Gaming itself is a fun loving activity that brings out the inner child in us all.  And if some of you could think back to how you actually acted as children and compare it to your online attitude, you’ll very quickly see the similarities. But it’s not just the users who act childishly.  Sometimes the companies themselves decide to be dicks or to not think a decision through and come out looking like assholes. In celebration of these incidents, I bring to you the Top 5 bastard moments in gaming.

5) The New 360 Interface

Lookin Sharp Kid.

Last fall, 360 users received a facelift for their dashboard courtesy of Microsoft.  This was supposed to bring a new level of interactivity and user friendliness.  You could probably write the rest of this joke, but allow me the pleasure of articulating. What we got instead was a hack job done by Dr. Frankenstein while on a tequila and meth bender.  It was essentially Microsoft doing what it did with Vista, that being ripping off the successful interface of a competitor and doing it wrong.  While I will agree the first 360 interface wasn’t the greatest, I could at least navigate it with the minimum of issues.  This one has me guessing half the time. At least the last one was color coded.

4) Selective Backwards Compatibility on the 360

Gorilla Learns Sign Language

Congrats Microsoft, you take two places right in a row. Though this being a top five list of sh*tasticness, don’t go pattin yourselves on the back.  So yet again, Microsoft tries to recreate what a competitor did successfully, and once more got it wrong.  Though they have made efforts to correct this — and this is the only thing saving them from a higher spot on this lists — the Xbox 360 was originally only backwards compatible with 13% of Xbox games.  Which was awesome if you wanted to play “Barbie Horse Adventure”. Not so much if you wanted to play “Otogi”, “Steel Batalion”, or even “Fable” at one point.  And it would have been a moot point if the Xbox wasn’t such a delicate machine that couldn’t even withstand a fly’s fart.  Most of us had to buy a 360 to keep our library from becoming so many decorative coasters.  Thanks for keepin up that trend of mediocrity Microsoft.

3) Sega kills itself

Tiny, but Fierce.

Back in the 16-bit era, the Genesis set the mold for more mature gaming.  Advertising for an older audience, and not shrinking away from showing blood and extra violence in it’s games that Nintendo deemed inappropriate.  Though instead becoming married to this wave of success and committing to a working formula, Sega left us all standing at the alter as it released two hardware expansions, and then rapidly abandons them in favor of the next new piece of shiny, black plastic that struts it’s skank ass down the street.  This attitude came to ultimate culmination when it decided to cancel the life cycle of the “Sega Saturn” barely two years after it’s release.  This burned gamers and developers alike, who took treated their next release “The Dreamcast” with measured reluctance.  And after “Dreamcast” failed to perform in sales, Sega was forced to leave the console making arena.  A sad day for those of us who were among the Sega faithful, but even worse for that fact that the “Dreamcast” was and remains a damn good system.   However, if it wasn’t for Sega’s earlier indiscretions, gamers never would have lost faith, and we never would have lost Sega.

2) Every Decision Sony Has Made in the Console Era

Good Ol'fashioned FU

Sega might have been a whore, but Sony was a whore that tied us to the bed then robbed us, left us naked in the motel room, and called the police to report a pervert.  We start off with a launching price tag that went somewhere past, “arm and leg” and went straight to, “soul” or “first born child”; then continued to a ridiculously low number of units shipped for the first wave of sales; followed that up with removing rumble features from the controller; and end it all with a nice big removal of backwards compatibility.  My third god Sony, I want to like you, but you make me feel like I’m your dirty secret.  Seriously, all of that added together amounts to being told to “eat sh*t and die” without so much as the direct courtesy of being told so.  I would say try not to be bastards in the future, but we know that’s not gonna happen.

1) Nintendo Whores out Legend of Zelda Liscense to Phillips

Holy God Did This Suck

I sure as hell hope to god Nintendo doesn’t go under the way Sega did. If the CDi versions of “The Legend of Zelda” franchise are any indication of what the games will be like on a non-Nintendo platform, I will weep for my childhood.  So once upon a time in the 90’s, Nintendo had been working a deal with Sony to create an attachment for the Super Nintendo that would make the system more powerful and allow it to play games written on CDs.  It all looked grand and glorious, till at a press conference Nintendo surprised everyone including Sony with it’s decision to back Phillip’s new project the “CDi”. What followed were three Zelda titled games that looked like ass, played like ass, and made Nintendo feel like an ass.  It was this decision that caused Nintendo to lose almost all of it’s third party support, as no company wanted to associate with a firm that made such a dumbass business decision.  And whatever happened to that Sony made add on. Well it was tentatively titled “The Playstation”.  The rest is history.

And so you know the Top 5 Bastard moments in gaming.  Hopefully game and hardware makers you’ve been reading and will learn the lessons of history.  And I shall be sure to sprinkle salt over the patch of ice indicating Hell froze over. 

Hell Yeah Konami Code!

Written By: John Quick

Photo Illustrations By: Alex Chod