10 Video Games That Sold MILLIONS (Despite Being Terrible)
It's not what you do, it's how you market it.
The history of gaming is littered with cult classics - brilliant diamonds left to shine in the darkness by the general public.
This list is not about them.
Instead, we're taking a look at some of gaming's most notorious overachievers - towering edifices of mediocrity whose staggering commercial success belied the deficiencies of their design. Whether through name recognition or launching on the right console at the right time, these games managed to fail upwards into millions of gamers homes.
Each game on this list contains a multitude of sins, from general woes (slapping a license on a clearly unfinished product and calling it a day) to more specific failings (cha-cha dancing aliens).
Yet no matter how deeply flawed they were, they all managed to sell over a million copies, and in doing so provided yet more evidence of the amoral, uncaring nature of the universe.
And on that cheerful note, let's get started!
10. Wii Music
The mid-to-late noughties was a golden period for rhythm games. The likes of Guitar Hero and Rock Band saw gamers across the world strutting their stuff and living out their rock star fantasies in the comfort of their living rooms.
Naturally, Nintendo wanted to get in on the action in their own idiosyncratic way. Unfortunately, this particular brand of idiosyncratic genius was less The Beatles and more John & Yoko.
Wii Music suffered from two problems. One was its inescapable air of cheapness, from the lo-tech graphics to the public domain songs that made up the majority of its tracklist. The other was a total lack of immersion.
Guitar Hero and its ilk succeeded because playing on their peripherals created a genuine sense of engagement with the music. Wii Music, on the other hand, simply asked players to half-heartedly swing the Wii controller about in a vague approximation of whichever instrument you were tasked with playing.
This had all the immersion of waving a baguette at home and pretending you were conducting the London Symphony Orchaestra, with the downside that you couldn't eat the Wiimote afterwards.