Oh. What Fun... Trivia Quiz

Answer: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial

You know it has to be bad when the publishers collected tens of thousands of copies of the game back in the mid-1980s and buried them in a landfill in New Mexico just to be rid of them. Sure enough, they were all still there when they unearthed the site in 2014.

But just to give a bit of history, this horrible game, known for being inane and completely beside the point of the film, ended up being one in a small handful of poorly-developed titles for early-'80s consoles that led major companies into an industry recession.

Many credit Nintendo with bringing things back around when they launched the NES in North America a couple years later. Now the horrible "E.T." game is history...in the Smithsonian.

Answer: The Legend of Zelda

Both of these games (along with a game in the Mario series named "Hotel Mario") were created as a joint venture between Phillips and Nintendo for the short-lived CD-i console, and egads were they not popular. When the console was released, it was poorly-received both because of its less-than-stellar technical capabilities and its lack of games.

It didn't help that the "Legend of Zelda" and "Mario" games were unlike any seen before, and coupled with their poor controls and quality, they became the notorious black sheep of the series.

Answer: Superman

"Superman 64", despite being popular in sales, became one of the poorest-received titles on the popular Nintendo 64 console because of quality assurance issues created by complete mishandling behind the scenes. While DC Comics simply tried to keep the license for the game going, the developers at Titus Software were unable to fix any control issues, bugs, and graphical quirks before release, effectively launching an unplayable game.

They went bankrupt in the following years.

Answer: Big Rigs

In "Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing" (because where else are you going to drive your semi tractor-trailers?), the player gets to race large trucks, but what they don't know upon installing this PC game is that it seems to have, unintentionally, been set in a world where physics need not apply.

This game was panned to a ridiculous extent, mainly because the game went through next to no real quality assurance testing before launching in a pre-alpha format, simply to gain money quicker. Players could drive straight up ninety degree inclines, crash into objects with no real penalty, and ride, actually, off the roads without decelerating.

More than a decade after its release, it continued to retain the ranking as 'Worst Game' on Metacritic, with an approval rating below 10/100...mainly because some reviewers don't rate at 0%.

Answer: Duke Nukem

While "Duke Nukem 3D" (for the Nintendo 64) wasn't the most amazing game on the market when it showed up in 1996, its old-school shooter aesthetic ended up proving popular in the long-run, and its popularity caused a nostalgia trip for more than a decade as developers constantly put another sequel in and out of development. Finally, in 2011, fans got a new game in "Duke Nukem Forever"...and were immediately disappointed by an all-around shoddy product bulked up by pre-order bonuses and hammy jokes. Players faced a lack of variability and challenge in the game and, in the end, waited forever for pretty much nothing.

Answer: The Walking Dead

Somewhat of a cash-grab based on the popularity of the hit TV show "The Walking Dead", players of "Survival Instinct" could play as Daryl Dixon, a character not appearing in the original graphic novel series, but made a fan favourite through Norman Reedus' portrayal on the show.

This was likely the only selling point since, after the game's quick release, there was little else to offer save for an unimaginative first-person shooter experience with little storyline. Many fans of the series would quickly point to TellTale Games' series of adventure games based on the show for a good time. "Survival Instinct" developers Terminal Reality went defunct the following year; they also developed "Bloodrayne" and "Kinect Star Wars".

Answer: Aliens

"Aliens: Colonial Marines" was something everyone hoped would work, but really didn't. After appearing in E3 conferences in the years prior, many expected that this game would have the dark atmosphere needed for an ideal horror shooter on the next generation of consoles, but what resulted was a shipped-too-early mess in which, in some cases, faulty alien AI resulted in foes running into walls, prancing around in circles, and effectively doing nothing.

The developers at Gearbox Software, much better known for the "Borderlands" series, ended up pulling much of its team off the game early on, and Sega released an unfinished product...and it cost them over a million dollars in false advertising lawsuits. You want terror? Play "Alien: Isolation" instead.

Answer: Ride to Hell: Retribution

Meant to be released in 2009, this particular game was canceled and then, as it would seem, released in 2013 with no changes made. While many believed it would live up to the open-world setting akin to "Grand Theft Auto", "Ride to Hell: Retribution" ended up being significantly more linear and absurdly banal. Between non-working controls, poor scripting, and bad acting, the game was dead on arrival, and triggered a plethora of bad review scores. Two games under the same series were canceled in its wake; it was pulled off the Steam Store itself in 2014.

Answer: Sonic

While Sonic games were some of the most popular to appear on Sega consoles back in the 1990s, forging their way through a heavily Nintendo-centric industry and coming out with consistent hits to boot, Sonic's appearances on consoles in the 2000s and 2010s have had fans pining for better days, and while other titles showing on the Wii and PS3 (to name a few consoles) were critically panned, "Rise of Lyric" essentially went out of its way to somewhat reinvent a cast of well-established characters...and not fix issues that fans had been seeing for more than a decade. Between repetition, poor puzzles, and several bugs, the rise turned out to be a flop.

Answer: Tony Hawk

While the early "Tony Hawk Pro Skater" games were extremely popular in the past (on the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation 2), and rightly so, the fifth in the "Pro Skater" line, appearing eight years after "Proving Ground" a generation earlier, ended up falling flat on its face. Bugged to the extreme, the game ended up being a case of 'sent out too soon', and players were faced with a nearly unplayable final copy that was patched repeatedly over the months proceeding its release. And with as many big names and sponsors attached to a game like that, it's exactly what you don't want.