Action 52

The Good
When you first insert the cartridge, there is some brief digitized sound that is actually of reasonable quality for the NES.

The Bad
Yikes, where to begin? Everything in all 52 games is bad. The menus and title screens are very simple and generic looking, but since 52 games are on a single cartridge space needs to be saved somehow so I could probably have forgiven them for this had everything else been better. Graphically, the games themselves are poor at best, with some of the games being worse than downright awful. Screenshots don't fully do the game justice of how bad it looks; not only are sprites and backgrounds poorly drawn, but the animation is poor and tends to be quite choppy and flickery. Sound is pretty minimal; no interesting sound effects or music are to be found anywhere in any of the 52 games! Most of the games can be pretty buggy, with some that will just randomly crash outright, while others seem to go on for a while and then enemies just stop appearing and you're left with nothing more to do. Collision detection can also be pretty poor.

And the worst aspect? The controls and gameplay! Many of the 52 games are pretty much unplayable due to extremely poor controls. For example, in several of the platform games (such as Fuzz Power or Non-Human), I've been completely unable to get past the first screen. There is a pit I keep falling in as jumping in a direction other than straight up is pretty much impossible. Ok, next. Games like Micro Mike are so fast that you'll lose your first few lives before you even realize the game has begun. So much for that. Fire Breathers is supposed to be like Atari 2600 Combat, I guess, but there is nothing to do or hide behind; seems basically like a programming exercise. Dam Busters seems to have absolutely no point I've been able to figure out. And of the remaining games, the amazingly poor controls tend to make them extremely unfun in addition to the complete lack of variety and interest they posses. The Action Gamemaster (The Cheetahmen) was supposed to be the "flagship" game of the lot where you can allegedly fight all of the bad guys from the other 51 games, but I never got anywhere in this due to a combination of lack of interest and the usual poor controls (They even went through the trouble of creating a short hack of a story for this one).

The Bottom Line
This isn't just the worst game ever made, it's the 52 worst games ever made! You actually have to see this to believe how bad it truly is, I can't think of any way to convey in words how poor the games in Action 52 are. It's truly awe inspiring in it's awfulness. I thought it might be good to make fun of (kinda like a "Mystery Science Theater 3000" of videogames), but as that's not much of a challenge it's not even good for that. Since this game is quite rare, it seems to sell for a high price often; makes an interesting addition for NES collectors, but otherwise is useless.

The Good
I've got 52 OTHER games to pick from in my NES library, and then some!!

The Bad
You wanna talk about jokes? Here's the ultimate joke for you: 52 piles of CRAP, meant to be games...no wait, I take that back...52 MISTAKES OF HUMAN LOGIC passing themselves off as the ultimate game collection!!

What's so bad about this miscreation? All of the "games" on here look more like BASIC games a kindergartner could write while hopped up on Kool-Aid and Oreos! There's ZERO variety between any of the games; in fact, this is my worst nightmare: I'm shopping for new games, but I can ever find is the SAME game just packaged many, MANY times over! cold sweat

Anyway, just how bad can they be? Here's some examples: the game "StarEvil" is a VERY generic vertical shmup, with lousy controls, no weapons, and the same stage repeating itself and almost NO enemies!! "Haunted Hill" is a pitiful excuse of a Castlevania clone with no power-ups, no threat from enemies, and...lousy controls! Need I continue? Very well...the cart's apparent flagship title, "Action Gamemaster", has about the only amusing scene in this whole pile of schlock: a kid having massive seizure while playing his video games...er...not really, but the intro is so badly drawn that I don't blame you for thinking the same thing. And from initial impression, you think you MIGHT be getting at LEAST a slightly mediocre platformer, you instead get a stupid Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES version, of course) clone, with...WOW!!! Lousy controls!! And asinine gameplay! And no power-ups! No ways of recovering lost health! Sound effects that sound like my NES just blew its top! And...horrible graphics!! gasp OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH....HOW IMPRESSIVE!! Sarcasm Meter: BOOOOOOOOM!!!!

Last but not least, this was a collection unleashed onto an unsuspecting world by some guy in a basement in Florida who thought that 12 year old kids who owned an NES would rather spend $200 to get ONE cartridge full of schlock instead of 4 or 5 excellent, top-notch, AAA NES titles available at the time. Someone should find him and execute him in public.

The Bottom Line
To the crackpot who thought unleashing this collection of his "games" was a good idea: when I was 12 years old, $200 got me Ninja Gaiden II, Mega Man 4, Tetris, Castlevania 3, and Final Fantasy....I love Christmas! ^_^

The Good
Well, I like bad games. Action 52 is funny. None of the games are good. Some are hilariously bad. Some are just boring, but in general, the games are just indescribably funnily bad.

Generally speaking, the games are very good in that they tell me that even I can, without any boasting or even any special proof, write better games!

The Bad
All of the games are either shoddily coded, ugly, sound awful, badly designed, or a combination of thereof - and if any of the games doesn't manage to annoy you at all, it will bore you to death. There aren't a single "high-quality" game in the collection, none are better than tech demos written by neophyte NES coders after a week of training. Unless you happen to like bad games, this collection sure isn't going to help you.

The Bottom Line
Once upon a time, there was an unlicensed NES developer called Active Enterprises. They got a bright idea to make a game collection for NES. 52 games in all. They sort of made that thing. And then they tried to sell it to unsuspecting public at 200 USD price tag (the price was later considerably lowered for reasons that should be fairly obvious).

Well, now, thanks to the ROM distribution channels and several helpful websites, everyone can check this game out. The Active Enterprises folks probably won't dare to step out to protect their copyrights - they might be stoned to death by angry NES fans. Not that Action 52 would need any special copyright protection, it keeps people far away it by its own merits already.

This is not a pirate cart - this is a collection of 52 original games. Most of them are simple one-screen things, many even feature scrolling. Most are some kinds of space shooters, driving games, or platform games. Uh... well, that's about that.

And yup, if I say it's original, it's original all right. All of the games are absolutely, unbearably, categorically horrible. I'm actually quite speechless. So horrible that they're funny - well, they're funny if you just downloaded the ROM, they sure aren't funny if you actually spent your pocket money on the cartridge (unless you get really drunk before playing, or got the bright idea to sell the cart to some collector a few decades later - I hear original carts can be valuable these days).

All in all, the whole thing is charmingly bad. The only real reason to hate the makers would be the obvious money-making scam they tried. The games themselves are actually chuckle-worthy if you happen to like to play really bad games every now and then.

This game is best experienced with a company of people who happen to like bad games. Those who don't like bad games may want to do what many people have suggested - get a bunch of people together, and start a drinking game of some sort (just beware of alcohol poisoning!)

The Good
Nothing. The music is not the worst thing ever on some of the "games".

The Bad
There's actually only a few games but just reskinned to get to 52. They're all trash. I guess if you like some arcade games you might get entertained for a couple of minutes. Most games are buggy and just badly made, others are just the same game over and over again.

The Bottom Line
There's nothing to enjoy here truly. You're better off watching someone's reaction to this rather than playing it yourself.

The Good
The concept of the idea sounds good. I mean, it's an unlicensed multicart containing 50 games! The music is also pretty good, but those are the only good things about this multicart. (Yes, it's a multicart, not a game.)

The Bad
The games on the cart are unplayable, glitchy, frustrating, and they tend to crash. Also, the price for the NES version is a whopping $200!

The Bottom Line
It's one of the worst games/multicarts ever made, and it's one of the worst NES game ever made!

The Good
There's something to be said for emulation-unlike the 4 or 5 idiots who wasted 300 bucks on this, I got to experience the pain for FREE. Plus the intro is pretty funny.

The Bad
Two words: BUG CITY

The Bottom Line
Action 52's sheer badness could kill a whole cornfield and cause milk to go sour in cow's udders. None of the 52 so-called "games" work right, if they even work at all, and if by some miracle they actually start, there's an army of bugs guaranteed to make them unplayable. But then, there's the dirty little secret-the games are DESIGNED to be unplayable! Just another facet of Active Enterprises' scam.

The Good
Nothing at all

The Bad
Well, this game sucks a looong way... if you can stand this game more than 10 minutes... you are a real hero. It lacks spirit, graphics, sound effects, music... but the most important of all... it lack FUN

The Bottom Line
A horrible compilation of 52 horrible "wanna-be-games"... !! Awful !