What is the worst SEGA game?

[Guinea]

A game made by Arzest/Balan Company and published by Square Enix on various modern non-Sega hardware is the worst Sega game?

Yes, was it not clear when I said the name?

 

[UnDubious]

Yes, was it not clear when I said the name?

How did you miss the point that it's not a Sega game

 

[Guinea]

How did you miss the point that it's not a Sega game

I know that it's not a Sega game now, but when I wrote it, all I knew about the game was that Yuji Naka and someone from the NiGHTS team made it, and that led me to believe it was a Sega game. It looks like one too. I was wrong, whatever.

Edit- And now I think the worst Sega game is Gungrave on PS2.

Edit 2- Wait, no. I got that mixed up with something else. There are no bad Sega games. The only thing I can think of wasn't even bad, it was just different. Toejam and Earl in Panic on Funkatron. Good game, but completely different from the first.

 

[NOTthatHARD]

I know that what I'm going to say will make A LOT of people here angry, but the worst SEGA games for me are Shenmue and Ren-a-Hero, those game had SO MUCH vision, originality and potential but it was all wasted thanks to some terrible gameplay and corporate decisions; truly sad.

 

[BigTony]

Phantasy Star online 2 New Genesis. Game has no content they turned an amazing dungeon crawler into generic openworld slop. Genuinely the most disappointing video game I've ever had the misfortune of playing.

 

[Ikagura]

Why the hell would you play "Sonic The Hedgehog Genesis" when you could literally emulate the Genesis version?

On the GBA? I remember Taxman (or Stealth?) that had shown an actual port.

The Sonic Collection on the DS was much better (despite the screen crunch and slow downs).

A GBA game from after the DS had no excuses...

Phantasy Star online 2 New Genesis. Game has no content they turned an amazing dungeon crawler into generic openworld slop. Genuinely the most disappointing video game I've ever had the misfortune of playing.
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The worst is that they've forced base PSO2 to be attached to it so people couldn't play PSO2 Classic without installing New Genesis... Open World could've worked but they missed the point.

PSO2 already started to get worse as Episode IV brought a new director (who did an isekai story when they could've done something more interesting with Earth and also missed with the anniversary of the franchise).

 

[bcdusk]

corporate decisions;

The only really bad corporate decision about Shemue was too invest so much money on it. However Sega made the Yakuza/Like a Dragon games based on Shemue and while it took a while nowadays Like a Dragon is one of Sega Cash Cows Franchises.

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Testing

Post automatically merged: Dec 8, 2025

Shemue vs Yakuza games

 

[hazys]

Sonic and the Black Knight was really bad... they gave Sonic a sword and it was still awful

 

[BrawlMan]

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. A game that is somehow worse than Sonic 06. The two 3DS games are decent, but mainly the second game.

Death Crimson OX on Dreamcast/Arcade. It's not the worst rail shooter ever, but it's bad/mediocre by SEGA standards.

 

[UnDubious]

Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. A game that is somehow worse than Sonic 06. The two 3DS games are decent, but mainly the second game.

Death Crimson OX on Dreamcast/Arcade. It's not the worst rail shooter ever, but it's bad/mediocre by SEGA standards.

Neither game was made by Sega. Their quality standard for publishing games was never as high as for games they made in-house. I'm guessing this was originally because they needed to publish a bunch of games made by other companies to have enough to support their consoles since Nintendo had a near-monopoly on third party support early on. And then they also have the bad tendency to farm out their licenses to shitty Western developer because those licenses are more popular in the West (like Sonic Boom).

 

[BrawlMan]

Neither game was made by Sega.

SEGA stilled allowed it, so it counts for me. They're just as responsible.

 

[Quiggling]

I know a lot of people swear by it and it's gained a cult following, but back in the day I purchased Sonic R from Toys R Us and I thought it was complete ass.

 

[UnDubious]

SEGA stilled allowed it, so it counts for me. They're just as responsible.

"Allowed it"
Every single official game ever released on every console was "allowed" by the makers of the console. Doesn't make it their game. At least say "published".

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 5:15 PM

I know a lot of people swear by it and it's gained a cult following, but back in the day I purchased Sonic R from Toys R Us and I thought it was complete ass.

It's not an intuitive racer, that's for sure. Whenever I tried it (not for long, honestly), it seemed basically unplayable. But I remember someone mentioning there's a method to it, so maybe it's not that bad if you learn how to play it.

 

[BrawlMan]

"Allowed it"
Every single official game ever released on every console was "allowed" by the makers of the console. Doesn't make it their game. At least say "published".

Sega's logo is all over both games, so they count, even if they're just publishers. They allowed it to happen and knew what was going on. Unexcusable for either game, but mainly for Sonic. Death Crimson was at least some game made on the very cheap side.

These are my picks; deal with it. I'm not changing otherwise, and i'm not doing a pointless back and forth. If you don't have a pick, then there's nothing else that needs to be said especially.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 5:18 PM

I know a lot of people swear by it and it's gained a cult following, but back in the day I purchased Sonic R from Toys R Us and I thought it was complete ass.

The soundtrack is still excellent, but you are correct.

 

[Quiggling]

Oh and when I bought Sonic R it was when the games were being clearance priced to liquidate Saturn stuff in the USA. When I think about that damn wall of games now.... brand new copies of Panzer Dragoon Saga, Mr. Bones, BURNING RANGERS, Saturn Resident Evil, Shining Force 3& Shining The Holy Ark, Three Dirty Dwarves, Mystic Knight Rayearth, NiGHTS with 3d controller, etc. All of them were $19, and I was only just getting some semi-steady income.

By the time I had enough money to buy more... all gone.

 

[BrawlMan]

Saturn Resident Evil,

That one you're technically not missing much. It's a decent port, but there is not much else going for it, other than a battle mode.

​

 

[Bakuma1997]

I know a lot of people swear by it and it's gained a cult following, but back in the day I purchased Sonic R from Toys R Us and I thought it was complete ass.

*Can you feel the sunshine intensifies*

 

[Frickinfrik]

Neither game was made by Sega. Their quality standard for publishing games was never as high as for games they made in-house. I'm guessing this was originally because they needed to publish a bunch of games made by other companies to have enough to support their consoles since Nintendo had a near-monopoly on third party support early on. And then they also have the bad tendency to farm out their licenses to shitty Western developer because those licenses are more popular in the West (like Sonic Boom).

Sega is one of the main reasons why Sonic Boom came out the way it did. The devs wanted it to be on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, but Sega wanted it to be Wii U exclusive because of their exclusivity contract with Nintendo at the time, despite that CryEngine was never designed for the Wii U at all. Even Nintendo themselves were very skeptical of releasing a game with an engine that was never meant for their platform on their platform.

 

[UnDubious]

Sega is one of the main reasons why Sonic Boom came out the way it did. The devs wanted it to be on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, but Sega wanted it to be Wii U exclusive because of their exclusivity contract with Nintendo at the time, despite that CryEngine was never designed for the Wii U at all. Even Nintendo themselves were very skeptical of releasing a game with an engine that was never meant for their platform on their platform.

It would have sucked on PS4 too. A decent developer could have made a decent Sonic game on Wii U.

 

[Juiceala]

Sega is one of the main reasons why Sonic Boom came out the way it did. The devs wanted it to be on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, but Sega wanted it to be Wii U exclusive because of their exclusivity contract with Nintendo at the time, despite that CryEngine was never designed for the Wii U at all. Even Nintendo themselves were very skeptical of releasing a game with an engine that was never meant for their platform on their platform.

Fair, but this argument falls flat once you realize glitches are the least of Sonic Boom's issues, the gameplay is very generic and boring, visuals are very bland and generic, music is boring, the game is very western, I've 100%ed Sonic Shuffle, I've 100%ed Sonic Blast, I've 100%ed Shadow 2005, I've 100%ed Sonic 2006, I've 100%ed Sonic Unleashed, I've 100%ed Sonic Forces, I've even 100%ed Sonic Boom Shattered Crystal and Fire & Ice (these two are also bad games) but Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric is the one and only Sonic game I just couldn't bring myself to 100%, I honestly tried but I got extremely bored I just beat the story and moved on, some years later I decided to go back and finish the game, I couldn't stand 10 minutes, it's really really boring, Big Red Button are just incompetent and SEGA saw the writing on the wall.

 

[Blueskunky]

Why is this thread all of a sudden coming back from the dead now?

 

[Frickinfrik]

Fair, but this argument falls flat once you realize glitches are the least of Sonic Boom's issues, the gameplay is very generic and boring, visuals are very bland and generic, music is boring, the game is very western, I've 100%ed Sonic Shuffle, I've 100%ed Sonic Blast, I've 100%ed Shadow 2005, I've 100%ed Sonic 2006, I've 100%ed Sonic Unleashed, I've 100%ed Sonic Forces, I've even 100%ed Sonic Boom Shattered Crystal and Fire & Ice (these two are also bad games) but Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric is the one and only Sonic game I just couldn't bring myself to 100%, I honestly tried but I got extremely bored I just beat the story and moved on, some years later I decided to go back and finish the game, I couldn't stand 10 minutes, it's really really boring, Big Red Button are just incompetent and SEGA saw the writing on the wall.

Well from what I’ve heard, Big Red Button had big ambitions for this game, judging by concept art. I’ve also heard that Rise of Lyric was originally going to be an origin story game. Before Sega stepped in and forced the dev team to change course and make it into what it is today.

 

[UnDubious]

Well from what I’ve heard, Big Red Button had big ambitions for this game, judging by concept art. I’ve also heard that Rise of Lyric was originally going to be an origin story game. Before Sega stepped in and forced the dev team to change course and make it into what it is today.

Everybody has big ambitions when they start developing a game. It doesn't mean they know how to make it good. Big Red Button made the worst Sonic game, Sega made all the best ones. How does it make sense to assume that it's somehow Sega's fault Big Red Button's game turned out bad? The no-name company that never actually made any game anyone cares about? Sometimes a publisher has to step in because the subcontractor isn't meeting expectations. Almost every time Sega has contracted one of its Japanese franchises to a Western developer, they made a garbage game. That's the lesson I wish they'd learn.
And who wants some random outside company to make an origin story to an established franchise? They're weird for even trying to do that.