Happy Monday, folks, and welcome to the Weekly Video Games Thread!

Now, most of my weekend was pretty full. I went on a Source Gaming livestream that lasted for five and a half hours, and then an Avocado GamesCast recording that lasted four, so I haven’t had a ton of things to do. However, I did start my playthrough of one Donkey Kong 64. I’ll talk about it further in the comments, but this is a somewhat rare experience for most players: playing something with a poor reputation.

Now for me, this isn’t that uncommon. I’ve had an on and off series for over a decade now that does retrospective reviews for games that are notoriously bad, or at least controversial. This is why I’ve been itching to play DK64 for years, and why Nintendo’s announcement that it was going on NSO made me happy. And it’s certainly not rare to watch people play bad games on Twitch and YouTube. Schadenfreude and a general fascination with bad art and bad entertainment is, if not universal, incredibly popular. But I do think most players would prefer to watch than try it out for themselves. I can’t imagine videogamedunkey caused sales of Gollum and Garfield Kart 2 to spike.

But maybe you can tell me I’m wrong! At least, I’d like to with today’s prompt: have you ever bought and played a game off its negative reputation? I don’t mean something “merely” controversial where the tumult excited or intrigued you. I specifically mean that you sought out a product off what some TV Tropes editor termed “bile fascination.” And if you did this, what was it like? Did you find something that was unexpectedly good? Did it live down to your assumptions? What was it like to play?

And as always, what did you play this weekend?