Do You Love Bad Video Games? The Japanese Have a Word for That – How-To Geek

Just like any other entertainment medium, video games are a treasure trove of guilty pleasures and fascinatingly terrible trashfires. While bad games aren’t as widely celebrated as notorious films like The Happening or The Room, there’s an entire subculture dedicated to the art of “kusoge.”

What Is “Kusoge”?

Kusoge is a Japanese term that directly translates into English as “crap game,” and refers to video games with remarkably low quality or production values. The term is derived from the Japanese words “kuso” (meaning “crap”) and “geemu” (meaning “game”). Originally, it was used as a disparaging term to denote games that possessed little to no redeeming qualities. Games that are barely functional, incompetently designed, or make playing feel like a form of self-torture all count as “kusoge.”

The meaning of “kusoge” has gradually evolved over the years. Whereas “kusoge” was once a catch-all term for awful games, it’s now used more affectionately to refer to games that aren’t great by traditional standards, but still appeal to their small fanbases. In its modern context, kusoge are entertaining games that lack the polish and budget of most other releases, but make up for it with their unconventional ideas and charming imperfections. Kusoge can also refer to games that are “so bad, they’re great,” meaning they’re fascinatingly terrible in just about every aspect.

Although kusoge is most commonly associated with Japanese games, the term isn’t exclusive to games from any particular region. Plenty of infamous Western-developed games like Superman 64 and Bubsy 3D certainly qualify as kusoge. The same applies to great games that suffer from a severe lack of polish, such as cult classics like Kenshi or S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.

Kusoge has since spawned an entire gaming subculture of its own. Many gaming forums, YouTube channels, and preservation projects are specifically dedicated to analyzing and archiving all games that can be considered “kusoge.” Some developers like Sunsoft and Sandlot have even embraced their reputation as creators of kusoge.

Much of the fascination with kusoge can be attributed to the niche status of these games, as very few kusoge titles ever receive mainstream attention or international releases. Many of these games come from small studios and inexperienced developers with ambitious goals. While the results are far from perfect and often suffer from amateurish mistakes, there’s a unique charm to kusoge games that came from passion projects or good ideas gone horribly awry.

Kusoge Celebrates the Bottom of the Barrel

Not every kusoge is equally bad, but most fall short of being a “good” video game by any metric. Some kusoge are mediocre games that simply fumble half-decent ideas. Others are infested with egregious performance issues, terrible design choices, or an unfortunate combination of the two. Controversial new releases are often accused of being the “worst game ever made,” but the only games that truly deserve that dishonor are among the most infamous kusoge.

Many of the worst kusoge seem outright malicious towards the players, often including frustrating design choices that include time-wasting mechanics, nonsensical puzzles, and egregious gameplay oversights. This was especially common during the 80s, when console games padded out their length with an intentionally frustrating level of difficulty.

Retro side-scrolling action games like Battletoads and the original Ninja Gaiden achieved this with obstacles and enemies that required split-second reaction times. Similarly, turn-based RPGs like Final Fantasy and Phantasy Star 2 relied on obtuse level design and excessive grinding to keep players busy. However, these games still provide an entertaining challenge thanks to their fun gameplay and timeless visuals. Unfortunately, most old kusoge games forgot to include the fun.

One notorious example is Takeshi’s Challenge, a bizarre game that was only ever released in Japan. Takeshi’s Challenge combines side-scrolling platforming, beat-em-up combat, life-simulation mechanics, and a bunch of other random genres to create one miserable experience. Throughout the game, you take on the role of an ordinary salary man as you embark on a treasure hunt by completing a sequence of oddly specific tasks that you’ll probably never figure out on your own. Even if you follow a walkthrough, Takeshi’s Challenge will test your patience with tedious mini-games and constant obstacles that only exist to make your playthrough even more painful.

Not every kusoge is that painful to play, and many are a lot funnier than they are functional. Games like The Sniper 2 and Michigan: Report from Hell feature some of the ugliest graphics and clunkiest gameplay on the PlayStation 2, and their unintentional comedy is elevated by their equally hammy voice-acting and nonsensical stories.

While there are still plenty of bad games released today, old-school kusoge embodies a different type of terribleness. Modern games also suffer from game-breaking bugs or dull gameplay, but these issues are usually the result of mundane mistakes such as rushed developments or overly safe game design choices.

Games like Takeshi’s Challenge were made during an era in which the rules of game design were still being written. Many early developers didn’t fully understand how to design games for certain genres, resulting in games with unconventional approaches to common mechanics or bizarre ideas that didn’t always pan out. Early kusoge was the result of the gaming industry trying to find its footing, and it laid the groundwork—or at least showed what not to do—for better games that followed.

Kusoge Culture Highlights the Value of “Bad” Games

Even bad games can still be legitimately entertaining. Kusoge aren’t just worth laughing at; they can provide a genuinely fun time if you’re willing to look past their shoestring budgets and blatant disregard for polish.

It may sound odd, but the best kusoge sacrifice common sense and basic game design principles for the sake of fun. The Earth Defense Force games are produced on modest budgets, yet they aim to deliver experiences with a larger scope than most AAA releases. Recent entries feature hundreds of levels, comprised of massive destructible environments filled to the brim with armies of giant monsters and towering spaceships.

The result is an unpolished, visually ugly, and sometimes barely functioning experience that struggles to run under the weight of its absurd enemy counts. It’s also one of the most entertaining series I’ve ever played. Every aspect of Earth Defense Force contributes to its mindless fun, and the game pushes its own engine to the limit to create the most bombastic battles imaginable. Nearly every entry in the series concludes with an explosive finale that features enough enemies to spike its frame-rate into the single digits. This would be a problem for more polished action games from AAA studios, but for kusoge like Earth Defense Force, their willingness to put fun over functionality is what makes them so entertaining.

Kusoge also encompasses games that are fantastic in some respects while also being painfully terrible in many others. Story-driven games demonstrate this best with expertly crafted writing and deep world-building being weighed down by boring gameplay.

This issue can be seen in Deadly Premonition, an open-world horror game in which you take on the role of an eccentric FBI agent as he visits a small American town to investigate the murder of a teenage girl. As the story progresses, you’ll meet a cast of quirky characters and gradually uncover supernatural forces that lurk beneath the town. If that premise sounds familiar, I swear that I’m only scratching the surface of the game’s many similarities to Twin Peaks.

Deadly Premonition will likely turn some players away with its off-putting visuals, inconsistent performance, sluggish combat, and lackluster scares, yet it shines in its quieter moments. The game lives up to its inspiration with an atmospheric setting that’s simultaneously cozy and creepy, along with a gripping mystery that features plenty of memorable characters, clever twists, and a tone that brilliantly blends offbeat humor with thrilling horror.

Kusoge spans all categories of gaming, but you can find the best (and worst) kusoge in the fighting game genre. The worst of these fighting games are defined by their awkward animations, unresponsive controls, and horrendously buggy gameplay. It can be fun to laugh at these games for a few sessions, but the real gems of kusoge fighting games come from experiences that throw balanced gameplay and any notion of fairness out the window.

Games like Evil Zone and Phantom Breaker: Omnia don’t offer much depth in their mechanics, but their flashy combat and beginner-friendly controls make them accessible for anybody to easily pick up and start performing complex combos. While these games undoubtedly prioritize style over substance, there’s nothing wrong with a little mindless fun.

Just as learning the mechanics of an excellent fighting game can be incredibly rewarding, uncovering broken combos and severe balance issues is half the fun of the most memorable kusoge fighting games. Notorious kusoge like Fate Unlimited Code and Arc System Works’s Fist of the North Star boast terrifyingly high skill ceilings, catering to no one but the most die-hard fighting game fans. There’s an impressive level of depth to these games, but some of that complexity is entirely accidental.

Rather than learning how to predict and react to your opponent’s moves—you know, like a good fighting game—these games are all about mastering and exploiting broken moves, overpowered characters, and never-ending combos. If you aren’t dribbling the other fighter like a basketball or juggling them like a circus performer, you’re playing the wrong way. This type of fighting game may seem unfair—and they absolutely are—but the hilariously unbalanced gameplay combined with their sheer mechanical depth has helped these games maintain a long-lasting competitive playerbase.

Kusoge aren’t always niche, and a few of them have broken into mainstream popularity. The entire Marvel vs Capcom series is full of unbalanced characters and endless combos, but its iconic roster and fast-paced combat launched it into one of the most recognizable fighting game franchises of all time. Newer games like Earth Defense Force 6 and No More Heroes 3 have also proven that kusoge isn’t just for niche audiences. I’ll also take this opportunity to mention the kusoge masterpiece that is Dong Dong Never Die.

Second-Rate Games Deserve a Second Look

Kusoge are almost always cheaply made and lack the polish of most AAA releases, but that doesn’t automatically make them worse than bigger-budget games. Despite their obvious shortcomings, kusoge represent some of the most impressive games on the market. In an era where the gaming industry seems to punish risk-taking behaviors (like trying to redeem a bad game with a good sequel) with server shutdowns and mass layoffs, there’s something admirable about studios that attempt to punch above their weight by pursuing unconventional ideas and ambitious scopes.

Sure, the results can be utter garbage, and even the best kusoge make significant concessions to deliver on their ideas. However, these games are capable of delivering experiences that could never be found in larger games. Regardless of whether that leads to diamonds in the rough or digital trainwrecks, kusoge are a lot more important than most players realize.