Sat 25th Feb, 2006 -  Top 5: Worst Games I’ve Ever Played

Once in a while my common sense goes haywire and I end up (renting, borrowing, buying) really bad games. I mean everyone does this at one time or another and not only with videogames, who hasn’t rented a bad movie in their lifetime. Yesterday while talking to Edu, a few of these really bad games came to mind. So we’ve decided to each do a post about these games. So without further ado, I present to you my top 5 worst games I’ve ever played:

1. Ground Zero, Texas (Sega CD): This game brings back memories. You see, I never owned a Sega CD but one of my friends did and he invited me over to play this game. The premise of the game is that you’re a Government Agent who’s sent to the town of “El Cadron” Texas to save the people from the alien invasion. This game is a Full Motion Video (FMV) game and you basically had control of 4 camera views and a crosshair targeting system that let’s you shoot down aliens, some which are disguised as humans.

Ground Zero, Texas

I played this game for about 20 minutes, and I can tell you something, this game was repetitive as hell and frustrating as well. It was frustrating because once in a while, somebody who looked “like someone you could trust” would pull a gun out of their @$$ and shoot you. That sucked, you would have to start the FMV sequence again, and with all the bad acting going on it was not the thing you wanted to do. Interesting note, this game was the first game directed by a Hollywood director, Dwight H. Little, director of Halloween 4, Free Willy 2 and an X-Files Episode.


2. Friday The 13th (NES): Now this one I rented. I thought the game was all about fighting Jason one on one, man was I wrong. It was the other way around, you had to prevent Jason from killing all of the campers. Once you saved all the kids then you could fight Jason. I remember fighting zombies with rocks and that’s about it. What can I say about this game, it’s a really crappy game and I can’t believe I got influenced by the franchise. I found this awesome review/guide that will take you back to the good ‘ol days of camping.

The Pac

3. Pac-Man 2 : The New Adventures (SNES): This is not your run-off-the-mill Pac-Man game where you try to eat all the pellets and capture ghosts. In this game, Pac-Man is a married man with child and his adventures are based around this. He has to, for example, get milk for his baby. This is where the fun begins, you see, you don’t actually control Pac-Man, you get to remove obstacles in his way that prevent “The Pac” from reaching his objective. There’s nothing more fun than preventing the local neighborhood dog from eating Pac.

Clay Fighters

4. Clay Fighters (SNES): I remember this crappy game well, this game made me loose the 1995 local Blockbuster Video Game Challenge. I mean the controls in this game were horrible and the fact that the characters on the game were so unbalanced (in fighting terms) make this one of the worst games I’ve ever played. I lost 2 of the 3 rounds of fighting with Mr. Frosty, and I did so good in the challenge with the “Turtles In Time” game. Not fair I tell you, not fair…

7th Guest and CD-i Console

5. 7th Guest (Phillips CD-i): Now don’t get me wrong, the 7th Guest is a a relatively good video game, it was the CD-i that sucked. Around 1991 Phillips released the CD-i during that whole Nintendo/Sony/Phillips CD adapter for the SNES fiasco. Well the CD-i was a multimedia CD player with a focus on educational titles and games. It had a 1X CD drive so loading times were unbearable and this made games unplayble. The controller was horrible, it would be a miracle if you got it to click where you wanted. Well a friend of mine bought one, didn’t like it, and gave me a test drive of the system so that I would buy it from him. What can I tell you…. I currently don’t own a CD-i. Interesting note: the CD-i had a game called “Thunder In Paradise” based on the TV series of the same name.

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Mon 26th Dec, 2005 -  Newbie Guide: Getting a Super Card for your Nintendo DS

1. First you have to get Nintendo DS ($129) but remember get the old one, not the new one with Mario Kart, Nintendo changed the firmware on those and you can’t use a Super Card with that NDS. (Somebody will probably find a workaround soon) You also need an original NDS game, it can be pretty much any game, I bought Castlevania ($54) cause I’m a big fan of the series, especially in 2D.

Nintendo DS

2. Buy your Super Card Adapter with Super Pass. The Super Card allows you to play homebrew and gameboy/nds software stored on a SD or CF card which is then inserted into the super card. The Super Pass allows you to run nds software, you have to own an original game for this work. I got my supercard and superpass combo from ioffer.com, but be careful with ioffer, there are pretty much no guarantees (you could end up with no money and no card, it’s like the shadier side of ebay), and remember, you get to make an offer. I got mine for about $65 with shipping included. I bought the SD card version of the Super Card.

Super Card and Super Pass

3. Wait for like 2-3 weeks until your supercard arrives from Hong Kong (or wherever you purchased yours.) In the mean time, remember you need an SD or CF card, you can get those on Ebay for a pretty good price, I recommend getting a 256mb or bigger card. In my case I purchased a 1gb sd ($60) card cause I wanted to have space for some mp3 (yes, you can play mp3’s with this.) You should also take this time to download all that “homebrew nds software and demos” you want.

Super Card and SD Card

4. Download the latest Supercard software from the Supercard website. As of this writing you need to get Kernel V1.54 to update your Supercard and SoftwareV2.44 which you install in your XP comp.

5. Once you get your “NDS software demos/hombrew” you need to run them through the Super Card software. Remember to set your Saver patch and Rom Position patch to the SD/CF card position (this is done by double clicking the file on the gamelist screen) so that the file runs and saves to the SD/CF card. Also remember to enable compress in the options. You will end up with two files for NDS: a “file.nds.dsq” and a “file.nds.sav” For gameboy you will end up with 3 files “file.gba” “file.sav” “file.sci” Put these files on the SD/CF card.
SC Software
Properties
Options
6. After your supercard and superpass arrive, fit the superpass with the NDS game on the nds game slot, and fit the SD/CF into the supercard and put that into the gameboy slot of the DS.

Side Shot

7. When you power the system, it should go directly to the Super Card screen shown in the pic, select your file and press A. It should give you a kb count and then run; If the screen goes to white, then you have a problem with the file and you should try to run the file again through the sc software, maybe changing some of the properties, also remember to check if your “files” are compatible with the supercard, here’s a good website to check for that.

SC

8. Well, total price for this project: about $300 including the Nintendo DS price, that’s the price for the ultimate portable!! Next time I’ll be explaining how I hacked the firmware so you don’t have to use the Superpass.

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