In Praise of Bad Games, Part 1
Before I begin praising bad rpgs I think a little disclaimer is in order. I am not going to be praising the three worst role-playing games ever devised. In all my rpg-geekery I have encountered tales of three games that are completely without merit:

1) FATAL would be just another piss-poor fantasy heartbreaker if not for its skin-crawlingly creepy fascination with rape.

2) Racial Holy War (a.k.a. RaHoWa) is the official rpg for skinhead Nazi fuckwits. When it comes to Nazis I hold with Professor H. Jones ("Nazis. I hate these guys.") and J. Blues, esq. ("I hate Illinois Nazis.") but I believe it was the Dead Kennedys who put it most eloquently: "Nazi punks fuck off!"

3) HYBRID claims to be an rpg but is just plain crazy. Not good, zany, funny crazy, but sad, pathetic, incoherent crazy. HYBRID is nothing more than the sad ramblings of a mentally distrubed man who truly needs professional psychiatric help.

The above trio constitute the top three worst rpgs of all time. If you can find a game as abhorrent as FATAL or RaHoWa or as insane than HYBRID, please let me know so I can add it to the above list.

Anyway, what I really want to talk about are other games that perpetually hover on lists of "all-time worst rpgs". A detailed look at these games reveals that most of them have a redeeming feature or two that deserves mention. Some of these so-called "bad games" may even have an unwarranted reputation.