Publisher: Ultra

Developer: Konami

Year: 1989

Concept: April has been kidnapped...again. Its up to you to try and stop Shredder by helping the Ninja Turtles drown in a reservoir filled with electric seaweed.

Execution: Endless waves of mechanical, and acrobatic baddies, many of whom I have never seen before in the Ninja turtles universe. Enemies engulfed in fire, and chainsaw wielding maniacs populate the game like a meth nightmare that again, don't seem to belong anywhere. The best part of the parade of non-canonical enemies is their habit of reappearing faster than a case of herpes during shore-leave. The game had an interesting "slow controller response indoors side scroller" meets " I'm completely lost, lets stop playing this already, top-down view". At any time during the game you can swap out characters to decide to who dies, and during your successive failures you will get all of your childhood turtle heroes, captured, tortured or outright killed by your worthless incompetent hands. The only one worth playing is Donatello, who's staff reaches the furthest of any weapon, making him the most least helpless. Classically people have been deterred in this game by the aforementioned electric seaweed, if you've played the game you not only know what I'm talking about but I think some of you probably at the mentioning just punched something in reflexive anger. Even with the difficulty being as painful as driving a broken plate into your calf, the real vileness lies in the third level when you aimlessly drive about the surface streets in the turtle van, frittering away what few life bars you have until you resign yourself to the use of a continue, a pause break for a coke, and then finally cry yourself to sleep.

Good: The Turtles!

Bad: The hard fact is that Shredder isn't going anywhere. Even in defeat he's going to be a problem, the real issue is that April got herself kidnapped. Normally its not fair to blame her for that, but at this point, being who she is and not having an assortment of self defense tools, several body guards and traveling place to place in an armored car labels her somewhere between naive and retarded. If I did find a way to eventually rescue her in this game, I would want to back hand her. I'm sorry to say it but this game promotes violence against stupid women, which is unfortunate, but in the grander scheme of things if we weren't intended to hit women, why did god make a toothless blow job feel so good?

Rating: 4/7 Hills One for each turtle.

Developer: Atari

Year: 1984

Concept: Get your marble from one end of the course to the other. It sounds simple, but six and seven year olds can struggle more internally with this game than being touched by an uncle.

Execution: The clever music and simple design are as insidious as a single grain of crunchy sand in every bite of a burrito. The controls in the original arcade cabinet featured an actual ball you can use to guide your marble. On the NES you are treated to the primitive design scheme of the d-pad. You could grind the soft meat of your thumb for hours trying to master the cornering and handling of the marble, though the time could be better spent, memorizing the phonebook, learning to fly, or attempting to blow yourself - you know, something useful. I've never felt less in control of anything, even the time I fell down a steep hill I figured I could at least aim my corpse in a certain direction. The last bit of painful memory is the noise that your marble made when it fell from the edge, kind of a saddened wail, that echoes in your thoughts. A wail that returns over and over, letting you know you're a failure, and reminding you of the torture of this poor marble, relegated to shattering on the imaginary 8-bit ground.

Bad: I hate timers, and in this game the most relevant measurement of time is a second, there should be a law somewhere prohibiting this from happening, adding short timers to games is like is like trying to set a speed-eating record every time you sit down for a meal. Why would you even throw in a pause feature? You literally have less than 240 seconds to complete the entire game. The comprehension that your purchase of the Marble Madness cartridge only contains about four minutes of game, (the last 160 seconds you will never actually get to) is staggering to say the least - the argument could be made that you'd learn more about yourself by spending the time trying to shove the wrong end of a hammer up your ass.

Here's a list of all the things that take as long to complete as the intended run length of Marble Madness:

• Wash your hands really well
• Watch an adult nearly drown
• Microwave popcorn
• Reject Satan
• Watch a child drown
• Run a mile really fast
• Enjoy a mini-muffin

And that's a cruel list, because I've never even eaten a mini-muffin or washed my hands.

Good: Made me realize I've never played marbles and made the decision not to pursue taking it up.

Rating: 2/7 Hills

Publisher: EA

Developer: Data West

Year: 1990

Concept: Six semi-olympic-ish events in the style of dated caveman stereotypes.

Execution: This game has the absolute worst controls of the entire NES library. Each stage features a different way to grind your thumbs into arm-straining, confidence obliterating, madness. Its easier to steer a pogo stick off a building into a fire hydrant than get your character to "walk" forward. In this game you can pole vault, gladiator club, Dino race, run from a saber tooth, start a fire, or toss your mate. You are better off inventing a text version of this game, and extracting entertainment of reading the description of how fast your dino was, than attempting to master the controls on this game. Even after you gain some semblance of what the controls are its hard to relate the experience to entertainment. I'm fairly certain that because the NES didn't have online play, Data West was trying to simulate lag with their controller scheme. Truly a pioneer in engineering an artificial high ping to increase the challenge of a boring game.

Bad: If you happen to have this game back in the day, and a friend came over and wondered what it was, you would never talk to that person ever again. A game, so bad it was socially crippling, much like people discovering you contracted gonorrhea from a relative - again, you will be judged.

Good: Being a rather rare cart, you could probably get a few extra bucks from a collector than your average joe-strider, or Gradius-six pack. There is also the added bonus of being able to remove the game from your NES and never play it again.

Rating: 3/7 Hills

Publisher: Capcom

Year: 1985

Concept: You are Arthur, trying to retrieve your princess from the evil Astaroth. Capcom takes the Mario and Princess platform paradigm and adds 2 cups d&d, and equal parts of frustrating and annoying to the mix, essentially adding something like plastic meat to a perfectly good pizza, you could still eat it but whats the point.

Execution: Run, jump, and die eventually: the Special Olympics. Piles and piles of enemies come speeding at you, while their friends hang back and throw stuff. While standard in a platformer sense, the speed at which you have to progress through the levels and avoid enemies is frustratingly impossible. The addition of a timer to this game adds (in my opinion) just one more panic attack for a 9 year old to suffer through. But the timer isn't entirely to blame for the frustration, they combine a wicked number of endlessly spawning enemies, sloppy controls, and the timer. You need reflexes that spiders can't even muster to get through the first levels. Where else do enemies spawn endlessly? Where did that concept come from? Why is it still around?

Bad: I read that if you get to Astaroth, past the ice cavern, the cemetery and lord knows what else, he sends you back to the beginning to start over again. It's not like that will keep happening, ie the never ending game, but you have to fight your way all the way back to defeat him again. Jesus Christ is that fucked up, why not just have the game turn off after the first level to save you the time.

Good: Very classic arcade game where you could marvel at advanced players get slightly farther than you did, so you could worship them like greasy backpack wearing gods.

Rating: 5/7 Hills