It's really not that bad. You can tell that it's made by competent programmers, since it isn't buggy and it controls fairly well, they just didn't know how to make a quality fighting game. It's far from the worst thing to play, though.
Meme status aside, this really shouldn't be in the contenders for worst games of all time. It's not good, but I can name a lot of way worse games off the top of my head before even getting to this one.
The Room was well made in the sense that it had competent camera work, editing and lighting. In fact that is what makes the bizarre incompetency of a lot of the rest of the movie seem so jarring. Things can be well made crap.
I think a fighting game that does "ok" in every other regard but fails to be a fighting game is still pretty bad. I can name worse games in general but I can't think of many fighting games that failed as utterly as this one did. The fact that the only ones I can think of are porn parodies of Street Fighter from that era in Japan that put far less effort into the gameplay than this tried to, probably doesn't speak well for the game. I mean in the Genesis version of the game the characters don't even fill the screen as much as they should and their limbs come apart at the seams.. I would say it's in the same tier of incompetence for fighting games, that Cheetah Men is for platformers. They both did some things right, but they both did some things horribly, horribly wrong. Coupled with it being about Shaq and him fighting things too campy and cliche for an MK game and I can see why this reached meme status bad.
This definitely doesn't deserve to be rated so low, not the Genesis port at least. It's not that bad, and the goofiness of it counts for something I guess.
Having said that, I got to battle 9 in the story just from running straight at each enemy and kicking. I'm convinced I could have beaten the game that way too
It really is that bad though? Game is barely responsive on SNES, the story is funny-bad, characters and animations are generic. The art is a mixed bag at best. Sure it aged well as a piece of cultural memorabilia, but that's about it. Can't speak for the Genesis version but the game feels like it plays at about 6FPS on SNES
I think a fighting game that does "ok" in every other regard but fails to be a fighting game is still pretty bad. I can name worse games in general but I can't think of many fighting games that failed as utterly as this one did. The fact that the only ones I can think of are porn parodies of Street Fighter from that era in Japan that put far less effort into the gameplay than this tried to, probably doesn't speak well for the game. I mean in the Genesis version of the game the characters don't even fill the screen as much as they should and their limbs come apart at the seams.. I would say it's in the same tier of incompetence for fighting games, that Cheetah Men is for platformers. They both did some things right, but they both did some things horribly, horribly wrong.
Coupled with it being about Shaq and him fighting things too campy and cliche for an MK game and I can see why this reached meme status bad.
Having said that, I got to battle 9 in the story just from running straight at each enemy and kicking. I'm convinced I could have beaten the game that way too
Can't speak for the Genesis version but the game feels like it plays at about 6FPS on SNES