I Can't Believe I Bought That! - Features

We’ve all done it. Impulse leads to despair. One moment’s weakness leads to the realization that we should have left the wallet at home. In the sense of humor and hindsight that we should all have about our mistakes in life, here are the top ten games that Tazman is most embarrassed about having paid money for.

Newsletter

Be notified of site updates. Sign-up for the Newsletter sent out twice weekly.

Enter E-Mail Address Below:

I Can't Believe I Bought That!

Advertisement

gender wars

10. Gender Wars for PC

A bargain bin mistake. A saw a 3^rd person strategy game with a funny premise of the ultimate battle of the sexes – men versus women for control of the planet. It seemed as though the graphics while not amazing would definitely be serviceable. Upon installing the game, I was rewarded with the opening animation for

either the women or the men’s campaigns then the game froze my PC (which was pretty hard to do on my computer – it had a ton of RAM and a decent processor for its’ time). Calling technical support, I was advised of an update that they would send via mail (this of course being the time before the internet proliferation). Eight weeks later, a new floppy arrived that patch my version to a higher one and it proceeded to crash in exactly the same place. Once again calling tech support, they reported that they were aware of the newer problem and would send me a new patch for the game. Another Eight weeks later, same story: crashed computer, annoyed customer. An even more irate phone call leads to the promise of a third patch and after the final patch the game still won’t load. So two years later, and still no game, and so I lost my patience and turfed the box figuring that this had become an extreme waste of my time (which in of itself is a bold statement, back then my time wasn’t worth squat). If I ever get a chance, the design team of Gender Wars will get a voracious c$%k-punching.

mario is missing

9. Mario Is Missing for PC and SNES

My parents loved buying computer games for myself and my sister, especially when they got her a computer just for her needs (it was really a major refurbishing of about 3 older computers stealing the best components from each of them). One of these pointless games was none other than the horrible Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego rip-off, Mario is Missing. Making this all the more tragic for me was the fact that my parents had me supervise her whenever she played on the

computer, so whenever she played something, I had to tag along. Even for an educational game, this was an impressive waste of time being both boring to play and devoid of any sort of message that would help children develop. Not all Nintendo products can be winners apparently.

rampage nes

"What a disappointment..."

8. Rampage for Nintendo Entertainment System

What happens when you ‘port one of the greatest arcade games to Nintendo? Not much if your name is Rampage apparently. This game was on my mind for 6 months when I saw the first preview in Nintendo Power magazine and I waited anxiously for it to come out. What a disappointment – no Wolfman… lame graphics… and all the tricks in smashing buildings on the arcade version were reduced to one type of attack. This game could theoretically be played all the way to completion in one sitting, assuming of course you had some sort of debilitating sickness or injury that would leave you in a “couch-potato” state. The hype machine strikes again… all that excitement and money dashed in a big letdown, I can’t recall being more depressed about a game that I REALLY wanted.

7. King’s Quest VII : The Princessless Bride for PC

This was the first Sierra game that I REALLY didn’t like. It’s not really a bad game, or one that I’m embarrassed about owning, it just failed to live up to the requirements that I had of all of the Sierra games “a sequel must be more impressive that it’s predecessor”. This was a better looking game that the previous King’s Quest games, but I didn’t like the art style at all and it certainly wasn’t as well thought out as King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow.

To me, I was so disappointed, I wouldn’t even try King’s Quest VIII: Mask of Eternity. This game took away the best feature of the series, explore the country-side and solve the problems in any order you like – it was too compartmentalized and it

Advertisement

felt like you were playing the game with blinders. To me, this game wasn’t King’s Quest, it was some animated knock-off that used the same characters. I know that selection is going to draw some fire… Sierra On-Line was a god of gaming in the 80’s and most of the 90’s and a large part of my PC gaming experience in life, but for me, this was the start of the end for this storied company.

6. Mercenary Force for GameBoy

A simple game, even by GameBoy standards, that had all the soul of a ham sandwich. You build a team of four then travel in a straight line shooting at every opponent – you can change formations for theoretically better attacking and defense and hire new team members every level… if you have a high enough pain threshold to keep playing this game. Every level looks exactly the same, and you have about three different types of enemies to defend against. This game looks like a re-tread from the ole’ Coleco-Vision, not the noble GameBoy. Mom said that I could buy a game, and this is what happens when you buy the closest game instead of the game that looks the best. This was a game so bad that no second hand store would buy it.

mercenary force

Mercenary Force (GBA); Frankenstein (PC)

5. Frankenstein for PC

Another foray into the god-awful film games of the mid-90’s. Every scene was obviously shot on green-screen, and as such, the actors seemed to be working in spite their surroundings. Featuring Tim Curry (who happens to be one of my favorite actors, especially his energetic performance in the movie Clue) in an otherwise forgettable adventure game that seemed to wander from one task to the next. If you could figure out what the hell to do next, you were either a game designer or playing the game with a printout of a walkthrough in your lap. This is what happens when you don’t design a game with any sort of interaction for the player.

4. Oni for PS2

Take a game. Now combine anime and martial arts themes into it. Now take away the possibility of repeating a move twice and make the save points FAAARRRR apart. Also make the game ridiculously hard. There you have it: Oni. If a game is difficult, you can usually convince me to get good at it through practice, but when the game controls stink to high heaven, I’m not that much of a masochist to continue. A better controller layout would have made the game that much more playable and worth it.

Oni (PS2); Undying (PC)

3. Undying for PC

My legendary bashing of this game lives on. An FPS that was bogged down with a War and Peace-like script – every object that you interact with has a back story, and Lord if the game didn’t try to foist it on you in all its’ excessive way. A perfectly fine game if you can get past the absolutely terrible story and move into the (for its’ time) decent action and fighting. I don’t think that I was more annoyed with having paid full price for a game that turned out to be so unplayable by my standards. A horror themed game that never worked until Doom 3 came along and showed you how to be truly terrified of a computer game.

voyeur

2. Voyeur for PC

Damn. This is a prime example of why horny teenagers and video games shouldn’t mix. In an extreme lack of anything boarding on rationality, I bought my first “Mature” game thinking that I might get to see some nudity. Back then, store clerks didn’t check IDs for those

types of games – Lord knows I wish someone had stopped me from buying this one. A pretty cool concept – you are in charge of watching the home of a potential presidential candidate from a nearby apartment in order to investigate some potential criminal activity. The game was one of the first to be nearly exclusively video capture and had about 3 storylines progressing simultaneously – after about five play-throughs you had seen every possible angle. So, in summation, I paid full price (about $55 US) for a game with no nudity and could only be played maybe five times, which would take about an hour and a half to accomplish. I’m a friggin’ idiot.

1. ET for Atari 2600

Holy crap did this game suck! Much has been said by much funnier people about how much this game repositioned the low point of gaming. You have to help ET collect pieces of a phone so he can phone home. Except, every time that you enter a hole to look for a piece of the phone, it may not be there. Climbing out of the hole is problematic at best… you’ve got maybe a 5% chance of climbing out without falling and having to repeat the horrific mistake of continuing the game. Even back in the day, as a six year old who could spend hours articulating the toe of a robot made out of Lego, I

couldn’t play this game more than the ten minutes. Technically, I didn’t pay money for this but then it was bought on my behalf so I accept the blame for this silicon tragedy.

- Tazman

(August 26, 2005)

"I understand some people *cough* Meatwad *cough* don't look good."

- Master Shake (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)


PC \| Gamecube \| DS \| Wii \| PlayStation 2 \| PlayStation 3 \| PSP \| Xbox \| Xbox 360
News \| Reviews \| Previews \| Features \| Classics \| Goodies \| Anime \| Forums