Did you grow up playing video games when you had to wait online to get them? Do you remember the bad, weird, or otherwise underrated video games of your youth? Did you like a few of them more than your friends did?

A Selective History of ‘Bad’ Video Games will walk you down memory lane and perform unholy excavations of games you remember, games you’ve forgotten, and games you never knew you wanted to read about during your lunch break. From a seemingly nude Atari 2600 karate referee to a basketball star doing martial arts to a tiger that speaks broken English and walks through walls, the book will try to uncover what the developers were thinking — and occasionally succeed. While there’s been some recent coverage of the most famously “bad” video game — E.T. — this book starts there and continues on to 40 other curiously (or unsurprisingly) unsuccessful video games during the first few decades of the industry’s lifespan. Written by a modern day video game developer, the book explores why these games failed, whether or not they truly deserved it, and what could have made them better. The covered games include screen shots that capture awkward moments, irreverent captions, and pages of tongue-in-cheek psychoanalysis.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter One Early Gaming (1958 through the early 1990s)
• Chapter Two E.T.
• Chapter Three Cosmic Ark
• Chapter Four River Raid 2
• Chapter Five Pac Man 2600
• Chapter Six Tax Avoiders
• Chapter Seven Karate
• Chapter Eight Mr. Basic Meets Bits ‘n Bytes
• Chapter Nine Tron Maze-a-Tron
• Chapter Ten Tron Solar Sailer
• Chapter Eleven Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Intellivision)
• Chapter Twelve Math Fun
• Chapter Thirteen Intro to the Nintendo and early PC gaming Era
• Chapter Fourteen Final Fantasy 2J
• Chapter Fifteen Street Fighter 2010
• Chapter Sixteen Guardic
• Chapter Seventeen Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• Chapter Eighteen Crystalis
• Chapter Nineteen Dynowarz: Destruction of Spondylus
• Chapter Twenty Double Dragon (NES)
• Chapter Twenty-One Dragon’s Lair (NES)
• Chapter Twenty-Two TMNT (NES)
• Chapter Twenty-Three Pinball Quest
• Chapter Twenty-Four Back to the Future 2/3
• Chapter Twenty-Five Little Ninja Brothers
• Chapter Twenty-Six Intro to SNES Era
• Chapter Twenty-Seven Street Fighter 1
• Chapter Twenty-Eight Ballz
• Chapter Twenty-Nine Double Dragon V
• Chapter Thirty Space Ace (Super NES)
• Chapter Thirty-One Rise of the Robots
• Chapter Thirty-Two The 7th Saga
• Chapter Thirty-Three Mega Man’s Soccer
• Chapter Thirty-Four Pit Fighter (SNES)
• Chapter Thirty-Five Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest
• Chapter Thirty-Six Secret of Evermore
• Chapter Thirty-Seven Shaq Fu
• Chapter Thirty-Eight Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball
• Chapter Thirty-Nine Intro to the Late 1990s and Beyond
• Chapter Forty Bubsy 3D
• Chapter Forty-One Beyond the Beyond
• Chapter Forty-Two Saga Frontier
• Chapter Forty-Three Suikoden IV
• Chapter Forty-Four Final Fantasy IV: The After Years
• Chapter Forty-Five Life of Black Tiger
• Chapter Forty-Six The Wrap
• Chapter Forty-Seven Appendix A - Awards
• Chapter Forty-Eight Other Resources of Interest
• Works Cited