Video Game Frustration

Video games are meant to be challenging and fun. However, there are a lot of games out there which are either too hard or offer little reward for a lot of work. Here are some of my favorite sources of frustration over the years:

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002, PS2) - This game was a historic milestone in video games: a full city to explore and to establish a criminal empire. This game was a lot of fun to play, especially with the ability to steal any car or mug anybody who walks by.

There is one point where you need to race another car through the city to advance in the game. For some reason, I found this race to be really hard to win, and there were no cheats to help me overcome it. I stopped playing the game for several months, and then finally resolved to win this race and finish the game.

I must have gone through that race at least 200 to 300 times before I finally won it. Thankfully, I finally finished Vice City, and I will never play it again.


Seaman (2000, Sega Dreamcast) – Seaman was a virtual pet-type game where you raise a fish-creature with a human face from a tadpole to an adult. The innovative part of the game was that you could talk to your Seaman through a microphone on the controller and teach him words as he grew up. It was actually one of the better games on the Dreamcast system.

When I was playing this game, I dutifully visited my Seaman every day after he hatched. I fed him, I decorated his fish tank, and I talked to him. No young video game fish could ever ask for anything more. I tried to teach him words, but he only spoke gibberish to me.

This when on for a month, and I was never able to exchange actual words with my Seaman. “That’s ok”, I thought, “we’ll have many more opportunities to have deep, meaningful discussions when he’s all grown up”.

However, one day I missed a day to visit Seaman, and the next time I came back, he was dead! I never realized a virtual fish was so fragile. What a waste of time! Nothing will ever be able to fill the fish-sized hole this game left in my heart.


Tomb Raider III (1998, Playstation) – Back in the day, the Tomb Raider franchise was huge. Young boys everywhere lusted after the polygonal Lara Croft and tried to find that mythical “nude” code.

I never played the original Tomb Raider, but I had just finished Tomb Raider II, and I was ready for another round with Tomb Raider III. However, after playing the third game in the series, I realized that it was a lot more of the same, only worse.

What was the biggest problem? I couldn’t see anything! Somehow I was always stuck in a dark, miserable cave where I had to strain my eyes to see where I needed to go next. I quickly gave up on the game, and I haven’t gone back since.

Hopefully, the forthcoming Tomb Raider: Legend will bring us a more realistically-proportioned Lara Croft with a whole new bag of tricks, rather than the old, tired ones.



X-Men (1993, Sega Genesis) – I have a lot of fond memories of this game. Actually it was a really cool game for it’s time. If I’m not mistaken, this was the first X-Men video game, and they did a really good job with it. You got to play as Cyclops, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, or Gambit, with occasional aerial support from Jean Gray, Storm, Angel, and Iceman.

What frustrated me about the game is that on one level, you are asked to “reset the computer” before a bomb goes off and ends your game. I looked everywhere on the screen for a stupid reset switch, but I could never find it. I think I spent weeks looking for a way to reset that damn computer.

I ended up calling some sort of video game hotline and got the answer: in order to “reset the computer”, you were supposed to hit the reset button on the Sega Genesis console. Jesus Christ! Why in the world would they want you to do that? 99 times out of 100, if you hit the reset button, you’ll lose your game. To this day, this still makes me shake my head in disbelief.


Swordquest: Earthworld (1982, Atari 2600) – This is the granddaddy of all my video game frustration. I was fourteen when I bought this game for our Atari 2600 (with my own allowance money, mind you). Back in those days, the only way you knew if a game was any fun was by how good the artwork on the box was. This one should have been a doozy. One other cool thing was that it had a title screen of a sword with constantly changing colors. I remember staring at the title screen for a long time, marveling how far computer technology had come.

The object of this game was to explore twelve rooms, each one representing a sign of the zodiac. You were supposed to find twelve objects, and place them in the proper room.

You know what? This was impossible! Twelve objects in twelve rooms? Good God, there are thousands of different combinations! How is a fourteen-year-old kid supposed to figure this out?

I ended up writing a letter to Atari asking them for the answer. They sent me back a form letter that didn’t tell me what I wanted to know. I sent a second letter asking the same question, but I never received an answer.

All these years later, I realize that Swordquest: Earthworld was nothing more than a crappy game. The best thing about the game was that it came with a comic book drawn by George Perez. I’m sure that was the real reason I bought the video game. Yeah, that’s it.

Looks tempting, right? Don't be fooled, kids.