What's the "The Room" of video games?

Oh, hi bombers!

I had the honor of watching Tommy Wiseaus movie, The room, just recently. It's the same film that got the "Citizen Kane of bad films" stamp.
And I do agree it's the best worst movie ever, but now I wonder if there's something like that, but in games.

Maybe Superman?

@larsmonsen: Probably something like Deadly Premonition I guess. It's a pretty bad game to actually play, but the characters and story help balance it out to make it an enjoyable ride.

Most broken games aren't fun, they're just complete ass to play. The Room is fun to watch because the ways in which it are bad and amateurish are a great source of ridicule.

The closest I can think of is Big Rigs Over the Road Racing, in that it's definitely broken, but instead of just being buggy unfinished garbage, the way in which it is broken is kind of just hilarious and you can actually have some dumb fun with it.

It's hard to find an example, because truly bad games are not a fun experience, which sort of defeats the point of something being so bad it's good. So it then falls into quality of story, art, voice acting, etc.

To be fair, I haven't experienced many terrible games myself. I'm pretty selective in that sense.

The Room or Silent Hill 4: The Room

The actual answer might be the Earth Defense Force series. It's technically bad but it's charming and fun to play.

I think it needs to be a game that has a story behind why it is the way it is, right?

Like, part of what makes The Room what it is isn't so much the film itself, but the weird mystery of the dude who made it, the bonkers story of it costing millions and millions to make, the history of how it was shot (Like green-screening a fake roof outdoors for some fucking reason), people randomly getting thrown into random roles at the last second, etc.

So much so that there are books and documentaries ABOUT the movie itself.

In that way, I think it has to be E.T. for the Atari.

It's a bad game. It's a game that is not just bad, but notorious. It has a weird cult like fascination, people traveled from around the country to maybe see some copies dug up from a landfill. There's been documentaries and books made about it and it's supposed role in the video game crash.

It's gotta be E.T.

In recent history, I think of Ride to Hell: Retribution.

There isn't one really (and I've played many games- good and bad).

Deadly Premonition is close, but in the end it's actually more competent as a game than The Room is as a film if you understand what I mean.

There are many games that are capable of being amusing ironically, but the thing is when you play a bad game often it's bad because it's not fun at all. A movie is different because it's a shorter experience, consuming it is a passive experience, and you can add to it just by talking. Making jokes about the acting in a video game will only carry you so far, you know what I mean? How long is a cut scene in a game in comparison to a film where all you do is watch?

Sure, sometimes games have silly physics and that's funny, but those kinds of things don't necessarily make a game bad (I'd argue often they make a game better) so it's much more difficult to find a game that is "so bad it's good" because the way you consume that entertainment is much different. There just isn't any bad mechanics that are fun because they're bad. If game mechanics are bad they're just not fun to use. If they were then it wouldn't be bad.

This is why "Let's Plays" that are popular work. You aren't playing- you're watching someone else play. Ultimately you're just watching someone else play, probably hate it and themselves, and be really funny about how much they hate that you are making them do this. If you were playing (and a lot of people will after watching a "Let's Play") you probably won't have the same experience unless the game is designed that way (for example: Goat Simulator).

That's not to say bad games can't be fun. I've played many that are fun- Deadly Premonition is a bad game that is arguably a lot of fun to play. I'd argue that game is fun because of the quirky writing, and because underneath it has a lot more heart than you'd expect. The mechanics are also aceptable in that if it had released 10 years or so earlier it would have been fine.

Anyway, it's not really comparable as enjoying a bad game ironically is a different thing from enjoying a movie that is "so bad it's good".

I state this as someone who both enjoys bad movies and bad games. I'm just saying it's not a comparable experience. Any "bad" game I recommend to you would not be fun in the same way. Most of the time bad games can make you actually feel like you are dieing. It's more of a masochistic sport at that point.

Probably the best pick

Rising Zan: Samurai Gunman?

I don't know. Deadly Premonition really isn't that bad of a game. The controls are definitely clunky as hell but I think it's still relatively competent and the story is legitimately interesting.

The fact that video games are an active medium means that it's hard to have something like The Room. It's a lot easier to watch a bad movie than to actually get through a bad game.

@dadjumper: Or better yet.

The thing about The Room isn't just that it's bad, it's mystifyingly awful in a way that defies reason (which is part of the reason it fits right into "so bad it's good" territory) and goes beyond other bad films that are merely incompetent. Deadly Premonition might play and look like an upscaled Dreamcast game, but as far as it being extra weird Japanese Twin Peaks is concerned it's pretty spot on and I'd say most of that is deliberate.

I think the better comparison is something like Ride to Hell or Big Rigs.

i actually find The Room really fucking endearing now.

It's nowhere near the levels of "The Room" in terms of bad awesomeness, but my personal favorite is Resident Evil: Survivor. A very short entry in the RE universe that serves for a damn good, campy-ass night. The voice acting topples RE1 in the hilarity department, I think. "Though I can't remember anything, I know this is no way for anyone to die."

As my real answer, it's probably Deadly Premonition.

The Metal Gear Solid series. Both The Room and Metal Gear are clearly the work of insane would-be auteurs who exert near-total creative control over every aspect of their respective productions and who passionately believes their lunacy is vital social commentary. The Room and Metal Gear are both pretentious, boneheaded and awkward, yet bizarrely fascinating. The one place where the comparison starts to fall apart is that Metal Gear Solid's fumbling ineptitude has been continually rewarded with large budgets, sales numbers in the millions, and critical praise and The Room is infamous for being "the Worst Movie of All Time" even though it succeeds and fails in basically all of the same ways Metal Gear Solid does.

Also loving camera shots of the protagonist's butts.

I think the problem with comparing Deadly Premonition and The Room is that you then have to compare Swery with Wiseau and their respective intentions. Swery is a super nice dude who wrote a bizarre, interactive love letter to David Lynch. Wiseau is a major asshole who tried to make a drama and immediately backpedaled once everybody started laughing at it and embracing it as a comedy. And DP isn't that bad of a game, just really clunky. Plus the comedy is largely intentional. The Room is truly, completely awful and funny in spite of itself.

I can't think of any perfect "The Room" games in that respect, but I'd say the closest comparison would be along the lines of Plumbers Don't Wear Ties.

David Cage stuff seems like it might be close? Indigo Prophecy ends in such a batshit crazy way that I still remember it some 10+ years later.

I think if there's going to be any of those 'so bad they're good' games it'll be the ones in the TellTale / Modern Adventure format, most bad games that throw more complex mechanics and less story just aren't rewarding enough to slog through.

my roommate and I had a blast with Sonic the Hedgehog ('06)

the story behind it is interesting, the story of the game is so absurdly dumb and the gameplay is broken in a way that is really funny.

deadly premonition isn't it because there is somer actually great things about that game. its more of a weird twin peaks ripoff

road to hell has a couple funny cut scenes but overall its not enjoyable

the real answer is probably nothing because the room is a once in a lifetime thing

Birdemic is The Room of movies, man.

Probably this game.

I think Big Rigs is the right answer here. It's objectively awful in every way, but still kind of charming and amusing.

Ride to Hell Retribution did everything wrong in some of the best ways

A terrible game that people play endlessly?

Mario Party, duh.

Shaqfu

Enter the matrix

How quickly the world has forgotten this atrocity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_of_the_Lost

I would also say Deadly Premonition.

you forgot both seem to be written by people who watched a lot of tv and thought thats how the world works and how people talk

What perfect timing for the Blues and Bullets quick look....

Can't stop thinking of Drake and the 99 Dragons when I read this thread. Don't know why. Was that game ever bad/good?

Edit: Drake OF the 99 Dragons. Sorry

Thats how most actual movies seems to be written aswell so thats not unique to MGS or The Room.

Alone in the Dark 2008.

I did not hit her, it's not true! It's bullshit! I did not hit her! I did not! Oh hi, Otacon.

@briguyd: i was trying my best to remember this game. It fits perfectly with the room as both are horrible in every aspect and can be horribly laughable sometimes.

Drake of the 99 Dragons was my first thought, too but I think it's just bad-bad. The controls are frustratingly bad, the story is predictably bad, the graphics are simplistically bad, and the camera is historically bad. If it wasn't so horrifyingly difficult to control, it might be a good-bad game, but since the player is constantly fighting with the game to move, see and shoot whatever fun might be had by the ridiculousness of it all is replaced by controller-throwing resentment.

People who say "Deadly Premonition" don't understand both Deadly Premonition and The Room.

I'd also go with Ride to Hell, or if we're going by gameplay- Motor Bike. Gameplay so bad it's good.

Heavy Rain.

Yeah, Deadly Premonition doesn't quite fit the bill because people genuinely like things about that game. Nobody actually likes anything about The Room. It's objectively one of the worst movies ever made.

The Ring: Terror's Realm is pretty amazingly awful. Same basic premise, only you died 7 days after playing a cursed video game. It's one of the only Dreamcast games I ever returned (remember when stores still let you do that?).

I think the Way of the Samurai series is a complete mess now as far as overall quality, but man are those games fun.

Back in college, I followed a lot of indie-game-related blogs and forums. Once, there was a competition to make a great "B-Game", as in a B-movie (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=411.0). The prompt introduced me to the work of MDickie (warning, his website is a deep dive into crazy), a prolific game creator who specialized in systems-based managament sims that used terrible 3d models but were interestingly deep. He covered everything from managing a pop-star's career, to a wrestling promotion, to a life in prison. The games were uniformly terrible, but endearing.

I would nominate any of his games. While they weren't self-aggrandizing power fantasies like The Room, they were lovingly awful.

Oh yeah, I forgot about MDickie! At first I was going to say Big Rigs, but there's something so endearingly sincere about Dickie's games and the ambition behind them. I do think "self-aggrandizing" applies to him as well, since he at one point referred to himself as the only "true" independent game creator in the world. Did you ever try The You Testament?