Warrior's ROM of the Week:
The Worst of MAME
As just about any MAMEr who has walked into an arcade in the last five years knows, it doesn't take much to make a video game mediocre. It is arguable that well over half of the games that show up in the arcades these days fall into this category, with the games that are worth playing being the exception. Back in the days of classic video games, there was plenty that fell by the wayside of mediocrity, but it takes a select few that can transcend mediocrity, and wind up being just plain bad. Thanks to the efforts of the MAME team, we have the dubious privilege of seeing some of these monstrosities of the early arcade.
Rolling Crash
How does one get away with this kind of color interpolation? |
It's amazing that someone would have the chutzpah to release something like this into the arcades. Granted, it was made way back in the days when having video games be in color was just starting to sound like a really good idea. Consequentially, several games (most notably Berzerk) had to be "colorized" late in production. This appears to have been the case with Rolling Crash, this appears to have been one heck of a rush job. If you didn't see it before, take a look at the angel up above. Something tells me that they probably would have been better off just leaving this one in black and white. To it's credit, Rolling Crash was paired with Moon Base, an average Space Invaders clone (but only one of a couple bazillion or so that have found their way into MAME sone way or another. About the only thing that could make this game any better would be the MST3K treatment. For some reason, it seems that combinations of this sort were popular back in the day (for example, Invinco/Head On 2, done by Sega, does an overall much better job of pretty much the same thing.
Was I playing this in my sleep? |
Space Zap
I'm sure that there are those people out there who would just love to flame me to a crisp for putting this one in here, but there is one compelling reason that I put this here... It's just plain boring. The graphics on this one are actually pretty good for this era (especially the "explosion" graphic) but in the end, this one ends up being little more than an electronic version of Whack-a-mole, except with this one, but there's no time limit, and you don't get tickets from it. Anyone short of some species of garden grubs can walk up to this one and play for hours, or at least until you get really bored of it and let something hit you just to watch the explosion. Of course, then you get 2 more lives, so you just hit the escape key and quit, smashing your computer to bits with a heavy metal object, and disappear to the woods to become a hermit.
Bomberman as a juvenile delinquent? |
Warp Warp
To many, this is considered the quintessential bad game to show up in MAME. Personally, I don't have a clue why that is. I mean, for just one press of the "3" key-I mean quarter (uh, hello officer.... heheheh) you get not only one warp, but two, hence the name "Warp Warp" (Must be this "new math" stuff or somethin' like that.) One great warp deserves another, I guess. Anyway, one warp has you shooting the badguys as they shoot you back (wasn't this done already all sorts of times so on the 2600?) The other warp lets you blow up the enemies with little landmine thingies that blow up in your face if you stop to admire the pretty weird aliens with no eyes and perpetually stuck-out tongues... And if the pretty little thingies in the center turn purple and say "WARP WARP", you can warp (that's where they got the name) between the two levels! Doesn't it sound like fun? Yeah, about as much fun as dental surgery without anesthesia.
This sucks... When's the beer frame? |
Robot Bowl
Now here's an original idea.... let's get these robots (actually really pixellated humanoid thingies) to go bowling, and try to hit a bunch of pins.... And when they hit them, let's make them fall over for what appears to be no apparent reason! Then let's do really blocky graphics, and then make everything move really really fast... They'll love it! Robot Bowl admittedly does look like something that a 12-year old could have coded in a day or two, yet somehow manages to be strangely addicting at the same time. In fact, one may say that this one falls into the "so bad it's good" category.
And there are plenty more where these ones came from. If I get enough requests, I may put together another one of these in the not-too-distant future. As I said before, I am open to suggestions.
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