☆ "Everyone Had A Spectrum Except Me!" ☆

My Dream Machine

 

Growing up everyone had a Spectrum or if they were really lucky they owned an Amstrad!

I spent my entire time going round to my friends houses after school to play these machines and really liked the idea of owning my own "Speccy" with a disk drive......surely (at the time) the most advanced piece of kit out there! 

Games Freezer - "What A Disappointment!" - #Retrogaming

Being a person who always does a lot of research before parting with hard earned cash for a game I can't say that I have ever been too dissappointed when opening the box of a new game and powering the game up for the first time.......

BUT 

There have been a few games that I anticipated with great expectation only to find out from a review that it was an absolute stinker of a game and a few that I maybe thought I would enjoy but no matter how good I knew the game was just couldn't enjoy it.

So my greatest disappointments of my gaming world over the last 20 years or so for me are as follows:

1."Super Kick Off" on the Super Nintendo

The Amstrad Box Art (lovely stuff!)

 

For years the SNES was crying out for a great footy game. 

It had to wait years for ISS to come out and blow everyone away, but before that came the news that KICK OFF was coming to SNES in all its 16bit glory. 

I read the pages of Super Play Magazine and Nintendo Magazine System with deep joy as I thought how great Kick Off would be on the SNES.......Months went by as the magazines previewed the game constantly teasing me with a few more screenshots. 

Then came the review......it turned out the game was a turkey!! My dreams of controlling Tottenham Hotspur on my shiny new SNES were blown apart....it was back to Nintendo's very own Super Soccer for me to get my footy thrills. No matter how tempted I was to buy Kick Off it never happened and will be forever disappointed.

2."Starwing / Starfox" on the Super Nintendo

 

This is probably a controversial inclusion for a game that included so much cutting edge technology such as the Super FX Chip. 

All the reviews were glowing with 90% scores and yet when I played it I was particularly underwhelmed. 

I just didn't get why everyone was raving about this game. The only thing I did like was how your team mates would radio into your cockpit with updates of what was going on. 

But unfortunately Starwing bit the dust early on for me and it was traded in pretty quickly.

3."Stunt Race FX" on the Super Nintendo

 

Looks like a recurring theme for me here with all the SNES games that didn't live up to their promise. 

Again with this one it had glowing reports, all the latest technology (the fabled Super FX Chip) and yet again, I just didn't get it. 

It reminded me of a badly made set of Lego vehicles with poor handling and a really annoying surround on the screen where the action took place, again this was consigned to the trade pile pretty quickly!

4."Premier Manager" on the Amiga

 

When I was younger with no responsibilities I played a lot of Championship Manager, days were eaten up by taking my Nottingham Forest team through 12 seasons of glory until all the "regen" players took over from the real world players and I was left with a load of unknowns.

I felt that after such over exposure to Championship Manager it was time to get my management kicks elsewhere, hence why I went for Premier Manager. 

It had received good reviews and was seen as an alternative to Champ Manager. The game looked impressive and I have to admit, initially it was good to play a management sim other than Champ. 

But the problem was ..... it wasn't Champ Manager and I always compared it to Champ Manager (which wasn't really fair). Eventually I had to concede that it was a disappointing game compared to Champ (oh yeah, and the fact you always had to start in the Conference didn't help!!)

5. Gran Turismo 5 on the PS3

So there I was with a shiny new PS3 for christmas! 

Inside was one game......it was GT5. My last encounter of GT was on PS1 , the original GT and I loved it at the time, it was so novel to have a driving game that you could invest hours of time just tweaking and collecting and building.

Fast forward 5 reiterations later and you have the all singing all dancing version of GT!

The problem with it though, is that it's lost it's soul, it's almost too realistic and maybe there's too much on offer, too many things to do.

For that reason ..... I’m OUT! (GT5 was quickly traded for a lovely copy of Heavy Rain!)

Have you got any disappointments that you would like to tell The Freezer about?

Consign them to the Freezer's deep freeze forever by letting us know and we will dispose of them carefully! 

*Richard From The Disappointment Department Of Freezer Town*