Some of My Worst Gaming Experiences

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         One of the worst gaming experiences I had as a kid was dealing with things that didn't work. I'm old school enough to remember blowing on your cartridges to make games work again. But, what happens when you can't fix it?


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         That happened to me one day when the family's Atari Jaguar blew a fuse when I tried to turn it on. My siblings and I could smell something was burning. We had plans to play some Raiden and then take turns taking stabs at Doom. Well, the console breaking meant we had to change plans. Good thing we didn't lack other alternatives.

         Lucky for me, I wasn't blamed for the incident. It bummed me out that it finally gave up the ghost. Today, the system is very much collectible and pricey, but nothing astronomical. Last I checked, my parents still kept the game cartridges and their inserts intact. So yeah, at least we preserved some of the "antiques".

         So, that's a hardware failure. Not much I could do about that unless I had the skills to repair/replace the damage. The more frustrating gaming experience I had growing up was being unable to complete a game. Not because the game was too difficult, but because the game had a serious glitch.


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         Enter Turok: Rage Wars. I had a lot of fond memories playing this game with family and friends. I still remember my favorite load out: Mag 60, Shotgun, Flare Gun, Plasma Rifle, and Grenade Launcher. I played this game so much that I obtained all the medals/achievements I could... except the co-op and "frag tag" ones.

         Frag tag, was a game mode where a player was "it", like the game tag. "It" can be a monkey or chicken that could not utilize weapons and items, but could pick up health. The other players try to kill "it" to score points until "it" finds a way to transform back and make another player "it".

         There was this game breaking bug that would cause mission failure in co-op campaign mode. No matter what you did, your mission always end in failure. Unfortunately, it is impossible to skip the last frag tag stage in campaign mode. This bug seemed to also have prevented you to get any of the frag tag medals in multiplayer.

         So, there I was at 43/50 medals, but could not complete it because the game wouldn't let me. Despite of that, I tried to enjoy the game as much as I could. It was the first time the completionist side of me felt completely ripped off.

         This was before today's trend of constant patches and DLCs. This was also back in the early 2000's when internet wasn't as part of our lives as it is today. I didn't know how to look for information. I didn't even know if it was our particular cartridge or something else.

         It was not until years later that I discovered a workaround to that issue. Turned out, you could send the black cartridge back to Acclaim Games, and they would replace it with a gray one. Here's an article about it. The gist of it is that the black cartridges were defective products.

         https://www.cbr.com/turok-rage-wars-rarest-n64-game/

         The younger me would have been livid reading that article. The current me laments the fact that I didn't find out about it sooner. I could have gotten a gray cartridge, which is a collectible item now.

         In the end, those experiences felt crummy when they first happened. Toys were literally broken. As an adult, I came to realize how costly those inconveniences could be. They are not life changing amounts of money, but it made me wish we took care of things better.

         On the other hand, my family and I had great fun with the Atari Jaguar and
Turok: Rage Wars. You can't buy those experiences and moments.



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30 comments
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I remember being frustrated by a few puzzle and strategy games that I got from older relatives which were too difficult for a young kid. I kept them and beat most of them later.

Watching people use game genie was a little frustrating, I always thought it was cheating.

When PS1 came out I was often frustrated with the loading times.

My good conscious wouldn't let me get the mod chip, so I was frustrated when my friends would try to give me burnt games.

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Haha yes, I understand the whole beating the game when you are older thing.

We never owned Game Genie. I remember burrowing one from a friend to access an Easter egg thing in one of the games.

My earliest memory of PS1 was watching my aunt playing Resident Evil 2. I had some burnt games on the PC back in the days. My brother was good at that.

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My neighbor had a ton of burnt games and basically got every system as soon as they came out, so I got to try everything there. I also used to rent games before buying them. If I couldn't beat it or get bored of it in a week, it was probably a good game.

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Don't forget, you can upvote peoples comments too!
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I never played a Jaguar, but then a lot of the consoles passed me by. Atari did a lot of cool stuff over the years. I nearly bought an ST at one point.

!BEER

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Atari even have their own coin now.

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Just what the world needs! ;) I have no idea who owns the name now. Back in the day I went with an Amiga instead of the Atari ST. Had a lot of fun with it.

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image.png

I guess it's owned by someone, but rights given to several entities?

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Wow, that is horrible. My dad and I used to play a game that was a war simulation and no matter what you did you could not win the battles. It was almost true to life. I might have to join in on this and write a post!

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I can relate, especially the first few lines. Dealing with things that didnt work or troubleshooting can be a real pain especially back in the days while growing up, it was one of the most frustrating things to experience as there were literally less ways to find solutions when things dont work

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Yeah, and today, some of these items are considered collectibles. So, that made things feel a bit worse.

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The first Turok game was one of my favorites growing up.

  • deranged
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Nice!

I remember my favourite weapon in the first game being the Pulse Rifle.

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At home the Atari burned due to electrical problems and how I suffered from it. But I kept playing at an aunt's house with a cousin. Greetings.

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Yeah, the same thing happened to ours. Wonder if that's the most common problem over time.

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Have you ever had a CRT tv blow out and turn your image into a white line across the middle of the screen?

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I wanted an Atari Jaguar bad. Never got it. I bought a Fender Jaguar instead...
Tetrahedrosephs FenderJag.png

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It's never too late to start, my friend.

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(Edited)

I bought SOCOM 4 for PS3. I waited years to get it because I had kids and couldn’t afford new games nor did I have time. I had no idea about the problems it had, like how you couldn’t get past the first mission if you had your PS3 updated past a certain system level. Well fuck me I took it back to Walmart and they tried to tell me it’s common knowledge. Noooo it’s not. Gimme back my $21. (I got my money back and bought Battlefield 3, where there was no pistol in your hands in the first mission making the game impossible to start, but a large download fixed that.)

Ripped. Off.

I don’t have any PlayStation anything anymore. Fuuuuck that

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Sounded like a no-win scenario.

I haven't touched a Playstation since PS2.

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At least you weren´t blamed for the accident, I´ve never played Turok but I think I should give it a chance.

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Turok is a great series. You should give it a go.

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