クソゲ (kusoge) is a Japanese term that means “shitty game.”
This refers to games that are infamously terrible. The absolute bottom of the barrel.
For example, a great kusoge is Atlantis no Nazo for Famicom. This game has
And yet, it’s incredibly popular in Japan.
What kusoge do you appreciate?
I appreciate it because it features Moai
I’ll have a think about some others.
Fire Rock on Famicom disk.
It reminds me so much of C64 games, exciting idea but so much jank.
Matou no Houkai is a lot better than that, but still janky
If I go digging through my Famicom cart games I probably have another 100 more lol! I love all the attempts from that era.
Atlantis yes! That’s the sort of trash I can appreciate, since the developers did have a lofty goal with it (surpass Super Mario Bros) but failed miserably at it. It’s as interesting as it is painful to play.
The PC-88 version of Super Mario Bros is another one.
One of my favourite shit game nobody talks about is the Assassin 2015. It’s a FMV-heavy DOS FPS by the Vectorman developers featuring hyper-linear levels, only one gun throughout the entire things, characters that look like evil muppets, and the exciting feature of playing a cutscene every time you kill the last enemy in a room
I don’t know if this is bad enough to qualify for this thread, but I absolutely adore Knuckles’ Chaotix for the 32X. Yes, it feels unfinished, and the level designs are often both sprawling and empty, and the inclusion of the Heavy and Bomb characters make the game worse, but… I’ve beaten it five times in the past year and a half lol. The art and music are incredible, and it is the polar opposite of nearly ever Sonic-series bonus stage, in that the Chaos Ring bonus levels are actually really fun, and look fantastic. It has problems, to be sure, but if you can learn to appreciate the rubber band mechanic, you can have a lot of fun with it, as I often do.
Chaotix is awesome. It’s one of my favourite Sonic games.
If someone expects a thoughtfully made platformer that’s meant to be challenging and engaging, yeah it’s wank. But it’s a fantastic delivery container for awesome art and music.
I definitely would not include Chaotix here.
Cosmic Carnage on the other hand…
Fair! I wasn’t sure. It just gets a bad rap, but yeah, probably not a kusoge.