Forum posters and bloggers for other, less-exciting websites have been saying that 2011 was one of the best years ever for videogames—and they are absolutely, unconditionally right. Let’s look at the facts:

FACT: 2011 saw direct sequels to not one, not two, not four, but three former GameCola Games of the Year: Batman: Arkham Asylum, LittleBigPlanet, and Lego Star Wars 2: The Original Trilogy. (Yes, somehow we didn’t give Portal Game of the Year back in 2007, despite the fact that it topped our Top 50 Games of All Time list a few years later.) This is completely unprecedented, unless it’s happened before.

FACT: The Sonic the Hedgehog franchise finally broke its years-long dry spell by releasing a game that was, as many put it, playable.

FACT: For the first time in a decade, we got to know Jack. We also got the closest thing we’re ever going to get to a new Chrono Trigger, and the closest thing we’re ever going to get to a Final Fantasy VII remake.

FACT: Some popular shooting games were probably released, maybe.

FACT: Fans of the Back to the Future franchise were delighted to play as Marty McFly once again in a game that in no way involved giant balls of poop (at least, until the inevitable DLC comes out).

We gather here today to celebrate these games. Well, not these games. None of the games I’ve mentioned so far (save for one) actually won any GameCola awards this year. But others did, and we’re here to discuss the crap out of them.

Who are we? Well:

• Matt Jonas, news reporter, reviewer and video-er,
• Kate Jay, author and illustrator of “The Gates of Life,”
• Mark Freedman, reviewer and author of “What the Crap?“,
• Elizabeth “Lizo” Medina-Gray, editor as well as occasional reviewer,
• Vangie Ridgaway, author of “Gamer Girlfriend” and occasional podcaster and reviewer,
• Christian Porter, artist, blogger, news reporter, podcaster, reviewer, video-er and organizer, as well as author of “Poor Player’s Paradise,” Top of the Heap,” and “Power Gloves & Tinfoil Hats,”
• Alex Jedraszczak, the podcast master,
• Jillian Dingwall, reviewer,
• Michael Ridgaway, reviewer, podcaster, and former author of “Quantum Geek,”
• Nathaniel Hoover, editor, reviewer, podcaster, video-er, YouTube administrator, artist of “Sprite Flicker” and author of “Flash Flood” and “Impaired Closed Captioning,”
• Daniel Castro, author of “Don’t Be That Guy,”
• And, finally, me.

So join us today in celebrating 2011: the year that was, and, as always, be sure to tell us in the comments exactly where we went wrong. Here, I’ll start:

Where the hell is Gunstringer?!

Best Licensed Game

Batman: Arkham City

Christian Porter: The Batman: Arkham (Progressively Larger Geographic Location) series has been full of surprises. Arkham Asylum not only shirked convention by being a good superhero game, but it was actually an amazing game to boot, winning GameCola’s coveted 2009 Game of the Year title. Now Arkham City shirks convention by turning the sequel into a sandbox without making the game seem crammed with filler, and the game is still just as fun as the original. The same high-quality writing and voice acting also return, with tons of Batman villains around every corner, but somehow not feeling like they’ve all been shoehorned in. It’s an amazing adventure and, any other year, would be a shoo-in for Game of the Year.

Honorable Mention: Back to the Future: The Game
Last Year’s Winner: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game

Best Remake/Re-release

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D

Daniel Castro: What else can be said about this game? It’s freaking Ocarina of Time, a game remembered as one of the best games ever made—and now it looks so damn awesome that we won’t feel at all embarrassed showing it off to future generations. It’s not the perfect remake, since there aren’t any new additions besides prettier aesthetics, but I guess not everyone was waiting for newer mechanics or anything else for the game that they cared about and loved so many years ago. And, hey! The 3D effects are gorgeous, it’s portable, and you can aim by tilting your Nintendo 3DS in front of your face, which means I can finally play Ocarina of Time on the bus, drunkenly trying to aim at anything with the slingshot, while other passengers play shitty music on their cell phones. It’s fun!

Honorable Mention: No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise
Last Year’s Winner: Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck’s Revenge

Best Use of Motion Controls

Child of Eden

Jillian Dingwall: Child of Eden is an arcade-style shooter in which you use your hands to target and destroy various enemies. It’s set in space, and the object of the game is to rescue a super-hot fairy girl who has been eaten by what appears to be the Internet.

This game is HARD. It’s quite confusing to begin with, and the enemies come flying at you from all angles resulting in flailing arms, sweaty armpits, unattractive facial expressions and frustratingly continuous failure. As a “game,” it’s not that great; however, you can switch off the super-death mode and play the game in the much less challenging  ”Feel Eden” mode (Eden being the name of the environment, not the fairy—that game would be called Child of Molestation), and this is where you begin to appreciate the genius of the game’s concept.

Child of Eden combines its  surroundings, music and motion controls beautifully, and when you remove the fear of death, the game becomes a highly enjoyable, exciting and ethereal experience. Shooting different enemies produces different effects which blend together seamlessly to create your very own, unique sound. The motion controls are impressively responsive and make you feel as though you really are in control of the celestial surroundings. I agree with those who feel it may not be the best game in the world, but as an experience, it’s definitely a worthy winner. Motion control is still in its infancy, but if Child of Eden is anything to go by, we have a lot to look forward once it hits puberty.

Honorable Mentions: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword; The Gunstringer
Last Year’s Winner: N/A

Best New Character

Wheatley
(Portal 2)

Christian Porter: Homer Simpson, Rose Nylund, Jenny McCarthy—everybody likes a lovable moron. In Portal 2, Stephen Merchant fills the moron shoes perfectly. (I mean that in a good way.) Valve really hit the nail on the head by letting Merchant ad lib to his heart’s content, with some of the best comedy in the game coming from standing around and waiting to see what Wheatley will say next. No matter how many awful situations his rampant stupidity gets you into, Wheatley is simply impossible to hate.

Honorable Mention: Cave Johnson (Portal 2)
Last Year’s Winner: Sheep Man (Mega Man 10)

Most Innovative

Bastion

Alex Jedraszczak: To say that Bastion is the most innovative game of 2011 is a little odd. The game itself is a pretty solid action/adventure type game, but that genre has been around long enough to be fairly finely tuned. The innovation is all in exploration and storytelling.

The world literally drops from the sky as you explore. More than a cool visual effect, this leaves you always knowing when you’ve been someplace before. It’s pretty obvious where you’ve been, and this guides you where you need to be without needless exposition.

The game’s main claim to fame, however, is the storytelling. Rather than reading through boring text before getting to play the game, the story is told as you’re playing. The end result is a game that flows very well, and can be pretty entertaining when the narration is tailored to your in-game actions.

Honorable Mentions: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective; Catherine
Last Year’s Winner: Heavy Rain

Best Story

Portal 2

Portal 2

Nathaniel Hoover: Hmm…Portal 2, you say? Is it really the funniest game of the year? Absolutely. Unless you’re adopted. Or obese. Or a sympathizer to either demographic, for that matter. However, we here at GameCola are horrible, insensitive people, so we think it’s pretty hysterical. Eminently quotable. From the mad ramblings of Cave Johnson to the moronic assertions of Wheatley to the sarcastic barbs of GLaDOS, there’s no shortage of creativity in the humor. Throw in a prophetic talking turret, legions of its dimwitted cousins, a droll male computer, outrageous personality spheres, a few wonderful sight gags, and all the hilarious situations afforded by portals, springboards, and bouncy goo—especially in (un)co-operative multiplayer—and you’ve got pretty much the only game we could have voted for this year.

Honorable Mention: No More Heroes: Heroes’ Paradise
Last Year’s Winner: No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle

Best New Peripheral

3DS Retractable Stylus

Paul Franzen: Oooh. Oh, baby. Come here, my baby. Let me slide this thing in. And slide it out. Slide it in. Slide it out. Over and over. Aren’t we having fun, my baby? You can touch it, if you’d like. Just don’t scratch up the screen; this thing cost me $250 and still doesn’t have any games.

…Wait, what? What did you think I was talking about? I’m talking about the new stylus that comes bundled with the Nintendo 3DS! It’s retractable! That means you can make it whatever length is most comfortable to you! Stop it; there’s nothing sexual about that. And it’s fun to play with, too, while you’re playing with yourself. I mean, playing games! With yourself. Phew. I can’t believe I got through this whole thing without any innuendo.

Honorable Mentions: Wappy Dog; Pop Star Sparkle Gloves
Last Year’s Winner: Pokéwalker

Best Multiplayer

Portal 2

Vangie Ridgaway: In the Portal 2 co-op mode, GLaDOS has finally found a more self-sufficient mode of conducting her scientific testing at Aperture Science. Her latest creations are P-body and ATLAS, a modified turret and personality sphere, respectively, who are now possessed of arms, legs, and portal guns of their own. Together, the two of them explore a completely new set of testing areas, which are specifically designed for two players, and require both guns (meaning a total of four active portals!) to complete. The new puzzles require a fair bit of cooperation on the part of the players, which ironically seems to annoy GLaDOS, as she is constantly trying to set her two new testers against one another through her unique brand of “encouragements.” Expect more cleverly designed puzzles, a fun twist on the original portal gun mechanic, and more of the humor that the Portal series has become famous for.

Honorable Mentions: Trine 2; Gears of War 3
Last Year’s Winner: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game

Best Indie Game

Bastion

Michael Ridgaway: I could go on and on (and have) about Bastion’s fun Diablo-style gameplay, its beautifully vivid graphics, the poignantly shattered apocalypse it centers around, the amazing use of narration in the storytelling, or the awesome soundtrack that I find myself listening to at least once every few days. I could talk about those things, and they’d all be true, but for the moment I want to focus on how earnest the fans are and how keen Supergiant Games is to return that affection. For instance, one gentleman wrote to them asking for help in making his wedding ceremony extra special, and they delivered. A soldier in Afghanistan was not able to get a digital version of the game, so they specially made and sent him a physical copy of the game. Bastion really is the full package here, folks: an awesome game with awesome people behind it.

Honorable Mention: Orcs Must Die!
Last Year’s Winner: Super Meat Boy

Best PC Game

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Mark Freedman: If someone says the name Elder Scrolls to you, and all you can think of is your grandpa trying to figure out how a mouse wheel works, it’s time to get on the Skyrim bandwagon. I can’t think of any other game where, after playing 60 hours, you can still feel like you’ve only scratched the surface. Compared to other open-ended worlds, this game has the scale of an entire galaxy. Even if you’re not interested in combat, there’s so many beautiful mountains, lakes, caves, and forts to discover. With over 60,000 lines of dialogue and hundreds of hours you can spend playing, you’re definitely getting your money’s worth here. Kill some bears, craft your own armor, learn some spells, betray some townsfolk, or reanimate the dead…it’s all up to you. Despite its many bugs, this is truly a breathtaking adventure.

Specific to the PC version, some really great mods are finally coming out that make it feel more like a PC experience. There haven’t been a whole lot of beards in videogames, but Skyrim majestically integrates the tenacity and allure of beards in to such an epic quest as ever you’ll see.

Honorable Mention: Star Wars: The Old Republic
Last Year’s Winner: Mass Effect 2

Best Console Game

Portal 2

Kate Jay: The original Portal made its mark on the gaming world with its witty dialogue, innovative concept, and fast-paced gameplay. Fans asked for a sequel, and Valve gave us everything we asked for and more: Portal 2 took that theme and ran with it, releasing with a fully-fledged story with actual character development, backstory, and, of course, more snarkiness. Playing through Portal 2, we learn more about the history of Aperture Science and the men and women who made it what is was (before GLaDOS killed everyone, that is). Valve added new Aperture Products, including three types of gel, robots for the multiplayer levels, and defective personality cores. To add more frosting on this delicious, theoretical cake, Valve also provided players with plenty of free—yes, FREE—downloadable content for the multiplayer and single player campaigns. Portal 2 is clever, quirky, and charming, and it most definitely takes the cake.

Honorable Mention: Batman: Arkham City
Last Year’s Winner: Super Mario Galaxy 2

Best Portable Game

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

Elizabeth “Lizo” Medina-Gray: What if you were dead, but you didn’t know how or why you died, and you couldn’t remember who you were? And then what if you found out that you could manipulate objects in the world, and even go back in time and save other peoples’ lives? And what if you learned of a mysterious conspiracy tied somehow to your murder, and you had only until dawn to figure everything out before you disappeared forever? Then you’d be the main character in Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective!

Ghost Trick is a new game from the creator of the Ace Attorney series (and we all know how well-loved those games are here at GameCola). Fortunately for all of us Phoenix Wright fans who were hoping for another great portable game, Ghost Trick delivers in full. The characters are quirky and well-developed, the graphics and music are awesome, and the mechanics are unique, challenging, and fun. But, like the Ace Attorney games before, the thing that really made Ghost Trick stand out for me was its story. Many times, I’ve played a game and found myself disappointed because it didn’t surprise me in a big way—sometimes I feel like the ideas I have and the guesses that I make while playing a game are more interesting than what the writers actually do. With Ghost Trick, though, I had the exact opposite experience. I didn’t come close to guessing the ending, but beyond that, the story went places that I never saw coming, and that was a great thing for me. Plus, the story’s just really cool!

With awesome characters, a compelling story, only a couple of annoying puzzles among the many good ones, and probably my favorite graphics on the DS to date, Ghost Trick is definitely a winner.

Honorable Mentions: Pokémon Black/White; Super Mario 3D Land
Last Year’s Winner: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

Best Downloadable Game

Bastion

Kate Jay: It’s not often that I download Xbox Live games, but then, it’s not often that games like Bastion come along to entice me. At a glance, this indie games seems like your typical RPG: a young hero sets out to save his world from destruction. However, Bastion takes a different approach to the whole “rebuilding the world” theme—the world literally rebuilds itself around you as you move around the richly colored isometric map. To make the experience even more unique, your adventure is narrated blow-by-blow in the mellow tones of Rucks, an NPC voiced by Logan Cunningham. Gameplay is fast paced, if a little repetitive, but the story moves pretty quickly, keeping the experience fresh. A sensational soundtrack rounds out this refreshing game, making it a must-buy for any RPG fans.

Honorable Mention: Trine 2
Last Year’s Winner: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game

GameCola Staff Member of the Year

Alex Jedraszczak

Paul Franzen: A lot has changed since Alex (real name: Jeddy) first won this award in 2007. GameCola changed formats, from a monthly e-mail newsletter to an actual Internet website. All of our writers decided to grow magnificent beards. Our site started having actual fans. But while he won last time because he was the only person who consistently submitted his articles in on time, this year, he won because he helped bring GameCola to an all-new level in 2011—and the fact that we have actual fans now is due in no small part to him.

The GameCola Podcast, under the Jedraszczak regime, has way more listeners now than ever it had before. I mean, it has actual listeners now! Listeners who send us e-mails, ask us questions, record covers of our theme song on their saxophones, and draw pictures of us as the cast of Phoenix Wright. (Note: This hasn’t actually happened yet, but here’s hoping.) Kevin Leacock won this award last year for making the site much more accessible to new fans; this year, Jeddy’s winning for drawing those new fans to the site. Whether he’s role-playing as Metroid, singing the theme songs to old Nickelodeon shows, or just sitting back and letting us argue the merits of Ace Attorney Investigations, you can bet that, if you’re listening to a Jedrazcast, your next hour is going to be awesome.

And he still gets everything in on time, too. You can set your calendar by it.

Honorable Mentions: Matt Jonas, Christian Porter
Last Year’s Winner: Kevin Leacock

Game of the Year

Portal 2

Michael Ridgaway: Man, what was it with 2011 and awesome storytelling?

Portal 2 refined and added a lot to the platformer/puzzle elements from the first game for yet another amazing quantum-tunneling exploratory experience, but where it really shined was the story. In addition to the ever delightful GLaDOS, players were introduced to Wheatley and Cave Johnson, voiced by professional actors Stephen Merchant and J.K. Simmons, respectively. I’m not sure I ever stopped laughing while playing the game, and it very squarely fell into the category of “games I can only play with Vangie around or she will straight up cut me.”

Portal 2 proved that it was possible to tell an exciting, entertaining story in the context of an excellent game, and it raised the bar not just for videogames, but all other forms of media, as well.

Honorable Mention: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Last Year’s Winner: Heavy Rain

Videogames, Sensory Deletion, and The Shadow Government

Videogames have been in the mainstream for over 30 years now, yet it seems we still can’t get through a year without the news media telling us “Those dadgum Intendo tapes are ruinin’ the chillin’s minds.”

Well, what if they’re right? What if there’s a game whose purpose is to burn away any capacity for dissent within you and transform you into a complaisant drone, devoid of any dreams, goals, or ambition, satisfied with whatever life hands you like a good do-bee?

The story of the mysterious arcade game Polybius suggests that this could be the case.

The Story

In 1981, a mysterious arcade cabinet suddenly started popping up around the suburbs of Portland, OR. The cabinet was solid black with one button, one joystick, and a marquee that read “Polybius.” Soon after it appeared, people started playing the machines and were immediately hooked. Word spread quickly, and lines constantly formed around the machines with people eager to play again. Owners of establishments which had these machines reported visits from mysterious men in black who would not collect marketing information or even quarters from the machines—they would only collect unknown data and leave. People who played Polybius reported that they experienced night terrors, amnesia, insomnia, memory loss, and even an inability to feel sadness¹.  The game is said to even be directly responsible for a few cases of suicide. Then, as suddenly as the machines appeared, they were gone. Many people who played the games eventually developed an aversion to videogames, and one even became an anti-videogame activist.

The first pieces of evidence for Polybius’s existence were limited to this screenshot of the main screen:

And this black-and-white photo of a Polybius cabinet:

The cabinet picture corroborates reports that it was an all-black cabinet with simplistic controls. The screenshot gives little information except for introducing the game’s designer, Sinnesloschen Inc. (which translates from German as “Sensory Delete”).

The Internet Has Their Say…

The story spread across the Internet in the early 2000s and, though its origins are not certain, the legend is thought to originate from a Usenet post. Eventually the story gained such notoriety that it even enjoyed a brief reference in an episode of The Simpsons.

The Internet being as it is, rumors started flying fast and furious with leads on Polybius’s origins and where it is now.

Many people claimed to have a copy of the original Polybius ROM, but all of them refused to release it, most saying that, the budding philanthropists that they are, they were afraid of the adverse health effects they may loose upon the world. How thoughtful. (Though, a recreation of how people thought the game would play is available at http://www.sinnesloschen.com/, a Polybius tribute site.)

The game was said to have been developed by Ed Rotberg (Battlezone), though stories have surfaced that Atari and possibly Sega were also involved. Some claimed that Polybius’s gameplay was similar to Atari’s Tempest, except that it utilized strobe effects, and instead of you moving your character directly, it was the entire maze around it that moved, creating an optical tunnel effect.

One piece of information that was uncovered and has been largely accepted as part of the Polybius mythos comes from a 2006 comment that appeared on CoinOp.com’s Polybius entry that purported to be written by Steven Roach, who identified himself as part-owner of Sinnesloschen. To summarize his post, Sinnesloschen was allegedly contracted by an unnamed company from the southern United States to develop a game they had an idea for. A story is told with great detail to attention about working environments, contracts, etc. Skip ahead a bit and the writer discusses a story about a kid who suffered an epileptic fit due to Polybius. However, they settled out of court, so no documentation exists. The “men in black” described in the story were explained as being company directors assessing the machines. If you want to read the full post, it’s on the coinop.com listing for Polybius in the comments on this page.

Coinop.org reported in 2009 that they were going to Ukraine to research a lead they got about Polybius, and that they would report on their findings once they got back. Three years later nothing has been posted. I’ve contacted Coinop.org but have not received a response as of the time of publishing. If they get back to me afterward I will update this article with any information they give me.

…And Nothing of Value Was Gained

All this information is great and all, and it’s a cool story—but does it hold water? First thing’s first, we have to separate the wheat from the chaff and figure out, of the information provided after the story was posted, how much is legit.

Let’s take a look at the two pictures that were originally released—the cabinet and the screenshot. Considering how easy these would be to Photoshop, it’s hard to call them evidence at all, so those are out.

But what of Ed Rotberg of Battlezone fame’s involvement? Well, it turns out he’s been interviewed about this before, so take it from the man himself:

“…I can state with confidence that I never saw or heard of, and certainly never worked on any game called Polybius. I understand that my name has somehow gotten connected to this game (if it ever existed), and have even seen some sites that purport to show the screen display, ‘game play’, etc. I have had nothing to do with any of those.” – Ed Rotberg²

So there goes Ed. We’re almost back to where we started, except for one thing: Steven Roach. If you read the story, it’s very detailed—but that’s what I think tarnishes its credibility. The story is too detailed, like the author was really trying to anchor himself into the Polybius story and win over skeptics with a glut of facts. The fact that they worked in portacabins, details on what district of Portland the kid who had an epileptic fit lived in, the fact that playtesting figures were collated—are these the details you’d include if you were telling the story? Ones you’d consider important? Hell, after 25 years are these even details you’d remember?

Coinop.org seems to agree.

“Quick update, we just wanted to go on record here that Steven Roach is full of himself, and knows nothing about this game. We have it on good authority. No, Polybius is not a Tempest prototype. No, Polybius is not a vector game. Does the title screen look vector? No, it does not.”- coinop.org May 16, 2009.³

These, however, are just opinions, not proof. I searched around the Internet for proof of Steven Roach’s identity and finally found it at the Retrogamer.net forums⁴.

It was a 150-post discussion, so I’ll give you the play-by-play:

• Steven Roach (Stevenroach) posts the same “I want to clear things up” spiel.
• User, Space_Ace and others reply that they are skeptical.
• Stevenroach answers some questions and says he may have more proof, but he will have to dig it up/get legal clearances.
• Users ask what the game was about.
• Stevenroach evades that “What’s the game about?” question for about three posts. After being grilled a bit, he divulges the info. It was action based but with number puzzles.
• Stevenroach gives the full backstory on the Sinneslöschen name—it was blurted out at the last minute by a co-worker when they were on the phone with their lawyer and needed to quickly come up with a business name.
• Enter Porkpie, a user that immediately defends Stevenroach and demands people being skeptical of him to apologize.
• Enter Baxter, a man with a background in the game industry who discusses why Polybius is very plausible and compliments Stevenroach’s writing.

The conversation died for a few months at this point, so I feel this is a good time for me to comment on something I thought was very strange. If you buy this story, then this means that the company, Sinnesloschen, which means “Sensory Delete” in German, accidentally made a videogame that allegedly deletes senses. If that’s the case, I’m going to start a company with this Steven Roach guy and we’re going to name it after the German words for “Blow Jobs and Ice-Cream Sundaes,” and see what happens.

Also, if you look at the conversation, people really had to grill him to get any information out of him about the game. Even very vague information—people were saying “just tell me if it was puzzle or action,” and it took quite a while for him to come out with it. That’s suspicious for someone who wanted to “set the record straight.”

Anyway, skip ahead a few months; the thread is revived and someone notices something important: that Stevenroach, Space_ace, Porkpie and Baxter—the most active commenters in the thread—have a suspiciously similar writing style. (And they do. Stevenroach, Space_ace and Porkpie, for example, all double space at the end of their post and sign their name. That’s uncommon in forums.) A mod researches and verifies that Stevenroach, Space_ace, Porkpie and Baxter are all coming from the same IP.

I’d say this pretty well debunks the whole Steven Roach story, but I’m nothing if not a good skeptic, so I’ll entertain the idea that it’s possible that the Stevenroach commenting on those forums isn’t the same as the original one from the Coinop.com messages. This seems a bit unlikely, though—the writing styles between the retrogamer.net and coinop.org personalities are very similar. His writing is reasonably eloquent, but a giveaway is that it’s overly descriptive, a desperate attempt to make his story seem anchored in reality. However, I think the case-closer here is the more damning fact that the retrogamer.net user Space_Ace, who was later found to be Stevenroach, registered his handle on March 17, 2006, three days before the Steven Roach post appeared on CoinOp.com. This soundly puts to bed the notion that Steven Roach plays a part in this story any greater than tacking a hoax backstory onto the original legend.

The Shadow Government: Malicious, Cunning, but Not Too Bright

A hobbyist’s recreated Polybius cabinet.

The biggest problem with the Polybius story itself and the data-harvesting G-men is one that is common to many the-government-is-evil-and-out-to-get-me conspiracy theories—it postulates the existence of an incredibly sly, technologically-advanced shadow government that is at the same time an evil genius capable of launching a mind-control device right under the public’s nose without their knowledge, and a bumbling moron so stupid that it achieved exactly zero of its goals. Add to this the fact that they supposedly have these amazing resources, yet they somehow didn’t have anyone talented enough to code the game in-house, so they had to outsource it to Sinneslöschen. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that rule number one in the Secret Evil Organization Handbook is “be self-contained.” Since they purportedly weren’t self-contained, this means they had no real control over the code of the game, so they would have had to actually explain to the coders at Sinneslöschen “Yes, we want it to be similar to Tempest, except this one erases all senses and life goals from the person playing it and gives them a feeling of lobotomized contentedness for the rest of their lives. Oh, and a love for toil, if you can fit it in.” Also, I’m no military strategist, but I’m pretty certain that the CIA almost certainly wouldn’t want other countries to know how our super-advanced mind-control devices work—that just seems like national security 101.

This brings me to the fact that Sinnesloschen means “sensory deleting,” which I’ve touched upon a bit already. Now the U.S. may be a pretty unilingual country on the whole, but if people were lining up to play this game at multiple locations for several weeks, then simple probability dictates that AT LEAST one person would know enough German to know what that says. They might not think anything of it at the time outside of “what a weird name for a company,” but later when they’re waking up screaming, having forgotten their childhood, unable to feel normal emotions, they might look back at that and think “You know, that might have been more literal than I initially thought.”

Also, regarding the men in black not taking the quarters—of course they wouldn’t. Generally, the game company doesn’t collect the quarters; the owners of the establishment the machine is in does. Then they usually write a check to the game company for the licensing/rental fees.

The Verdict

Some people say that the Polybius legend came about from a seed of truth: that a game in the 1980s (possibly a prototype of Tempest itself) caused epileptic seizures in those who played it, and the mystique of “men in black” and more creepy symptoms eventually were added to the story. Though that may have happened, frankly, I don’t believe that the Polybius myth is based on any truth at all. I will, however, admit that I believe something is missing in the story. If it began on Usenet, I think it’s been retold so much that a crucial piece was left out in the re-tellings—something tied to the game’s namesake, Polybius, an ancient Greek historian. You see, Polybius wasn’t just a historian; he was also a budding cryptographer, inventing a decoding tool named for him called the Polybius square.

A normal Polybius square, used for deciphering codes.

Maybe I’m just reading too deep into it, but this fact seems too good to be coincidence. Why choose Polybius, an obscure Greek historian, to name the game in your story after? Even Sinnesloschen means something related to the story, so it seems out of place for the game itself to be a completely randomly chosen name. I think there was a big punchline/scare at the end of the story that required the reader to recognize a code and decode it. However, even with that addition, since all the evidence crumbles upon any kind of inquiry, the story is still 100% fiction.

Some people ask “If the story is fake, why would someone just make it up?” Just a passing glance at YouTube will show what some people are willing to do for the chance at a soupçon of fame. Create a creepy enough story on Usenet or wherever, and you can take pride every time you hear about it online, in the news, or even in The Simpsons.

But even if somebody did dig up a legitimate ROM, I highly doubt that any videogame could have such a profound effect on one’s psyche that–

ALL GLORY TO POLYBIUS.

ALL GLORY TO POLYBIUS.

ALL GLORY TO POLYBIUS.

sources:
1.Polybius Theory
2.Den of Geek
3.CoinOp.org
4.RetroGamer.net forums

Sitting down for a few online matches can be a fun way to relax after a hard day at work or school. But it’s hard to avoid getting even more frustrated when we have to share our games with idiotic players.

In this column, we’ll talk about some of the worst offenders and how they end up corrupting the hell out of our gaming experiences, and we kindly invite you to…well, don’t be that guy.

You know the drill, right? Every single game with a multiplayer component has its whole assortment of cheap tactics and exploits that players abuse in order to defeat their adversaries.

There’s a lot of stuff to complain about if we’re talking about shooting games, like campers, noob-tubers, grenade spammers, bunny hoppers, etc. But cheap tactics aren’t exclusive to a particular genre; real-time strategy games have tankers and rushers; fighting games have shield-grabbers, turtles and cookie-cutter combos; and Mario Kart games have blue shells (that stupid blue shell!)

This month’s and incoming editions of “Don’t Be That Guy” are going to address those cheap tactics and playstyles. But unlike before, I’m not just telling you to stop using them; you already know that you shouldn’t. I’m asking you to stop complaining about them!

We need to understand something: We can’t fight the cause of this problem. Cheap tactics, game glitches, and physics exploits are part of every game; they’ve always been there and they always will be, and people are going to exploit them because the goal of every game is winning, and normal, reasonable people do what it takes—within the rules of the game—in order to do so.

Rather, we’re going to focus on the effects. I’ll try to make you aware that these cheap tactics are fair and perfectly normal. I’m not saying that they’re OK. No, I’m not! It’s perfectly fine to feel bothered about them, but yelling at random strangers online or cursing in message boards is not the solution, either.

So, What’s Cheap, Anyway?

We deride as cheap any kind of winning playstyle that we don’t think is as skillful as our own—and we get stuck on that idea because the way we choose to play is the way we think the game is supposed to be played.

Let’s face it: Online multiplayer games make everything look stupid. Just look at the current shooting games of this generation; there are people jumping around, roadie-runs and, apparently, nowadays combatants can survive multiple bullet wounds, but they’d die instantly at the first sign of stabbing.

That’s part of the reason we think some playstyles are cheap: because we play the “this doesn’t happen in real life” card.

Some people complain about games for being unrealistic, while others complain about games for being too realistic. There isn’t a standardized system for the sense of reality on every title; each one has its own set of rules, and you’ve got to accept them if you want to play it.

Don’t be…this guy!

But what happens when people are ruining your gaming experience by exploiting the game’s rules, physics, or glitches?

That’s easy. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Go to your game library or game store.
2. Pick a game, an entirely different game.
3. You’re done!

See? You’re not obligated to like every game, and you shouldn’t play a game you’re no longer enjoying, unless you consider yourself a masochist. Seriously, there are other games out there that might deserve your attention, and one of them could have everything you’re looking for.

But what if you really like that game, but you just can’t stand that thing (or sum of things) in particular? Well, let yourself be heard! But do it properly! Don’t yell at random strangers online, don’t troll around in message boards, and don’t send death threats to any game developer. Be smart. Be polite. Talk about it with your fellow gamers; write about it in your blog, favorite forum, or social network; and provide sensible feedback to the people in charge of the game.

Good developers and publishers pay attention to what people are saying about their games. They want their next titles to be sold; they’re not going to mess around if people are no longer enjoying their product. And in this modern era, companies can also update their games to address glitches and balance issues whenever necessary.

Remember the release of Gears of War 2? What a mess!

We’ll continue with this subject in the next edition of “Don’t Be That Guy.” For now, I invite you to read Vangie Ridgaway’s “Gamer Girlfriend: Candy Corn Games.” She did an excellent and funny analogy about why you don’t have to play a game you don’t like, no matter if everyone’s telling you that you should.

Over 8 million people purchased Halo 3. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas sold a whopping 12 million. And Nintendo can’t defecate out Pokémon and “Wii Insert Random Thing To Do Here” games fast enough to completely satisfy the masses. But with all these amazing successes, there have been numerous games and even complete series that have fallen to the wayside. Remember: for every Super Mario Bros., there’s a Shutokou Battle 2: Drift King Keichii Tsuchiya & Masaaki Bandoh. As a proud gamer, I feel that it is my privilege—nay, my duty—to take some time and offer a brief glimpse at many of the games that either disappeared into bargain bins and trash bins alike due to overshadowing from more prominent titles, as well as titles that will forever remain sequestered within one region of the world. You’d better be prepared to be educated a little, because there is much that you haven’t seen.

January 2012:
Ganpuru: Gunman’s Proof

It’s the new year, and that means a whole new set of obscure games.

THOSE MAYANS BETTER NOT BE FUCKING WITH US. THIS COLUMN NEEDS TO END THIS YEAR, AND I NEED TO GET BACK TO MY TRUE PASSION.

And what would that be?

PILATES.

Really! I’m quite surprised, considering your general lack of flexibility in all other aspects.

WHY, YOU CHEEKY BITCH!

No, really. I think I may have misjudged you. I had you pegged as a firm, unlovable coot, enveloping a bitter, soured soul. Yet within that crusty exterior lies a heart of pure gold; there is sensitivity flowing through your veins, shackled down like rickety manacles, simply aching to burst out and spread like a brushfire. Your love of spirituality, developed through the self-mastering art of pilates, is just the beginning to the true you. Am I correct?

ACTUALLY, I JUST LIKE STARING AT CHICKS IN SPANDEX PANTS BENDING OVER. THAT’S MY FAVOURITE GAME OF BURGERTIME!

What?!

ER…I MEAN, DON’T YOU HAVE A GAME FOR US THIS MONTH?

Well, yes, though I’m now a tad distracted. Er…um…ah yes! This month’s entry into the GameCola Hall of Obscure Fame is Gunpuru: Gunman’s Proof for the Super Famicom (the Japanese equivalent of the SNES, for those not in the know). It would have come over this way had the popularity of the SNES not faded so quickly in 1997. I believe the game could have seen modest success here, considering it’s set in the Old West!

Taking on the role of a young boy on a tropical island (with strong western undertones…and a crappy saloon) in the year 1880, you are soon possessed by the Space Sheriff, Zero, who can give you extraordinary powers beyond that of a typical human. Don’t get too excited—that just means he can survive a bit longer during his dungeon-crawling adventures, although your character can also wield a flamethrower, an unusual feat for the 19th century. Anyway, your overall goal is to stop the conquerage of the island from Demi, the space vigilante who has naught but evil on his mind! Taking down all of his minions (a splended mix of foreign devils and blue possessed humans with mild to moderate gunmanship skills) is your main goal, though you can also enjoy some fiiiiine scenery along the way. Other than that, it’s your typical friendly top-down adventure game, not unlike Zelda: A Link to the Past, but with more unusual-looking town citizens.

ZELDA, EH? I HEAR THAT’S A GOOD SERIES.

It sure is. Ever play Wand of Gamelon? Flackin’ brilliant.

SO I GUESS YOU’D OPENLY RECOMMEND THIS GUNPOO, ER, WHATEVER YOU CALLED THIS GAME…

Yeah, if you can get your hands on it.

SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN.

Hey, when did you put your leg over your head?

JUST PRACTICING MY PILATES POSITIONS. I’M LOOKING TO SCORE A HOT DATE TONIGHT!

Ah, you British folk and your presumed “charm.” Anyway, welcome to 2012, a year of new and exciting obscure games!

YOU MEAN THIS COLUMN ISN’T ACTUALLY GOING TO END? AUGH—DAMMIT!

With all the quality reviews, delightful columns, and hard-hitting game journalism you can find here at GameCola, it’s sometimes hard to believe that the site’s written by regular people like you and me, and not a race of evolutionarily advanced superhumans. To help bridge this divide between staff and reader, we’ve set up this column so you can get a look at our staff’s personal opinions on serious issues. Serious issues like the following:

This month’s question was submitted by our own Jillian Dingwall, and it is:

What movie would you like to see turned into a videogame?

Matt Jonas
The Neverending Story

It would be a wide, open world role-playing game laced with J-RPG elements. You play as Atreyu, following the guidance of AURYN, as you quest to save Fantasia from The Nothing. What would be ironic, though, is that the film is concerned with the growing problem of children not reading books or using their imagination as much as they used to, something that videogames themselves are partly responsible for. Therefore, the game should focus on using complicated puzzles to tax the mind of the player. The game should also shatter the fourth wall at the end, but in its own fashion, different from the film.

(Matt is a staff reviewer and news blogger.)

Stuart Gipp
Indecisive Bastard

I’ve been throwing a few suggestions around, nothing too in-depth, but a broad succession of brief pitches that may interest.

Perhaps a PC title based on Nicole Kassell’s challenging piece, The Woodsman? Gameplay could take the form of QTEs in which Kevin Bacon sees small children off in the distance, and must rhythmically press “B” to fight his urges and re-integrate into society.

I also feel that there are real financial prospects for a game based on the seminal stage musical-turned-film, Mamma Mia. The main character must investigate three potential father figures to determine which one is, in fact, her father. Investigation mechanics are handled through a mixture of basic deduction and Bemani song and dance routines. A secret bonus mode would take the form of a reverse tower defense game where the player is a male attempting to leave the movie theatre without being stopped or noticed by his wife.

A game based on Last Tango in Paris, where gamers take the role of Marlon Brando and use the Kinect to apply butter to Maria Schneider’s anus before simulating rough anal sex.

Finally, it’s always been obvious to me that, though critically savaged, 1993’s Bob Hoskins-starring Super Mario Bros. would make for a compelling videogame, given a few small changes.

(Stuart Gipp is a staff reviewer and the author of “Ctrl-Alt-Del: The Animated Series: In Review: Diary of a Madman.”)

Kate Jay
Return to Oz

I’d like to see the old Return to Oz movie turned into a game. But developers would have to keep the creepy, dark feeling to it, including the part with the hall of screaming heads. It would adapt pretty well to a game format, with plenty of potential sidequests, explorable areas, and twisted humor. All in all, nothing like the actual Oz books, but then again, neither was the movie.

(Kate is the author and illustrator of “The Gates of Life.”)

Paul Franzen
Super Mario Bros.: The Movie

Imagine, if you will, an alternate-universe edition of the Super Mario games, where Goombas are giant lizards with little tiny heads, the mushroom power-ups are sentient, and the giant fish that eats you in Mario 3 is, instead, an enormous black woman with Thwomps strapped to her feet. Also, you’re playing as Bob Hoskins, digitally inserted into the game ala the characters in Mortal Kombat, and Yoshi is a goddamn tyrannosaurs rex. And in the final boss battle, Bowser (as portrayed by a digitally inserted Dennis Hopper, of course) has a gun that can turn you into a monkey.

Just tell me that wouldn’t be the best Mario hack ever.

(Paul is GameCola’s Editor-in-Chief as well as author of “Minus the Pudding: The Best of Xbox Live Indie Games.”)

Mark Freedman
Spaceballs

Spaceballs: The Video Game. I got the idea when someone made a multiplayer character mod for Jedi Knight 2 where you could play as President Scroob with a purple lightsaber. (I would have much prefered to play as Dark Helmet, though.) The Star Wars franchise has made so many great videogames like Knights of the Old Republic and the Super Star Wars series on SNES, so it should be easy to do the same with Spaceballs and add in a hearty helping of comedy. Unfortunately, Rick Moranis is fully retired and didn’t even make an appearance in Ghostbusters: The Video Game, so we’d need a suitable replacement for Dark Helmet. Keep firing, assholes!

(Mark is a reviewer and the author of “What the Crap?“)

Christian Porter
Battle Royale

I think the Japanese splatterfest, Battle Royale, would make a perfect multiplayer shooter. Even the film’s tagline—“Could you kill your best friend?”—encompasses what people who play shooters like doing best. The short version of the plot is that Japan has decided kids are too unruly and violent, and the best way to solve this is to dump one class per year on an island to brutally kill each other with no rules until only one is left standing. No, I don’t understand the rationale, either. My pitch for the game is that the island is procedurally generated—different every time, weapons are assigned to people at random (sometimes you get an Uzi, and sometimes you get a GPS and a frying pan). Also, the teacher calls out certain areas of the map every few hours where the students aren’t allowed to be. If they’re still there after a given period of time, then the exploding collars they were fitted with are set off, solving the problem of camping rather quickly. It’s pretty perfectly suited for a videogame.

(Christian is a reviewer, author of “Poor Player’s Paradise” and “Top of the Heap,” and creator of the video series “Speak American.”)

Jeff Day
The Wizard

If playing NES games is fun (which it undoubtedly is), then playing a game about playing NES games must be fun, too! Though it might be difficult to get the various publishers to cooperate, can’t you just picture it? Each level requires you to go to a different location in the United States and play a level from a classic NES game. Castlevania? Ninja Gaiden? Double Dragon? Friggin’ Rad Racer? You know it. (Good luck getting the rights to that last one.) The grand finale comes when you have to complete the first stage of Super Mario Bros. 3—what a challenge! And when Lucas Barton shows up to cause trouble, the game switches to a Street Fighter II format where you can beat the living crap out of each other. Haley is an unlockable character whose special powers include Irritable Scowl and False Molestation Accusation. And running from that creepy old guy who’s been hired to catch you turns things into a knockoff of Home Alone for the NES. *shudders* Now let’s just see if we can get Jackey Vinson to do a few voice-overs. You know he’s not working much ever since…well…you know…the incident…

(Jeff is the author of “Gamera Obscura.”)

Daniel Castro
The Terminator

More than any one movie I’d like to see in videogame format, I have a lot of movie-based videogames I just want to see done right! Among those I’d love to play is a well-made Terminator videogame.

Remember the first shots in the original Terminator movie? That post-apocalyptic future is the perfect setting for an awesome action game. That said, the game based on Terminator Salvation was horrible—not only because it was merely the cash-in movie-related videogame we’re all used to, but because the Terminators in that game are way too easy to defeat compared to their big-screen counterparts.

I don’t want to fight hundreds of useless Terminators—I want to face just one. I want to be scared shitless being chased by an almost invincible T-800. That is the trademark this movie is well remembered by, and it’s something no videogame has been able to pull off.

(Daniel is the author of “Don’t Be That Guy.”)

Jillian Dingwall
Deliverance

I have long felt that the movie most overlooked when it comes to videogame potential is Deliverance. There really is a whole world of variety involved in bringing such a timeless classic into your living room. The game would be divided into three sections: character design, motion control, and handheld control. Let’s begin with character design. In some games, like Tiger Woods Golf, for example, character creation is a game in itself. Deliverance would have all the time-consumption of Tiger Woods Golf, except you would have nothing but 250 moustaches to choose from and four outfits, all of which would consist of different shades of double-denim. Once your character is ready to hit the canoe, the game would move on to the motion control stage. Here you would row yourself down the river, contending with a few rapids along the way, before picking up your virtual banjo and spending the next thirty years trying to learn how to play “Dueling Banjos.” Finally, the violent sodomy scene. This is where the hand-held controller comes in. I’m not going to go into too much detail, but let’s just say that it would work in a similar way to lock-picking in Skyrim. In short, Deliverance would combine all the versatility of 21st century gaming with the excitement of ’70s facial hair. What’s not to love?

(Jillian is a staff reviewer and blogger.)

Nathaniel Hoover
Serenity

I’d love to see a videogame adaptation of Serenity, Joss Whedon’s 2005 space western that follows the hit (read: cancelled) TV series Firefly. A depressingly serious wisecracking third-person role-playing adventure game with a handful of first-person vehicle missions and a mix of real-time, turn-based, and event-based combat would not only make for the most difficult-to-classify game of the year, but also the only game with enough variety and nonstop challenges to properly capture the essence of Serenity. There are enough characters to pull off a Knights of the Old Republic-style rotating party system, and Heavy Rain’s open-ended story structure would still allow all your favorite characters to get killed off unexpectedly, without impaling them in a contrived, prescripted cutscene. Throw in a few bonus missions where you can play as the bad guys—including a horrifying Dress-the-Reaver character customization screen—and I swear to you, I will get very choked up. Honestly, there could be tears.

(Nathaniel is a reviewer, author of “Flash Flood“ and the “Sprite Flicker“ webcomic, and creator of fine videos.)

Look readers, I’ll be frank: and that’s why, today, I’m reviewing the most obscure 1990s first-person shooter I can find. Whoops, sorry; wrong Frank! Let’s try this again.

I keep going back and forth on whether I keep wanting to keep writing “Minus the Pudding.” On the one hand, the quality of my GameCola writing has been deteriorating lately as a factor of  my being more focused on other projects. On the other, I’m not exactly the only person covering XBLIG anymore; there are plenty of other sites doing it better, and more timely-ey. Sites like Indie Gamer Chick, which I hope to God never reviews Life in the Dorms, because they terrify me, and sites like VVGTV, which I hope to God does, because they contributed to our soundtrack and are therefore appropriately biased.

On the other hand (on the foot?), I also haven’t played any great (or even particularly good) XBLIG games in what feels like a year. Actually, it doesn’t just feel like it; it is, literally, a year, because I couldn’t come with any XBLIG games to nominate for GC’s 2011 year-end awards. And on the other hand (again, foot), Microsoft has seemingly given up completely on XBLIG; in the latest dashboard redesign, they relegated it even further away from anything relevant than they did the last time, to the point where—no joke—it takes 13 button pushes just to find them. In contrast, it takes just one button to, as of this writing, watch a trailer for the Paranormal trilogy. I don’t even know what that is.

Now, I’m not saying that it’s completely pointless for me to keep writing “Minus the Pudding”—just that, if 2012 goes by, and we don’t have another Excruciating Guitar Voyage to make it all worthwhile, I’m going back to writing erotic Pong fanfiction. Or worse. Shape up, XBLIG!

Sins of the Flesh

I’m starting to wonder if maybe it’s inappropriate to make jokes at Silver Dollar Games’s expense in literally every single thing I write for GameCola. Sure, they may propagate some of the worst of what XBLIG has to offer, and sure—this is only a rumor—they eat babies; but more and more it seems like they’re trying to branch out and make actual videogames. Or, at least as “videogame” as one can get on XBLIG.

Case in point: Sins of the Flesh.

You start off dead. A haunting little girl’s voice tells you that you need to do everything she says in order to live again. She says you can trust her. A cell phone rings. She tells you not to answer it. Do you? If you don’t, the screen starts fading to black; if you do; an older British man cuts in and blames you for everything bad that’s ever happened in your life. Both characters continue to vie for your attention throughout the game; all the while, your character moves automatically across the screen, while you try to shoot down all the enemies that are trying to drag you down to hell.

I’m a sucker for games that stimulate my ears; it’s the reason I found Bastion so interesting, even though everything else about it isn’t. It’s also the reason why I dug Sins of the Flesh. The gameplay’s simplistic to a fault; even during the eight-minute trial, my thumbs were sore from constantly pressing back and forth on each of the joysticks. Even if you hate the idea of this game, though, you should buy it; that way, maybe the world will never have to suffer another Cassie’s Animal Sounds.

ElfSquad7

Remember what I said earlier about not being timely? This is a game about wrapping presents for Santa. Oops.

An elf named Elfington. A rat named Cheesums. A Reindeer named Jellybean. What do they all have in common? They all have the best names ever. Also, they’re trying to save Christmas! There’s a present shortage, so they need to operate a present-making machine and—this is almost too wonderful to type—shoot the presents with their “present guns” in order to automatically wrap and then collect them. I just hope someone’s working on a Skyrim mod that includes this weapon as we speak.

The game’s like Smash Bros., with present-guns instead of any other attacks, and also you’re not trying to kill each other. You’re just trying to wrap presents. It’s actually pretty repetitive, too, just like Sins of the Flesh. Apparently it boasts four-player co-op, which should make it more chaotic and, inevitably, more fun. But it also means you’d have to ask three other people to play a game called ElfSquad7 with you.

Extreme Jogging

Little-known fact: I’m a runner (or at least, I pretend to be one every morning before work). I don’t talk about it much on GameCola, because this is a videogames website, so I assume, thanks to decades’ worth of stereotyping, that everyone reading it resembles something akin to Jabba the Hutt. So I’ll admit it—I checked this game out not because it looked inherently fun, but because it played to my own interests. (This is also the reason why Back to the Future: The Game is going to get Game of the Year this year: not because it’s the best game, but because it’s Back to the Future. Hey—it worked for Batman before.)

Although it claims to be a “running” game, actual running is the last thing you have to worry about in Extreme Jogging. A lot of the game is just moving from right to left and vice versa to avoid hitting things, though there’s also some strategy involved. For example, jumping. Also not jumping. Also, in the beginning level at least, there’s a soda power-up you can pick up to increase your stamina, which is not something I believe most running organizations would endorse. There’s also these neat Hole in the Wall-style segments where you need to control each of your arms with each the joysticks to fit through the brick wall rather than splat into it.

What really make the game, though, are the obstacles. In the first level, there’s a giant bounder chasing you; later levels have cows, hot air balloons, and goddamn sharks coming after you. It’s just dressing, but it makes what would otherwise be a pretty dull experience…slightly less dull, anyway.

Game Type

This is a game about how terrible the new dashboard is for XBLIG gamers. Here’s the joke: It’s very difficult to get to the XBLIG section on the dashboard, and also there’s a lot of advertisements. The first part of the game involves navigating through a fake dashboard with a series of fake advertisements (and some for actual XBLIG games—nice touch), until you can find the hidden “Game Type” menu that brings you to the second part.

The second part is a side-scrolling shooter with kittens and football players that are trying to kill you. It’s a lot of the weirdness for weirdness’ sake stuff; kind of like if the GHXYK2 guys put down the drugs and tried to make an actual videogame. The whole thing’s about as one-note joke as it sounds, but there’s some sense of vindication in knowing that someone went to all this trouble to make this point about the new dash.

And they’re probably right—even though they were intentionally trying to make it difficult to find the game within a game, I was still able to find it much more quickly than the actual XBLIG channel on the new dashboard.

…but that’s too depressing a note to end this article on, so here are some sloths taking a bath:

Season 1, Episode 3: Competing With Zeke

Previous episode: “Avoiding Work.”

Zeke and Ethan are at what appears to be a golf course, but are playing paintball. Ethan asks if Zeke is ready, then fires at him a bunch of times. He misses with all but one, which strikes the robot in the shoulder.

“Woohoo, I got you! These things are tough to aim.”

Zeke now goes into RoboCop targeting mode, a crosshair appearing over Ethan’s crotch. He unloads 5 or 6 paintballs, and we hear Ethan moan in agony. Dammit, I wanted to see his nuts get hurt.

Ethan: “That’s not fair; you used like, math or some shit!”

Zeke: “I’m not taking the blame because evolution cursed you with a fragile meat-vessel to call a body.”

Ethan: “Fucking evolution.”

Ctrl+Alt+Del—demonstrably pro-creationist. Anyway, that was terrible, but at least the pre-credits wasn’t the whole episode again. Yep, opening titles roll. No discernible plot or motivation has been set up.

Here we go…

Some sort of elf walks along. He falls over and turns around. Spotting an adorable little bunny, he smiles cruelly and draws his sword. The bunny looks up quizzically. Down comes the sword.

Cut to Ethan at his computer, who espouses the virtue of his knight becoming level 30, or something. Get it? It’s funny because he’s playing a videogame. Zeke stands at the doorway and explains that he is level 60, despite only making an account the previous morning. This is, of course, impossible, but who cares?

Ethan complains to Lilah that Zeke is better at everything than he is, while repeatedly walking in front of the TV she’s playing a game on. Zeke’s not better at being an INCONSIDERATE CUNT, IS HE!?

Lilah: “He’s a computer, obviously he’s gonna be better at technical stuff. It’s not that big of a deal.”

Ethan glares at her.

Ethan: “You’re siding with him! Oh my God. You’re a robot! I’ve watched Battlestar Galactica. I know that the Cylons look like humans now! You can’t fool me!”

Lilah: “Uh, OK. You caught me. I’m a robot. I’m on a mission to harvest your brainmeats for fuel.”

HAHAHAHHAHAHA! “BRAINMEATS”! Like on Invader Zim!

Exactly like on Invader Zim, actually. Hm.

Anyway, Ethan freaks out and runs off. He approaches Zeke, who is repeatedly flicking a lamp on and off for some reason. Ethan then explains that humans are better than robots and pledges he will prove it. He drags Zeke off camera.

Lucas is sitting at the table reading a paper when the two enter. Ethan asks who is better, himself or Zeke.

Lucas: “Oh, Zeke. Definitely.”

Tell ‘em, Lucas!

Some stuff is said, then Ethan takes a massive bite out of a loaf of bread, bragging that he can eat better than a robot. Predictably, he then starts to choke. Zeke rushes over and whacks him on the back, presumably saving him.

How much better would this have been if Lucas and Zeke just stared on impassively, while Ethan tried in vain to beg for help, his eyes filling with tears as he reaped what he had sown with his maniacal behaviour? Just me?

Back on the sofa, Ethan apologises to Zeke, mentioning that he’s dating a robot. Remember, ‘cos of the whole Cylon…yeah, that. Anyway, Zeke announces that “porking the vacuum cleaner does not count as dating.” Yep, enjoy that mental image.

Zeke leaves.

Ethan looks over at the nearby vacuum cleaner.

Cut to Ethan.

Cut to the vacuum.

Cut back to Ethan.

Credits roll. We hear the sound of a vacuum.

HA HA! HE’S FUCKING IT! HE’S THRUSTING HIS ERECTION IN AND OUT OF IT TO STIMULATE HIMSELF TO ORGASM!

This episode’s side-splitting comedy credit: “17 ordinary house pets were harmed in the making of this episode. The 18th was a fast little $%&*@#.”

Another entirely worthless five minutes. Seriously, I am staggered that Buckley had the gall to charge for this. There is an infinite amount of superior stuff available completely free.

I apologise for how little I wrote about this one—there’s honestly not a whole lot to be said.

Episode 4 is entitled “Learning to Cook” and it’s THIRTY SECONDS LONGER. AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGHHHHHH WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Immediately following such a revelation often comes a series of warring impulses. On one hand, to an active and experienced gamer, the idea of wasted time is not appealing. You know you’ve played better games in the past, so why should you continue to slog through something that is “fine” but not stellar? On the other hand, you might be the type of person who feels compelled to finish something once you have started it (Note: this is definitely true of Mike, who probably has an undiagnosed case of OCD); not to mention the possibility that there might be nothing better on hand to play instead. Thus, a conundrum presents itself: when faced with a game that is of mediocre quality, should you simply give up, or should you push onward in the hope that the game will eventually reward your patience with some sign of improvement?

Unfortunately, if the game doesn’t improve over time, this irritating quandary simply continues to repeat itself every time you pick up the controller. This is partly due to the peculiar tendency of the human memory to blank out on things that are unpleasant or painful. No matter how bad the last gaming session was, give it a few days, and you will invariably find yourself thinking: “You know, maybe it wasn’t really that bad. Maybe I was overreacting to the tedious plot and the terrible voice-acting and the glitch mechanics. Maybe if I just give it one more chance, it will actually end up being awesome.”

Mike has dubbed this odd phenomenon The Candy Corn Effect, named after the beloved tricolored Halloween treat. Put simply, the Candy Corn Effect describes a strong, pressing, and inexplicable desire to eat something you don’t actually like all that much.

Pictured: All your wasted hopes and dreams

Mike first coined the term while playing Tales of the Abyss, which he had borrowed from his brother. He said that it was a “serviceable RPG” in terms of mechanics, but he quickly grew to hate the characters, all of whom were whiny, annoying, and cursed with ear-splittingly terrible voice actors. His brother swore up and down that the characters “got better” later in the game; but it was rapidly becoming clear that “better” might take a while. Unfortunately, RPGs are pretty heavily dependent on storytelling and character development (since mechanics alone aren’t enough to make a 40+ hour game interesting), so a game where you hate all the characters can become really painful, really fast.

As it happened, Mike started playing this game around the time that we had purchased and were listening to a new album from angry comedian Louis Black. Among the many rants on the CD was a particularly vitriolic tirade about candy corn. “Candy corn,” Black pointed out (and please note that I’m paraphrasing here), “basically tastes like shit. But the thing is, you only have to eat it once a year, so you always end up forgetting how terrible it is. Halloween comes around again, and hey! It’s corn, that tastes like candy. There’s no way that can go wrong! And then you actually eat it, and it’s like, ‘Son of a bitch, it got me again!’”

For some reason, Tales of the Abyss had a similar effect on Mike. As bad as it was, about an hour after he’d thrown down the controller in disgust, he’d start thinking, “Well, maybe it wasn’t that bad. Maybe I should try again. Anyway, it is supposed to get better. I guess I’ll give it another go, and…Son of a bitch, it got me again!” And so on.

Candy corn games are everywhere, so avoiding them completely is next to impossible. The only thing you can really do is recognize them for what they are (ideally before you get too far in), and act accordingly. Remember: you are not obligated to play these games. I repeat: You do not have to do it. Just because it got great reviews in IGNSpotCritic or it was recommended  by your Best Friend’s Cousin’s Brother does not mean that you have to guilt yourself into loving it too! You can instead just put the controller down, and walk away. Simple as that. Go read a book, or practice woodcarving, or find some other way to entertain yourself until the next new release comes out.

Incidentally, the “Just Say F*%king No” rule applies to other forms of entertainment as well. I didn’t figure this out for myself until 1998, when I was but a mere teenager. At the time, I was making an ill-advised attempted to read George Orwell’s 1984 on my own. About halfway through the book (right around the point where everything starts to get really depressing), I suddenly realized that I did not like where the book was going, I did not feel like reading it anymore, and God dammit, I was not obligated to continue. There was not going to be a test on it; no one expecting me to finish. I could just stop. It didn’t mean that the book was bad, necessarily; I just REALLY hated it. I took it back to the library the next day. And I felt great.

Mike had a similar experience recently while playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion by Bethesda Software. He had picked it up because his best friend loved it and had just moved on to playing Skyrim, Oblivion’s much-lauded successor. Mike was eager to see what all the Oblivion fuss was about, but soon realized that he disliked the leveling system, hated the lack of storytelling, and was constantly cursing the way the game inadvertently discouraged exploring. He really did give it a fair chance; but eventually he was forced to admit that if he had to play a Bethesda game at all, he’d much rather be playing a game like Fallout: New Vegas, which he had already played through at least three times (not including DLCs!). While he respects his friend’s opinions and tastes, the truth is that games like Oblivion and Skyrim just aren’t for him.

Which is why, I guess, he is now playing New Vegas yet again. Like, for the fourth time. Because if Oblivion is candy corn, then—for Mike, at least—Fallout is the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of games, full of chocolaty, peanut buttery, mutant-murdering goodness that can be enjoyed all year round.

We’re halfway to the end. Beware: The games you’ve seen up until now were a walk in the park compared to these. What follows is pure, untamed garbage. Weapons-grade crap. Steel yourself.

25. Wall Street Kid (NES)

Just read my review. Wall Street Kid manages to find the small sliver of goodness found in investing fake money, rips its heart out, and stamps it on the ground, just like the kid’s in-game girlfriend who only loves you if you buy her a house and a car. For no apparent reason, the game starts on April Fools’ Day, but you’re a fool for buying this trash regardless of what the calendar says. It’s just awful.

- Mark Freedman

24. Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 (Xbox 360)

This game can be played with one hand. The other hand can either be used to pleasure yourself, or it can be used to repeatedly punch yourself in the face. The latter is preferred.

Breast physics and skimpy outfits, terrible unplayable minigames, and a game of poker that doesn’t operate like actual poker (not like I know how to play poker, anyway). Do these elements form together to make a game? Do they fuck.

- Matt Jonas

On the Other Hand…

I’m mostly going off of Matt Jonas’ review, which cited casual gamers’ disinterest in breasts as a primary strike against the game. I feel it’s unfair to judge a game by its audience, so I took it upon myself to do excessive extensive research of screenshots and gameplay footage before casting my vote.

I’ve come to the conclusion that, when you’re sifting through a thoroughly unredeemable pile of filth to determine which 50 games are most deserving of a New Mexico landfill, things like an absurd storyline, grating voice acting, profoundly flawed gameplay, and the blatant objectification of women are secondary when there’s just so much titillating eye-candy. We can still watch these absolutely terrible games without playing them, so it makes sense to offer a little amnesty to the better-looking games with the sexy, sexy slot machines.

I mean, c’mon, Wall Street Kid doesn’t have a casino that pretty.

- Nathaniel Hoover

23. Yaris (XBLA)

An on-rails shooter with sloppy aiming centered around a flying Toyota Yaris somehow results in an absolute mess that isn’t even remotely playable. The game doesn’t make any sense! What are you supposed to do in it? Why does it feel like you’re piloting a penguin on ice?

- Matt Jonas

22. Fatal Labyrinth (Genesis)

Complicated controls. Confusing interface and inventory system. Enemies that just won’t die. I had to play this game to get an Achievement in Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection, and I haven’t touched it since. It wasn’t even designed for the Genesis originally; the SegaNet modem wasn’t exactly known for “great” games.

- Matt Jonas

21. Space Quest: The Lost Chapter (PC)

Whoa, how did this fan-made adventure game make it to the list?

This game that’s totally unknown to all but the diehards in the Space Quest fan community, and the chosen few who’ve read my GameFAQs review?

The game with a text-parser interface that doesn’t recognize words?

The game that’s dominated by unnecessarily huge, dreadfully bland, confusingly repetitive, and excessively swimming-intensive locations?

The game with the giant squid maze that—OH WAIT. THE SQUID MAZE. PRETTY SURE YOU SHOULD AVOID ANY GAME THAT MAKES YOU NAVIGATE A MAZE OF TOUCH-ME-YOU-DIE TENTACLES THAT BORDER AND BLOCK YOUR VIEW OF THE THREE-PIXELS-WIDE PATH STRETCHING ACROSS THE ENTIRE SCREEN THAT YOU MUST SWIM THROUGH TO PICK UP A STUPID BONE THAT’S NOT EVEN AN ITEM YOU OBVIOUSLY NEED, AND THEN SWIM BACK OUT THE WAY YOU CAME IN.

Also, there’s a bunch of grammar errors.

- Nathaniel Hoover

20. Rocky and Bullwinkle Adventures (NES)

All you really have to do is look at the game, and you’ll know why it made this list. A 5 year old could’ve scribbled this together. I know the animation from the actual animated series was never superior in any way to…well, anything; but this looks like one of the lowest-budget, gotta-get-it-done-in-two-days-or-the-boss-will-probe-me kinds of games. And what kind of a game forces you to hurt yourself when you attack? That’s exactly what happens when you use your antlers to charge as Bullwinkle: your health decreases. Rocky can only barely fly, too; wasn’t he supposed to be a FLYING squirrel? Yeah, way NOT to fly. The music is terrible, as well, causing eardrums to shatter across the nation. Quality assurance at THQ must’ve consisted of a man picking up the cartridge, looking at it, and saying, “Yup, it’s a cartridge, dagnabbit!” before applying the stamp of approval.

- Jeff Day

19. Timecop (SNES)

You can tell I’m the most qualified person on staff to discuss Timecop, because I watched five minutes of some guy playing it on YouTube.

The graphics look like a digitized cardboard cutout festival, and the levels seem to consist of you getting shot in the face and falling down three stories just to get shot in the face again. Ammo for your gun appears to be about as plentiful as ham sandwiches at a Bar Mitzvah, and the only other way to kill all three of the different enemies in the game is to do pilates until one of them trips over your foot. It’s like a poor man’s Batman Forever, and that’s a statement that makes puppies cry.

- Nathaniel Hoover

18. Two Worlds (Xbox 360)

There are many emotions that I like to experience whilst gaming—excitement, fear, happiness, slight arousal—but the only thing I felt when playing Two Worlds was embarrassment. I was embarrassed for this game, to the point where I was struggling to look it in the eye. For starters, all the characters look the same (like the malformed survivors of a nuclear holocaust), yet strangely, every villager talks with a different accent. And I don’t mean like one talks with a southern English accent whilst the next is a bit more northern; I mean that the local farmer sounds like a Scottish fisherman whilst his daughter sounds like she’s from Texas. Finally, let’s talk about the voice acting…Sloth from The Goonies could do a better job. Now get out of my house and don’t come back until you’re better than Skyrim.

- Jillian Dingwall

Throughout all entertainment mediums, one fact is universally true—there sure is a lot of crap out there. H.L. Mencken once famously said:

“Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”

The fact that Michael Bay movies are continually global blockbuster hits proves that this is true all over the world. Film and television live and die by this motto, and videogames are no different. Games that copy well-worn formulas are much more likely to be released than ones that try something new and clever, no matter how fun they might be, because publishers don’t like taking too many risks. Largely because of this, so many bad games get released that we’re barely even surprised by them anymore.

But our tolerance has its limits. Some games go beyond being a bit trite or a bit lazy, offering an experience so poorly crafted and terrible that you’re offended that such an abomination could even exist. The kinds of games that are just so loathsome they invade your subconscious thoughts until you find you’re sitting at work thinking of nothing but how sick it makes you that there could be somebody out there who actually enjoys and pays money for such terrible things, contributing to the offending developer and causing the cycle to repeat itself, and that this person is allowed to continue living each wretched day of their life without being publicly crucified with white-hot rivets in front of their weeping mother while you look on and just laugh at them as they breathe their last breath. Hahahahhahaha…

…or maybe that’s just me.

Regardless, here’s a bunch of games that are awful. Just awful.

50. Super Noah’s Ark 3D (SNES)

Where do I begin? For starters, Super Noah’s Ark 3D is a blatant rip-off of Wolfenstein 3D, reportedly even down to the SNES version’s code. This wouldn’t be terrible except that, yes, Wolfenstein 3D for the SNES was pretty bad, and somehow Wisdom Tree managed to make it even worse.

Scratch all the stuff about Nazis, killing, or anything interesting. Let’s replace all the soldiers with animals. And then we’ll replace your gun with a slingshot that fires tranquilizing pellets. Let’s also replace the somewhat colourful surroundings of German prisons with the inside of an ark. That’s more suitable for this game, but now the environments are all red and brown. If I wanted to see a ton of red and brown, I’d eat at the Olive Garden.

But perhaps most importantly, this game is bad because it’s a Bible game. No Bible game has ever been awesome—aside from Bible Buffet, anyway, but that’s only because it was more focused on the buffet, and very few vegetables are religious.

- Jeff Day

49. Winter Games (NES)

Ah, the bitter cold of wintertime. There’s not much to do outside, so you’re probably thinking about bundling up inside with a nice classic winter sports game. Can’t find your copy of NHL ‘94? Well, pop Winter Games into your cart slot and get ready for a bumpy ride. No, I’m not talking about downhill moguls; I’m talking about the overall cesspool that is this game. The controls are basically nonexistent, whether you’re doing Hot Dog Ariels (whatever that is), speed skating, or figure skating. While its crappiness does have a certain charm to it, it amazes me how such a steaming pile has an official Nintendo Seal of Quality on the box.

- Mark Freedman

48. Wolverine (NES)

How did LJN get their hands on so many licenses? And how could they possibly ruin a game about Wolverine? There’s so much they could’ve exploited: so much badassery, a whole assortment of enemies to fight against. Hell—they could’ve copycatted any decent action sidescroller and called it a day. Instead, the whole game setup just yells “generic.”

You may not know everything about Wolverine, but the one thing we can all agree on is that he has claws, and he shred enemies with them. But in this game, you won’t be using Wolverine’s claws all that much, since they are limited by a “berserk gauge.” Also, the claws aren’t very impressive; they’re only a few extra pixels attached to Wolverine’s fists. That’s lame!

- Daniel Castro

47. Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing (PC)

I honestly don’t understand how this game happened. I can’t fathom a scenario where it was looked upon by anyone in the company, and that person said “Yes, we can release this now. It is finished.” I’ve downloaded viruses that have done less damage to my computer than this game. I am genuinely concerned about the people who playtested it; someone should go look for them. If they thought this game was adequate, I guarantee they are still trapped in whatever room the testing occurred in, as there is no possible way they can operate a doorknob.

This is theoretically a racing game, but it is the first racing game I played where the other driver seems to have abandoned his car, probably because he was too embarrassed to be featured in this steaming pile of fail. The other truck doesn’t move, and after growing tired of waiting for him to do something, I tried to push his car along only to find out that I’VE BEEN DEAD THE WHOLE TIME AND PILOTING A DAMN GHOST TRUCK because I went right through him. Either that, or the game didn’t bother to include any collision detection, as you can drive through anything and the game doesn’t seem to have any problem with that.

Big Rigs is less a game and more a practical joke on the gaming community—the equivalent of a company releasing a game that Rick Roll’d you when you tried to play it. I would call this game trash, but I feel like that is unfair to trash. So instead I will say that there is absolutely nothing good about this game at all and that the spouses of everyone who worked on this game now have legal grounds for having their marriages annulled.

-Nikola Suprak

46. Karnov (Arcade)

Karnov for the NES is an…OK game. Nothing special, but if I can finish it, there must be some merit to it. However, that game stems from an arcade version that will violate you mentally…and possibly sexually, if you play it the wrong way.

The biggest issue is the game’s difficulty: boss battles often require you to avoid so many projectiles that you might as well be wearing a bulls-eye on your forehead. Enemies are also quite plentiful and have no problem killing you in one hit. But what’s worse is the timer: It’s practically impossible to beat the final level, not ONLY  because of all the obstacles you need to overcome, but also because there just isn’t enough time to get to the final boss and defeat it.

Karnov is also filled with weird characters that really don’t make any sense being there. Where can you find dinosaurs living in the same region as a circus? Why are buff bodybuilders trying to slaughter you? Why are there half-centaur, half-caterpillar women in existence at ALL? Karnov is the only drug you will ever need. Plus, the ending sucks. It just sucks. Sucks!

- Jeff Day

45. Rambo (NES)

Whatever you do in this life, for the love of God do not play Rambo for NES directly after completing Platoon for the Commodore 64. You will be more disappointed than Anne Frank was when she got a drum kit for Christmas. In all honesty, my memory is a bit hazy on this one, as I have not touched the game since 1990 (and even then I couldn’t bring myself to complete it), but from what I can Google-remember, it was just straight-up boring. All you do is kill animals, which, considering I refuse to even kick a chicken in Fable, only made me depressed. In the end I gave up because I kept getting lost in its terribly designed layout—and, like most 9-year-old girls, I just wanted to kill some humans, anyway.

- Jillian Dingwall

44. Samurai Shodown Sen (Xbox 360)

SNK Playmore? More like SNK should “play more” games! Every massive flaw in Samurai Shodown could have been avoided if the developers compared it to the games that they were up against at the time. Shodown Sen is one of those games that goes beyond so bad it’s funny into just completely awful. Destroy all copies on sight.

- Matt Jonas

43. Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion (GBA)

Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion is a fairly good game. I like it a lot, and…wait, we’re talking about the GBA version? Ugh, forget it!

This is a great example of a bad port. Almost all the animation, voice acting, music and sound effects were cut out. Hope you like playing in complete silence! The graphics quality has taken a steep dive, and it’s impossible to figure out what to do unless you’ve played the original game. Perhaps worst of all, the GBA version retains the hideously difficult endgame challenge, which forces you to remember twelve different Chinese symbols and put them in the proper order.

The most positive thing that anyone has ever said about this game is, “The loading times aren’t that bad.”

- Michael Gray