Did you know that the Xbox Live Arcade actually started as a disc based distribution service on the original Xbox? Chances are you didn’t (though I eagerly await the one person in the comments who stands to correct me), because Microsoft’s mini marketplace only gained widespread popularity once it relaunched alongside the release of the Xbox 360. As someone who bought a 360 close to launch, when there weren’t a huge amount of games out and backwards compatibility with OG Xbox games was limited, I used to look forward to every single new XBLA drop. I’d snap up whatever was on offer at the time, be it a new title like Zuma or a port of an old school arcade classic like Gauntlet. Some were great, some were bad, but none were ever as truly terrible as Yaris, a game that many regard to be The Worst Game Ever Released(TM) on the Xbox Live Arcade.
Released in October of 2007 and then quietly delisted around a year later. Yaris was an Advergame developed by Castaway Entertainment and published by Backbone Entertainment, in partnership with the car manufacturer, Toyota. The term ‘Advergame’ is used to describe a game created to advertise a product and, as soulless and corpo-douche as that term sounds, ancient Advergames like Cool Spot, Zool and McDonaldland are all remembered with fondness by those who played them. Nowadays, if a brand with a capital B wants to market itself to the youth, it can just chuck some money at a popular game like Roblox or Fortnite – or, in the case of KFC, PUBG Battlegrounds. Throw a couple of skins or emotes into an existing title and job done, nice and simple.
But, back in the early days of the Xbox 360, when live service games were mainly confined to the PC, those capital B brands had to do something different. And by different I mean, putting some actual effort into releasing a full, playable video game. The small wave of budget priced or free advergames in the Xbox 360 era however were either absolutely terrible, like Burger King’s Pocket bike racer, a game where you can play as a junior whopper on a moped, or incredibly forgettable, like Red Bull Crashed Ice Kinect which I didn’t even know existed until I started researching this piece. The only real exception to the terrible Xbox 360 Advergames rule was Doritos Crash Course, a curiously addictive obstacle course game that saw you pushing your Xbox Avatar across the kind of treacherous terrain that would make Takeshi Kitano jealous.
But anyway, that’s enough history, let’s get back to Yaris. For some inexplicable reason, Toyota decided to fund the creation of Yaris, a game that was to be released on the XBLA as a free-to-download promotional tie-in for that line of vehicles. I say inexplicable because I’m not exactly sure who this game was even aimed at. What potential purchaser of a car would be persuaded to buy a Yaris, over all others, by a free downloadable video game? Let alone one that didn’t even demonstrate what was good about the Yaris to begin with like, say, its excellent reliability or superb fuel economy.
Loosely inspired by a series of adverts from 2007
Among the roster of risks to avoid were AT-ST-inspired toaster on legs, a barely-animated bull dog on a hoverboard with dead, pupil-less eyes, an implausible one-eyed yeti that’s piloting a futuristic helicopter, mini bike riding wrestlers that inexplicably appear in both beige and green flavour,s and a flame spewing Ouroboros snake that might as well have been lifted from a Clip Art pack for Microsoft Paint. It’s a pretty stunning slideshow of cack, considering the two artists from Castaway who were responsible for the look of Yaris had previously worked for big companies like SEGA on projects such as Kid Chameleon and The Ooze, and later for Blizzard on Diablo II. I dunno, Kid Chameleon is pretty old now. Maybe this was their first time making 3D models or something. It certainly looks like it was.
Gameplay-wise, in a jaw dropping display of barely understanding the brief, there’s hardly any driving in Yaris. Sure you can use the left thumbstick to speed up a bit or slow down a bit, or nudge your Yaris of choice left or right to avoid obstacles, but the car basically drives itself around the game’s eight looping tracks. This means the player is able to put more concentration into using the right thumbstick to aim the Mechanosymbionts reticle at your bizarre adversaries. But get this: shooting also has a lock-on mechanic with heavy auto-aim, which makes it a breeze to take out targets. Seriously, up until about midway through, when the game suddenly hits you with a huge difficulty spike by throwing far too many enemies and some bullet sponge boss battles at you, Yaris pretty much plays itself.
And those enemies. Christ on a bike, they either fly onto the screen from behind you and hover there waiting to be shot, or drive onto the screen from behind you and hover there waiting to be shot. Some of them might even occasionally leave an ugly, screen tearing trail of flame PNGs in their wake too. It’s all impossibly grotesque to look at and, unbelievably, it’s just as bad to listen to. Did the developers sample the Yaris’ engine noises perhaps, to give players a better understanding of the car and how it might perform in real life? Did they hell. Your Yaris is silent for the entire game. The only audio you can hear underneath Yaris’ selection of godawful looping soundtracks are the pathetically limp pew pews of whatever weapon your Yaris currently has equipped, the occasional damage sound effect when you run through a wall of flimsy flame effects and the flaccid wibble wibble wibble noise that the wrestlers make when you fire a laser bolt up their backside.
Of course, I’m not the only one who thinks Yaris is Y-awful – reviews at the time were predictably harsh. GamesRadar, for example, politely stated that “there are actually no redeeming qualities to Yaris”, while X-One magazine was much more keen to stick the boot in, simply calling it “a festering turd”. And so, in the face of this overwhelmingly negative reception and an expiring licensing deal between Backbone Entertainment and Toyota, the choice was made to yoink Yaris off of the XBLA before any more damage could be done. Farewell Yaris, your legacy as the worst game ever published on the XBLA will live on in video game history, whether you like it or not.