff I got, I remember getting Toy Story 3 on the ds because I thought the sandbox mode they advertised on tv would be on it. It wasn't. Instead it had a shitty tower defense game in it. The rest of the game was just really a mediocre 3d platforming game. I played it all anyway because I was a stupid kid.

 

[DumbDude42]

does mass effect 3 count? everybody just bitches about the ending but i personally couldn't even get past the first few hours without physically cringing at the atrocious writing

 

[Sascha Vykos]

I'm not sure how I had come to possess this game. I was convinced it was a fever dream until I sifted through a list of old Wii games.

 

[sasazuka]

There was also "Garfield: The Search for Pooky" on the GBA which legitimately looks like a bootleg but it's music is soul so I shall forgive the horrible "have to collect everything" gameplay.

Looks much worse than the first party Sega Genesis game Garfield: Caught in the Act despite the GBA game being on much more powerful hardware.

Spoiler: Garfield: Caught in the Act

At least Garfield's jumping animation in the Genesis game is more than a single frame and the backgrounds are much more interesting (and there are levels themed after several different Garfield TV specials, specifically Garfield's Halloween Adventure a.k.a. Garfield in Disguise, Garfield: His 9 Lives, based on the book, and Garfield: Babes and Bullets, which was also from the Garfield: His 9 Lives book but which got adapted as a separate TV special).

 

[DiceindaMirror]

The First Skunk Bundle on Wii U which I downloaded just for the 30 My Nintendo coins. The game was free at the time, but I feel really bad for anyone who actually paid money ($25 if I recall) for that garbage.

 

[Marissa Moira]

I bought a load of japanese switch games for dirt cheap recently and have been playing through them

Clannad, the story is needlessly melodramatic and there's no real gameplay to speak of, I've never seen something making dying of a horrible disease so funny in a Spanish soap opera way. A physical copy was like 12 dollars and i felt even that was too much, the softcover book made the purchase more worthwhile than the game.

Senran kagura Reflections, no real gameplay again you poke the girls and they speak some needless gibberish to you and repeat until you get the ending scene. If it's going for a softcore porn viewer it's even bad in that regard because the models are shit(including the models of the feet). I bought it because it came packaged with....

Senran kagura Peach Ball, a pinball game that only has two tables, both of the games together came out to a little over 10 bucks and that's way too much for these pieces of shit. Seriously you can beat both tables in udner a half hour and most of the game wants you to purchase DLC

Mary Skelter 1 and 2, it's nice to know that everything idea factory puts out is the same level of crap they've been known for for decades. The art style is like if someone told Christopher Hart to draw edgy anime and they put in a default first person dungeon crawler template because they're no Chris Roberts and can't get away with charging 60 dollars for still images. These two were around 7 bucks

Anyways getting close to having 80 switch games, I was surprised that Clannad came first because I ordered Grandia HD collection eons ago and that hasn't arrived despite the tracking number still being good from japan Because I would sooner play grandia 2 again than any of these dumpster fires of suck. Although I think Nurse Love Syndrome was worse than Clannad now that I think about it. On par with A Winter's Daydream.

it goes to show you how fucked up everything is When Bubsy: Paws on Fire turns out to be more competent than 80% of new releases.

 

[Big Ruski]

The Lord of the Rings Return of the King game was actually pretty good but short. It was made by EA so take that for what you will

 

[AbyssStarer]

My parents got me Frogger 2 on GBC because I liked Frogger, but I literally never made it past the first screen of the game because I couldn't read and couldn't figure out what buttons to click to do anything.
I also had some Power Puff Girls GBC game that I only remember being awful.

 

[Coolio55]

Also worth mentioning that I almost picked 3 shovelware games over Super Mario Galaxy from HMV one time. (My mother really didn't want me getting galaxy for some reason...)
One of those games I nearly picked was (believe it or not) fucking Ninjabread Man! The cover looked pretty cool but when the youtube reviews came out I realized what a massive bullet I dodged.

The First Skunk Bundle on Wii U which I downloaded just for the 30 My Nintendo coins. The game was free at the time, but I feel really bad for anyone who actually paid money ($25 if I recall) for that garbage.

Almost had a heart attack when I saw the N95 mask room in the hotel horror minigame at 26:30. This was made in 2016.

 

[Slamerella]

Looks much worse than the first party Sega Genesis game Garfield: Caught in the Act despite the GBA game being on much more powerful hardware.

It's funny you say that because, Sonic Genesis (what fans call the Sonic The Hedgehog Gensis port on GBA) is a testament of how you can truly fuck up on better hardware. They didn't look at Mario Advance or any other SNES ports for reference and thought "yeah let's just make it the original resolution but have it zoomed in", and that's one of its many problems.

 

[huiswartz]

Bart Simpson's Escape From Camp Deadly released at peak Simpsonsmania on the Gameboy and is a game that I still own to this day.

Some people dislike Bart vs the Space Mutants or Bart Simpson vs the World but at least you didn't have to play those on a screen only a few inches wide with a shitty glare from a 3rd party torch/magnifier.

It did not play well and the music was ear bleeding. It's a bad sign when the best part of your game's soundtrack are the brief seconds in which it is interrupted by the highly compressed voice lines of Bart and Lisa Simpson.

View attachment 1718869

I saw a mix and match or memory game that blatantly plagiarizes Disney characters, notably the evil queen from Snow White. It was clearly aimed for kids.... actually, no. Kids won’t even go near that. The only people who buy that are YouTubers who want to make interesting content.

 

[BSC]

I saw a mix and match or memory game that blatantly plagiarizes Disney characters, notably the evil queen from Snow White. It was clearly aimed for kids.... actually, no. Kids won’t even go near that. The only people who buy that are YouTubers who want to make interesting content.

Would it happen to be Snow White and the 7 Clever Boys?

Made by a studio called Phoenix Games. They apparently have several other releases of similar quality. I refuse to believe that these "games" exist outside of Youtube videos about bad vidya. They're just so shit.