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You Hated This Game | Nostalgia Nerd

Nostalgia Nerd | March 6, 2026



Thank you to sponsor Displate. Use my code: NOSTALGIANERD at checkout or click here https://displate.com/nostalgia_nerd/?art=64b448b2d7dae to get 20% off 2-3 Displates and 30% off 3+ Displates ~ SQIJ SQIJ SQIJ. This video is about SQIJ… categorically, the worst game ever devised, and in this video we’re going to explore exactly why that is.

Produced & Narrated by: @Nostalgianerd
Written & Edited by: @octaviusking

🔗Video Links🔗
BAD GAME HALL OF FAME ARTICLE https://www.badgamehalloffame.com/sqij/
EUROGAMER ARTICLE https://www.eurogamer.net/the-story-behind-the-worst-game-ever-made
ANNOTATED CODE https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1lIWldt8I1edUo4ZHBkRXdNVjA/view?resourcekey=0-ZUDlF7nVFbOvTli_Gg0JGw
RUBIKS MAGIC IMAGE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubik%27s_Magic#/media/File:Rubiksmagic.jpg
LASER BASIC IMAGE https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/36517/Laser%20Basic/
C64 DISC IMAGE https://archive.org/details/CommodoreModel1541Test-Demo-Diskette-FloppyDiskScan
SQIJ! COVER ART AND POWER PLAYS COVER ART: https://www.mobygames.com/ AND https://www.giantbomb.com/
COMMODORE 16 IMAGE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_16#/media/File:Commodore_16_002a.png
COMMODORE 16 VERSION CASSETTE BACK https://plus4world.powweb.com/software/Sqij
CRL LOGO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRL_Group#/media/File:CRL_Group_plc_logo.png

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Errors and omissions excepted.

Some material in this video may be used under Fair Dealing / Fair Use. Where under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 (UK: Sections 29 and 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988), allowance is made for purposes including parody, quotation, criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, education and research. Fair Dealing / Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.

Written by Nostalgia Nerd

Comments

This post currently has 46 comments.

  1. @cf9699

    March 6, 2026 at 7:15 pm

    None of this could happen without the permission of the parents. makes you think. any money would have had to be paid to the parents, unless they sent them cash. dodgy as F.

  2. @cptmiche

    March 6, 2026 at 7:15 pm

    "massively insensitive"

    Oh man. We can't be having games be insensitive can we? God forbid! Come on man, where's the spine in people from the UK these days? It's like all of you lost it after the 70s.

  3. @Kaaatieee

    March 6, 2026 at 7:15 pm

    Really disappointed with this and didn't realise how bad the bedroom coder era was (despite being one for fun..)..

    CRL as well produced one of my fav games (juggernaut)…

  4. @Its_Jordan

    March 6, 2026 at 7:15 pm

    This kid didn't know how to code at all, that game can barely function. He thinks he's smart, creating a silly game that can't function.

  5. @OhNoBohNo

    March 6, 2026 at 7:15 pm

    i actually have no criticisms of the conversion because the game company utilized actual RUSHED, MANIPULATIVE, FUCKED-UP CHILD LABOR to get the game to market

  6. @blarghblargh

    March 6, 2026 at 7:15 pm

    I was going to be damned impressed by the 13 year old putting out a game with that much proper usage of graphics, since it wasn't entirely trivial to do a good job of that, and none of the dozen-odd books or few magazine subscriptions I got my hands on really went into that much depth. All the books sorta stopped at the basic usage of the various hardware registers. Sort of always a "now draw the rest of the owl" or "the rest is up to your creativity" moment. Probably because plenty of the authors knew how to code, but none of them knew how to make an industry quality game or demoscene level program.
    Sure, articles had a trick or two here or there, but I never ended up finding one at the time that talked about how best to do cave-like not-fully-grid-aligned wall tile graphics, how to do large scrolling demo style text, or doing multi-room graphical games. I found some maze adventures with inventory, text adventures, and plenty of one-room arcade arena type games, and the odd graphics demo such as rendering a 3d cube. But nothing combining all of the above, nor going to the extent in the first version of this game.
    But I also now remember that I sorta halted all programming at around age 10 (1990/91) and didn't really resume until age 14. If I had kept it up the whole time, I too might have started getting to that level by late adolescence. It's cool to see what happens when a kid actually gets to stick with something, and happens to have enough learning material around therm to advance, or enough knowledgeable people around them to learn from or at least ask questions to.

  7. @AndrewHalliwell

    March 6, 2026 at 7:15 pm

    Ahh,memories. Buy one power house game, never ever buy another.
    One of the adventure game publishers included a teletext parody on their B Side called spectacle.

    One page: Did you know…
    That the power house actually have some programmers?

  8. @safebox36

    March 6, 2026 at 7:15 pm

    An reminder that there are parts of the UK that Displate does not deliver to…
    Still annoys me, cause I've been trying for years now.

  9. @CallousCoder

    March 6, 2026 at 7:15 pm

    Hearing these these terrible royalties for the developer suddenly doesn’t make me bothered with being a cracker in the 80s 😂Actually come to think of it, I never was. 😂I you overcharge for pure crap and you leave the door open you shouldn’t be amazed if for cracked. And often then extra lives and other cheats we added made the games more fun.

  10. @zebragrrl

    March 6, 2026 at 7:15 pm

    I love how the moment you said "He sat down to make a purposefully crap game. Let's have a look at it!" Youtube cut out to a midroll ad for an RPG kickstarter.

  11. @rodmunch69

    March 6, 2026 at 7:15 pm

    What's wrong with paying a kid for something he would have done for free anyways? If I had a chance to make like $500 USD in the 1980s, for writing something in basic, I would have worked on it for the entire summer from the time I got up until I went to sleep. The fact people think their dumb kids are too precious to do anything other than sit around and do nothing is ridiculous.

  12. @blistlelo1700

    March 6, 2026 at 7:15 pm

    I have heard that you are allowed to perform lighter work at 13 at limited amount of time and I think programming and art design don't require much heavy physical activities.

  13. @pjcnet

    March 6, 2026 at 7:15 pm

    I got 2 crappy games published on a naff Research Machines 480Z in the 1980s at school, but at least the company called Software Production Associates gave me a monthly cheque for 20% of royalties, the money came in for a couple of years and started dying to smaller and smaller cheques, my last was something stupid like £6, but overall over a couple of years I must had been paid about £1500.

  14. @giornikitop5373

    March 6, 2026 at 7:15 pm

    hahaha, i loved this. those "kids" knew these morons at crl / powerhouse were blatantly exploiting them and busting their balls. so, they ultimately gave them the biggest middle finger ever. i would have done the same, because as you might remember (i'm also in my forties), 13 year old teens of the time were anything but innocent kids.

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