Nintendo is, and it will always be the big N. It has reached our life of entertainment, emotion, and hours of happiness and anguish. The truth is that Nintendo has also been responsible for making us spend money on games that were not good enough. Additionally, it has forced us to suffer in front of the screen with video games developed by the same company or by third parties, which must never have existed.
That was the case with some GameCube video games. Although this console did not have as many titles as its competition – Playstation 2 and Xbox — in that generation, it had quite a few excellent games. Thus, that does not mean it does not have bad games – because there are, and they are awful.
If out of curiosity, you want to see how bad they were, here are the worst Gamecube games of all time!
11. Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly
Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly is not a game worthy of the consoles of those days, mainly due to its completely outdated graphics section compared to other games. Besides, it has an uncomfortable control.
People only recommend Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly to followers of Spyro and lovers of the genre who have already played all the previous titles and are looking for new challenges. It is a shame to see how Spyro debuted in the 128 bit because Spyro Enter the Dragonfly does not honor the saga.
10. The Sum of All Fears
The sum of all our fears is what this game represents. Ubisoft Red Storm based this game on a movie in which Ben Affleck and Morgan Freeman starred – actually pretty good -. It is an adaptation of the excellent PC game, which unfortunately does not work at all on the Nintendo GameCube.
Unlike the original version, The Sum of All Fears for the GameCube is only playable in first person, which is rare considering the gameplay is slow and inaccurate. The graphics are horrible compared to the PC title, and the sound is the worst. The music is repetitive, the sound of the weapons effects appear to have been recorded underwater, and the voices through a walkie-talkie.
It is a shame because you can tell that the idea for The Sum of All Fears is excellent; the problem is the execution.
9. Trigger Man
The plot of Trigger Man is similar to what we would find in a Godfather movie or an episode of The Soprano. The gameplay is so identical to Hitman that it could almost be a sequel — poorly done.
Characters are lousy designed and lacking in personality. Enemies do not drop weapons when killed, which is problematic thanks to the limited number of items the player can carry. Also, the graphics are squared, more like what we would find in a Nintendo 64 game.
Also, the game is very short. You can finish it in an entire afternoon — which I suppose is good, considering how painful it is for the players to finish it. The biggest problem of Trigger Man is how generic it is since it is nothing original.
8. Catwoman
Considering the Catwoman movie with Halle Berry was horrible, it should come as no surprise that the adaptation to the video game is just as bad. And that was made by Electronic Arts, an AAA company that usually produces quality games.
The controls are lousy; moving Catwoman is nearly impossible. The graphics are weak, and the camera is the worst. It moves too much, it never positions itself where it should be, and it despairs more than anything else.
Additionally, to all of the above, the game is short; it ends quickly, but the taste in your mouth is very unpleasant.
7. Driven
Look, another dreadful game based on a bad movie! Driven, with Sylvester Stallone, is the guilty pleasure of many. It is a kind of Rocky in the racing world, only, with much less credible characters, absurd dialogues, and somewhat weak special effects.
Considering the concept, however, we could hope that the game is decent, but that is not the case. Driven is a slow, tedious racing game with no impact crashes and colorful graphics, but ultimately monotonous.
It has simulation elements, but the game has an irregular gameplay; it is hard to control the car. Realistically it has very little like the film which it is based. This game is hopelessly mediocre, so it did not turn out to be memorable.
6. Bad Boys: Miami Takedown
If you have a franchise like Bad Boys, it should be relatively easy to produce an action-packed video game, explosions, shootings, and hand-to-hand fighting. However, Bad Boys: Miami Takedown is a disgrace.
The action sequences are boring, and they rely too heavily on a mechanic to cover that it just does not work. The graphics are horrible, the dialogue is terrible, and there is nothing funny or sympathetic about the game.
And how to forget that the developers could not even get Martin Lawrence or Will Smith to record new texts for their characters! Its imitators are horrible, and they make the scenes of its plot more unbearable.
Bad Boys: Miami Takedown is one of the worst action games released. The saddest thing is that it wastes a license full of potential and relatively memorable characters.
5. Batman: Dark Tomorrow
Having played the Arkham saga, it is hard to think of a time when Batman games were terrible, but sadly, it was.
One of the first titles to come out for the Nintendo GameCube was Batman: Dark Tomorrow. The developers of Dark Tomorrow took ideas from the comic. Also, they based it on several Dark Knight interpretations on TV. And hey, it is not a particularly good game.
The graphics are decent, but the gameplay is slow, and it has several glitches. But what kills the game is the camera. It moves in ways that do not make sense, get stuck in the worst moments, and changes angles like crazy. All of this happens when Batman is trying to run, jump, or hit an enemy, making the game an absolute disaster.
4. Smashing Drive
Smashing Drive was Namco’s first game for the GameCube. They could not choose a worse cover letter. It is like a mix between San Francisco Rush and Crazy Taxi without the charm, colorful graphics of the former, or the wild gameplay of the second.
You have to control a taxi driver who has to take his passengers from point A to point B. It is an idea that works very well in the arcade. Still, as it does not have significant attractions or more game modes, it is repetitive on a home console.
There are no additional items, no secret clues, no extra missions; the game is simply too short. Graphically and at the sound level, it is a disappointment as well, so it deserves to be part of this list.
3. Universal Studios Theme Park Adventure
Theme Park Adventure hardly even qualifies as a game. The goal is to go to the different attractions of Universal Studios, controlling a child, which in theory, should be fun, but no.
Each mini-game is short and lousy controlled. The map and garbage collection system – yes, garbage collection – almost do not work, making the game a confusing mess. The graphics look like Nintendo 64, and players can finish this title in a couple of hours or less.
It is not worth spending time on this pseudo game.
2. Charlie’s Angels
The developers based Charlie’s Angels on the two movies of the same name in which Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu starred. In this game, characters, who are supposed to represent them, appear to be their poorly made robot clones.
The graphics are terrible, the modeling is the worst, the animation is unpresentable, and the level design is awful. But the worst thing is how repetitive the title can be. There is no a variety of villains, nor visually attractive settings.
The game also has glitches. Charlie’s Angels is an ugly, boring, and poorly made game.
1. Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis
For the undersirable title of Worst Gamecube Game of all time, we have Battle for Atlantis. Battle of Atlantis is like Superman 64 for the GameCube. It is a title based on a DC Comics character, crafted in the worst possible way.
The underwater ‘open-world’ is empty and wholly repetitive, and the graphics are the worst. There are like 2 or 3 types of enemies, and the combat system is pitiful. They try to explain the plot through a few comic-book panels, but the rest of the game consists of swimming around and hitting any clone villain that appears.
The control makes this game practically unplayable. It is for all the above that Aquaman is the worst game for this console.
