I like Pinball Arcade for sampling a game, but I get bored of even the best games on that format.

Champion’s Pub

Scuba

Striker Xtreme (Stern, 2000)

I understand that this game was built at the worst time for pinball scene but releasing this atrocity was like pouring gasoline on burning pinball industry.

At the factory tour for Expo 2002, they were giving away Striker Xtreme translights as we exited.

South Park is that walk away, during a game, to get a bat out the trunk to come back an beat the Mr. Hanky out of it.

I have seen quite a few bad games, and I know many good candidates.

Many Sega games can be pretty awful (especially Starship Troopers). I have also seen some other games in the list and I have to say I don’t really like them either, but I hate the crud-burger of a game that is Monopoly. Broken gameplay, annoying, tinny sounds, and a very out-of place theme make this one of the worst games I’ve played. Elvis isn’t much fun either.

Yet one game I hate seems to be quite popular. As of writing, it occupies the 16th position on the Top 100. This game... I am surprised to see a prolific company output such failure and inferiority. It is the worst game of all.
This game is TOTAN. Blood of Jesus, I hate TOTAN. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but this game is THE definition of good companies making corporate F-ups. Why did they throw away the perfectly good team of past games? Why? WHY?!?! The only man who isn’t a glorified monkey in the design team is Pat McMahon. I’m sorry if I angered fellow fans of the game, but I want to set fire to this garbage. I just don’t get what this game is doing on the Top 100 and why people are selling it for 8 grand. Thankfully the rest of Williams’ games are pretty fun, but Tales of the Arabian Nights is a f*cking nightmare.

Starship Troopers does rank up there with the worst of them.

It seems not many of you have played Thunderbirds.

Yes, I was lucky enough to play Thunderbirds. It was not great. The only good thing was I did not need to pay to play that game. Thunderbird was one of the worst games I ever played.

There needs to be a touring pinball show "whipping horse" version so more people can get hands on with the now-legendary awfulness.

Keep in mind gameplay itself became a secondary objective when the Aussie preorders foundered back in 2015.

The main goal on pinside from that point onwards from the Homepin loyalists down here was to shill TBAG so much that Northern Hemisphere pinball distributors would be convinced into placing orders so that Homepin could become solvent to actually get the initial down under preorder machines built from 3 years overdue.

For perspective there were 17 preorders for TBAG in Australia. The other 99% of pinball collectors down here knew from the beginning what a shit show it would inevitably become and kept our wallets closed.

Twister

Hi, my name's grandnational, and I've played Thunderbirds...

It's really bad. The non-scoring ramp to nowhere is possibly the best feature. The DMD animations rival the likes of unfinished Alvin G games, but substantially worse. The "rules" are archaic at best. Basically hit stuff for points. Thunderbirds makes Sega/Stern Harley Davidson feel like Medieval Madness in comparison. Suffice to say, I'd argue there's more entertainment value in one of those flipperless plastic injection molded pinball-like games with a plunger from the 70's.

Twister? Yeah, it does have only the one spinner.
But the mat has red, yellow, blue and green dots on it.

But is it a matter of unsalvagable design, or would an overhaul of the software by a competent coder take it from worst to merely mediocre?

Well, it was late night at a show, and there had been some beers involved, but as I recall, it was an abomination.

Think zizzle style game play/layout, but with commercial grade components. Imagine Vacation America, but worse. Like a lot worse.

I recall it being extremely "easy", with little thought placed into the geometry of the playfield or shot layout.

I literally walked away in the middle of ball two.

I doubt anyone could "save" it...

I’ve always had a lot of sympathy for those that paid $7,000 for Primus. I was able to to play it on free play and I had to force myself to finish ball 3.

Mafia was pretty bad,
I started a game and walked away before the first ball finished.

Also on my list of couldn't finish a game
Full Throttle
Whoa Nellie

Yes.

Bally El Toro, or as many know it as El-boro. Just a turrible game.

My favorite memory of Pinburgh was playing with Lyman in the final round of qualifying two years ago I think. A group in a different division was finishing up on "El Toro". A player finished his game with what was apparently a score he wasn't pleased with as he had some choice words for the game. Lyman deadpans and goes, "Another satisfied El Turdo customer" I laughed and laughed.

Aussie MightyMast - Star Galaxy. Same size and layout as a Zizzle but looks like they merged it with a $10 toy pin that used a metal silkscreened playfield. Same ramps and triple bumper group using one solenoid like Zizzle. However everything is tripped by the ball rolling over a bare metal strip and contacting springs on the bumpers and one stretched in front of the slingshots. Also has the spinning bumper and extremely simple rule set, just one notch above a $10 pin.

SG (resized).jpg

If I still had Thunderbirds, I would definitely entertain a trade for that.

Super Mario, it’s an insult to pinball and an insult to Mario

The backglass makes me want to punch myself in the dong repeatedly. That must be one of those old sears catalog pins

I wonder if we could ever see a new Mario pinball? Could be seriously cool, especially given that in the years since the Gottlieb game, Mario's games have featured so many great and colorful worlds, characters and music. Very recognizable and popular license as well, and for multiple demographics.

Rob Zombie worst game ever.

Unpopular opinion. I got about an hour on one in Boston last year. I actually had alot of fun playing it. I don't know that I'd want one in my basement but to an amature who just likes fun games, it scratched the nostalgia and fun itch.

There could be hope to see a new Mario Pinball. In the 90s Nintendo went all out with licensing Mario, the pinball, the movie, some third party games, it all failed so they stopped for 30 years
They started licensing again recently, the Lego kits, 2 movies so there might be a good trend here for a new pin.

That’s ok, I’m a big fan of the Sf2 pinball so I totally get where you come from !

"Worst pin" lists are a lot like "worst music" or "worst book" lists -- the worst pin I've played is probably so forgettable that I've, well, forgotten it. Something has to have a certain level of quality to even register in long-term memory as "oh, geez, that was bad."

That said, there are four games that would tie on my list of "worst pins I remember playing", for different reasons:
* BBBB, because I couldn't understand what I was supposed to do.
* SF2, because I understood what I was supposed to do and I didn't like it.
* Police Force, for its "take high score" feature that utterly destroys the rest of the game. (Bride of Pinbot gets a solid honorable mention -- not for the billion shot, which bumps you to a different high score board, but for the 50M Big Wheel award.)
* Super Mario Bros, for the combination of "not at all fun to play" and "not at all fun to stand within earshot of someone else playing".

I'm generally not a fan of all EM games and frankly find almost all of them boring as hell. Still, I don't consider any of then inherently bad since back when they were released, and especially before the advent of SS pin and all the advancements they brought, they were considered to be very enjoyable. And some people do still really enjoy them for their simplicity.

But straight up terrible pins, the worst one I've ever played was Data East's Monday Night Football. The games looks terrible, sounds terrible, and worst of all plays like utter shit. No game I've played before or since has touched how awful thay game is. I'd rather play nearly any EM machine before returning to that piece of crap again.

Nightmare on Elm Street. Most asinine game I have ever played.

Eh, I’ve played waaaaayyy worse

Nobody that has ever lived (or will ever live) in any universe has ever played a game that is even a fraction as bad as Freddy.

I see you haven't reviewed Barb Wire yet

Fun Fest.

I actually thing Fuckfest is above Barb Wire, but below King R/Cock.

I think it's a great arcade game, but a game that doesn't have staying power at home.

Wish I liked it more, as it's a top theme for me (sometimes miss it, but almost never played it before selling, and don't have room for such games).

In an arcade, it's fairly clear to anyone how far you're progressing through the game (nightmare level) and where the finish line is (a rating on how well you did...like Rad Racer on NES, showing how far you made it through the track before failing...exciting to try to best it), and it's also reasonable to expect to beat it in an arcade with average skill.

At home it's too linear and the "free" multiballs don't feel good. Some neat, unusual features like the Claw save...and while Freddy doesn't eat the ball, he does spit them out!

You all can make excuses for the stench of that stinking mess all you want… everybody has the freedom to live in their squalor if they really prefer that sort of thing.

No one makes excuses, or owns the POS, except Horror folks. The OG theme whores

Never seen it in the wild yet.

On a 3 balls pinball game I drained so fast that I didn’t break a million on a new modern Star Wars stern. Worst pinball game of my life . But I still love the game

Venom

Def the worst Stern since WWE

RZ - Bought NIB and one of the clunkiest games I ever owned. I wish Spooky waited for this title.

It's a dog of a game for sure but it was also the game the finished off the Williams/Bally pinball division (if my memory of Neil Nicasto's comments are correct).

Clive

Star Wars Episode 1