Greatest disapoinment for NON game and NON system

[SoulBlazer]

We've had threads talking about disapoinments for games and game systems. How about everything else? Accesories, add-on's, programs that are'nt games, etc.

Mine would have to be Bleem! for the PC, without a doubt. Did I get robbed on that.

Back when it came out, I read all the news about it and supported their fight aganist Sony. It seemed like what the people at Bleem was doing was fully legal. I had allready been in emulation for a few years and knew the emulator was legal as long as they reverse engineered it.....and the PlayStation had been on the market long enough that I was SURE it could be done. I got excited at the prospect of playing PlayStation games on my computer with better graphics, better load times, and save states. But my computer at the time was'nt that good, so I held off.

A few months later, Bleem had won the first court battles with Sony, they were releasing updates on a fairly regular basis, the plans and dreams they talked about in their press releases and on their boards were encourging and hopefull.....and then I got a new computer. Confident of my ability to run Bleem! now, I went out and paid $40 for it. After all, I wanted to help support Bleem to improve their emulator.

What a freakin disapoinment. Out of the dozen or so games I tried on it, only about two worked properly. And they were slow without any graphic improvement at all. Mind you, my new system exceeded the specs that Bleem said that I should have. And these were games that according to their lists and site SHOULD work properly with some nice upgrades. (I recall the games that did work being Metal Gear Solid and Mega Man Legends)

Still, the boards were active, so was the company, and I patiently waited for another update......which never came. About six months after I got Bleem I finally got fed up and traded it to someone. Soon after that, it was offiicaly announced that there would be no more work on their PC emulator. Glad I got rid of it before it became a paperweight.

To this day I have yet to try any other PlayStation emulators, I was so disgusted by the whole experience and wasting money.

I wonder what ever happened to Bleem, the people, and the product rights anyway?

So, what are yours?

[Cryomancer]

Well, as bad as Bleem turned out, Bleemcast was even worse...they even had controllers and memory card adapters lined up for it, but it just never took off...could have been awesome.

Other dissapointments are mostly hardware what ifs for me...

Dreamcast zip drive
N64 DD (us never got it...i wanted one forever, still do)
Dreamcast mp3-player VMU


I'm also saddened at the low run of Dreamcast BBAs as it'll be ages before I get one of those...

[Nez]

I'd say all of my 3rd party stuff. Never works right or for very long.

[DDCecil]

Turbo Touch 360 pads for NES.

[MegaDrive20XX]

Well, as bad as Bleem turned out, Bleemcast was even worse...they even had controllers and memory card adapters lined up for it, but it just never took off...could have been awesome.

Other dissapointments are mostly hardware what ifs for me...

Dreamcast zip drive
N64 DD (us never got it...i wanted one forever, still do)
Dreamcast mp3-player VMU


I'm also saddened at the low run of Dreamcast BBAs as it'll be ages before I get one of those...

That N64 DD I wanted badly too...just to think if they released that F-Zero expansion and Zelda URA in the states...*sigh* especially the "Mario Artist" game

[link1110]

Xenosaga. Xenogears was pretty fun, so I actually paid full price for that "game" on release day. Worst game ever. I stopped playing soon after I wandered around that ship for an hour trying to deliver dinner to the evil looking guy. If I want to be a waiter, I'll do to a diner and pay for it, not get ripped off at a game store for it.

[Lone_Monster]

He said Non-Games, link.

I will also second third party stuff. Controllers, memory cards, whatever. 99% of the time it's crap.

[slip81]

I was pretty dissapointed with the 32x at the time of it's release, mainly because it cost and prommised so much, but gave very little. Though now that it's cheaper I want to collect for it.

[Funkenstein]

Oh yeah, 3rd party memory cards. My 10x Playstation memory card crapped the bed on me wiping out many a valuable save. The cartridge memory backups for my Sega Cd and Saturn both died on me. I was never a fan of the Gamecube having different sizes either, but that's off the topic.

I've always thought the vibrating contollers were dumb. I bought Starfox for the N64 (the first wiggle-enhanced game I beleive?) plugged the rumble pack in, of course you couldn't throw the memory card in at the same time, and got really sick of it after 10 minutes.

Then the Playstation came out with the whole Dual Shock thing. Some games like MG:S used it effectively, but most of the time it boils down to things on the screen going boom and the controller going bzzt. I've gotten used to it though, so if I turn the vibration off it feels dead in my hands. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. :)

[MegaDrive20XX]

Action Replay Max Evo for PS2

The excitement about playing Genesis games on your PS2 was tempting...but when I found out some ROMS will not work with this PGen Emulator was a total let down, especially when signs of LAG in Sonic games was a crying shame, yet on a good day, Contra Hard Corps would play alright, but it couldn't launch Street Fighter 2? odd indeed...

[boatofcar]

I've never liked any non-standard controllers for any system. I suppose it started with the NES Max (ugh), and continued with the Ascii SNES controller and MadCatz PS2 controller, both of which quickly died on me and never felt right anyway. As a rule, I only buy 1st party accessories now.

[Dr. Morbis]

The power glove that my best friend at the time got for his birthday. We were so hyped about playing nes with the power glove, but it sucked.... SO BAD!

Also the nes MAX, the power pad, and pretty much all other nes peripherals *except* the nes Advantage which rox my sox.

[DJ_DEEM]

not that i had one, but im really upset it didnt take off was that modem for the nes, anyone rember this thing? i cant think of the name, damn that would be cool, it would be awesome if someone hombrewed up a modem for nes and made sum games for it, sigh i can dream right?

: P

[Avenger]

ill 2nd/3rd/watever, 3rd party stuff...especially when its a crap knock off of a 1st part accessory...like memory cards and stuff

[Ze_ro]

I'm still bummed that the Jaguar VR helmet never came out. In fact, I'm bummed that the whole concept of VR has effectively died out :(

I'm surprised no one's mentioned the Gamecube's broadband adaptor yet. I got one as a present and I have yet to actually use it. I'm not a fan of online gaming though, so I was never particularly disappointed.


Xenosaga. Xenogears was pretty fun, so I actually paid full price for that "game" on release day. Worst game ever.
I remember being in EB one day, and some kids came in asking to buy a copy of Xenosaga, and the guy at the counter kept trying to tell them that it totally sucked... He'd be like "Y'know, I loved Xenogears too, but trust me, Xenosaga is terrible, you don't want to waste your money on it!", but the kids wouldn't listen and bought it anyways. Sometimes you gotta learn the hard way I guess.

--Zero

[SoulBlazer]

I was just trying to keep games out of this thread cause we allready have one ongoing about that. :)

Oh, I forgot about the PlayStation third party memory cards. Ick! :(

[Pedro Lambrini]

Force-Feedback mice on the PC. I think these should be standard for PC gamers by now but have never amounted to anything. Oh well...

[Dahne]

I still hate having to shell out extra for memory cards. Bah.

[DigitalSpace]

The SNES Super Scope 6 was way too big and awkward.

And has anyone made a decent third party memory card?

[SoulBlazer]

YES! I've NEVER had a problem with my two Interact memory cards. And used them heavily for a couple years.

[Pedro Lambrini]

Madcatz PS1 and PS2 mem cards have always been reliable as well :D

I thought of another dissapointing accessory - magnifiers for handhelds! I've never used one and thought it was a) worth the money or b) an improvement.

[EnemyZero]

the fact that the virtual boy killed whatever eyesight you had, within a matter of an hour

[dethink]

sega VR
sega becoming a 3rd party
the death of specialized 1st party peripherals (i.e. light guns)

[Gapporin]

All this mention of 3rd party stuff brought one thing to mind...

Don't not, under any circumstances, ever buy Mad Catz Gamecube controllers. I absolutely loathe them.

[Iron Draggon]

Games X Copy for the PC. I bought it on Memorial Day weekend this year, as soon as it came out, because they had a deal on it that I just couldn't pass up. Only $60 - $10 instant savings - $30 mail in rebate = $20 + tax. I filed for my rebate the same day online. They said it would take 6 to 8 weeks to arrive. After 2 months, no show, so I went back to check the status on it.

They said they were waiting for me to tell them if I wanted them to send me a check or if I wanted it in online store credit towards the purchase of more of their software. If I went with the online store credit, they would double my rebate and give me $60 towards the purchase of more software. I don't remember the rebate form saying anything about me having to make any choices and specify how I wanted my money. It said they'd send me a check. So I said send me a check and it said wait another 6 to 8 weeks.

Another two months and still no show, so I go to check the status on it aghain. This time it says that due to all the litigation against them, they have been forced out of business, and they can only offer me some downloads of some free software as a consolation. I don't want anymore of their software, I just want my $30 that I was promised back. I'm waiting for a class action lawsuit over it now, but I'm not returning the software just to get it, if that's what they want. My only real consolation is that I actually got a copy of the software, which is now illegal to sell and therefore no longer legally obtainable, and I downloaded the latest update that I know of for it right before they went under, which is a good thing, because the original CD still had some bugs on it that had caused me to need some tech support with it.

So I have no idea if they had updated the software again after the version that I downloaded, but I hope that I got the latest revision because now you can't even download it anymore, because the patch was actually just a full version of the software, which they can no longer distribute legally. I guess if I searched hard enough I might be able to find out, but I'm sure that it's only available through newsgroups and warez sites now. And it has to be activated, so my biggest fear is that if I ever have to uninstall it for some reason, it will become completely useless, because there's not gonna be any way to activate it anymore. Which means that I'll have to find a crack for it or something, if one exists, but I'm sure that there will be a crack for it.

So here I am with my illegal game copying software that they got sued over because it was supposedly an aid to piracy, but in most cases the copies won't work unless you have the Games X Copy software installed on your computer too, so it's only an aid to piracy if the developers didn't have any copy protection on the game in the first place. Which means that anyone with a CD burner could copy it, so they only have themselves to blame for that, and not the people who made this software. It has worked in one way or another for every game that I've tried it on though, so at least I can play from backups now, and not have to use my originals, which was supposed to be the point in the first place, so I'm real pissed off that they got sued out of business for it. But they should've known that would happen if they tried to go up against the gaming industry. Those guys don't joke around like the RIAA & MPAA do, they are very serious about fighting piracy, even with something like this that isn't truly an aid to piracy as they claimed it was. Next thing you know they'll be demanding that I uninstall the software and destroy all remaining copies of it. I'm sure they seized all my information from that company when they got it shut down, so I'm just waiting for it now.

[Oobgarm]

U Force and Power Glove immediately come to mind. Bleem! is up there, too.

Luckily, I haven't had anything that has acted like total crap yet.

[davidbrit2]

e-Reader

Very awesome hardware with great potential, but destined to be another quickly discarded Nintendo cash-grab. It can join the ranks of R.O.B., Power Glove, Super-Scope, Virtual Boy, Gameboy Printer, GBC infrared port, Gamecube ethernet adapter, and most likely the GBA wireless adapter (I'll bet dollars to dimes we don't see more than about 6 additional games that end up using it).

[tritium]

Ultra comfortable control pad for my psOne made by pelican. I beat Chrono Cross with it. Loved the thing, and it spontaneously died.

-Tritium

[MegaDrive20XX]

e-Reader

Very awesome hardware with great potential, but destined to be another quickly discarded Nintendo cash-grab. It can join the ranks of R.O.B., Power Glove, Super-Scope, Virtual Boy, Gameboy Printer, GBC infrared port, Gamecube ethernet adapter, and most likely the GBA wireless adapter (I'll bet dollars to dimes we don't see more than about 6 additional games that end up using it).

You know, I couldn't agree more about the E-Reader, it was doing well until Nintendo decided to release the NES Classic series..and it was a second rate citizen to Nintendo from then on, plus the wireless adapter isn't what it's cracked up to be, what was wrong with the Link Cable?

I like Nintendo, but some of their add-ons and accesories I just don't know what they were thinking when the idea is thrown out the window so soon.