there are certain moments in games that when invoked, take the reader back to the moment they first experienced it. the baby Metroid; Snake's ladder climb; and perhaps most memorable of all, the Spelunker elevator.
what do you mean "shut up dork"? YOU know what i'm talking about:
this moment comes literally 2 seconds after pressing start to begin the game. years of precedent tell you that your character can clear a 1 millimeter gap by simply walking over it, but Spelunker is here to remove the comforting lies you were told: welcome to the real world motherfucker. EVERYONE dies here their first time playing, there are no exceptions.
spelunker is a legendary kusoge (crap game) for a lot of reasons: the repetitive and silly BGM, the brutal difficulty and the Spelunker himself, one of the most fragile and inept video game protagonists i've ever seen in my life. there's an often-repeated bit of trivia that Spelunker was such a cultural touchstone in Japan that it spawned the expression "Spelunker's constitution", typically referring to athletes who are easily injured by trivial things.
SO, you fall off the fucking elevator. you're probably going to do it again in about one second because upon death, Spelunker will respawn quickly and without fanfare at the very edge of the platform he fell off of, making it hilariously easy to repeat fatal mistakes once or even twice more.
when Spelunker jumps, he's locked into the height and trajectory so if you made a positioning mistake there is no mid-air correction a la Super Mario. if he falls roughly 4/5ths his height, he dies instantly, and you don't even get the catharsis of seeing him hit the ground! he just freezes in midair like an idiot. if a bat shits on him, he dies. if he sets off fireworks (to scare bats) and they fall back onto him, he dies. if he uses his gun to defeat a ghost his air supply plummets (guess what happens when it runs out). he dies a lot
for these reasons and more Spelunker is known as a kusoge and the patron saint of the bargain bin in Japan. calling it such is funny but i just don't agree with it. Spelunker is not a bad game, it's a deliberate game. it runs on harsh but internally consistent rules that are reinforced clearly and early; as early as the first couple of seconds. is Ghouls and Ghosts a bad game for its bottomless pits and locked-in jump trajectory? how about Castlevania?
Spelunker is fun okay! it's just difficult, unorthodox and a little absurd. you can certainly not like it, but it's learnable and rewarding and honestly thrilling once you're just good enough to start blazing through the obstacles while still dealing with the randomly appearing ghosts and constantly depleting air supply. i urge you to give it a fair shake and you might fall in love with it; or, try another game commonly considered to be bad! there's something redeeming in almost any game.
also, if there's an unpopular or infamous game you love please tell me what you love about it!
(image source: The Prisoner Apple II manual)
i think it's worth reiterating that there's a difference between kusoge (derogatory) and kusoge (subculture). the latter is actually closer to how people are seeking for unorthodox gameplay and being extremely amused/charmed by it.
titles like Atlantis no Nazo fascinate people within the kusoge subculture because they're doing something entirely different. they're not doing Good Game Design. one of the reasons i'm pretty sure the old avgn was popular on nico is because they inspired people to look into the kusoge subculture: NES games like Silver Surfer are unique for how difficult and "unfair" they can be, so they provide experiences that can't be really found anywhere else.
it's only rather recently that this idea of "masochistic" and jank gameplay is legible to mainstream gamers (thanks Dark Souls but also you're not that jank). people are too subscribed to game design concepts like FLOW that folks only see the "bad" and "outdated" in kusoge (subculture).
much of why i'm inside this subculture is because i reject what's considered "textbook standard". the most interesting games are the ones that go for the more negative emotions that mainstream games today avoid. the kusoge i enjoy are the ones that violate norms because it doesn't care or even recognize; it puts me into a spot and makes me rethink what makes for fun game experiences. i call any game "kusoge (subculture)" if it's able to surprise me.
you could say i read kuso as surprise or shock, so how does it look like? in games like The Prisoner for the apple ii, it could mean having entirely different controls when you're inside the room versus the world map. in 9:05 by adam cadre, the text parser is hiccuping with most inputs you put in because it's simulating the protagonist's state of mind. in Viscera Cleanup Detail, the bugs and physics trouble your cleaning up of bloody space stations and make for interesting stories. in S.T.A.L.K.E.R., shooting accurately is a privilege. in Pathologic, you are terrorized by how hungry and tired your character can be from simply walking around town.
and it doesn't have to be exactly mechanical too. in the Caligula series, that could mean having storylines that go into taboos like fatshaming and gender dysphoria. in Romancing SaGa 2, it is accepting your characters will die in order to pass down the skills and stats to the next people; by contrast, Venus and Braves is about you as an immortal who must keep fighting for 1,00 years, attending the graves of your soldiers who lived and died by you, and wondering when you'll be out of the game because it's such a miserable experience.
all of these games have been labeled kusoge in one way or another for not meeting "appropriate" standards for game design. their volatility is what's so exciting about games. if you don't feel uncomfortable playing a game, you aren't going to remember this experience -- a purely comfortable game is simply Entertainment: fun and forgettable.
even the more interesting cozy games have discomforting vibes at random times. animal crossing n64/gc lol.
anyway, kusoge is cool and i'm always looking for them. bye.
spelunker (nes) is excellent, very inspiring game. i 1cced it because i'm cool, it's easier than you might expect once you get accustomed to rope jumping
while kastel is right about there being a subculture that uses "kusoge" positively, i kind of wish people would just say they think these games are good and interesting without also calling them "shit games" or whatever. people who genuinely like my games often struggle to describe them without basically saying something like "it's bad game design but done on purpose"
i'm joining the group that sees "kusoge" as a positive term because i've only ever seen it used positively, but that could be because i've mainly heard it from the side of the fighting game community. the most recent fighting kusoge i played is the legendary Ultra Fight Da! Kyanta 2, and it was an incredible experience
the opening starts off with badly scaled PNGs flying across the screen as the most bizarre synths blast your ears for an entire minute straight. random sprites are thrown on screen, the character designs look like they were made 20 years ago in exactly 5 minutes, and incomprehensible text flies across the screen. this is the game you're playing!
starting up the game isn't much better, since every single time you press a menu button it sounds like someone's screaming. in-game, characters will fly across the screen, have full-screen projectiles, and every single sound effect was probably made in a torture chamber. the animations look awful, the attacks are incomprehensible, and there are absolutely 0 good color choices in the game. by basically every definition, this is undoubtably a kusoge.
but it's aaalso really really funny!! the game was probably designed through irony, but it's also just ACTUALLY FUN TO PLAY! the movesets are surprisingly simple so it's easy to get into, and pressing literally any button causes something funny to happen. there are entire tournaments for this game!!
i played it with a friend for like 2 hours straight and we had the time of our lives, then we both immediately uninstalled it because it was really overwhelming. but really, i think when most fighting game players hear "kusoge" they understand it as "broken and silly, but still silly fun" which is something that i think a lot of fighting games need every now and then.