Cosmic Race

"Cosmic Race" was a video game developed for the PlayStation system, which became famous after receiving the dishonor of a "0.0" rating in "Game Players" magazine. As the title implies, it was ostensibly a spaceship-racing game, created by the Japanese company Neorex.

The game was reviewed in "Game Players" issue #88, published September 1996, which was the last issue published under the name "Game Players"." In it, the reviews section was prefaced (as usual) with a list of the possible ratings (0.0-10.0). In each issue ratings 1.0-10.0 would have humorous real world analogs. The rating of 0.0 had been described for quite a while as simply "Cosmic Race"." Since this was the final issue of "Game Players" under its original name, they decided to commemorate the occasion by finally giving the game a proper review.

The review was written by Chris Charla, who bemoaned long loading times, poor graphics which were taken directly from the PlayStation SDK ("your mom could do better graphics than this. Seriously."), a non-intuitive control system, and a complete lack of collision detection (allowing you to "fly under the world"). This was the first time a game had been rated 0.0 by the magazine, and this fact (combined with the hilarious yet scathing review) cemented "Cosmic Race" in many gamers' minds as one of the worst video games of all time.

Reviews

* [http://www.8bitjoystick.com/archives/bbq_review_cosmic_race.php 8-Bit Joystick review]
* [http://web.archive.org/web/20051222205228/http://www.playphoria.com/games/cosmicrace/ Wayback Machine archive of the Playphoria review]
* [http://ugp.trenchman.com/cosmicracereview.jpgGame Players review]