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Worst Software House/Label

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2003 12:27 am
by LeeT
Come on then - Which Publisher constantly amazed you with the low quality of their games?.......

A few spring to mind......

1) Electric Dreams - Purely for 'Explorer' alone!!
2) Creative Sparks - Did they release any decent games?
3) Atlantis - Probably the worst budget label in the world..ever?!

Any more suggestions?

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2003 1:08 am
by Iain
Ocean released some real turkeys! but then again, some of the best games came from Ocean, the luck of the draw!

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2003 1:23 am
by Fab
Hey, you are forgetting CRL! :D

(but, admittedly, Tau Ceti was good)

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2003 1:37 am
by Iain
Did they do Hocus Pocus or something like that? Going around a cave taking photographs?. I never really did get into that. Although CRL did the Rocky Horrer Picture SHow on the C128, so they get kudos for making a C128 game! My only one!!

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2003 8:45 am
by Lloyd Mangram
Durell!
I hated all their games!
Poor graphics, poor gameplay, POOR ads!
An ugly, ugly, ugly company!

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2003 10:47 am
by Mayhem
Reelax. I don't think you can get worse than them ;)

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2003 12:48 pm
by LeeT
Yes CRL released a right load of old crud! I am amazed that they managed to survive - Wonder how many copies of titles they managed to sell after the bad reviews were printed?!

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2003 6:04 pm
by gordon
LeeT wrote:Yes CRL released a right load of old crud! I am amazed that they managed to survive - Wonder how many copies of titles they managed to sell after the bad reviews were printed?!
I'll be the third to vote CRL as the worst. There was one full-priced game called Stratton, or something similar, which would have shamed the 99p giveaway box at John Menzies. They had the odd highlight now and then, but they maintained low standards for years.

g.

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2003 9:44 pm
by Lloyd Mangram
mm...
I'm totally NOT into adventures (tried playing Jack the Ripper to see the 'lovely' pix, but I couldn't even get out of the room, or got killed outside, can't (or don't wanna maybe) remember) but CRL seem to have produced some decent Adventures. Jack the Ripper (indeed), Frankenstein, Bored of the rings (& the boggit , of course)

And I luuuuuurved OINK!
Tau Ceti's already mentioned.
Although I do recall totally cr*p games like Cyborg & TRIGGER HAPPY (aww!)

In the end CRL seems like a pretty good choice.

Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2003 8:43 am
by wazzaw
gordon wrote:I'll be the third to vote CRL as the worst.
Make that four, Gordo!

On the whole I too think most of their games were pretty crud, Stratton was bad enough (only saving grace being a half decent Jay Derrett tune) but what about Lifeforce, or indeed the 64 version of the Rocky Horror Show? The only saving grace CRL had was the Rod Pike adventures (Dracula, Frankenstein and Wolfman) and even then they went for maximum hype by getting them classified by the BBFC...

Argubaly even worse was their budget label, The Power House. Anyone ever play Osmium or Destruct? Ugh, big heaps of steaming horse manure both of them.

GO!

Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2003 1:46 pm
by Lloyd Mangram
I had a dream last night. It said that GO! was a pretty poor company as well. So I woke up and checked it out.
And indeed, what a trash:

Bad Cat GO! 37%
Bedlam GO! 40% 3
Bravestarr GO! 28%
Captain America GO! 36%
Gunsmoke GO! 15%
Jinks GO! 48%
Lazer Tag GO! 22%
Ramparts GO! 48%
Side Arms GO! 61%
Trantor GO! 55%
Wizard Warz GO! 30%

Wasn't GO! a sort of second rate software channel for US Gold?

But then I remembered that GO! had something to do with The Great Giana Sisters, but weren't they only distributors or something?

ROb

Re: GO!

Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2003 2:14 pm
by wazzaw
biggestjim wrote:I had a dream last night. It said that GO! was a pretty poor company as well.
Seemingly so. To me, although GO! was an offshoot of US Gold, initially it was set up to handle original games from other sources (ie: Rainbow Arts) and then later on some arcade conversions were under the label too.

Bad Cat and Jinks were all originally Rainbow Arts releases in Germany before GO! snagged them for the UK market. The GO! label was dropped around mid-1988, just before Great Giana Sisters reached the UK, and with the ratings you could easily see why!

Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2003 3:37 pm
by LeeT
It was funny that both Activision and US Gold both decided to launch sub-labels called 'Electric Dreams' at the same time!! :lol:
Also funny that they released terrible games on both labels!! :D

Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2003 4:01 pm
by Mayhem
Electric Dreams was actually Activision UK's sublabel (initially) to release UK based games to the US market. Sure there was crap like many other labels, but games such as Spindizzy and Citadel can't be faulted ;)

Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2003 4:22 pm
by alexhighnumber
When reading the title Atlantis sprung to mind and I see it got a mention, I got a couple of theirs in 1985 but only paid 99p so wasn't too disappointed. I rank "Scorpio Gamesworld" lower though, "Rabbit" was pretty poor to althougth not all together bad!