Worst Graphics Ever

Hey guys,

I just looked a pic in the showcase that looked terrible. I'm not going to point it out because I know not everyone is an artist and they're doing the best they can, but it made me wonder what games I've played that had absolutely terrible graphics.

If you had to vote for the worst looking games of all time. What would your votes be for?

For me I think there was a paintball one I played that was pretty bad, but I don't remember the title.

The Army Men games always looked abortive to me.

I've never played one but, I have a mate who used to enjoy them, for some reason. :/

Last Rites...an old OCEAN Doom-beater!!

Mortal combat, always thought they looked bad and moved liked they belonged in a low budget horror movie.

Hunt the Wumpus?

1) It's Mortal Kombat, and the graphics (aside from maybe Goro) where digitized from video of martial arts performers. How can that possibly be the worst graphics?

Because they looked poor, even if they had digitized Jet Li it still would have been a poor, ill looking Jet Li.

There was a Mortal Kombat rip-off on the Atari Jaguar that used similar digitised sprites. It was called Kasumi Ninja.

im guessing 10/15 whatever years ago video capture wasnt what it is now
perhaps a camcorder and some bespoke hard/software resulting in sprites that are only 100 odd pixels high

so unless they filmed on 72fps film and then scanned each frame in at a very high res they always will be shitty looking but way better than (atari's?) pit fighter with its monochromatic jcvd and 2 other blokies and odds and sods bad guys

i say 72 and not 24 as for fluid movement a fast film is better eg watching bats at 1/3rd speed gives you a better idea of their movement

That old Journey aracade game...

I liked the level where you zapped the baddies with your guitar while the Journey music was playing :P

AAARRGGH! Kasumi Ninja!!..I was there! I witnessed that mountain of poo in the making\finishing! I was working on designing\sketching characters for the KS2 would you believe? (they would never have made it to the game) I shudder with shame... I can never wash myself clean enough of those memories...sullied for life.

The end boss in that runny dog turd of a beat'em up was a bloke in and old Doctor Who monster suit! No expense was spared!!

Well considering I used to play games on a Spectrum and BBC Micro, there were some pretty bad graphics back then! (but did we know they were bad?) Actually I've seem some stinking graphics in games (demos) on this forum too :-), but I guess you mean commercially released games.

This is a bit of a strange question because by asking what are the worst graphics EVER, everyone is going to say games from the earliest 8 bit computers. For example any ZX81 game, and what about that Grandstand game (or was that the name of the console?).

As Grey says, what is total crap now may have been some of the best graphics around at the time the original game was released. A game of today with rubbish visuals is still, literally, decades ahead of anything released at the birth of the home computer.

Still, we can look back and laugh at what we thought were stunning looking games at the time.

Depends wether you mean how they look or how they flow or a judgement of both.

Also you cannot compare today to then, thats like asking which is more "beautiful", a new mountain bike or a mint condition penny farthing.
It is certainly in the eye of the beholder.

-For classic example Outrun on the C64 Vs Spectrum. The C64 looked great in comparison, but the speccy version was much smoother and hence more playable so in my opinion the speccy ver. had better graphics.

After searching google, public opinion on this seems to gravitate around ET by atari.

given hardware of the time its easy to point the finger to any 8bit game

finger pointing should be leveled soley at modern gaming where we have 16.8 million colours to choose from and a minimum res of 800*600 for home brew/casual gaming up to the likes of HDTV

now us blitzers might not be the best at gfx (i know i aint) but if we 'hired' someone to do our art wouldnt you expect them to be good at it and not look just slightly better than what you could do yourself (for free)

so leave the 8bits alone
its like slagging of a B&W silent film for its total lack of CGI and explosions
stick to todays shite found in game etc
name and shame name and shame

This is somewhat difficult issue. I first thought that graphics are poor when full potential of the hardware is not being used. But then again, think about pixel art. For some people it is pleasing to the eye, even though it's not using much different colors and the resolution is low. Maybe poor graphics are the ones that irritate and pull your mind off of the game itself. And that does include the shiny and new 3D stuff of today too...

Worst Graphics Ever is a subjective experience. I can't think of what would be mine. I'd be interested to find the graphics I absolutely hate. Just like there was this one time I was searching for music. I listened to an album by Andreas Vollenweider and I found myself laughing and thinking 'I abso-f*ing-lutely hate this music! More!'. After a few sessions, I wished I'll never hear Vollenweider again.

In the casual realm, pixel art doesn't do that well, but in retro-indie games it's practically the accepted norm, so yeah it's all in the eye of the beholder ;-)

lol, not the direction I expected this thread to go.

space giraffe... seriously...

I dont know. I cant remember any graphics that REALLY made a game terrible, or unplayable.
Maybe.. i cant remember the name.
It was this N64 game, that looked absolutely horrible

Thats all i can remember.