Category Archives: Bad Video Games

Games that are not very good.

Marble Madness: Deluxe Edition, Amstrad CPC

The ‘Deluxe Edition‘ of Marble Madness was released the same year as The Construction Set‘ edition and it contains a new set of screens to play through, plus the Construction Set editor, and the ten screens from the earlier release. It’s still complete and utter garbage, though…

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Marble Madness: The Construction Set, Amstrad CPC

The Amstrad CPC version of Melbourne House‘s 1986 release of Marble Madness is more or less identical to the ZX Spectrum version, but with a bit more colour. It was coded by the same author – John F. Cain – and suffers from the same problems as the Spectrum version.

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Marble Madness: Deluxe Edition, ZX Spectrum

The ‘Deluxe Edition‘ of Marble Madness on the Spectrum was again written by John F. Cain and published by Melbourne House in 1986, and it contains a new set of screens to play, as well as the ten screens from the previous release, plus the Construction Set editor, as a separate load on side ‘B’ of the cassette.

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Marble Madness: The Construction Set, ZX Spectrum

Written by John F. Cain (who also made Booty, Moonlight Madness and Super Dragon Slayer on the Spectrum), and published by Melbourne House in 1986, the ‘official’ Marble Madness on the ZX Spectrum bears little resemblance to the classic arcade original.

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Castlevania, Amiga

The Amiga version of Konami‘s classic Castlevania was ported by Novotrade and first released in 1990. I was surprised and excited that the first Castlevania had actually been released for the Amiga, but after playing it I kinda wish they hadn’t bothered, because it’s bloody awful.

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Commando, BBC Micro

Unfortunately the BBC Micro version of Elite‘s conversion of Commando is an absolute travesty, with terrible graphics and horrible gameplay and the only thing it has in common with the arcade original is the name of the game and the basic scenario.

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Paperboy, Commodore 16/Plus4

Joerg Dierks (of Kingsoft in Germany) wrote the C16/Plus4 version of Paperboy, which was published by Elite Systems, mostly on cassette throughout Europe in 1986.

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Dragonfire, ColecoVision

Dragonfire is a fantasy action game designed and coded by Bob Smith and first published for the Atari 2600 by Imagic in 1982. This ColecoVision port features enhanced graphics and gameplay over the Atari original and was first released in 1984.

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Bride of Frankenstein, Commodore 64

Bride of Frankenstein is a cartoon action adventure game, based on Mary’s Shelley‘s classic Frankenstein story, written by Paul Smith and Steve Howard of Timedata Ltd. and published by Ariolasoft in 1987. And it is absolute rubbish. Yes: Bride of Frankenstein is a malformed, badly-designed abomination that is barely worth a mention here.

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Dr. Franky and the Monster, ZX Spectrum

Dr. Franky and the Monster is a 1984 platform game written by Martin Wheeler (who created the original Sorcery) and published by Virgin Games for the ZX Spectrum. It’s a cartoony, satirical take on the Frankenstein story, and – to be honest – it isn’t very good.

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