10 Amazing Video Games With TERRIBLE Graphics

3. NetHack

NetHack was designed with a very firm gameplay over graphics ethos so it’s no accident its graphics are terrible.

But to be fair, they’re also pretty much non-existent and nobody cares.

Of course the game does exist in the visual medium, it just released in 1987 as a game made of up text and a very simplistic map for you to navigate so while you can hack and slash your way through it, you’ll be doing that as a rudimentary symbol among a sea of rudimentary symbols. The entire thing is presented as ASCII so, yeah, not the world’s best graphics, but it was what was available and serviceable at the time.

Even still, it doesn’t detract from what is an iconic moment and experience in gaming history. What the game did for roguelikes, randomly generated environments, and the pile of possibilities in how you want to engage with the game world and what might happen when you do so is still a super important moment in video games.

And all of that without a positive word that could be said for its graphics in sight.