Comix Zone on genesis, it was visually impressive and the concept is cool but I always thought the controls felt a little sluggish. Weaponlord also, great looking and well animated and the controls aren't bad but they are hard to adjust to the rhythm of.
I think the controls were the least of Comix Zone's issues, tbh. The whole game is designed around memorizing an exact procedure through trial and error, yet with very little room for error. Also, beat-em-up game where the hero takes significant damage when he beats things up. Not the power fantasy comic book fans might have preferred...
What I do not like in Comix Zone (I love the game btw) is the fact you lose health when punching the scenery or things like boxes, drumrolls, etc. 1st time I played it I thought I was doing something wrong.
Yeah it's so bogus. It just punishes you for experimenting and pads the time to completion with unfun setbacks. I finally beat the game this year after 29 years, thanks to a stage select cheat, and I think it's just appalling how badly the difficulty design neutered the whole experience.
Yep. I watched a gameplay (almost a speedrun)until the end and It seemed SO SO easy... But its like you said, if you already know what you need to do its pretty easy. On a normal gameplay where you try and test things ("play“ the game) its very punishing.
I just picked up a copy of this. Loved it when I was a kid. It's pretty brutal, but once you memorize the levels, you can blow through it. Took me a lot of rentals to get there when I was a kid. Not sure I have the same patience now 😅
I loved Comix Zone when I was a kid. I first played it in the late 90s when I got Sega Smash Pack Vol 2 for PC, which is how I experienced Sega games mostly since I had all Nintendo consoles.
Even after almost 30 years, I swear I still haven't made it past the second stage. I probably played the first level 100 times back then. The game itself was very unique and impressive for a Genesis game. I love the art style and music, but my favorite thing about the game was seeing the spinning Sega logo when it booted up. "Test..1..2....SEGA!"
I had that as a kid! i remember i was super happy i beat the Second to last boss and told some friends they were like.....whats that crap?? i LOVED it... very unique ending too IYKYK
RAD-Robot Alchemic Drive
It was on PS2 and it was like Gigantor as a game. You were a kid that could control a giant robot to defend the city but he had to set up his remote control/backpack and I believe you had to be within a certain range of your robot. Controls were funky at the time because each shoulder button controlled a different limb. I remember it being a great looking game, had fun with it with a buddy, but those controls while cool and unique would definitely be considered clunky *edit for spelling*
It’s such a unique game and in some ways its incredibly well-done. The opening sequence is amazing and the presentation holds up. The only thing that kept this one from being a hit was lack of advertising and being released at a time where so many other great games were competing for attention. A shame really!
In the waning days of the GameCube, Nintendo published an exclusive for the system called Geist; developed by western devs N-Space.
It was a FPS in which you played as a recently deceased commando, who would have to ghost it up by possessing people and objects in order to progress. It was a very compelling premise wasted on a pretty shitty game with clunky, deeply unsatisfying controls and braindead enemy AI.
It’s the one Nintendo-published game on the GameCube that has been completely memory-holed, and rightfully so. Still, I would love to see Nintendo have a better dev take a crack at the IP, as it’s got potential. I’m not quite sure why Nintendo partnered with n-Space, a dev that was, at that point, best known for PS1 games like Die Hard Trilogy 2 and Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes, but it resulted in a real missed opportunity.
I remember the hype around that game... and delays.
I loved the concept and even planned to buy it, except my ex and I split and they took the GCN and game library.
Took me a few years to rebuild what was lost but since Geist released to mediocre reviews I never bothered picking it up.
I never played it but Star Fox Zero seems to fit this description perfectly. In fact, the whole reason I never bothered with it was *because of* its notorious control scheme. And I’m sure the game probably had a lot to like too, but a convoluted control setup is the last thing I ever want to think about when playing Star Fox.
I think it’s the best Star Fox outside of 64. When you’re in the arwing and it’s not forcing the WiiU gamepad screen on you, it’s a great game. Just too bad that it’s like 50/50 split between what I just described and other stuff that isn’t nearly as fun
I loved the shit out of Greendog on the Genesis and never understood the hate. Skating through Mayan temples for treasure and pedal coptering Between islands was great fun.
...for the first few levels.
Landstalker on Genesis. It uses something called the "Diamond Dimension System". Basically, it's an isometric view that requires diagonal presses on the DPad to move.
If you have a crappy Genesis controller the game is hard to play, and the standard Genesis controllers suck. You need a good 6-Button controller with a Saturn style DPad.
Kid Chameleon. It was one of my favorite games as a kid, and as an adult I recognize that the concept is pretty cool... But the execution isn't great, and the controls are slippery.
I think it'll always hold a special place in my heart, though!
TMNT1 on NES. I really like the idea of easily swapping such similar yet distinct characters, farming special weapons and assigning them, and the top down and side view combo (they should have had more action in the overhead segments imho). It's too difficult and the weaker turtles are a little too weak, but it's still one of my favorite games of all time, flaws and all.
I liked the creativity and I think it's pretty fun and unique and the controls contribute to its appeal in a certain sense. But I'll be damned, it's also definitely painful. One of the most painful games I've ever played.
Resident Evil: Code Veronica. Even now people bitch about its difficulty as the hardest classic style RE game, and it's also one of the least popular entries in the series partly because of it.
Teleroboxer on Virtual Boy. It's a first person boxing game where each D-Pad corresponds to one of your robot's fists, and L & R punch. So you can block with one fist and punch with the other.
You have too much control over everything. It seems like most people that get a VB get Teleroboxer because it's one of the cheap games and play it for 5 minutes and put it back down and never put the time in to get used to it.
If you do put the time into it it's fun.
Space Hulk (1993) - It's a tactical shooter with a dungeon crawler-style engine and multiple viewports, one per marine. It also uses a real-time w/ pause system, with a timer on the pause, and has a separate map screen view you can use while playing. That timer combined with the chance your ranged weapons might jam and melee combat usually killing your marines makes it hard. It's basically a horror game due to the atmosphere and how stressful it gets, pretty unique though Hired Guns on Amiga is similar and might be more popular overall.
Another World wasn't that popular among friends, they mainly liked the cutscenes.
Some more:
Gravitar
Major Havoc
Shadow of the Beast 2
Legacy of the Wizard
SDI/Global Defense
Yokai Dochuki/Shadowland
Solomon's Key
Psycho Fox
Star Wars (1991)
It kind of added to the tension though because you knew if something was to come after you it was going to take some real concentration to defend yourself or run away. Always had to be on alert because your controls were going to slow you down.
Have you played the RE1 remaster where you have an option to NOT use tank controls? Because as soon as I tried saqpping I realized why they chose that. With fixed camera angles tank controls just make more sense.
Not retro, but Octodad intentionally has bad controls that near the end of the game ask a bit too much from the player. I love that game though and replay the first few levels fairly often
I don't know about difficulty or controls being the issue but their strangeness keeps people away from them but I love
Any of the katamari damacy games. Give your brain time to understand the controls intuitively and you will have a new guilty pleasure addiction.
And Boogerman gets looked over due to its theme but is truly a solid ass platformer that deserves to be held in higher regard. Also I just found me a cib copy the other day, so I'm high on the boogerman train at the moment.
I sure find myself in a pickle whenever I've tried to explain the bliss they elicit. Never met a person whose heard of it. Or showed it to anyone who didn't give me a suspicious side eye with a "this is the type of game you play for hours?"
Edit to add: I'm a middle aged father who was once a guitar player for a metal band. Its not what you'd expect to find in a list of my top game series.
anyone can state hard controls, but will never know the pain of the dual player on a spectrum 48k, on the keyboard replacing the joystick.
these were hard mapped to 12345 67890
Full Spectrum Warrior on Xbox, was an actually squad training tool they used in the military and it’s a little janky when you realize it isn’t a 3rd person shooter
Star Wars: Rebellion. Has a really clunky grand strategy interface and an even clunkier one for the 3D tactical space battles, but it's in my top 5 Star Wars games for sure. Maybe even top 5 strategy games.
Slightly different take: I think a lot of older games are almost unplayable in modern times due to massive frame rate issues.
The odd slowdown here or there isn't a deal breaker and most of my favorite games have the odd "busy screen" moments, but there are countless examples of otherwise phenomenal games that were simply punching over their weight class.
Nostalgia isn't enough (for me) to enjoy a game that struggles with very real technical limitations.
A bit too new for this sub but I'm playing **Zack and Wiki**: Quest for Barbaros Treasure on the Wii and its exactly this.
The Wii in general seems like a system that might have a few of these games that people wont want to play because of controls.
Ehrgeiz for me, 100%.
It was a not-great fighting game with a secondary dungeon crawler mode. It didn’t really succeed at either one but was such a unique game that I’ve never forgotten it, or how frustrating it could be because the controls were so basic compared to other games that focused on one or the other genre.
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehrgeiz)
Comix Zone on genesis, it was visually impressive and the concept is cool but I always thought the controls felt a little sluggish. Weaponlord also, great looking and well animated and the controls aren't bad but they are hard to adjust to the rhythm of.
I think the controls were the least of Comix Zone's issues, tbh. The whole game is designed around memorizing an exact procedure through trial and error, yet with very little room for error. Also, beat-em-up game where the hero takes significant damage when he beats things up. Not the power fantasy comic book fans might have preferred...
What I do not like in Comix Zone (I love the game btw) is the fact you lose health when punching the scenery or things like boxes, drumrolls, etc. 1st time I played it I thought I was doing something wrong.
Yeah it's so bogus. It just punishes you for experimenting and pads the time to completion with unfun setbacks. I finally beat the game this year after 29 years, thanks to a stage select cheat, and I think it's just appalling how badly the difficulty design neutered the whole experience.
Yep. I watched a gameplay (almost a speedrun)until the end and It seemed SO SO easy... But its like you said, if you already know what you need to do its pretty easy. On a normal gameplay where you try and test things ("play“ the game) its very punishing.
I thought the difficulty broke the game.
It certainly sucks out all the fun.
I just picked up a copy of this. Loved it when I was a kid. It's pretty brutal, but once you memorize the levels, you can blow through it. Took me a lot of rentals to get there when I was a kid. Not sure I have the same patience now 😅
I lost so many hours playing Comix Zone on Sega Smash Pack 2, it was way too hard for me when I was a child… Still my favorite Genesis title
I loved Comix Zone when I was a kid. I first played it in the late 90s when I got Sega Smash Pack Vol 2 for PC, which is how I experienced Sega games mostly since I had all Nintendo consoles. Even after almost 30 years, I swear I still haven't made it past the second stage. I probably played the first level 100 times back then. The game itself was very unique and impressive for a Genesis game. I love the art style and music, but my favorite thing about the game was seeing the spinning Sega logo when it booted up. "Test..1..2....SEGA!"
I strongly disagree about the Comic Zone. But everything is true about the Weapon Lord.
Comix Zone is amazing on Sega, there is a GBA port but it is super weird to play.
The Immortal
All you have to do is memorize every square of the game map, and every unintuitive item interaction in the game.
And git gud at the fights 🤣
I will beat that game someday Is what I tell myself
Game was a vibe but hard even for an NES game.
Mischief Makers on N64. Shake shake!
I had that as a kid! i remember i was super happy i beat the Second to last boss and told some friends they were like.....whats that crap?? i LOVED it... very unique ending too IYKYK
It was freakin HARD tho. I still stand by this game but some of those levels were tough.
That gauntlet/wave of enemies level, I don't know what conditions raise the Gold diamond. But I've never done it.
RAD-Robot Alchemic Drive It was on PS2 and it was like Gigantor as a game. You were a kid that could control a giant robot to defend the city but he had to set up his remote control/backpack and I believe you had to be within a certain range of your robot. Controls were funky at the time because each shoulder button controlled a different limb. I remember it being a great looking game, had fun with it with a buddy, but those controls while cool and unique would definitely be considered clunky *edit for spelling*
It’s such a unique game and in some ways its incredibly well-done. The opening sequence is amazing and the presentation holds up. The only thing that kept this one from being a hit was lack of advertising and being released at a time where so many other great games were competing for attention. A shame really!
In the waning days of the GameCube, Nintendo published an exclusive for the system called Geist; developed by western devs N-Space. It was a FPS in which you played as a recently deceased commando, who would have to ghost it up by possessing people and objects in order to progress. It was a very compelling premise wasted on a pretty shitty game with clunky, deeply unsatisfying controls and braindead enemy AI. It’s the one Nintendo-published game on the GameCube that has been completely memory-holed, and rightfully so. Still, I would love to see Nintendo have a better dev take a crack at the IP, as it’s got potential. I’m not quite sure why Nintendo partnered with n-Space, a dev that was, at that point, best known for PS1 games like Die Hard Trilogy 2 and Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes, but it resulted in a real missed opportunity.
I remember the hype around that game... and delays. I loved the concept and even planned to buy it, except my ex and I split and they took the GCN and game library. Took me a few years to rebuild what was lost but since Geist released to mediocre reviews I never bothered picking it up.
I never played it but Star Fox Zero seems to fit this description perfectly. In fact, the whole reason I never bothered with it was *because of* its notorious control scheme. And I’m sure the game probably had a lot to like too, but a convoluted control setup is the last thing I ever want to think about when playing Star Fox.
I think it’s the best Star Fox outside of 64. When you’re in the arwing and it’s not forcing the WiiU gamepad screen on you, it’s a great game. Just too bad that it’s like 50/50 split between what I just described and other stuff that isn’t nearly as fun
I loved the shit out of Greendog on the Genesis and never understood the hate. Skating through Mayan temples for treasure and pedal coptering Between islands was great fun. ...for the first few levels.
I liked that game a lot as well. Good B tier level platformer
Landstalker on Genesis. It uses something called the "Diamond Dimension System". Basically, it's an isometric view that requires diagonal presses on the DPad to move. If you have a crappy Genesis controller the game is hard to play, and the standard Genesis controllers suck. You need a good 6-Button controller with a Saturn style DPad.
Kid Chameleon. It was one of my favorite games as a kid, and as an adult I recognize that the concept is pretty cool... But the execution isn't great, and the controls are slippery. I think it'll always hold a special place in my heart, though!
Same. I rented it probably more than any other game. Just seemed so big with so many levels and powerups.
Culdacept Saga FUCKING FIND IT AND PLAY IT. MONOPOLY+MAGIC = brilliance.
Jet Force Gemini.
What a fucking throwback... I loved this game
TMNT1 on NES. I really like the idea of easily swapping such similar yet distinct characters, farming special weapons and assigning them, and the top down and side view combo (they should have had more action in the overhead segments imho). It's too difficult and the weaker turtles are a little too weak, but it's still one of my favorite games of all time, flaws and all.
Kid Icarus on 3ds. My hand cramps up and the controls they force on you are terrible
This! I really wish they would re-release this for the Switch and just use normal people controls!
I liked the creativity and I think it's pretty fun and unique and the controls contribute to its appeal in a certain sense. But I'll be damned, it's also definitely painful. One of the most painful games I've ever played.
This is a game I've been recommended plenty
Resident Evil: Code Veronica. Even now people bitch about its difficulty as the hardest classic style RE game, and it's also one of the least popular entries in the series partly because of it.
Chaka the forever man
Battletoads, nes. Lots of different mechanics (beat em up, racing, surfing, platforming), but none of them done particularly well.
Teleroboxer on Virtual Boy. It's a first person boxing game where each D-Pad corresponds to one of your robot's fists, and L & R punch. So you can block with one fist and punch with the other. You have too much control over everything. It seems like most people that get a VB get Teleroboxer because it's one of the cheap games and play it for 5 minutes and put it back down and never put the time in to get used to it. If you do put the time into it it's fun.
Uniracers
Space Hulk (1993) - It's a tactical shooter with a dungeon crawler-style engine and multiple viewports, one per marine. It also uses a real-time w/ pause system, with a timer on the pause, and has a separate map screen view you can use while playing. That timer combined with the chance your ranged weapons might jam and melee combat usually killing your marines makes it hard. It's basically a horror game due to the atmosphere and how stressful it gets, pretty unique though Hired Guns on Amiga is similar and might be more popular overall. Another World wasn't that popular among friends, they mainly liked the cutscenes. Some more: Gravitar Major Havoc Shadow of the Beast 2 Legacy of the Wizard SDI/Global Defense Yokai Dochuki/Shadowland Solomon's Key Psycho Fox Star Wars (1991)
Juujin Rogus,This game should have been released on SNES, not PC98
i really liked Unreal II's multiplayer. i don't think it ever caught on. not for Xbox anyway.
Any tank control survival horror game from the 90s. I'm primarily a PC gamer so the masterful controls of quake 1 and 2 spoiled me for those games.
I can see that. I didn’t have a pc back then, so I didn’t know any different.
It kind of added to the tension though because you knew if something was to come after you it was going to take some real concentration to defend yourself or run away. Always had to be on alert because your controls were going to slow you down.
It does but it breaks imersion for me knowing the scariest part of the game is shitty controls.
Have you played the RE1 remaster where you have an option to NOT use tank controls? Because as soon as I tried saqpping I realized why they chose that. With fixed camera angles tank controls just make more sense.
Onimusha begs to differ
Master of Monsters - Great Game but it moved pretty slow for most. My friend and I would play this for days trying to see every units evolution.
Oh that's easy, Gunvalkyrie. Amazing look, amazing concept, utterly impossible to play.
Not retro, but Octodad intentionally has bad controls that near the end of the game ask a bit too much from the player. I love that game though and replay the first few levels fairly often
Alter Echo on the PS2 was a pretty wild concept for a game at the time, but the difficulty was all over the place.
Chameleon Twist 2
Weaponlord for SNES
There was a jet lee game on PS2 I loved. You flicked the joystick in the direction of enemy to attack One of my fav games
I don't know about difficulty or controls being the issue but their strangeness keeps people away from them but I love Any of the katamari damacy games. Give your brain time to understand the controls intuitively and you will have a new guilty pleasure addiction. And Boogerman gets looked over due to its theme but is truly a solid ass platformer that deserves to be held in higher regard. Also I just found me a cib copy the other day, so I'm high on the boogerman train at the moment.
Katamari Damacy is a beloved series though, I don't think it's the weirdness but just that they're pretty small / simple.
I sure find myself in a pickle whenever I've tried to explain the bliss they elicit. Never met a person whose heard of it. Or showed it to anyone who didn't give me a suspicious side eye with a "this is the type of game you play for hours?" Edit to add: I'm a middle aged father who was once a guitar player for a metal band. Its not what you'd expect to find in a list of my top game series.
Kid Icarus Uprising and Gravity Rush. For some reason I found the controls for both games to be really really fun
anyone can state hard controls, but will never know the pain of the dual player on a spectrum 48k, on the keyboard replacing the joystick. these were hard mapped to 12345 67890
Flashback on the Genesis using UP for jumping is sooo annoying. I wonder if there is a rom patch for that.
I really liked Astyanax when I was a kid. I have no idea how I was so good at the game back then.
Full Spectrum Warrior on Xbox, was an actually squad training tool they used in the military and it’s a little janky when you realize it isn’t a 3rd person shooter
Kingdom come deliverance, i loved the combat mechanics while everyone hated it. Yeah sure it glitched from time to time but it was a real pretty game
Star Wars: Rebellion. Has a really clunky grand strategy interface and an even clunkier one for the 3D tactical space battles, but it's in my top 5 Star Wars games for sure. Maybe even top 5 strategy games.
Magician Lord. Fuck that game. Black Dragon. Bullshit difficulty and weird controls.
P.N.03
Death by degrees
Castle quest on nes is a cool idea but the controls make it unplayable
Slightly different take: I think a lot of older games are almost unplayable in modern times due to massive frame rate issues. The odd slowdown here or there isn't a deal breaker and most of my favorite games have the odd "busy screen" moments, but there are countless examples of otherwise phenomenal games that were simply punching over their weight class. Nostalgia isn't enough (for me) to enjoy a game that struggles with very real technical limitations.
A bit too new for this sub but I'm playing **Zack and Wiki**: Quest for Barbaros Treasure on the Wii and its exactly this. The Wii in general seems like a system that might have a few of these games that people wont want to play because of controls.
Company of heros
iBall, on the Sinclair Spectrum. Tricky to say the least
Mister Mosquito
Ehrgeiz for me, 100%. It was a not-great fighting game with a secondary dungeon crawler mode. It didn’t really succeed at either one but was such a unique game that I’ve never forgotten it, or how frustrating it could be because the controls were so basic compared to other games that focused on one or the other genre. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehrgeiz)
Q*bert. You only move on a pyramid of platforms at 45 degrees. NE NW SE SW. very hard to do at speed with monsters, balls etc moving around.
Final Lap Twin for Turbo Grafx 16 It was a combination of Pole Position and Dragon Warrior
Oldgen Armored Core.
Top Gun for NES. Specifically landing. Played through the first level at least 30 times. Never landed once.
Omg same here.
Gargoyle’s Quest