It starts with Ninjabread Man and it goes on FOREVER. Support Rerez and get cool stuff! / rereztv #Ninjabreadman #DDI #Wii #PC #Nintendo #Gaming #VideoGames #JustBadGames
Former DDI employee here. I love seeing people dunk on the company, because it, and Stewart Green in particular, was no better than the garbage games it put out. I was hired after the Wii shovelware dump, but heard from other employees that they were expected to crunch nearly non-stop and given as little as 6 weeks to take a game from concept to release. While I was there, there was no QA department whatsoever. Us programmers doubled as makeshift QA. Fun DDI fact: In the early 2000s, they were trying to get a license to develop their own Spyro game. There was even a playable demo they shat out in less than a week, complete with Spyro models and animations ripped from the existing games. It wasn't good. Fortunately, they didn't get the license.
Fun Fact: Just recently, a bunch of Data Design Interactive development hard drives were released on the internet, and on one of them was a prototype for a 3D Zool game
Also worth noting: Zool had a sweets level. Zool had a rock music level. Zool 2 had an ancient Egypt level. Zool 2 had a toyland level. I wonder why they had the assets to make these four games in particular?
If they had all been combined into one game giving the player 4 different-themed worlds then that wouldn't be too bad and it would feel more like an actual game.
They tried to hide it from us in Trixie in Toyland, but let's look a little closer at the title... myth makers: trIxIe In toyland or Ninjabread Man III
My dad brought home Myth Makers Orbs of Doom for the PS2 one day. It's supposed to be DDI's super monkey ball rip off. Since I was a kid, it just looked a little boring. A few years ago, I tried to research this game again but in my head, I thought it was a PS1 game because graphics were pretty bad.
@@Manic_Panic Don't get me wrong the PS1 and PS2 had plenty of shovelware but I swear every other game for the Wii was really broken, terrible shovelware. Sadly the Wii U wouldn't even get that (I mean barely I guess compared to the Wii) Sadly because of the power difference the switch is getting plenty of these kind of games (which I hope are selling poorly at least) they finally hit another home run for a console and this is their reward.
When they had that Seal of Quality they still allowed plenty of awful games to be published. Angry Video Game Nerd for example has played many really awful NES and SNES games. :D
Funny story: All 4 of these games were at my local Value Village, and whoever donated them slipped a piece of paper in with the manuals, and each piece of paper said, "DO NOT BUY THIS GAME, LET IT ROT ON THE SHELF", written in permanent marker. Whoever donated those games _seriously_ hated them. EDIT: Guess what? After a full year, someone finally bought them again, and it was the same guy who wrote those notes. I actually met him (he was a young adult male), and he told me he wrote those notes because of not only how terrible the games were, but because he actually had a ragequit on all 4 of them. He wrote that note partly as a warning, and partly out of spite. He was a great guy. I asked him if I could ask him questions about why he donated them, and he happily oblidged, being a good sport about it the whole time. I told him about how it was reminicsent of the beginning of one of those old creepypastas, and he admitted that he hadn't thought about that at the time, but he realized it was a lot more like that then he thought. After all was said and done, he asked me if he could have my phone number. I politely declined as I really only have family on my phone contacts, but told him that he could contact me via Gmail if he wanted to. He said if it was okay with my dad (who was with me at the time), it was okay with him. My dad gave the thumbs up, and now I have him on my Gmail contacts (I won't reveal his email address for privacy's sake). He was a good sport all-around, considering he had a random kid (me) coming up and interviewing him outta nowhere.
No mention of the reason WHY Ninja breadman sold so well. The game was SO poorly coded it actually enabled you to hack the wii, which meant people could install the Wii Homebrew Channel on it. For fun I suggest people looking it up as it's also the reason why copies of Ninja Breadman skyrocketted in price on the second hand market.
Idk about that, do you have any sources, since last time someone mentioned a shovelware game having an exploit that enabled execution of unsigned code, it turned out to be a load of bull.
@@PointsofData they’re confusing this with twllight princess which actually had an exploit which could enable installation of the homebrew channel it doesn’t work in the newer versions of the firmware
“By a candy company” which logo was designed by great surrealist painter Salvador Dali... This isnt a game, its a work of surrealist art, and THIS explains EVERYTHING
So basically DDI became one of the best-selling publishers on the Wii, purely based on how much absolute shite they shoved on the system. Is that correct?
There was actually FOUR reskins, the fourth one titled "Casper and the Ghostly Trio" was only released in Europe and Australia (trust me, it's awful, I once owned it in fact).
"They made Zool into a F**KING cookie!" 🤣 Yeah, you know it's bad when a partnering company sees the product and says NOPE knowing the product would become one of many shovelware titles with the exact gameplay.
Because the way he gets all angry and frustrated is hilarious. Just to do what they do you have to be a little masochistic, and by a little I mean like basically enjoy being tortured.
Wanna hear a story?: There is An Italian-American New Yorker Twitch Streamer with a Mario-like mushroom as an icon who had to SUFFER through all of this heap of DDI shovelware. He was never the same afterwards. Just like that one particular frog or geese in general, he's filled with rage, hatred, and fear whenever he sees anything DDI related. True freaken' story...
genuinely curious if vin knows about the whole connection with zool, considering that he's mentioned several times that he used to rent and play it often as a kid
Ninjabread man, as a concept, sounds like it could be a hidden N64 gem. I almost bought the game as a kid because I loved the idea of it so much, but my mom looked up the reviews and convinced me to save my money.
Worst Ever series: Shane encounters the same games being repeated over and over again. This episode of Just Bad Games: Shane encounters the same game being repeated over and over again. I guess some things never change.
I'd argue that these games aren't *just* bad. That's being kind. That would imply they have some good/redeeming qualities. They're terrible. They basically ruined the Wii's reputation and made most people associate it with shitty shovelware tripe like this. And for that reason, it's *not* just bad, it's abysmal. -Also motion controls can work in Wii games if done well, I don't mind it.-
NGL, that health system could be an interesting concept if done right. That being said, this is suppose to be a kids game, so have a risk vs reward health system makes little sense, most young kids aren't going to like the idea of debating whether they should get a new life or keep their full health and end up more confused.
The same type of health system was done in Robin Hood: Legend Quest (Super Robin Hood on NES)! That was also from a British developer trying to translate the budget computer game concept to consoles at the time...
@@BagOfMagicFood that and Anubis II is the most polished of these games but they're still terrible. Though the health system needs a LOT of polish to work in a modern game. Without it, this system will be a hard pill to swallow. Like some odd version of tears of denial from Dark Souls. It COULD work if it had something like that.
@@JaggedBird Health systems like this actually go as far back as the SNES - Goof Troop has a similar system. In that game, you spawn with no health buffer, one hit and you're toast. Collecting any health item grants you one or two hearts. If you get hit, you lose all your hearts, but if you get 7 (overflowing the display area's six) they're converted into an extra life. This works because the game is based on solving individual rooms (think classing top-down zelda) so banking a respawn is more valuable than being able to take one hit.
One of my college teachers used to work at Data Design, no joke. Also there's early screenshots of Ninjabread Man out there with a different character model for the title character, hard to believe this game actually has prototypes when it is one Also screenshoots of the Zool build have surfaced since this video
@@zyzzy-ko4ww atlus made some of those ljn games avgn called ass atlus was the developer of shin megami tensei the world renowned popular franchise and grandfather of the mon rpg series pokemon dominates on a iron throne of skulls of many pokeclones.
@@AlexOlinkiewicz XD Also i played both the prototype and the normal game I loved both of them (I feel like so many horror games depend on "run and hide" and it makes me bored)
@@laladoopsy You're right! Despite the negative reception of the first game, on 23 January 2008, a sequel titled Ninjabread Man II: Blades of Fury was announced. Not much information nor a release date had been issued, but it had been revealed that Data Design had created a website asking for the fans of the game to give ideas for the sequel. It is likely the sequel will never be developed due to Data Design ceasing development in 2009. On August 24, 2012, Data Design went out of business, making a direct sequel unlikely to happen.
@@kiartoons2010 So they weren't even ashamed of straight out asking what to do instead of figuring it out themselves. Couldn't expect any more honestly.
I'm heavily impressed by the research done for these games, honestly. Now we know why it was so easy to make these games with little to no differences made to them at all: A stupid game engine to basically make the games for them to conclude a cash grab.
It's the Retail Release version of Hello Engine Fan-Games. For context, Hello made several engines based on the Mario Series, and had it available for others to download and use to make their own games. The thing is (more often than not) people just create awful games with little-to-no change with the graphics, music, or gameplay. The engine itself is mediocre at best, with awkward game physics, music, and voices in it, amongst other things that I haven't mentioned. Reason why I know is because I had used it before to make a fan game, but thank Christ I never made it. Before I wrap things up, I'll explain what Hello is doing nowadays; in brief, he makes 3D Mario games, which aren't much different compared to his old 2D engines, but the content got worse, with it even involving anime (not making this up) and Bowsette. Seriously, do not look into it; it is awful.
I want to see someone make a game with all of these characters in an actual competent 3d platformer where they are trying to escape from the cold hard grave of Data Design Interactive and try to prove themselves as good game characters.
The manual for Anubis II mentions bombs, but tells you that you need to hold B to throw them. You need to hold A. Ninjabread Man's manual got how to throw bombs right...or it would have, if bombs were in the game at all. Brilliance. Interestingly, the other three games also resemble other Zool levels; it's most blatant that Rock N Roll Adventures is Music World from Zool 1 and Anubis II looks like the Egyptian level from Zool 2. (There's a Toy World in Zool 1, but there's enough differences from Trixie to set it apart.) I'm willing to bet all four games were part of the same Zool prototype; once the Zool license got pulled, the four levels became four "separate" games.
Last year I made what COULD be considered a remake of Ninjabread Man. It involved cookie cutters in martial arts poses and my Grandmothers recipe for ACTUAL gingerbread. They were delicious, I'll probably make another batch this year too.
It is too bad the Myth Maker video games were made by DDI because the concept art and 2d art of the Myth Maker characters are not that bad. If these characters were put into well developed and well executed games, Myth Makers could have been a good video game series for kids.
It's always sad to see when competent artists etc. get hired into a shitty company run by idiots and their work is all for nothing It seems like a significant proportion of game companies through history have been helmed by very stupid people spoiling the efforts of the talented people who work for them
I emailed the company back in tge day abd Stuart Green himself replied. This was no automated reply and it had no predefined text either, it was a proper reply! He just stated how he provides so much joy his games give and the sales of the game proved this! I asked when Ninjabread Man 2 was coming out (it was announced, you could play a new character called Treacletart) and he said "it will be done when its great"...it never came out. Still, never expected a reply.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if someone sent some malware to his computer, via his Email address, given what he was responsible for, both for the company he was in charge of, and for essentially snowballing a good number of despicable things that now are more out in the open, in the gaming industry.
To the GODS engine credit, it sounds like it met it's goal admirably. It was designed to deliver a lot of quick asset swap games, and it did it very efficiently from what we can see!
I bought Anubis out of curiosity a few months ago. It would have been better if they would have released a box with a used tissue in place of the game disc.
Anybody who's been a long time fan of Game Grumps cannot see this thumbnail and not immediately think of the D-Club episode... May Dan's innocence rest in peace.
Oh lord! I was a victim to this company. Specifically, Trixie in Toyland. I was unfortunate enough to be given this game as a game since I had a Wii. And boy, was it boring as hell and difficult to play! I lost interest after the second level because it was becoming too similar to the last level and I sold the game to a GameStop for some extra cash. Otherwise, good video and hope you have a jolly good day!
I'm ashamed to admit I have a copy of Anubis II. My brother and I played it once back in like 2007ish, and then we never touched it again. It still sits on our shelf of games to this day, and to my knowledge, it unfortunately still works. Actually scratch that, even if the disc isn't scratched and the thing boots up. The game still doesn't work.
There was going to be a karaoke game by DDI featuring former Britain's Got Talent contestant Connie Talbot. Perhaps fortunately for her, it never saw release. It is uncertain as to why, but it's either that the company saw financial trouble, or they were too cheap to acquire licences for the songs to be used, or a variation thereof. Had it been released they'd most likely reskin it endlessly.
I think it was a licensing problem. I remember reading that it was going to be called Over the Rainbow so they probably couldn't get the rights to the song.
Can we agree that both the puns in Ninjabread Man; the titular Ninja and the Dough-jo, are pretty good, considering this started out as a game in a completely different franchise?
What's sad is the concept and even the name are pretty awesome. But it is just a perfect example of the kind of trash that was shoveled by the ton onto the Wii. It was the perfect console for duping people into buying garbage.
@@Acacius1992 Yep. Absolutely true. The sad thing is a lot of generic looking games from the past that you would look right past and say that's garbage are actually pretty decent/good if not great hidden gems. Like I said can't judge a book/game by it's cover. Sometimes the games with the lamest looking covers and art end up being really good once you get into the meat and potatoes as they say. Gameplay is king after all.
As crappy as this company was they did one thing exceptionally right which is make the front cover as alluring to small children as possible. It's why you can never judge a game much like a book by it's cover.
Heck, I knew at a glance that these titles weren’t worth the money it’d take to make the disc. I’d actually seen each of these on store shelves, and I just instinctively knew not to get them. I couldn’t tell you why; I didn’t even know that they were substantially similar or anything until like a year before this video came out. And it was at Target, which, while not exactly known for having the best game selection, isn’t known for stocking all the shovelware, at least on the main shelves. I just saw them-not even closely examining them all that closely-and just decided it wasn’t even worth the effort to look at the back cover, which is highly unusual for me. In fact, back then, my parents-who didn’t know any better-would sometimes buy us shovelware. Pretty much any gamer-even a casual one-has at least one relative who’d do this. And yet, despite this, even they had never even considered buying these ones. Never even asked if I was interested like they often did with games that were particularly cheap, and these were actually on sale at the time. I don’t know if it was luck or if even they could somehow sense the terribleness of them from just the box or something, but thank God I never had to deal with any of the Wii DDI shovelware.
Thank god that the games that I mostly got from Costco when I was little were Naruto games and I don't recall seeing any of these monstrosities at any store during my youth. But my family and I owned and in fact, still own a copy of one of DDIs games, Kawasaki Jet Ski though.
Sadly I remember all these games. We could never keep them in stock. Probably because of the fact they were cheap, parents ate them up because of that fact solely. Once DDI got the parent's money, they didn't care what people thought. They got what they wanted.
@@alynicholls3230 Well that helps too. Just speaking from my personal experience working at a toy store. Yeah, I do remember people asking for a certain PSP game because it would do something to the system that would allow you to copy games or something. Not to mention the false rumor about the Cooking Mama game for Switch being able to exploit Bitcoin somehow.
Activision: I have mastered the art of releasing the same game again and again while still charging full price. EA: Well I have several sports licenses and release the same game with only roster updates while charging more than full price. DDI: Amateurs... EA: What was that punk?! DDI: AMATEURS!
@@zyzzy-ko4ww Until the switch came along I would have said the was the last great time for shovelware on one particular console. But it's a great shovelware renaissance on the switch now thanks to the fact it also gets plenty of mobile games along with the poorly made regular shovelware.
I hate to do this, but I have to defend what EA and Activision do here. They do this because they know their audience well, and companies like Activision know what they want from their players, a decent CoD multiplayer experience. Their campaigns suck dick though. EA’s sports games? What CAN you do to make them any different? Let’s be real.
It's actually exactly for being successful. If there's a huge demographic to develop for = there's enough kids whining on the supermarket to buy a new game, and/or parents that just know no better. Hence it sells enough. Sadly. The Nintendo DS is also FULL of such trash, tho instead of motion controls it's touchscreen garbage, the PS2 got the classic garbage and so does the PC.
I've watched every Just Bad Game video you guys have made at least twice (some more) and even now, watching this one yet again, the "Yea.... awesome...." at 3:54 is the funniest line in any of the series to me. The deliver is just so perfect, it somehow catches me off guard every time I watch this.
I was wondering when you guys would get around to covering these hacks. A master class of "didn't give a crap" in game development. Even the company name itself shows how much they didn't care.
To be fair to them, they started in the 80's doing 8 bits micro games. So most likely it started as two teenagers programming games in their bedrooms for extra cash and they didn't looked far to get a name, as they probably never expected to get well know, or even to stay in business for more than a few months. Which they did, until that new director came and turned DDI in a shovelware mill. And even then they had zero reason to change the name since it used to be somewhat recognized.
The Wii was riddled with shovelware. They catered so hard to the casual market at the time and it shows looking back. Don't get me wrong there's more than a few handfuls of really fun exclusive games but boy you really got a dig through all that doo doo.
@@JaggedBird Well the DS was the portable side of the Wii/DS era and it definitely shows too. I remember even the commercials at the time going pretty hard at the casual market with celebrities like Jada pinkett Smith and people playing stuff on the DS. That's the problem with Nintendo they get pretty shameless when they have something that becomes the ubiquitous portable game console.
11:42 The same thing actually happens in Sonic 06 too. Sonic just casually lays down on lava. Which is also scientifically accurate. Fun fact: lava is liquid rock. I'm pretty sure we all knew that. But it's also just as _dense_ as rock, meaning you can walk on it and I'm pretty sure you could also drive a tank on it as well.
I don’t know why, but seeing Anubis ll makes me want to make a proper game featuring a decedent of Anubis that must bring balance to the world of the dead by stoping the uncontrolled chaos of Apophis
For some reason I’ve always remembered these guys as being decent, but I literally only knew them for making one game; specially James Pond 2 on the Mega Drive, and because that was decent I assumed they made decent games. But it’s clear that they didn’t 😔
Nintendo in the 80s: "There were too many consoles and that's why video games crashed. Everyone is going to need our approval to make a game for our console and it has to be top quality." Nintendo in the 2000s: "Come one come all publish whatever you want!"
I had waited for an episode on DDI. I had hadn't heard of these freaks until I came across Blameitonjorge. Side note: 20+ titles with the same damn coding....The Money Ghost Purgatory is not ready for it. Also, I enjoyed the segment with the money ghost looking like he ate a live seal. Also.....So......Much....motion control schemes....😫
Let's face it, ET's infamous Atari 2600 game was butchered beyond belief by a bunch of Laughing Joking Numbnuts who probably tried to programmed the whole doggone thing in a week, but at least it's ONE horrible game, not four of what is pretty much the same broken game!
