Rise Of The Robots
It’s probably the biggest faux-pas in gaming, or at least the most well known - Rise of the Robots. Could they have made this game any worse? This was a game so bad that it drove Journalist Stewart Campbell to write an angry letter to Time Warner asking them why they had released such an awful mess (Read here).
None of this would have been so bad if it hadn’t been hyped up to be the "Game Of Teh Futorz!" by various rags and TV programmes of the day. Adverts for the game featured heavy use of the FMV scenes, something which was undeniably incredible on a 16-bit Cartridge based machine, and which blew any tech-savvy kids mind with it’s awesome visuals. Unfortunately, graphic’s aren’t the only fruit. It did have a few seconds of Brain May on it though!
"For me it was all about the hype. Every magazine pretty much covered it and the graphics looked so far ahead of it’s time, they were supposed to be in game too. When it finally arrived it was so poor; the controls were like watching elderlies trying to walk about the same distance as the robots on screen. I thought it would be the future of gaming but in a way it was only the first of many games over the years that could not live up to the hype and promised so much but delivered so little"
- Bigman
Any poor sod unlucky enough to have been bought this by their doddering grandmother, or hadn’t read a review before rushing out to flash the cash, would have had the misfortune of playing a particularly stenchy polished turd.
With only one selectable fighter, stiff animation, rubbish collision detection, unfair multiplayer and ridiculous lack of replayability (Not that you’d want to) it was simply one of the biggest disappointments to anyone who had the displeasure of playing it. Horrible game.
"A response time so slow you could bake a pie between hits. And probably wash up"
- Justsushi
"Think of Street Fighter II, if Street Fighter II’s two-player mode allowed player one to choose only Blanka, while player 2 was allowed E Honda, Balrog, T. Hawk and Chun-Li. Then make it a lottery as to whether your button presses will register, and top it off with 20 seconds of Brian May on the soundtrack, then advertise it as if he performed everything in the game"
- Thwomp
Finding Out You’re Not The Best Gamer In The World
As a kid, king of your own console, you always thought you were the best gamer that ever lived. Back when you could pull off a 21 hit combo on Killer Instinct, destroying your best friends before they even knew what button was "kick", you were lord of your own games collection.
Fast forward to the present. The internet is born, not only do we have every bit of factual information we would ever need (Including made up facts), we have a streamable videos and online gaming.
"[The biggest disappointment for me was] playing Halo online for the first time, only to find that I was not even an average player"
- keirboy
Think you’re amazing at Halo? There’s someone better. Think you’ve got an unbeatable Pacman score? Someone’s beaten it into the ground like a bloody pulp (Unless you’re Billy Mitchell, in which case you can skip this entire section).
Suddenly, all those dreams of being the king of gaming are dashed by every other breathing organism hooked up to Broadband. What once you thought was a killer move on Street Fighter Alpha now turns into muddying confusion as you realise you can actually parry attacks. Who’d have thought it?
What once was the sole competition of backstreet arcade’s in the 80s and 90s has now moved into the front room. Where once you could hide from your own rubbishness, you’re now exposed for the thumbless reject monkey you really are. God damn the internet.
"Off the top of my head, going online with Metroid Prime Hunters for the first time, only to find that I’m absolutely rubbish playing against other people"
- Alistair Thomas
