btw, the "coin" that falls from the tree in the first boss battle is probably not a coin but an iron washtub; one falling onto a character's head out of nowhere is a fairly common gag in Japanese media
@@gameboy3d943 Animal Crossing: City Folk uses something like this. When Katrina has your fortune read, a washtub falls on your head so that Katrina can see your dizzy-stars to talk about a character. Someone like Blathers or Tom Nook.
And on top of that, once you collect all 947 puny items that ain't very easy to see or collect, you unlock a bunch of "bonus levels" with no real reward at the end.
3:08 Aluminum is a non-ferrous material and wouldn't be magnetic. Those soda cans near the beginning of the cutscene shouldn't have been attracted to Phix, even with the "Magnia Stone".
Interestingly, moving magnetic fields do induce small currents in aluminum. These currents are called Eddy currents and they create an opposing magnetic field. Have you ever dropped a magnet through an aluminum pipe with a diameter just barely big enough for it to move freely? Aluminum is still not attracted to magnets though.
The fact that every boss looks just a bit too dark and horrific than the artstyle of Phix and his world would imply made me fully convinced the Samurai was gonna commit seppuku infront of me.
The only one is the first boss that looks like the only thing fitting for this game. The others look like something out of a rejected rpg fighting game.
The worst part is. The japanese realease came out in 2000, while the amerocan realease came out in 2003. They had 3 whole years to "phix" this game, but did nothing. I'm also astonished that the devs allowed a small white pixel to count as a collectable. These devs are evil. EVIL I TELL YOU.
@@swilleh_You're in luck, sorta. Affect transitioned to developing web applications in 2008. Most of the games in its Wikipedia page are red links, including Phix: The Adventure.
The devs probably programmed them in, then forgot about them because they were almost invisible. I'm guessing they aren't textured, or they just happen to use a texture with a single pixel that's not transparent.
This is made worse by the fact that this game would have been designed to have been played on a CRT. If it's this hard to see on a pixel-perfect LCD screen, then analogue CRTS built with no clearly defined x:y ratio would be nightmarish.
I wonder if the original version was this broken, or if someone screwed up with localization. Obviously the plot could make more sense, because if I read between the lines a little, being used to execrable translations, I get this: The MAGNIA STONE is some kind of magical orb thing that balances the world’s magnetic energy. Everyone is happy when it’s out there doing its job. When something happens to destabilize it, it sets the world into turmoil. The 4 Kings, each controlling one cardinal direction (NSEW), get a little nuts when the magnetic field of the planet goes wonky. Meanwhile Phix has to go on this long journey, trying to set things right. They fight him because they’re literally being pushed to magnetic madness. That’s why they “snap out of it” when their energy is drained, and why some of them knew but couldn’t help but fight Phix. So he’s basically a worse version of Kirby, but without a Dark Matter analogue. And awful rendering. And bad controls.
And without copy abilities. And without cuteness. And with near-invisible collectibles. And without a secret ending or any other real reason to get the collectibles. And with a bad camera. And-
Yeah, I got the same feeling myself, but the game does an absolutely terrible job conveying this to the player. In Kirby 64, that entire concept was conveyed without a single line of dialogue for translators or localizers to potentially botch and so that young kids-y’know, the target demographic of these games-can easily understand what’s going on regardless of their reading comprehension skills. Conveying a game’s plot through dialogue isn’t necessarily a problem, but in this case, Kirby’s method of show-don’t-tell works out better, while Phix’s dialogue ends up making the plot more confusing than it would be otherwise.
The translation job was definitely rushed, I realized that those extra challenge levels were translated to "training stage" because both the verbs "to train" and "to challenge" can be more or less the synonym of "to try", so in japanese the title mustve had a vague term that implies all these definitions, and the translator had no time to do actual research. Also, for people who have enough knowledge of Japanese, the dialogues are noticeably very literal translation of natural japanese speech hence the overall weirdness.
Clearly the developers didn't even consider that. Either they were idiots when thinking of that idea or they were just downright doing it to make players go completely insane.
@@ExtremeWreck It was released in 2000, they were testing and developing this game on CRTs. They were probably downright doing it to make players go completely insane.
@@devonwilliams5738 Yeah, definitely. Like, the CRTs would probably have that very tiny collectable completely blend into the frames of animation & background.
Considering they're just floating about in random places, and aren't behind any difficult to reach places, I wouldn't be surprised if they were meant to be invisible, and the fact that we can see them on HD screens is unintentional.
You know what's even more insane about the literal pixel hunt collectables? This was made at a time CRT's were the norm, even with the fairly late release in '03. So not only did they expect you to find said pixels, but do it through a 480i at most CRT less then 20" wide. Even weirder is like almost every other collectable basically has a neon sign pointing to it and is otherwise visible.
Keep in mind that old graphics were designed specifically FOR CRT screens, they look much better when viewed on CRTs they do on LCD screens. As such, there's a strong possibility that these collectibles would have been MORE visible back in the day, on a CRT screen, though I'm not sure how that would work…maybe the lower overall pixel count would make the flashing of one pixel more noticeable? After all, pixels work differently on CRTs than LCDs, it's not the same as 480p on an LCD screen. Either way, all I know is that, when it comes to old graphics, graphics designed SPECIFICALLY to be viewed on CRTs, nothing in them is invisible on a CRT screen and visible on an LCD screen, that's just not how that works - it's not like video of live action events, visuals built from the ground up on CRTs for CRTs look much better on CRTs than LCDs. Granted, video game collectibles tend to be a lot more signposted than this either way, but I'm willing to bet it was SLIGHTLY less of a headache when viewed as intended.
what the hell is that even supposed to be an electron? a proton? an atom? does it say anywhere if you could only get one pixel why not make it A BIGGER PIXEL
Makes you wonder just what else has been forgotten by the sands of time. If something like Phix can be lost and found again....what else could be of a similar fate
What Just Bad Games would I like to see Rerez cover in the future? Highlander (Jaguar CD), Congo (Sega Saturn), Blade Dancer (PSP), Activision's SpongeBob duology (Xbox 360), The Incredible Hulk (Sega Saturn), Robin Hood's Quest (PC), Infogrames' Tintin trilogy (PC)
I feel like the "Analog Horror" industry could give this game new life. The game feels really ominous and empty and the basically undocumented nature of the game gives it a lot of potential to have a dark twist. I can already see Phix becoming obsessed with the player, as they're the first one to play basically since the game came out, and begging them to stay. That failing, he turns to violence and psychological manipulation.
So I think I have some ideas for better pickups: Magnia Stone Shards that broke off during the plummet & Balloons. And made new endings to go with them. Worst Ending: (barely any Shards or Balloons) They use Phix as a “Replacement Magnia Stone” and leave him to rot on that pedestal All Magnia Ending: (100% Shards but barely any Balloons) Basically the ending seen in the video where Phix has to find the softest landing zone. All Balloons: (barely any Shards but 100% Balloons) They launch Phix & intend for him to be the “Replacement Magnia Stone” but Phix uses the balloons to escape. Only now he has to avoid the Cleric’s minions for the rest of his days Best/True Ending: (All Shards & Balloons) The Stone is restored & put back on the pedestal but Phix has Balloons to get back down safely. He can spend the rest of his days not having to worry about all that magnetic nonsense
Ooh, that’s good- taking a leaf from Crash Bandicoot and Spyro’s book there. Maybe they could limit the polarity thing to only certain enemies as well, and make the bosses make a little more sense. That and “Phix” the controls. The game could have been great if they put proper thought into it.
That moment when they say "It's Just Bad" and that little tune plays. That joyous smile fades away and you realize you gotta wait weeks for the next one. 😟
Man, the developers really hated Phix, leaving him up on that island to either starve to death or to jump to his death… I mean, look at this poor creature… his existence is nothing but constant pain and suffering… I just feel horrible for him…
If Rerez ever starts making JUST BAD GAMES episodes on mobile games, the responsibility of keeping the series on will be passed on from generation to generation.
Mobile game candidates hm? Might as well address the demonic elephant in the room. EA and Dungeon Keeper Mobile. FF All The Bravest is also quite the turd. Most bad mobile games are mediocre and not even worth mentioning but those two are really awful. Edit: Hogwarts Mysteries too. Ever wanted to pay to play a game that barely qualifies as one?
God, you can feel the frustration the entire time just watching the gameplay. I can understand "we wanted to make a platforming game with magnets, but got too far before realizing it sucked" but like... why not just play like normal and have the shoulder buttons be "hold to charge negative" and "hold to charge positive" so the magnetic launching and attraction powers only affect you on command?
We think this game was so frustrating to play that the few who did play it at the time of it's release gave up early on. This is probably why this game is so unknown.
@@rerez Oh I don't doubt that players gave up on it, but one would think someone on the dev team would have tried out a build and gone "oh, wow, this is garbage! There has to be a better way to incorporate magnetism!" Then again, Drakd of the 99 Dragons had QA testers screaming its problems and the head of the project ignored them out of ego and sheer arrogance, so fair enough.
This is one of those games I stumbled upon while "acquiring" random PS1 games I've never heard of. I played it for about five minutes and then just got sad imagining whatever kid got this for Christmas or whatever instead of some other cool 2003 PS1 game. Like, uh... the weird THPS4 port?
Your premise is off and that’s what’s causing you problems. You start with the presumption that the developer who put the pixel collectable in is sane in the first place.
The interesting thing is, a platformer game based on switching between magnetic polarities isn’t necessarily a bad concept, and could legitimately work. Phix just managed to do everything wrong.
That Dreamcast game that I can't fully remember the name of *_in spite of hearing its name only A COUPLE MINUTES AGO_* showed that the concept can be done at least a lot better.
There's something special about that animation when Phix drowns and falls off a cliff, it's so damn hilarious to me, I can't stop cracking up when he plunges to his demise!
i think it's the fact that it's super crappily animated. they clearly just rotate phix's model along its basis point (which seems to be his *feet*) so he looks extra jank and comical. also, it's super abrupt.
It’s a shame this one turned out so bad, I think the 2D art of Phix is really cute and it had some great concepts, magnets are used great really well in It Takes Two and Super Magnetic Neo. I think it’s probably best that this game is left as a forgotten PS1 experiment.
Jeez, those collectibles... That's the sort of pixel hunting crud I'd expect for a secret UFO ending, or the best joke weapon in the game. Not... standard freakin' game-play!
@@BinglesP Survival horror tends to have some really goofy joke endings & weapons to lighten the mood. UFO endings used to be a hidden running gag in Silent Hill, and Dead Space 2+3 had foam-fingers that instant kills anything pointed at if you beat the highest difficulty. For just two examples. And~ that stuff was completely optional insanity slash fun for the completionists out there, I should add. NOT a must to see the dang ending.
@@LORDOFDORKNESS42 hell, i’d say even that’s being generous. This is more like the stuff you collect for a dumb easter egg that the developers snuck in without the higher ups knowing about it. At least with the foam fingers, that’s a reward for beating the hardest mode available and there’s a chance you might actually uncover the dog ending on your own by just playing the game. THIS is unbelievable
I'm being serious for once. I would like to express my deep appreciation to your sheer willpower, forcing yourselves to beat ludicrously hard or terrible games just for our enjoyment. and managing to craft fun content in the process. thank you guys.
Seriously. We've all played some terrible and frustrating games, and we turn it off if it's a chore to play. These guys put in countless hours, trudging through, to get enough recorded and to be able to explain the game in all its stupidity. And that's before they get to edit it all together! The voice-overs and editing are probably a picnic compared to getting all the raw footage haha
The dedication is off the charts. I wouldn't expect anyone to power through in order to beat garbage like this or the Cid games but they do it anyway. That reward though, what a kick in the teeth. Even if the game was good it'd still not be worth it. I was expecting a better ending or something but nope.
The models for the boss fights look genuinely fantastic, but aside from the first boss, they totally clash with the aesthetic and tone of the game. It's so weird, do I like them or hate them??
Just realized the Lava Boss model actually looks exactly like Balan from Balan Wonderworld minus the big hat lol. Did the Balan creator reused some of the asset from this obscure game?
This game actually could of been a hidden gem and honestly I think all it would’ve taken was them making the magnet powers a button press instead of constantly fumbling with your controller and looking at your HUD but the collectibles and level geometry are still inexcusable 😂
That silver thing with the "hit-me" tree wasn't a coin: It's a metal washing basin re "Drop The Washtub" TVtrope, and was an extremely old Japanese cold-joke gag that existed forever. It's probably the Japan version of the "drop anvil on head" Bugs Bunny gag. Man, even mentioning it feels old.
Phix looks so familiar, and yet I have literally never heard of this game before. I dunno if it's because Phix looks like a rejected party member from Chrono Cross, a game filled with rejected party members, or maybe it was in some magazine as a punchline, or maybe it's having drowned in tons of samey looking mascot platformers with cute cartoony mammals. But whatever it is, it's crossing into a weird uncanny valley of memory.
I def remember seeing this thing in stores once. I briefly looked at it before settling on a Monster Rancher game instead. Much better choice turns out lol
There's this game that's a Portal clone called Magrunner. It's a first person puzzle game that instead of using portals, it uses magnets to push and pull platforms and boxes. It also has a horror twist to it, as in, *LITERALLY CTHULHU* is warping reality around you and you even need to avoid eldritch monstrosities. Pretty underrated game IMO.
I don't really consider Magrunner a Portal clone: it's another member of the "3-D Puzzle-Platformer" genre. Also, it's made by FrogWares, who I adore for the Sherlock Holmes games they produce
I played that. It was pretty cool. A little janky in places, but it wasn't bad. I do wish the more Eldridge parts of the game involved a bit more puzzle solving with the magnets rather than just running away.
The thing I admire about these two chads is that no matter how the game makes them want to uninstall life (similar how to they want to uninstall this game), is that they don’t give up
honestly this game's concept is so cool, i would love to see a proper modern platformer with a magnet polarity concept! chaining jumps over pits with magnets would feel so satisfying, like nailing wavedashes in celeste!
@@hudsonm1a22 the funniest part is the mention of that exact game at the end, and it's release date being the same year the Japanese version of Phix released.
I'm POSITIVE that this is going to be a good episode, with a rather REPULSIVE game that doesn't even ATTRACT any masochists, with its NEGATIVE aura throughout the entire game. Puns aside, great episode as always, Rerez! Thank you for going against the grain and find really obscure bad games not talked about much, if at all; it is refreshing seeing something that isn't YIIK or Fallout 76 for instance. Hope you two are taking it easy, especially with how terrible these games can get.
Did this game cost a lot? Usually the ones that come out near the end of a console's lifespan land up being worth more. Is that the case here? Just wondering if torturing yourself is an expensive hobby ;) Cheers.
They could have _easily_ explained the boss' hostility by saying "The disappearance of the Magnia Stone drove drove the people of the land insane." I guess kinda like Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon...
A big problem with this game is that Phix is clearly a 2 object pasted onto a 3D world, which is why it's so hard to tell where he's positioned of the world. Or maybe it's the reverse? Either way it makes for awful platforming.
I disagree. There's plenty of great 90s games that combine 2d sprites with 3d objects. Like MDK. This game is just bad. You know, like the name of the series
The issue lies in the PlayStation itself and the developers. PlayStation 1 didn't have any hardware based z-buffer (which is responsible for showing objects behind each other in the correct order). Any developer that made a 3D game had to develop a software based z-buffer which meant that there could be various glitches depending on how much time they spent on it and how many resources it could take from the rest of the game. It's also the reason why the walls warp in many games for the ps1.
Shantae Half Genie Hero does it so much better. Shantae and the others are 2d objects in a 3d world, but you obviously know when Shantae is about to slip off.
@@brawler5760 I mean, she can still do it in Pirate's curse despite being deprived of her magic so it's not magical. I think they might've even said that she got that from her non-magical father.
The way y'all bleep the curse words really cracks me up. This is one of those cases for me where deliberate censoring is funnier to me than an uncensored thing. 😂
Wow. I thought they were being hyperbolic at the start since it sounded like a good idea in concept, but that was genuinely terrible. I know the PS1 could have some engine-inherent teething problems with true 3D like this, but that ground collision and layering was next-level bad.
Even still, it's not like they were making Super Mario 64, breaking new ground that has some teething issues. It came out in 2000 and isn't even doing a bare minimum. Like if you took out ALL the magnet stuff, it still wouldn't be even mediocre.
These guys just discovered a secret of a really bad game nobody cares about that probably remained hidden for 22 years, and suffered collecting the worst collectibles in a video game ever just to discover the secret. If that isn't epic and/or dedication, then I don't know what it is. Thanks for the video Rerez
For the clusterfuck it is, I have to respect that they actually went through the length to make something this insane. They could've made a Bubsy 3D/Gingerbread man and call it a day.
@@SuperPeterok it’s definitely not the worst game out there, but this definitely isn’t good. It has a cool idea, but you need more than that for a good game
@@SuperPeterok I'm not sure how you can possibly say it's "not that bad" when looking at all the problems it has. Seriously, the platforming looks tedious and is made no better by how easy it is to fall to your death, the collectibles are almost impossible to see, and these are just the game's main problems, which are terrible to have for a game of it's genre. It may have an admittedly interesting concept, but it hardly matters given how botched it is
One of the oldest Easter eggs in video games was in the Atari game Adventure. If you collected a specific pixel in a room, you could unlock a room with the programmer’s name. The programmer never thought anyone would find it. And 20ish years later, these devs decided that would be a good idea for their game’s main collectible.
There would need to be enough interest in remaking this game for that to happen, but it's so bad, it would likely need a complete overhaul to be phixed
2:48 Well to be fair Unprotected objects entering the earth's atmosphere from space tend to get reduced in size due to burning up in from entering atmosphere so fast
Sad part is this concept sounds really cool. If they did things like make it so you set your trajectory when shooting out of a magnetic felid, target feild to attract to to zoom you to it, allow you to hit one enemy with another enemy, manipulate metals to get to new areas, or collect metal scraps around to use as projectiles and armor, later on he could learn to perfect his powers to do things such as pull off metal armors or levitate in the air, using the crystals instead of making them for extra lives could be used as a curency to upgrade abilities. it could work. As for story instead of a magna orb accidentally falling off an unguarded, unprotected floating island, have some thunder diety create the orb and send it into phix giving him tremendous magnetic abilities but because phix is new he has to learn to control it, the reason is some unknown force has caused the kings of the realm to become corrupted.
@@IkesDaddelbox it’s not the EXACT same, more just a heavy object that falls and bonks someone’s head rather than flatten them but it’s pretty much the same concept
This game looks like a spiritual successor to Bubsy 3D that's somehow even more annoying and worse-looking than that game was. What an achievement. I don't know how you guys managed to beat this completely, but I have a newfound respect for your bad-game playing skills.
Can I just say how impressed I am that you always manage to finish these monstrosities? I mean, it's the smallest of rewards; but at least the compliment isn't killing you 317 times.
You know what I just realized that makes it even worse? The hint that mentions the "one condition" which obviously alludes to the pixel sized collectables? *It's in the part of the manual talking about the training mode, basically showing that the collectables are tied to that mode only.* They straight up show that the collectables and 100% the game was not gonna be worth it by having that one tiny part be in the section about the training mode, but still wanted players to talk about it by keeping that part in for the mystery!
So I do want to point out that the tree dropped a basin of water, not a coin. It's apparently a very common comical object to drop on top of cartoon character's heads in Japan, similar to anvils in the US. Doesn't fix the game though.
for those curious, Savart Castle was named after Felix Savart a French physicist who discovered the Biot-Savart Law together with Jean-Baptiste Biot in 1850. They came up with the mathematical expression for magnetic flux density at a point due to a nearby current-carrying conductor.
Feels kinda awkward that a Japanese castle themed level full of JP culture stuff(Chonmage Boomerang Samurai enemies and Shogun boss) is named after a French Physicst.
I could just watch this "just bad games" the whole day. They are so good. The tiny dots and the constant screaming were hilarious, I was really laughing out loud
12:48 Surely a massive apple didn't lacerate phix's skull Not after the game LITERATELY told us to hit... the F*&@%$ Tree Died... xD literately died of laughter here
I have to wonder if anyone even achieved 100% completion on this game before Rerez did, given the literal pixel hunt collectibles and the game's extreme obscurity.
With everything shown in this video, i am convinced this game was released unfinished and probably the devs had trouble, releasing the game late. Would like to know *what happened* behind the scenes...
I think it was a previously canceled game from the mid 90s that they decided to push out on the PS1 death bed as a quick cash grab before everyone moved on to PS2 and no one would remember.
I came up with the perfect analogy for this game. This game was conceived in live, by two parents who wanted the best for their child/game but then the parents died suddenly and the child was put in foster care and unstable homes until it was 18.
13:40 that wasn't a coin, it was a water basin. Based on the gag of someone opening a door only to get soaked with water from a bucket, in Japan, the gag often ends with there just being no water in the bucket
So, there's no extra ending for getting those collectibles? I'm assuming they're fairies whose combined magical power could get you off the island. Otherwise, why have an ending where you're stuck on the island?
Those pixels have to be the worst collectable I've ever seen. Regardless of the reward for collecting them all, how in the hell are you supposed to know those are collectables in the first place. You could easily disregard them as simple graphical errors.
