Epic Fail

In honor of the release of Super Smash Bro. Brawl, we decided to cover Fighting Games in this week's Epic Fail. So play nice kids, it's all fun and games until someone starts crying.

I owned this game for less than a single day when it came out back in 2005. Being a wrestling fan, and a wrestling game fan, I was expecting something great from this, especially given the trailers and the graphics. Boy, was I wrong.

The controls were awful. Simply awful. It was impossible to figure out how to play the game, even after reading the manual, and the flow of the game was really bad as well. Matches dragged on for minutes on end, without any way to pin your opponent, the gameplay was really awful, and, in the end, only the intros turned out to look good. In short, this is one epic fail of a fighting game.

-- Mike DAlonzo

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It's happened to all of us. You're playing an incredible game when you stumble upon a level or mission that makes you frustrated or annoyed or possibly even question the fun of the game as a whole. For this week's Epic Fail Thursday, TheFeed would like to welcome you to our selection of the most Epic Fail Videogame Levels of all time. Take note, we tried to avoid levels in downright terrible games, since pretty much all the levels in bad games are fails. This list is comprised of levels or missions from the games that we hold dear, games that, aside from the mentioned levels, would be just about perfect.

Be sure to let us know what you think of our list? Did we miss any epic fail levels from your favorite games? Feel free to expand on our list in the comments section below.

Speeder Bike Race (Battletoads)

Okay, I understand that this game is infamously hard, but it's also a lot of fun - except these levels. You're moving so fast you hardly have time to react to the giant concrete blocks flying at your toad. the only warning you get is the block flashing on the right side of the screen moments before it tries to kill you, and by the time you're halfway through, there are so many blocks coming at you so fast one after the other, the blinking blocks blend into one solid block, defeating the purpose of the flashing block acting as a warning. Yes it's just as annoying as it sounds. Also, you have to duck under some of them. How in the hell do you duck on a speeder bike?

-thepattractive

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Since the dawn of time, Man has dreamed of flying. Also going to school naked. But mostly of flying. While the majesty of man's conquest of gravity is super-inspiring and crap, we'd rather focus on the times when Mans' reach exceeds his grasp and rather than shuffling off the coil of this earth and soaring into the heavens, Man is more like, "oh, crap!" while he hurtles to the ground and certain death and/or humiliation. We're like that.

Please enjoy TheFeed's Epic Fail: Attempts at Flight.

Icarus: The classic, first ,and most epic of all epically failed flyers, mythical Icarus got carried away with the wings he'd created stolen from his pops, and flew too close to sun, melting the wax that held his contraption together, and causing his spectacular crash. Usually seen as a metaphor for man's hubris, I choose to think of the story of Icarus as a cautionary tale about using heat resistant wax when attaching bird wings to your arms. But Kid Icarus on the NES was pretty sweet.
--sjohnson

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Super villainy just doesn't pay off. The social contract of comic books demands that evil-doers who menace Black Lightning or Apache Chief are defeated by the end of the book or the end of the story-line. Even recurring villain favorites are shunted off to Arkham Asylum or forcibly banished back to Bizarro Universe. The absolute best a super villain can hope for is a successful retreat.

But some super villains are so nonthreatening, laughable and just plain dumb that they sink to the bottom of even the loser class of super-villains. So below are the Epic Failures of comicdom villainy. Enjoy!

Big Sir:  Born Doofus P. Ratchet, Big Sir is an enemy of The Flash, and, as far as I know, the only mentally disabled man ever to have owned the title of supervillain. Yep, a group of other supervillains, known as The Rogue’s Gallery, recovered Doofus from a mental hospital, put him in an iron suit, and gave him a weapon, an energy mace, which is not necessarily the best thing to hand a retarded person, but what do I know?

The Flash eventually defeated Big Sir. Probably by pulling a Snack Pak from his backpack and offering it to him.
--mdalonzo

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In past weeks, we've discussed the epic failure of various aspects of videogames, films, television and technology, but today, in honor of St. Valentine's Day, TheFeed will be discussing failures of the heart. Strap in for our list of Epic Failures: Ex Girlfriends...then leave your own terrible dating experience in our comments section!

Bleahy:  Back in college, I had been dating a girl who was generally pretty crazy. Like, if we had a fight she’d get a full on panic attack. Wanting to break up with her, but not wanting to drive her to hurt herself or others, I stayed with her and tried to convince her to get some counseling. She finally saw someone and they put her on some medication. Then I broke up with her. A few days later she came by my house to “give me the things I had at her place”, which ended up being pasta sauce and toilet paper. This is odd, because I wasn’t keeping any sauce or TP at her place. I threw out them out.

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This week, the shining spotlight of Epic Fail Thursday comes gleaming into the pages of the comic books most of us have held dearly to our hearts since our childhood. In other words, here is TheFeed's list of Epic Fail Superheroes, and may God have mercy on your soul.

This week's Fail is a gift from all of TheFeed's contributors clamoring to tell you who are the worst of the worst when it comes to superheroing. Some of the answers might surprise you.

Spitfire and the Troubleshooters - As a kid, I tried to get into comic books. People seemed to like them, and I figured I should get in on the action. So, in the Fall of 1986, with allowance secured inside my trusty Velcro wallet, I ventured down to the corner book shop and picked up issue # 1 of Spitfire and the Troubleshooters. A super hero decked out in a badass hi-tech exoskeleton that looked like a roided-out Master Chief seemed like it would be pretty cool. It wasn’t. Perhaps it was the ragtag juvenile sidekicks dubbed “The Troubleshooters,” who sounded like people you’d call if your VCR was on the fritz and who set the tone for similar teams to follow like the one in “Captain Planet” (hey, has anyone mentioned the Captain in this piece?). Long story short: I never did get into comic books.

-mbretz

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Super Bowl, for making us believe all these years, for building us up just to break us down, and for making us watch Brian Boitano skate and twirl around for the halftime show in '92, you are this Thursday's Epic Fail.

Let us first start with the game itself:

Wide Right! from Scott Norwood in Super Bowl XXV - After an incredible drive from the legendary Jim Kelly held together by great runs from Thurman Thomas, Norwood misses a potential game-winning field goal in the closing seconds. Providing the villain for Ace Ventura does not make up for this epic failure. See the last 10 minutes of the game on the tube.

The Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXV - XXVIII -  Four consecutive Super Bowl appearances. Four losses. Epic fail.

The Game Every Year - Because of frequent disparities between the two leagues of the NFL, one team typically blows out the other, meaning months of anticipation, and weeks of analysis all add up to one trumped up, anticlimactic event that becomes about everything except the actual game, because the game usually sucks.

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In honor of the title of the next James Bond movie (Quantum of Solace), this week's list of Epic Failures is movie titles. Specifically, we're talking movie titles that fail the movies they are meant to represent. Like, say, Quantum of Solace.

Before you start being like "What about The Incredibly Strange People Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies? That's a fail title." No, hypothetical reader, it isn't. That title nicely sums up the madcap, energetic, mid 60s youth-culture vibe of that under-rated film. Same with names like K-9 Cop. It's about a dog cop, so it's a perfect title. Fail titles are the opposite. They don't fit the movies they are attached to. Get it?

Here's the list, son:

• Quantum of Solace: James Bond movie titles are supposed to be badass (Live and Let Die) or at least funny (Octopussy), they're not supposed to be oblique and/or wimpy. A "quantum" is a measurement of the smallest amount of energy, and "solace" means comfort or consolation. So, rather than portending a huge amount of ass-whupping, the title of this movie promises just a little bit of caring. Why not call it "A Smidge of Hugs?"
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls: . When anyone mentions crystals, we think of  hippies and when we think of hippies we want to punch you.
• Miller's Crossing: The Coen Brother's stylized tale of Irish mobsters is one of the great crime films ever made, but the title conjures images of a Merchant Ivory style high-brow chick-flick.
• Antz: This animated movie was called "Antz" but was actually about "Ants." Fail.

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We all love gadgets and technology, but there are products that belong in the bargain bin of Epic Fail and not in our pockets. In no particular order, here are our failing favorites.

• Gizmondo – No, not the tech blog that was naughty at CES 2008. Take 1 part portable gaming console, add 1 part GPS and add a splash of 2.5G mobile data service. Stir in a crazy, Swedish executive that crashed a $1,000,000 Ferrari in Malibu while drunk and you’ve got a tall, tasty epic fail.

• The Phantom – Ah, the Phantom. Winner of many yearly vaporware awards, this console was supposed to play PC games and receive content over the internet. The developers would sometimes show up at E3 or announce a release date only to have it pushed back. Currently, Phantom Entertainment is releasing peripherals and hopes to develop a Steam-like digital delivery system. We doubt it.

• The N-Gage – Nokia’s gaming phone that spawned the Side Talkin’ internet meme. The first installment of the device rocked some terrible design flaws, the most notable of which, was forcing users to remove the battery to change the game. We just don’t see the need to combine a handheld gaming console and a phone if it takes a huge hit to game quality. Also, we don’t know anyone who owns one.

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TheFeed is proud to present Epic Fail, our feature that brings you the greatest failures in the world of videogames, popular culture and technology. We're not talking run-of-the-mill defeat here; Epic Fail is reserved for the top of the bottom: Grand-scale fiascos only.

This week: Numbers. 

Below are the worst failures in the world of numbers.

• 2: This perennial second-place finisher is never quite good enough to get the job done.
• 69: The dirtiest of all numbers, 69 never sounds as cool as it looks to write it on paper, and its reputation has been forever tainted with a usually less-than-satisfying sexual act. By contrast, its cousin 96 is well-thought-of by all.

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TheFeed is proud to present Epic Fail, our feature that brings you the greatest failures in the world of videogames, popular culture and technology. We're not talking run-of-the-mill defeat here; Epic Fail is reserved for the top of the bottom: Grand-scale fiascos only.

This week, Epic Fail is featuring the worst movie sequels of all time. Check it out:

• Dumb and Dumberer: In case you forgot, Dumb and Dumber was a funny Jim Carrey movie. Not a smart Jim Carrey movie or anything, but definitely funny.The sequel is a fail movie. Instead of Jim Carrey we get a lookalike (Eric Olsen) and instead of humor we get crap. The most telling moment in the film: Bob Saget yelling, "There's sh*t everywhere!" Yeah, Bob, we noticed.
• Indiana Jones And The Temple of Doom: This was a controversial choice. MDalonzo insisted that it is a terrible movie compared to the original. Everyone else was like, "Short Round was funny!" or "It was actually pretty good." But we realized no one but MDalonzo had seen it as an adult, and he assures us that we only like it because we saw it when we were eight. So we're including it here. Tell MDalonzo he's wrong if you want to. In fact, yell at him in our comments.

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TheFeed is proud to present Epic Fail, a brand new feature that brings you the greatest failures in the world of videogames, popular culture and technology. We're not talking run-of-the-mill defeat here; Epic Fail is reserved for the top of the bottom: Grand-scale fiascos only.

To kick off Epic Fail, we've compiled the below list of the most egregious failures in the current generation of videogaming. Because we can, we've defined the "Current" generation as beginning five years ago and ending this morning at 8 AM.

10) The Phantom: Originally announced in 2002, this never to-be-released gaming platform had a seemingly solid idea at its core: A set-top launch console that could play PC games, meaning thousands of Phantom games would be available at launch and development would be a snap. The problem was, like its namesake, The Phantom remained invisible. Reportedly, Phantom Entertainment has lost more than $62.7 million since it began work on The Phantom, without a single unit ever being sold. The SEC has implied Phantom's president was running a  "pump and dump" stock scheme in promoting the Phantom.

9) Advent Rising: Okay, it's hard to call a game with ratings like 67% on gamerankings.com a total failure, but the expectations for this 3rd person action title were so high before the game's 2005 release, anything short of magnificent was a failure. The game had everything going for it: Written by Orson Scott Card, and hyped to the moon, Advent Rising was planned as the first in a three part series. It had a comic book. There was a million-dollar contest at the game's launch for the first player to find a hidden symbol in-game. But when it came out for the PC and Xbox, it got mixed reviews and gamers were like "meh." As far as the million bucks: Majesco was forced to cancel the contest when security issues with Xbox Live's global time syncing made the contest unfair.

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