Naming stuff is hard. Just ask celebrities: they don’t seem to understand that names like ‘Norman’ or ‘Stephanie’ are better than ‘Zuma Nesta Rock’, ‘The Chronicles of Riddick’, or whatever their astrologist tells them is cool that week.
You need only have played an RPG to know how difficult it is, too. Many gamers spend longer than they care to admit fine-tuning their names to strike the fine balance between being cool and also not incredibly lame. After giving up on that notion a long time ago, I now call each character in every game I play ‘Melons’.
But what if you’re selling a product? Short, snappy, and memorable is always best, which is why we’re seeing more and more one-word movie titles. The same goes for video games – in an increasingly saturated market, your game name needs to be clean and simple to make an impression.
The same can’t be said for these games below, however, at least in terms of making the right impression. It isn’t too far a stretch to say that the only thing keeping some of them relatively relevant is their ridiculous names.
Here are just some of the worst video game names we’ve encountered. To spice things up, we’re limiting the amount of JRPGs that make the list. They never seem to make much sense when they hit the west.
11. Cock’in
You almost wonder why Jack Thompson hasn’t screeched about this at some point. In this Commodore 64 and Spectrum title, you play as a cock (the bird) that has protect its eggs from foxes and rats. It also goes by Chickin Chase, but if you have any sense, you will only ever refer to it as Cock’in. Just do me a favour: do not try to find out more about this game in Google video search. Or image search.
10. Life of Black Tiger
Let’s not mess around: Life of Black Tiger is ass and comfortably the worst game you can find on PS4. Not only is it a somehow incompetent port of a mobile game, but its title doesn’t make a lick of sense, either. It’s definitely missing a ‘the’ somewhere. Or shouldn’t even exist. One of those.
9. Most Kingdom Hearts games
DualShockers
Say what you will about Square Enix, but they sure know how to drag something out before giving fans what they’ve waited years for. In between Kingdom Hearts II and III, we’ve had Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 Remix, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, and Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. Someone stop them before they call KHIII something utterly alien.
8. No One Can Stop Mr. Domino!
Not only would this game’s name struggle to fit on a price ticket, but it’s also a total misnomer. Everything stops Mr. Domino, the gormless porcelain bastard. The name actually refers to how the player can’t stop him moving in this forgettable PS1 puzzle game.
7. Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code
A hybrid visual novel and fighting game, Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code reads like Cleverbot’s horrific nightmares in which it dreams of burning the world to the ground. It’s lucky that the game itself is actually quite good, then.
6. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
The most egregious think Konami have ever done isn’t banning a visionary from accepting his award, turning their beloved franchises into pachinko machines, or even submitting their employees to terrible working conditions. It’s when they made up a word for a Metal Gear spin-off and thought it was okay.
5. Tongue of the Fatman
To those of you wondering why exactly Activision lost their minds and started calling Call of Duty by constantly stretched variations of ‘Warfare’, I present you with Tongue of the Fatman: a 1989 fighting game with one of the worst covers imaginable. They’ve always been a little unhinged.
4. Sticky Balls
Remember the Gizmondo, the doomed handheld console that went on to become the least successful of its kind? I really can’t understand why when they had Sticky Balls.
3. Trevor McFur in the Crescent Galaxy
This game’s name forced me into a crisis owing to the fact that it’s painfully bad and also life-affirmingly brave. But then I realised that his name is Trevor and that simply cannot be allowed. The game’s also rather terrible.
2. GOLF Magazine Presents 36 Great Holes Starring Fred Couples
If you squint really hard at GOLF Magazine Presents 36 Great Holes Starring Fred Couples’s name, it becomes a porno. But who wants pleasures of the skin when you can tuck into some golf and be demeaned by a crotchety pro? It’s what Lee Carvallo would want.
1. S.C.A.T.
No comment. No. Comment.
(Dis)honourable Mentions
– Spanky’s Quest
– Touch Dic
– Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals
– Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together
– Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender
– Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom
– 70’s Robot Anime Geppy-X: The Super Boosted Armor
– Big Mutha Truckers 2: Truck Me Harder
– White Van Driver
– Billy the Wizard: Rocket Broomstick Racing
– Extreme Sports with the Berenstain Bears
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