8 Pre-Internet Video Games That Desperately Needed A Patch

While the history books will often point the gnarled finger of retribution at E.T for Atari as being the game that sunk the HMS Good Vibes, and gesture to the mass grave in the Mexican desert as proof of an industry trying to bury their sins, let's not forget that it wasn't the first stone cast at the gaming industry in its formative years.

That dishonor actually belongs to Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 which was a game so horribly rushed, botched, and callously splattered onto the gaming market that it irreparably damaged the relationship between gamers and publishers at large.

While there were many less-than-acceptable games circulating at the time of Pac Man's Atari port, this was the game that burned the fanbase the most, as it traded on the unprecedented success of the arcade original and delivered such slop that the game's box should have come with a biohazard warning.

From a horrendous flickering effect that came from the game being poorly optimized for the console, to the atrocious graphics and limp sound, this is quite possibly the worst port in existence. Yet had the sole developer been given more time and Atari been more conscientious to their consumer, maybe a patch or revised version of the game could have saved public perception of the industry at large.

In short, if patches existed back at this point in time, we might not have had to suffer through the horrendous crash of the entire video game industry.