My top 10 games I regret buying

This is a list of the top 10 games I regret buying. They come from all sorts of platforms and time periods, but the end result is I regret buying them for one reason or another. Have you played some of the games on my list?

The games I regret buying list

The list is in the order of oldest to recent purchase. They are not in order by rank. This is my personal list, so if you see a game that you like or you feel something is missing, don’t fret.  Feel free to make your own in the comments!

Back to the Future (NES)

This game came out on the NES and I was too young to know any better about how crappy licensed games could be. Back to The Future was my first lesson in this. You start off on a street with vertical scrolling. The goal is to avoid all the obstacles and make it to the end. I don’t think I ever made it past the first level to be honest. This game is horrible and was a slap in the face to anyone that loved the Back to The Future movies.

The Angry Video Game Nerd has said all there is to say about this game:

Space Ace (SNES)

I remember having this game in my collection, but I don’t remember how it got there. I certainly didn’t go to a store and buy this. I think it might have been a gift from an aunt. Anyway, this game really really sucked. The very first level is all about staying on the constantly scrolling screen and avoiding all the traps that you have to memorize. I think I only made it to the second or third level. Seriously, this game is hard.

Gameplay video:

Dennis the Menace (SNES)

In the 90s, there was a Dennis the Menace movie that had come out. This game was licensed from that. I guess I still hadn’t learned my lesson from the Back to The Future games. This game is awful and I never even beat the first level! You are dropped into your neighbor’s house and must…wait, what is the goal? The game never tells you. You just wander around the house and try not to die from basically anything that moves. Oh, and watch out for the neighbor that catches you if he touches you.

Gameplay video:

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (Nintendo 64)

I remember buying this game when I was in the 4th grade in elementary school. I had saved up some birthday money and went to Toys R Us and I picked out a game to buy. Back in the day, I didn’t think to properly research a game before I bought it. I was probably still judging games based on their covers and the back of the box.

I knew this was one of the games I regret buying, but I was in denial. After bringing this game home and inserting it into my Nintendo 64. I was immediately placed into a foggy world that was first person. If my memory serves correct, this was my first person shooting game I had ever played. However, there were no hints of where to go and no explanations in the game. You were sort of just dropped into a foggy mess. The fog was either the weakness of the Nintendo 64 hardware or the badly coded game. Either way, I didn’t get very far in this game and I found it very boring. The only cool thing to come out of this game were the cheats you could input and get all the guns.

Gameplay video:

 

Yoshi’s Story (Nintendo 64)

Maybe it was Nintendo Power magazine that had me interested in Yoshi’s Story. After I bought it, I felt really let down because the game was so short. Back in the day, Nintendo 64 games were expensive. This game should have been sold at a reduced price because it certainly was not a full game. The game is not bad, but I regret buying this game at the full price of a N64 game.

Gameplay video:

Mission Impossible (Nintendo 64)

I was over at a friend’s house when he showed me this new game he got. It was Mission Impossible and you could be the cool agent Ethan Hunt. You were able to disguise yourself as other people and sneak around. My friend forgot to mention that he had showed me the only good level in the entire game. Having been convinced it was a good game, I went out and bought it. The game was so so and nothing at all like I expected. The controls were pretty terrible if I remember right. My friend thought it was pretty hilarious that he managed to trick me into buying a mediocre game. In return, I tried to convince him to buy Yoshi’s Story, but he caught on. Oh well.

Gameplay video:

 Speed Racer (Playstation 1)

Growing up, I enjoyed watching the Japanese animation Speed Racer. I loved the main character’s car and all the gadgets built inside it. How cool would it be if I could play a video game that featured the famous Mach 5? Well, a game was made but it sucked. Speed Racer by Jaleco on the Playstation was the absolute minimum effort needed to develop a game. Most of the textures in the game were really basic and probably straight from the Playstation development kit. The only thing “Speed Racer” about this game was the opening animation from the show started when you put in the game. What a disappointment. There was a Shockwave game on the Internet many years ago that was way better than the Playstation game. And that thing had only 1 level.

Gameplay video:

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii)

What? A Zelda game!? Wait just a moment before you burn me at the stake. After skipping The Legend of Zelda: Windwaker on the Gamecube, I was pretty excited to play a Zelda game that was dark and had graphics similar to Ocarina of Time.

One thing I didn’t count on though, was the terrible Wii controls that were added (tacked on) to the game. I didn’t like having to wave my Wii remote around to attack. It got old really fast and I sadly never made it very far in the game because of it. Looking back, I really wish I would have bought the Gamecube edition. The game would have been more enjoyable and I might have even beaten it!

Gameplay video:

Okami (PS3)

My history with this game is rather short and I’ll explain why this is one of the games I regret buying. I bought this HD re-release on the PSN store for my PS3, really excited to finally get around this creative game. I had a limited amount of time to play before I had to go somewhere, so I thought I could at least start the beginning. I was wrong. This game has faux voice acting, which just uses random noises as voices for characters. The thing I will not forgive this game is using those horrible sounding voice effects and not letting me skip any of the dialogues. I wanted to hurry up and play the game. I ended up not being able to do much gameplay at all before I had to shut it off and go somewhere. I haven’t touched the game since this happened because I didn’t have the patience to listen to the voice acting and wade my way through the dialogues. I just wanted to play the game!

Gameplay video:

Dirt 2 (PS3)

This is probably one of the most recent games I regret buying. There was a friend in town and he and I wanted to find a game to play together for the evening before he traveled back to a different city. We were in a game section in a Japanese store and we thought about playing a racing game. The selection was not the best, but I narrowed down the candidates to Dirt 2 or some other racing game. The score was high on ratings websites, so I went with Dirt and brought it home. This is very unlike me, because I usually research games a lot before I buy them these days. However, these games were cheaper and used, so I thought I could let my guard down. Nope, guess not. My friend and I put the disc into the PS3 and we started racing each other. The game was filled with just loud motor sounds of us racing on dirt roads. There was absolutely nothing stimulating about this game. Maybe others can enjoy it, but I couldn’t believe I had paid money for that experience. I would have been better off downloading a PS2 game from PSN.

Gameplay video:

Final Thoughts

Those are games I regret buying. Not all of them are necessarily bad games, but they are ones I feel I should not have bought. Do you have a game that you regret buying? I’m anxious to know what other people have had to suffer through. Let me know in the comments what game you feel guilty over!