Before I start #9 I have taken the feedback into consideration, and added pictures and video about this choice.

9. The Rocketeer and Dick Tracy on NES

I dug them out of storage to tell them how much I fucking hate them

My Psychologist told me when he was working at AA one of his patient had this mantra, “To get to the good, you gotta work through the shit.” If that were ever true with me and games, it's right here. I enjoyed both of the films when I was a child. Dick Tracy was a bad ass, and who didn't want a rocket pack? I got Dick Tracy first, as a gift of some sort, and I was excited to play. Turns out I shouldn't have even taken it out of the box.


Its free roaming, like Grant Theft Auto, except with no possibility of having fun playing.

My young mind couldn't comprehend what I was supposed to do, where I was supposed to go. Even as I grew older and played it, it still made no fucking sense to me. Even my beloved Game Genie couldn't help, it couldn't tell me I need to go to this building, followed by that one, then meet with Mumbles here. When I figured out how the game worked, I still couldn't do anything, it was just way to easy to get killed. When I used the Game Genie, I'd quickly end up bored and fed up. My typical session of play would go like this, I pop in the game, can't find where I'm supposed to go first, end up going into a random building to fight some enemies, die, get frustrated, play something else. Yet I'd subject myself to the torture that is Dick Tracy biweekly prior to getting my SNES, and to this day I can't explain why. Thank god it was easy to die in it, otherwise I probably would've wasted even more time on it.


A typical screenshot of me playing Dick Tracy five minutes in.

After I saw that there was a Rocketeer game coming out, I was overjoyed, I saved my money up, and finally the big day arrived. I went to Toys R Us, picked up the slip, got it from the guy behind the glass, and I was ready to fly around and save the day, or so I thought. Looking back at the film now, there's a lot of deeper themes than I remember, but as a kid it was all about the Jetpack. So as an NES game, marketed towards children, one would figure it would be about flying around.


I should have known from here that it was garbage

What I got instead I can't even describe. In all honesty I think my mind blocked it all out. I had to look on Youtube for game footage, and I found what I needed and a commercial which I'm sure enticed me to buy it. In the commercial, clips from the movie are spliced in with game footage showing the Rocketeer flying around.


The thirty seconds that cost me forty dollars.

I don't know when you get to fly around in the game, I never made it that far, come to think of it I probably never made it past the first level. Dick Tracy pissed me off but it was a gift, but this was my own money going towards a game. I even think it was the first, if not one of the first games I bought and paid for all on my own. I felt ripped off then, and still feel ripped off.


A stage I never saw as a child, and don't think I'd have the patience to get to as an adult.

I later felt vindicated hearing The Angry Video Game Nerd bitch about Dick Tracy and ScrewAttack saying Rocketeer was shit, so I wasn't the only one. But, it did teach me to always read reviews, get friends opinions, and in the days when I rented games, to try before I buy. It also helped me realize as a little kid, it's not always the best idea to save up for something specific, because it can easily lead to buyers remorse.