• GraniteM@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I’m seeing a lot of games with awesome cover art but pretty standard gameplay for its era. You gotta pick something with truly dogshit gameplay to counter the cover. I present the NES game Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde:

    I was the kid who liked to stand in the horror section of the video rental store, look at the covers, and read the descriptions of scary movies I was way too meek to ever actually watch. This comes along, and I think it looks pretty cool! My mom paid good money to rent this and so help me I spent a good chunk of my evening trying to figure out how to do… literally anything. I wandered back and forth as Dr. Jekyll for a while before I bumped into too many pedestrians and turned into Mr. Hyde. Then I wandered back and forth as Mr. Hyde until I believe a bird killed me. Never made it past the first level.

    That is a truly horrendous game with badass-looking cover art.

  • arniegeddon@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Cover for Obliterator on Atari ST looked so cool. Game was a weird, slow, springy platform with odd controls.

  • _bcron_@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Title is fucking metal. Box is wild. Panned as one of the worst games ever made

  • Ashtear@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    Loved these movies as a kid. Still one of the worst games I’ve ever played.

    • groucho@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 month ago

      Have you played the second one? I begged my parents for weeks to rent it. Then I got it and… I can’t even describe it. At one point there’s a platformer puzzle room based on the Three Bears. I played it for a whole weekend because I couldn’t believe how awful it was.

      • Ashtear@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        Forever ago, out of morbid curiosity. I do vaguely remember it being quite bizarre.

  • Peffse@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    This is the one that got me when I was younger:

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    Turns out its a platform puzzle game with no attack button. Enemies can only be defeated by pushing blocks onto them.

    image

  • ramblingsteve@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    just about any game from the 80’s 8bit era was sold by the tape insert’s artwork… but that artwork was so fine I do miss it today.

    • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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      1 month ago

      Having the equivalent of movie posters as games’ cover art was awesome, if terrible for showing what the game was.

      It always amazes me that the European version of Mega Man has a fucking fantastic cover

    • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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      1 month ago

      I feel like that’s the opposite. The cover is weird AF and has nothing to do with the fact it’s a pretty good sci-fi SHMUP lol

      Unless you got hyped up for hillbilly banjo slappin’ action and were disappointed it was a shoot 'em up… 🤔

        • Peffse@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Oddly enough, I ended up buying Shadow Dancer specifically because the cover was so bizarre.

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          An old man with a bat protects a young woman from a plate armored man attacking both of them with a longsword, as a scared dog flees into a burning city in the distance.