The 11 Biggest Frauds in Gaming
They promised you the world. Then they broke your ****ing heart.
7/29/2009 9:10 AM | 36 Comments | Page 1 of 2
Scott Jones
Status: Coffee makes me feel 4-percent sexier.
(Contributors: John Teti, Evan Narcisse)
From its inception --
[robotic voice] "WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF COMPUTER GAMES!" -- this industry has always promised to deliver the future. In the never-ending quest to be the first to deliver a day-after-tomorrow experience, it's no surprise that more than a few of these promises turned out to be as hollow as a stuffed animal you won at a state fair. Sure, it looks cute and all, but once you get it home, the seams start to show, sawdust begins leaking everywhere, and you're left wondering what you've "won" after all.
11.
Wii MotionPlus attachment (2009)
Sure, it's better. But is it $20 worth of better? At this point, no. We've swung our way through three games that have been optimized for the Wii MotionPlus, including
Wii Sports Resort, which was designed to show what the device can really do. Our highly scientific results: a few degrees shy of negligible.
10.
Gizmondo (2005)
This hideous $400 game-playing GPS device stands as one of gaming's all-time greatest piles of sh*t. Only eight of the 14 promised games for the unit were ever released. And by February of the following year, sales were so pathetic that it was mercifully taken out behind the virtual woodshed and shot to death.
9.
Pac-Man on the Atari 2600 (1982)
This cartridge promised an experience that would approximate what we were paying 25 cents for at the time in arcades. We all thought, "No way!" What we eventually got was a blue-and-yellow maze populated with one ghost that appeared to split into four ghosts at various intervals, and a circular object -- i.e., the Pac-Man -- that was about as easy to control as a car with wheels that are made entirely out of banana peels and Vaseline.
8.
The Phantom (2002)
The Phantom promised on-demand PC games not unlike
what OnLive is promising to deliver. But it turned out to be an elaborate hoax; one that's rivaled, to this day, only by the inglorious
Piltdown Man.
Viva la Piltdown Man!
Viva!
7.
PSP Connect/rearview mirror capability for racing games (2007)
Sony promised that the PSP could someday be used with the PlayStation 3 as a rearview mirror in racing games.
Formula One Championship Edition was actually slated to include this capability, but at the last second, it was axed. It seems someone at Sony realized, at the 11th hour, that this was a totally stupid, uninteresting, wasteful idea.
6.
VMU "Games" (Dreamcast; 1999)
The little memory unit with the LCD screen certainly was nifty. (We still fondly recall the satisfying "click" it made when you popped it into the controller.) But the unit also purported to be a portable game-playing device. The idea was a good one. But the execution? Very bad. Terrible, even. These games are fun only if mowing the lawn or cracking walnuts absolutely delights you.
