There are huge games released every year that are praised by reviewers and gamers alike. These are not those games. These are the games that, despite the hype and excitement around them, found a way to disappoint players and critics alike. These eight games are some of the biggest flops of all time.
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Duke Nukem Forever
First announced in 1996, the sequel to Duke Nukem 3D was on the watch list of many gamers. Unfortunately, the game quickly became mired in development hell. After changing graphics engines several times and who knows how many rebuilds of the game, 3D Realms went through a downsizing and lost the development team. This led to a lawsuit from Take-Two for failure to finish the game. In 2010, 2K announced that Gearbox would be finishing Duke Nukem Forever, and in May of 2011, it was released after 15 years of development. It featured long loading time, terrible controls, and jokes that hadn’t been funny since the 1990s. It simply felt out of place in a world of modern shooters, and its reception reflected that.
Advent Rising
Originally intended to be the first game in an epic trilogy, Advent Rising was billed as what the Mass Effect series would eventually become. It had all the pieces, including a game world that spanned multiple planets and a script written by sci-fi legend Orson Scott Card. It even had a comic book mini-series that launched ahead of the game to build the hype. Unfortunately, the game itself didn’t live up to expectations. Enemy AI was extremely poor, cutscenes didn’t work right, and there were bugs scattered through the game. After the first game’s lukewarm reception, Majesco Games cancelled the remaining installments.
Superman 64
Technically titled Superman: The New Adventures, Titus Software’s game is based on the TV show Superman: The Animated Series. The game had a litany of problems, among them poor collision detection, an inconsistent frame rate, and numerous glitches. Often cited as one of the worst video games ever made, Superman 64 still managed to be a top seller in June of 1999 after its May 31 release date. An attempt was made to remake the title for PlayStation and Sega Saturn, but Titus’ license on the IP ran out before it could be released, and the remake was cancelled.
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
E.T. may have sold 1.5 million units (which is damned impressive for 1982), but it was certainly not well-received. It’s little wonder, as Atari gave the dev team only six weeks to complete the game so it could be released for the holiday season. The time crunch also meant that there was no audience testing of the game, as Atari believed it would be successful due to the movie tie-in. They produced roughly 5 million cartridges, but only sold 1.5 million units, with the remainder ending up in a New Mexico landfill. The flop devastated Atari, with the company reporting a loss of over a half a billion dollars in 1983.
Too Human
First announced in 1999 as a PlayStation title, Too Human was teased during E3 that year. Development was halted in 2000 when developer Silicon Knights entered an exclusive partnership with Nintendo and moved Too Human to the Gamecube. After little work, the game was shelved as the developer shifted its efforts to two other titles. It resurfaced in 2005 as part of a deal with Microsoft to bring it to the Xbox 360. It was poorly received at release, and the two subsequent games of the planned trilogy never materialized. The game was removed from all services after Epic Games won a lawsuit against Silicon Knights for failure to properly pay royalties for their use of the Unreal Engine.
Lair
Take the team that worked on the Star Wars: Rogue Squadron series (Factor 5) and give them the mandate to make an awesome game about flying on dragons. How could it go wrong? Well, they also invested heavily in using the almost completely ignored PlayStation Sixaxis motion controls – so much so that they did not allow for any input from the analog sticks. When the game was released, reviewers and gamers everywhere despised the controls, so much so that Factor 5 finally released a patch that added analog controls to the game. But by the time it was released, the fate of Lair was already sealed.
Daikatana
Ion Storm’s John Romero was a gaming industry darling in 1997, so when he announced Daikatana, people got excited. Unfortunately, Romero planned to release the game in only seven months, a plan that quickly fell by the wayside. Delays piled on delays, team members jumped ship, and the budget continued to grow. Two years later, at E3 1999, Romero’s Daikatana demo was shown off, running at a whopping 12 frames per second. At that point, Eidos took control of Ion Storm, ousted the founders, and pushed the game to completion. Once it finally launched in April of 2000, it sold only 200,000 copies. The failure doomed Ion Storm, which was closed the following year. It was an inauspicious ending for a game that was advertised with the tagline, “John Romero’s about to make you his bitch.”
Aliens: Colonial Marines
You really can’t screw up a shooter based on Aliens, right? WRONG. 2013’s Aliens: Colonial Marines did exactly that. While demos and previews left many critics with a positive impression, it turned out the the final product had little resemblance to what had been shown. On top of that, the game had a number of technical problems, ranging from bugs and horrible AI to low-quality graphics. The game was so disappointing that a suit was filed against Sega and Gearbox, although Gearbox was dropped from the suit last week, and a judge failed to certify it as a class action. A planned Wii U version was cancelled in 2013.
