Karnov's ladder.

You're supposed to drop those fake item boxes in the areas with the real boxes. I figured that out when I was 10.

The Top Spin weapon from Top Man in Mega Man 3

Definitely it would have to be the Goldeen Pokeball from Super Smash Bros.

Hoping for the chance to unleash fiery hell from a Charizard or the maddening rush of a hive of Beedrills, you are instead treated to the sound of a dyke-ish fish flopping around, calling out its own name in praise as it flops all over your dreams of kicking anyone's ass.

Absolutely useless, and an invitation to throw yourself off the stage in misery.

The Fan in Super Smash Bros. for the N64.

Nothing was as annoying as being so very slowly damaged by someone using the fan as a weapon. And since when is a paper fan a weapon !? It's just like paper in 'rock, paper, scissors'. It should not be included in the game.

My vote goes to the poison elixirs in Dark Castle, Beyond Dark Castle, and Dark Castle 3.

They are impossible to tell from the elixirs that give you health, and once you drink it your health continues to diminish until you either:
a) find a true health elixir,
b) find your way to the next level, or
c) die.

Those things suck.

The original Poison Mushrooms introduced in the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 (The Lost Levels over here) since half the time they looked like the normal Mushroom, but would instead just kill you.

Adding insult to injury is what those were.

I'll see your Mario Kart fake item box, and raise you a Mario Kart green turtle shell.

Those things are the worst. You're just as likely, if not more likely, to bust yourself with one of those things as you are to hit your opponents/fellow racers. I hate them, I hate them, I hate them.

For a split second you think, Ah, hellz to the yeah! I got myself a turtle shell-- watch out world!

And then, no. No, no, no. You quickly realize it's green. Not red. So you shoot it as quickly as possible in order not to miss another item box. And then you're buddy distracts you with another beer, you turn away for half a second to take a sip of that delicious and frosty brew and BAM! Hit by your own gorramn green turtle shell.

And that was your last balloon. Game over, man! Game. Effin'. Over.

Did I mention that I hate them?

Any gun that wasn't the rocket launcher in the Xbox game Breakdown. The game was an FPS/ first person fighting game. It had a really interesting story and the graphics were above par for its time, however, whenever you picked up a gun you were treated to the worst FPS experience on that console. In the end you ignored the guns and just went about dispensing whoopass in martial arts form because it was actually easier than trying to use a gun. Imagine that.

The Blue Shell from Mario Kart.
Allow me to explain. The blue shell exemplifies everything that is wrong with Nintendo. An item that is incredibly powerful, yet takes no skill to use, is the very essence of "everyone gets a trophy." It values luck over skill, something that makes any game fundamentally out of whack. And while it was once a rare item, only to be seen at most once a race, it is notoriously common for 1st place players to be hit with five blue shells a round. It cheapens the gameplay, and unlike the items in Smash Bros, can not be turned off.
But what of the player who gets the shell? Shouldn't be considered a godsend, and one of the best powerups in the game? No. Picture this: you and your friend are playing the game, and while you have performed well, you are a rather distant second, due to an early blunder in which you hit a cataquack or five. Your friend, meanwhile, has played perfectly, dodging every obstacle, making perfect use of turbos, and has perfected the art of aiming green shells. Now, it's the final stretch, a straight line to the finish. When the row of items come, your friend gets a green shell, which he quickly dispenses. Then, just before your friend wins,the CPU controlled racer in eighth gets a blue shell, immediately fires, and hits your friend dead on even though they are on opposite sides of the map. With only the slightest amount of hesitation, you speed right past him to victory. Now ask yourself: have you really won, or did the game let you win because it felt sorry for you? Your friend tells you he understands, and that he would do the same. But deep inside, he knows that victory was so close, only to be snatched from him at the last second by the idiocy of the blue shell. And deep down, you know that your desire for victory has corrupted you, and you have sacrificed integrity and honor for a paltry, cheap victory. And that's why the blue shell is the worst powerup ever.

Now I don't know if it really counts as a power-up, but to this day I am still baffled to as why it was ever added to a game in the first place. Asheron's Call was one of the first MMORPGs to hit the market. Some developer/creator felt that if they were going to introduce spells, you would have to take many many hours doing "research" to earn the spell (from what I remember, my memory is fuzzy with hate). Half the spells would help you in your quest for levels/items. The other half... were actual debuffs for your character. You would cast the spell, it would make you weaker and more easily killed by monsters, such as the dreaded Rabbit and Banderling. A self hindering spell earned through countless hours of frustration would be the worst "power-up" that I can think of.

I'd say any of the power ups from Black and Bruised. What an abortion that game was.

Klobb. 'nuff said.

I don't really want a shirt, but It would be a travesty not to mention one of the most useless items ever placed in a video game.

The Magic Hands from Sonic Adventure 2.

Now picture this. You're zooming along as Sonic, smashing enemies with your homing attack and just having a lovely time, when you spy some crates as part of the floor up ahead. You stop, use Sonic's smash attack to break the crates, and descend into a room with only a spring and a glowing light in a upgrade spot. You dash for the new item, excited to see what sort of new spin dash or super jump you will collect.
Instead you get the Magic Hands.
The game chirps that now you can stand next to enemies and use the Hands to trap them in a bubble and toss them at your other foes. But wait, there's more!
Before you can do that, you have to press another button to cycle through a list of options in order to bring up the hands, then press ANOTHER button to use them.
You just spam the homing attack instead, and never touch the stupid hands.

I would suggest pieces for the Gummi Ship in Kingdom Hearts. I can't think of a single person I know who didn't grit their teeth through these lamely thrown-together shooter portions only to skip them on every subsequent return. KH2 was kinda fun, but no the original.

The names of the pieces were somethign of a 'gotcha' as well. Wow, a Full-Life G! Awesome spell, right? No, its a cockpit. What's it do? It's a cockpit!

Speaking of names, you'd think that something called a Gummi Ship appearing in a Disney property would in some way involve the Gummi Bears, right? Instead you get Chip and Dale (who are great, don't get me wrong).

I'm afraid that not even Cid Highwind's infectious enthusiasm could convince me of the Gummi Ship's potential. Maybe if he'd cussed more...

Arkanoid. The Multi-Ball power-up.

No, you can't juggle three of those damned balls at once.

No, you can't manage two for more than a couple bounces.

But you're gonna try your damnedest, aren't you? And you know what you get for trying? You end up stuttering between two diverging balls and lose them all, plus a life. Congratulations. Better hope the next power-up is an extra life.

Just about every power up that gave you spread shots in shooter games, sure they're awesome for killing 1 hit enemies in the beginning but then they don't do jack shit against the stronger enemies and bosses. After getting those awesome lasers, flame throwers, rapid fire, etc. in comes a spread shot power up from a destroyed enemy to fuck things up.

The Cloak of Darkness from Wizards and Warriors on the NES.

You labor to get this thing, thinking "wow, cool, I can hide from enemies!" Nope. You use it, your enemies can still see you, only you can't see yourself on the screen anymore. That's an important little datum one needs when playing a game, it turns out.

It's the programmer's equivalent of a smack in the back of the head. Which would have been more useful, thinking of it.

The weapons in Jedi Knight III.

In JKII, they made sense, as you didn't have a lightsaber until the middle of the game (and even atfer that there were scenarios where you HAD to use that god-awful electric blunderbuss thing, which I quite like - cos, you know, it's an electric blunderbuss).

So anyway, JK III, as you start o with a lightsaber. I remember thinking "Christ, this'll be challenging, first level and I've got the most powerful weapon in the game...bet I hardly get to use it though."

Oh, how wrong I was. Turns out that the lightsaber is all I ever used (and I completed the game three times). Sure, you still collect the guns, and sure you can use them if you want, but everyone knows that if you had a choice between blasting your foes with an E11 Blaster rifle or removing thier limbs/hands/heads/dignity with the weapon "for a more elegant age", well, it's why as a child I picked up sticks in the park and made "vhoom!" noises.

For me though, the insult to this already quite terminal injury was that, as said before, you NEEDED the guns in JK II. Each one had their purpose, their own role in your Jedi hijinks. In JK III, not so much, they were just really unnecessary pick-ups which you would never use as you were too busy deciding which colour your saber was gonna be (and much later, whether it was going to be double-bladed or just carry two). So the guns gathered dust, and I remember feeling really sorry for all those ammo pick-ups I passed by in between slaughtering Reborn. I could practically hear them plead "Take me...make me feel needed...or I'll do it, I SWEAR I WILL!" and all I could do was reply "Sorry fellas, I coulnd't if I wanted to, you see I filled all my ammo up on THE FIRST FREAKIN LEVEL"

So yeah, guns in JKIII, you have no need for them, you feel guilty for not using them, and it made what should have been a fantastic expansion to the brilliant JKII a boring and repetitive leap-fest.

But it's okay electric blunderbuss, I still love you.

Rant over

Well, I'm not a gamer at all...

But the shittiest power-up I can think of is not what you *get* from the power-up, it's *how* you get the power-up.

Game: Golden Axe. Method: Kicking the shit out of little gnomes after a good night's rest by the campfire. Literally kicking them to collect potions.

Oh, wait... on second thought... that's actually pretty cool....

Easily the worst power-up ever is in Mega Man 2. When you defeat the dreaded Bubble Man, you get his Bubble Lead gun. Not even the name makes sense (is it a bubble made of lead?).
Don't even try to use this in a regular level. When you throw the Bubble Lead, it falls straight to the ground and then rolls until it pops. Mega Man walks faster than this thing. And it does exactly the amount of damage to an enemy that blowing real bubbles at someone would have. You can only jump over the badguy and drop the Bubble Lead or let it roll over to the guy and hope that he is on the ground. Slow, weak and hard to use. Worst weapon ever.
Also, it puts Mega in a gayass pink and gray suit. Degrading on all accounts.

Super Mario Bros. 3: Music Box

Yes! Now you too can put treasure-carrying goons out of commission for a round! And it changes the background music (admittedly, that's for what I use it). But best of all? Being rewarded with a Music Box after fighting Hammer Bros. It's not only ironic; it's a waste of your turn!

The Agility and Magic stat points and 50-75% of the skills in Diablo 2.

One of the features of Diablo 2 when the game first came out was the wide variety of skill trees one could specialize in with a character. Not only did these skills sound awesome, most were only available after inputting 20-30 hours of gameplay into a character. Each skill could up leveled up 20 times.

The downside was that while many of these skills seemed useful at first, Blizzard decided to make all but a few of them completely useless in later difficulty levels of the game. Considering that there were only about 120 skill points available upon reaching level 99, it was very easy to invest 80+ hours in a character, only to realize that you'd need to start over completely because you choose the wrong skills.

Add to this the magic and agility stats which became completely useless at later levels in the game because of the sheer number of hit points you'd need to survive one attack from the Big D himself in Hell difficulty. The rule online is to get enough strength points to be able to wear the right type of armor you want and then dump everything else into vitality, even if you are a mage. Needless to say, you have plenty of opportunities to fuck up your character you've invested weeks worth of work into, especially after a patch update nerfs the skill tree you had finely tuned to make your character useful in a party.

Well, since the 1 point you receive in Penn & Teller's video game for driving for 8 hours isn't technically a power-up I'll not submit it, but man, what a waste of time.

Lamest power up has to go to "The Tick" video game. Despite The Tick's own great power, doing certain things would allow you to summon your fellow heroes to help you battle villains. Each hero brought their own unique power to help you out. Some of them were pretty helpful in sticky spots.

But what was Die Fledermaus' power? He ran away! If you summoned him into battle he'd swing onto the screen, see there was danger and leave!

True to form for Die Fledermaus? sure, but not very helpful.

I'm going to point out Mr Saturn from the Super Smash Brothers games that thing was freaking USELESS! It has no powers and throwing him at enemies did NOTHING! Not only that but it was a useless character even in the series it originally came from!

The damned Steal Heal Boots. Pretty sure it was in one of the Final Fantasies.

@TheSeanFromLaramie

http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/top-10-best-and-worst-video-game-power-ups

5th worst - Goldeen Pokeball

I also second the Klobb. Seriously, it sounds more like a STD than a weapon/power-up.

However, I have to nominate Parry the Parallel Bird from Donkey Kong Country 3. Yes, Parry may be more of supporting character than a power-up, but he has to be one of the worst ideas ever created. All Parry does is fly parallel to you (hence his name) and gets stuff that's out of reach. That doesn't sound too bad, until you find out that the levels that feature Parry force you to keep him alive because--surprise--he's holding the last bonus barrel of the level or something else that's of high value (like a DK Coin or a KONG letter). Also, unlike the rest of the animal friends, Parry can't defend himself. AT. ALL. One hit kills the little bastard, and then you have to start the level ALL OVER AGAIN because he does not respawn at the halfway point. Nintendo and Rare, what were you thinking? I mean, the concept of Parry sounds good, especially when you don't have your partner. But, you really didn't execute the idea properly and Parry is well, perhaps the worst member of the DK animal allies period.

Ignore the part where I said Parry holds a DK Coin. I forgot DKC 3 created an enemy character that's sole purpose is to guard the DK Coin.

I think the worst power up is the slingshot in Zelda, it made sense in oot since you only used it as a kid for a stand in for the arrows.

But in all recent games what good is it, you get one and after using it for a tutorial section you never use it again. Especially once you get the Bow. The slingshot is relatively annoying since it just feels like it take up inventory space for an item that would be cooler

How about the retarded fetus suit from earth worm jim 2?

The level begins after an intresting digging level where you fight a pregnant cocoon on a unicycle... you are shocked by the utter weirdness of this new setting. What is apparently either in the most horrifying dimension possible, or the inside of a womans... you begin to traverse the acidic walls of tentacles, dont worry, worms have no holes to penetrate. you then deal with a NES ninja turtles esque level which lets you either take the hard way or the easy way as you slowly swim through the bloody mess avoiding the deadly caverns. you then land in a gameshow that doesnt matter, followed by pinball bumpers, yes... FUCKING pinball bumpers where you move as well as an actual worm in this situation. you end the level on a kitchen tile floor where you unzip the fucking suit before the smiling cows congratuluate you.

I know a lot of people like them, but I really hate Sonics speed shoes.

Sonic was fast enough, did he really need to go faster? And with the inclusion of the spin-dash in the 2nd game onwards, the shoes just became even more redundant.

And red was never my color.

The Thunderbolt in Mario Kart. What a horrible, frustrating, boring, fucking mess of an item. When you get it, it turns everyone else small.

That's awesome, right? They'll be small and slow and you'll pass them. No. You won't. When you get the thunderbolt, you're already in the back. You rarely pass anyone because everyone is only going slightly slower then they were before. The only drivers that benefit from the thunderbolt are the ones lucky enough to be invincible when you use the thing. In the mean time, everyone else is small. Nothing has really changed for them except that it's going to take just a little bit longer for the course to end...oh, and they lose any item they had. So they're all pissed off. Then, of course, there's those times when the fucking thing gets used 4-5 times per race. All this and it's completely unavoidable. Yeah, that's fun.

So to recap, the Thunderbolt Item:
a) doesn't benefit the loser using it
b) greatly benefits any lucky asshat who used a star
c) makes everyone lose their shit
d) gets used ad nauseum
e) it's unavoidable

It's a badly thought out piece of shit item.

The Goomba shoe from Mario Bros 3. It's in one level in one world in one game. That's it. And what does it do? Protect you from spikes that you could jump over or spiny baddies that you could easily kill with something useful like a fire flower. Plus it's got a stupid wind-up key sticking out the back of it that has no use.

I'm going with the "Custom Powerup" from Halo 3. It's a little yellow orb that appears in none of the maps, and I'm almost positive that it does nothing by default. The only way to make it worthwhile, is to go into the custom game and change what it does. Then, you have to forge a map to actually make it appear. 98% of people who make content on Halo don't boter with it at all.

Serious answer: Leveling up (or whatever they call it) in Last Remnant. There's lots of obvious encouragement to increase your Battle Rank, I think it was called, and chaining battles help it rise faster. Except... actually leveling up in and of itself doesn't make you stronger; it makes *enemies* stronger, so if you're not EXTREMELY careful, leveling up multiple times can make battles (boss battles in particular) nearly impossible.

That's right, the power-up that you're encouraged to go for can make it impossible to progress. Sweet!

worst item ever. it isn't a powerup. i don't even know what exactly its for other than getting a retarded achievement in Resident evil. and thats those stupid little eggs. "oh look. throw this in a badguys face and kill him with it. have fun". fuck eggs. dumbest thing ever.

That's easy: the frog suit from Super Mario Bros. 3, not only its only useful for less than 10% of the stages in the game, if you are foolish enough to equip it on a non-aquatic stage you're pretty much fucked, since the piece of shit doesn't even move fast enough to avoid getting your ass handed to you (also, it doesn't walk, it HOPS. IT MOTHERFUCKING HOPS), but if you equip it on an aquatic stage, the goal is actually OUTSIDE the water, so you have to get hit if you want to run fast enough to get the star at the roulette.

Fucking frog suit.

The stupid cloud in Mario 3 was that really necessary

My vote for worst would be the Superball mode in "Rise of the Triad". It's usually hidden in a random powerup. I hated snagging one of these accidentally and bouncing all over the damn place, usually winding up right next to the most deadly thing within reach.

OTOH, "Dog Mode" powerups were awesome. Becoming an invincible dog killing enemies by biting them in the crotch. Reminds me of my ex.

Knot of Rust in recent Final Fantasy games.

"Hey, this item deals damage to an enemy. Let's try it out. Wait, two fucking damage? You know what, I'll use this BIG ASS SWORD I'm carrying around from now on."

Dragon Rage, from Pokemon.
Thats two great nouns right there, dragons are pretty cool and when they get enRAGEd action generally occurs. Plus on the tv show this attack had a bunch of Gyarados calling a thunderstorm and sinking a boat or something.

In the games? 40 damage. No more, no less, every time. Terrible.

I would say the chainsaw in Maniac Mansion. Where's no fuel there's no use for a chainsaw ;)

I remember when I was a kid I used to play Super Mario World over and over and over....
And the one thing that always puzzled me was...
So your Yoshi ate a shell and gained whatever power that shell had. The green one could be used as a projectile(sorta) weapon. The red ones turned into fire that killed things ahead of you. The blue one gave your Yoshi wings to fly. And the yellow one... Made him heavier...
Why?
So you jumped and stomped and all the enemies within a 3 ft (gamewise) radius turned on their backs...
Usually these enemies were Goombas or Koopas, which were technically easy to beat anyway. The yellow shell was completely ineffective on the Football Players, Blowfish, or other similar enemies.
Whenever I ate a yellow shell I would usually just spit it out like a green shell...
Oh, and the yellow Yoshi? The one who would have that effect with whatever shell it ate? I would usually just drop it off the stage...

The Ring of Sustain Ability in Nethack. A ring based on the premise that stat increases are bad and should be avoided at all costs. Absolutely worthless for all except but the player who has maxed out every statistic on their character. At which point of course you have a dozen other, more useful rings in your inventory.

I'm showing my age by posting this, aren't I?

At the risk of pissing of Rob...FF7 Materia. Fucking Materia.

Most of the guns in Fester's Quest. They either zig-zag and get blocked by narrow passages or travel in a circle and fly AROUND the enemy instead of killing it. Not to mention that the powerups can upgrade OR downgrade your guns, ensuring that you have the wrong one for the situation at hand.

@ Chris Ward - Materia wasn't shitty per se, just stupid. Really, really stupid.

And I just reread the rules of this contest and have to ask: What are nanaporbes and why do I want a lifetime supply? Is it a typo and you meant "nanoprobes" because that doesn't make any sense either.

Or are they the shitty powerups from the upcoming ToplessRobot videogame? The ones that would have been the winning entry? And I used up my one entry per person on goddamn Fester's Quest??

The Laser in the original Contra for the NES. If you hit the B (fire) button more than once, the laser would simply repeat itself in front of the gun barrell instead of actually shooting out, which meant if you actaully wanted to fire, you had to press the B button, wait for the long shot to leave the gun and be well on its way before you could fire again. What the hell kind of gun doesn't let you shoot?

I will have to say that the most useless power up has to be the protein mixes in Deadrising,for the following reasons.

It was anoying to mix the fruits or meats with each other,(one could just eat the fruits and keep going) one had to go through hell just to find a blender, which when you end up drinking it, it would either take your like, or give you a small boost for running.

Through out the game you got the mixes for doing missions but none of them worked like expected, untill the end when you are about to kill a boss.

I really think the mixes are just like lotery tickets, you hope theyll work but you end up realizing you could have spend that money on a klondyke bar!

I would say the entire second play through of Legend of Zelda Windwaker. You turn into a vicious bastard and stab a man right in the forehead, and in return you get to play the game again in your pajamas.

I would say the entire second play through of Legend of Zelda Windwaker. You turn into a vicious bastard and stab a man right in the forehead, and in return you get to play the game again in your pajamas.

the ammo in resident evil 4. it can't be bought, only scrounged, and there's never enuf. you can buy weapons from traders. you can end up with LOADS of weapons, and no ammo.

ammo should never ever be so rare in a game that it becomes the power up and makes the real power-ups of the game, THE WEAPONS, useless.

Hmm... everyone's pretty much said my thoughts on some of the worst power-ups....
In DK you know how they'd give you different animals to use throughout the level? The elephant, spider, rhino and then the snake?

Snake. Worst, ever.
Maybe it's because I didn't have proper hand-eye co-ordination when I was a kid(I doubt it) or whatnot but I could NOT for the LIFE of me get that snake to jump where I wanted him to. Wasted years of my life on those shipwreck levels trying to get shit high up.

world of warcraft tauren racial.....it helps you pick flowers

There's the infamous AMUT / VOX from the original Final Fantasy. It's a spell, costs you gil, does nothing. Well, technically it cures Silence. No monster in the game will ever cast Silence on you. It is literally useless.

How about the "7 Branch Blade" from the original Soul Blade (pre-Soulcalibur) for the swordsman Siegfried. In that game, your weapons could break when blocking too much. The 7 Branch Blade however, healed its guard meter, so it would never break! How did it heal its meter? By /draining your life/. So whenever you guarded, you took damage instead, removing the whole point of guarding against attacks. Your sword remains pristine and in exchange, YOU DIE. Oh, and it did less damage than other swords, so forget about going all-offense and just never blocking, it sucked at that too.

The damn pistol from Halo 3. Of course, in the original Halo, it was freaking awesome if used properly, and even though they removed the scope for Halo 2, it was still a good combo with the SMG but I guess Bungie thought it was *still* too powerful and so what do they do? THEY HAVE IT FIRE ONE SHOT PER SECOND. WHAT THE HELL KIND OF HANDGUN SHOOTS THAT SLOWLY? Honestly! Does anyone even use it anymore? Any damn automatic made today can fire as fast as you can pull the trigger. Bungie should know better than this! Damn Bungie...they should have stayed a Mac property...

Would Snake's cigarette pack count as a shitty power-up? It was given to him, you can equip it, and in the very first game, I believe you offer it. But what's the use of it other than showing Snake how cool he is on screen? I have only equipped it on MGS4 just to challenge myself on how far I can get in a gun battle while my health depletes. Sure the smoke can detect invisible lasers...but usually Snake is equipped with infrared goggles before he even gets a gun!

Ok, so not sure if weapons are allowed in this but here goes;
In Castlevania SOTN, the Tyrfing sword. Wow, I mean, hey a new sword, cool. What does it do? Oh its a cursed sword, it does less damage than unarmed. Maybe once you level up more it will get some cool power. Nope, now it should just give life back to the enemy's. And once you find it, like most of the items found, you hardly even use it. Lousy thing.

I don't know how many N44 nostalgists there are here, but I'd offer the N64's "Kirby and the Crystal and the Shards" ROCK+BOMB combo. I'm sure it's common knowledge the kirby aborbs the powers of his foes and can combine them. Well, in this game, combining a rock power and a bomb power creates an incredibly powerful stick of dynamite the Kirby limply vomits and just sits there. So powerful was this attack that it knocked the shit out of you to the tune of 33% (2/6 eggs or whatever those fucking health ovals were supposed to be). Sure, you could move out of the way but you might miss the 3/4 of the screen which temporarily turns into Chernobyl. There was no timing control on this thing which lasted like seven seconds before blowing, which meant that you had a few seconds on your hand to play with yourself and dodge the enemies you're trying to kill before hoping that you're in that magical 25% of the screen by the time the thing goes off and your enemies aren't. Of course there was the option of vomiting the bomb directly onto your foe, but seeing as the thing only flew two goddamn feet and blew up on contact, you wouldn't be better off. Kirby could only hold one power (or one "combined power") which meant that unless you chucked it, you'd be usining it on EVERY INDIVIDUAL ENEMY IN THE LEVEL. So to recap, you walk up to an enemy,vomit the bomb, walk to the very edge of the screen, wait 7 seconds for the bomb to blow, then advance right until you reach another foe at which point its lather, rinse, repeat. God help you if you're on an abnormal/enclosed area or have a foe that doesn't stay in one position. I defy you to make it one level, hell HALF a level while equipped with that power. If you can and can document the feat, I'll send YOU a damn shirt.

@SpiderHyphenMan: Agree: Plus, it's been powered down. I remember it hitting every racer on the way. Now you usually get it when your in last place and it only takes out the first place racer and very near ones... and thus, does you no good at all. Just spoils the other person's victory.

GODDAMNIT someone already took Die Fledermaus from the Tick... That's devastating.

@Sevenvoices77: Actually, most of the juice mixes in Dead Rising were pretty useful - stuff like Quickstep and Nectar are vital at high-level play. Even Zombait, which has the "benefit" of making zombies chase you, has its uses.

But then there's the Randomizer mix. It makes you sick periodically, causing you to drop your currently item and double over. There is no benefit. Well, there's a benefit to the zombies, but it's not one you enjoy so much.

Runner-up to Spitfire, which makes Frank's spit do the same damage as a pistol. Only it fires slower. And requires you to freeze up in first-person view. And lacks range. And... you get the idea. Novelty value only.

On the obscure racer 2Xtreme (ESPN extreme 2), you have this obnoxious power up called "lets rumble", which does nothing but make the surrounding A.I. stupid and easilly knocked out, minus the fun competitive bashing that would normally be in play without the said power up.

@The Rain King: you could hold down after spitting up the dynamite to put on a hard hat and not take any damage from the explosion.

my vote for the worst power ups goes to the ones that you can't even get, namely the eggs and ice key from banjo kazooie. originally meant to be part of a Rare cartridge-swapping gimmick these elusive items are completely impossible to get in the game itself, even if you do use cheat codes. Despite many of the items on this list actually doing you more harm than good when you do get them, at least you COULD get them and would at least give you a challenge if the game ever got too easy. The Ice key and eggs are easily the worst power ups of all time since all they did was taunt you with the knowledge that you would never, ever be good enough to get them, and that even with every cheat code in the game on you were still not a good enough gamer to even find out if they were useful in the first place.

Does the "Suporma" from Earthbound count as a power-up? I invested like $500 into the Orange Kid's inventions, and all I got in return was a machine that plays a song about how wonderful the Orange Kid is, and them promptly breaks.

Konami's Ninja Turtles, the non-arcade release. The game with the "defuse x many of bombs underwater without touching the grasping, electric seaweed" level that managed to ruin so many summer nights.

The power up I am thinking of is the triple throwing star. The game was side scrolling and only had two "planes" in which an enemy could attack you: on the ground directly in front of you or from a 45 degree angle one jump height vertically. The triple throwing star was retarded because it gave the promise of a spread-shot and could kill almost anything in one shot. Sadly, nothing was ever close enough to hit with all three and rarely more than 1 was ever useful. Also, you only had 10 sets of triple stars versus the 20 of the single stars. You could also spam the single stars and rip Bebop or Rocksteady to shreds but you had to wait for the triple stars to leave the screen before you could throw another set. And to top it all off, you could only throw the triple shot when you were on the ground, whereas the single star could be easily thrown from either standing or jumping.

So lame.

@The Great A'Tuin IS RESPONSIBLE THIS: the Klobb was amazing, it just wasn't made for standing and shooting. You had to run in circles around your enemy to really get a brilliant performance out of it.

If you need a horrifying video game powerup, you need look no farther than Boogerman for the SNES. I remember being completely entranced by the game as a child, and today I'm shocked by it. Boogerman's main forms of attack were as revolting as one would expect, and his powerups would assist in the picking and flicking.
One collectible was a Glass of Milk that would mix with Boogerman's snot to form a filthy loogie. Enemies hit by it would collapse out of sheer disgust.
The other was a Spicy Pepper that could either light your belches on fire, or by pressing Down + A, would light your farts, sending you skyrocketing into the snot-filled trees.

It's a horrible experience.

@The Rain King
ProTip: Hold Down after throwing up the dynamite to make Kirby put on a hardhat. This will protect you from the blast so you don't have to run away from it. It won't protect you from enemies, though.

The Fire + Ice combo is MUCH worse. It slows you down, almost no range, it lasts almost half a second so it's hard to hit enemies with, and barely does any damage when it does.

See all of the combos here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVRtc5ljqBg

the Zodiac Spear from Final Fantasy XII. Basic Rule of RPGS if you see a chest grab it! (Wrong! There are four chest that must remain unopened... WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THIS?)If you opened one of those chests and saved... (Found out after 45 hours of gameplay) Re-start the game... or go to one of the dungeons (haven't played in a while) and the probabilities for getting the spear are 1/1000...

I'm not sure if this counts, but when you get struck by lightning in Jekyll and Hyde for the NES, and turn into Mr Hyde, you turn into Hyde, walk around for a few seconds, then die, good times.

whoops, looks like I repeated myself there, stupid me, I'm gonna go bash my head in with a hammer now

In Resident Evil 4, you can either buy or find a rocket launcher. Awesome, most would say...what better to splatter zombies with?

But no, 'tis not to be. First, it takes up about half of your inventory space. Well, a rocket launcher isn't small, that's the price you pay...

But second, it only has one rocket. One shot and you're empty. Strangely, Spanish villages don't tend to have many rockets just lying around for you to replenish your supply with. So you'd better hope that your single shot counted.

Oh, and third, once you've used it - it's gone. Not back into your inventory though. Apparently RE4's rocket launchers are very brittle and only take one shot before disintergrating. So after you've taken that shot, you need to grab another weapon quickly. Oh wait, you can't because you couldn't fit them into your case.

Oh sure, you can play the game through several times with the same character and eventually scrounge up $1 million gold pieces (very modern place, Spain) and buy a rocket launcher with unlimited ammo, just in time to turn the end boss fight into the quickest and dullest 30 seconds of your life.

Insult to injury, if you get to the point where you can buy the unlimited ammo rocket launcher, then you'd also have upgraded the Broken Butterfly revolver to cause almost as much damage.

That's right, a pistol deals out the same damage as the Uberweapon. If only Doom II had been like that...

Mine would have to be a pair of techniques you can "learn" Okami, the "golden slash" and the "brown fury". One of the forms of currency in the game is Demon Fangs, and after you learn these...um....techniques, you can use the moves on enemies to force them to give you even more of the needed fangs. Basically, the moves involve turning your waste products into weapons. When this childishness becomes genius is after you have beaten the game and collected all the stray beads. You get a bonus item that makes your character invulnerable and all of your attacks amazingly over-powered, including the two mentioned above. This means you can kill some of the early enemies by pissing on them. Yeah, the chosen weapon of infant boys against diaper changers every where becomes a great way to kill annoying enemies and speed up your fang collection. Now that is something either amazing or insane or both, but surely very, very Japanese.

I vote for 'Jet' from Fallout 2. It's a drug that you can find pretty much everywhere in the game. You can buy it, steal it, or better yet, loot it from somebody's body after you kill them. I think it enhances your combat abilities somewhat...anyway, one would assume it does, since other drugs you encounter in Fallout enhance your abilities with the potential penalty of addiction.
But Jet is different. Jet is VERY addictive. If you're stupid enough to take that shit, you're stuck with the addiction...for life. Until you find an antidote (have fun with the sidequest to find a cure, you stupid fucker!), you have no choice but to feed the need. Buy it, steal it, kill for it, but you HAVE to have it.
'Jet' is a powerup that teaches you about drug addiction, makes you feel like a moron for taking it in the first place, and forces you to do a lot more work because you were dumb enough to make your character into a junkie.
There are many ways in which Fallout 2 gives the player the middle finger. 'Jet' just happens to be the most obviously spiteful.

@ Ad
The rocket launcher is best used against difficult bosses. It kills verudggo in one hit, and he is a complete pain in the ass to kill WITHOUT the rocket launcher. Also, it makes Salazar a lot easier to deal with, too.

@This_Charming_Man: On the Pre-Solid Metal Gears the Cigarettes had some weird uses. Metal Gear: After the final battle Smoking gives you extra time to escape the destruction of Outer Heaven. On Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake: Smoking changed the direction of the wind for the Hang Gliding part. (Also the laser detecting smokes kinda worked here.
On the MGS remake (The Twin Snakes) Smoking had a tranquilizing efect like the Diazepam.

Volcanic said:
I'm going to point out Mr Saturn from the Super Smash Brothers games that thing was freaking USELESS! It has no powers and throwing him at enemies did NOTHING! Not only that but it was a useless character even in the series it originally came from!

Actually you could do quite a bit of damage with him if you juggled him. Also in the series, the Mr. Saturn's are key because they are very good at repairing inventions.

anyway

The squid from Mario Kart DS. All it did was cover screen with it's ink for a few seconds, but is completely worthless because you can just drive using the mini map on the bottom screen.

I can't believe we've gotten this far in and no one has mentioned the "stealth" power-up from the Smash Brothers games.

The object of Smash Brothers is to knock other characters off the fighting area/platform while remaining on yourself. This can get pretty chaotic in a 4 player match with the camera zooming in and out like Wayne's World, big pokemon farting out particle effects like a ticker tape strobe rave/parade, hazards spinning and shooting fire, background elements moving all over, et cetera et cetera. It's like trying to keep track of one specific kernal in an air popper.

So you're hunched around your friend's 19 inch CRT television trying to keep track of an 8-pixel tall baby shockmouse so he doesn't fall to his death.

You pick up a powerup that TURNS YOU INVISIBLE. To everyone. Only if you try to attack or charge up powers, you become pretty visible and open to attack. So someone winds up and knocks you into space. When you're trying to snatch the edge of a platform to keep from cratering like Alan Rickman at the end of Die Hard, you're Sue fucking Richards.

Cloak of Darkness from Wizards and Warriors NES

When used the cloak will turn you invisible. A kicking music beat begins to play and that is it. You would think it would stop enemies from attacking you or something, but it just makes it crazy difficult to see your own character and enemies still attack you.

The bench from Dead Rising.

Sure, you can kill a lot of zombies with it. Great if that's your kind of thing and there aren't any other objects around that do that for you (it isn't like Dead Rising is littered with them).

But can you sit on it?

What kind of idiotic bench doesn't let you sit on it?

The Ice Arrows in LoZ:OoT. I personally always couldn't get them because at a point in the game you have a key, and if you go into the wrong door, you lose your chance. And when you finally re-do the whole thing to get the damn arrows, they just turn out to work just like the fire arrows, but less useful. Damnit.

I would say the worst power up is the invinicibility spell/armor from the Zelda series

Yeah you're invincible and it in at least one game takes care of the ludicrous sums of Rupees you get but either you still get hit and the animation for falling and getting up takes place or your magic drains quickly making it functionally useless in dungeons where you'll most likely need magic for other puzzles.

Most useless item in a game....any Rush mode in Mega Man 7. 'NUFF SAID.

Hammerspace from Silent Hill: Origins.

Okay, maybe not the worst power-up, since it's pretty useful. But COME ON: Travis (The protagonist) stuffs a TV, a Toaster, a Typewriter, a Filing Cabinet, and a Toolbox in his pocket, and can still run around like he's friggin Bugs Bunny! We might as well give him a portable hole and an anvil instead. I know, this 'power-up' has been around Silent Hill since the first game, but the version in this game is just plain silly.

Smash Ball on Super Smash Bros Brawl. Not necessarily the worst, but definitely the most annoying...

The worst power-up was the Mega Ball in Mega Man 8. The first problem with it is that it just makes Mega Man look like a pansy. Why let him shot bad guys with his Mega Buster at a distance when he can kick them with some stupid ball that you have to chase after sometimes and get attacked while retrieving it? It's not like you even get that shit from beating something like Soccer Man. You just get it as afterthought, like Dr Light was just trying to throw it out and you happened upon it.

The other problem is that the Mega Ball reminds players of one of the most shameful Mega Man games: Mega Man Soccer. Because playing soccer with robots is as cool as blasting them with you Mega Buster. Actually Capcom, it's not. It sucks.

The Giant's Knife in Ocarina of Time.

When I played through for the first time, I swore I wouldn't use a guide. When I saw biggoron's deal for 'something great,' I knew I needed it. Ran around the field for about three hours to collect the 200 rupees I needed.

Lo and behold, a brand new freaking sword!
Hell's ya! Time to kick some.... oh, it broke....
That's when I gave up trying to beat the game without a guide. I needed to check out a strategy guide to figure out how to fix it.

I never finished Ocarina of Time after breaking my N64

The laser from Contra. Why the fuck would I want a laser that shoots 3 feet when the button is pressed rapidly, when I could have infinite rapid fire spread-shot. Better to die off a waterfall than downgrade to laser.

Whenever I found a treasure chest that had something for Edward the bard. Depressing at best.

A few people already pegged the laser from Contra. That was equipped suicide.

539

The jelly beans from "A Boy and his Blob" - different flavors of jelly bean turns the blob in to different things... essential to game play while being totally lame. Seeing an alien blob turn in to a coconut is not as exciting as it sounds.

The super-duper secret item in any RPG.

You know what this is. Nearly every RPG has some sort of item that you can only get doing very specific things that only someone with severe OCD would ever figure out. Valkyria Chronicles is probably the best example of this: during the game you get poop from various animals. While this seems worthless, you can gather this poop to make rings, and then combine these rings to make more rings, until you finally have a really powerful ring that boosts most of your character's stats.

That's right, you make your character more powerful by MAKING A GIANT RING MADE OUT OF ANIMAL SHIT.

Yes, I now see that someone mentioned the laser. Yet, I worded my answer more eloquently. That's how we roll in the future.

the MOST USELESS ability/Power-up...
the ability to Eat your own ASS in Noby Noby Boy, I mean sure its funny and I suppose its meant to "make you whole again" but really?

and on another note, I've never understood the idea of Gil Toss as an ability in any of the Final Fantasy games, why would you throw money at a bad guy? It also does hardly any damage... WTF?

The Torch from Ghosts 'n Goblins and all of the sequels. It is utterly useless on flying enemies and you're lucky as hell if you can hit an enemy on the ground and then it hardly does any damage to it. Fuck the Torch

The jelly bombs from any number of Bomberman games. If kicked, the jelly bomb would bounce off the nearest brick and come back at you, often resulting in your own death. If thrown, it would bounce around randomly for several seconds before either a)landing nowhere near any enemies, b)blowing up the actual useful power-ups, and/or c)trapping you and blowing you up. Of course, getting the jelly bomb removes any of the useful bomb types, like remote bomb, power bomb, or really-powerful-explosions-that-pass-through-several-layers-of-bricks bomb.

Ok, I haven't found the worst power-up yet but I have to say that your choice for worst power-up is in fact not the worst. In your own argument you claim that the fake power-up cube is the worst and is at least equal to a well placed banana. However, if you are playing as a large character such as DK (at least in the 64 version) you can hit the banana and use some fancy fingerwork to stop yourself from spinning out. So I would have to say that the banana is the worst power-up because it can not only be easily dodged but even if dropped right behind you there are a few characters who won't even be harmed by it.

I don't know if it's out there yet, but I'm going to have to say Javelin Man from River City Ransom. 78.25 for the ability to throw guys spinning into other guys, or into walls. Sure, it seems cool, but by the time you get it, trying to throw guys is almost pointless since they're getting up so fast. You pick them up, they stand up, jump off you and kick you in the face. If you threw them across the screen they even had a chance to recover and not get hurt at all. Not that them taking damage from that mattered all that much, as it didn't do much at all.

Also, the cube from Mario Kart is crap, and not equal to a banana. A banana you can hide around corners somewhat, a cube stands out horribly, so you can only place in the areas with the regular ones. You can't even block a shell with the cube if you hold it behind you.

I, like the rest of the internet, love the Evil Dead movies. I loved the series so much its all I wanted for Christmas the year it debuted on the Playstation as Evil Dead: Hail to the King. Oh and I got it alright, it promised me roghly an hour of Bruce Campbell cutscene goodness and Resident Evil style gameplay. You cannot go wrong with a Resident Evil, comparison right?

WRONG.

Yeah its like Resident Evil in that your main weapon, the goddamn chainsaw arm, runs out of gas like its leaking. Sure when its full you rev it up and skewer, slice, dice, and make julienne fries out of the demonic hordes but alas it lasts but a scant couple of minutes. You spend a good half hour collecting mushrooms to combine them in a Boy scout camping kit to make tiny can of gas just to rev up your chainsaw for 30 seconds of a 5 to 10 minute boss battle.

After a week of struggling with this I realize if you simply repeatedly tap the chainsaw button as the same time as you tap th attack button your chainsaw will rev for a brief moment and do the same damage as if it was full of gas. Thats right instead of looting the cabin and the fallen bodies of deadites for brown gas giving mushrooms you can simply give your index fingers tennis elbow for the same effect.

Oh I beat the game and never ever played it again when I discovered how to watch the cutscenes from my PC's cdrom drive.

here we go, i've figured out the worst power up of any game. HALF-ELF! I don't get it! Why!?!?!? It's like taking the least attractive bonuses from elves and adding the least attractive bonuses from humans. Rather than getting ANY stat bonuses or skill/feat bonuses you only get slightly better vision and slightly better immunity. In most cases I think of human as being the worst role playing race simply because it's the most boring but then you think about the half elf and realize that they are truly the most boring race to have ever been conceived with the least desirable bonuses of any race. They simply don't follow the rule for race choices. Usually if you are choosing a certain race, there are certain bonuses which you take in turn for certain defects. The half-elf gets practically nothing. Unless you are in a realm in which it is always dusk, there is no need for the half-elf (and even then an elf would do better!). I just don't feel as though it's possible to describe how horribly misconceived any half-elf character is and i'm glad to have gotten this off my chest.

Gatorade and Wheaties from Micheal Jordan and the Windy City on the Super Nes. MJ needs his all star sports drink and breakfast of champions in order to save lesser NBA players(read:all) from the tyrannical clutches of evil refs(or something like that). I have since forgotten what they did, but I do remember they were pretty fucking useless. If your going to stick blatant product placement in kids games at least try to make them look awesome.

The helmet removal power-up from Mega Man 9. For a sizeable amount of bolts (the in-game currency), you could get Mega Man to remove his helmet. That's right-you could waste your hard earned bolts (which could be spent on energy tanks and extra lives) so that Mega Man gets better peripheral vision...not that it matters since its a 2-D side-scroller. The item offers no bonuses to anything. The only use for it is to gain the achievement for beating all the robot masters with your helmet off. Of course, the first time you die, the helmet goes back on (losing a life and gaining a helmet must have seemed like a fair trade to someone) and if you want in again you have to buy it again. I suppose the other alternative is that you just can't stop looking at Mega Man's luxurious pixelated hair. Then I really can't fault you for buying it multiple times, you strange, strange person.

Someone else has already mentioned the speed shoes from Sonic the Hedgehog, which I actually totally agree with (I never ever used the damn things because they were so hard to control), but just for the sake of being different, I'll offer the fire shield from Sonic 3.

It's not that the fire shield was bad, per se. Any shield is handy in the Sonic games, since it prevents at least a single hit from landing on you, which can make all the difference when you're carrying a fortune in unmarked rings. And the fire shield, at first, seems pretty good. Some immunity to fire attacks, always a plus. A double jump launches you forward into the air, a bit uncontrollable at times, but ok. But then you got the electricity shield.

Again, it's not that the fire shield was that bad. It was that the electricity shield was too damn good. The water shield, while irritating on land, was invaluable during underwater zones, if only because it meant you didn't have to listen to that horrifying music every time Sonic came within five seconds of drowning. But on land? The electricity shield was far and away the better choice. The ability to double jump, allowing you to reach hidden areas, dodge enemies, and at some points, avoid falling to your death? AMAZING! But then, the fact that the electricity shield attracted rings, your very lifeforce in a Sonic game? Well that was just the icing on an already extremely delicious cake. If you managed to grab an electricity shield after turning into Super Sonic, well, then you were just an unstoppable killing machine. Fire what? After getting an electricity shield, I would go out of my way to avoid areas where I might accidentally grab the fire shield. I would skip the gumball machine bonus stages for risk of getting it. The poor fire shield didn't stand a chance, being made obsolete within its debut level of the game.

Ok, I just spend way, way too much time ranting about shields in Sonic the Hedgehog. It's like I've lost already...

I'm going for the Shabby Doll in Silent Hill 4. For the entirety of SH4, you can grab everything and it all serves some purpose (as a weapon, health bonus, or to advance the plot).

So, when you visit Apartment World and have a chat with a fellow in the staircase, he drops a Shabby Doll. After picking it up like a sucker, you find out that it does nothing - no importance to the plot and does not benefit you in combat.

As a further insult, if you try to throw the doll in your storage box in your apartment you will be haunted by screaming baby ghosts. Right over your item storage. The screaming babies keep coming back not matter how many times you exorcise them!

Your only option is to waste inventory space lugging the damn thing around with you for the rest of the game.

I'd have to go with the game Everquest, and nominate every piece of equipment from the original pre-expansions game.

At that point in the game, there was barely any reason to pretend that any sort of balance existed among the classes. As one can expect, warriors were heavily dependent on their equipment; my class, the bard, was significantly less so. That was good, because as far as bard gear went, there was one instrument of each type, plus a magic flute; that was all of the bard-specific gear in the game.

Other than that, bards could wear plate armor - the best kind. That's a misleading statement, though; it implies that any armor was actually decent.

Past level 15 or so, as any melee or hybrid class, if you'd adventured carefully and had gotten the very best items available off of monsters at your level, you'd still get your ass handed to you by the weakest monsters that would still give you experience. You were required to group with other players, which meant you were all competing for the paltry drops off of monsters.

So, assuming at level 15, you're a plate class like I was. That means you're headed to Permafrost Keep after Bronze Armor. A bronze breastplate had (guessing; it was ten years ago now!) 17 ac and weighed 13 pounds. By the way, your strength score exactly equals how much you can carry before you slow down. A full suit of bronze armor weighed like 90 pounds and granted about 70 armor total.

With this armor, you're still getting your ass handed to you. So it's time to grab yourself a weapon. You long ago left behind that rusty shortsword you started with, right? 3 damage, 30 delay. You probably traded up to a mundane weapon, with damage of 5 and delay of 30, but it's really not enough to keep you satisfied for long. No, you're going to go for a fine steel weapon! 6 damage and 30 delay! Except you're still getting your butt handed to you at level 20 with that, despite fine steel only dropping off of level 25+ monsters. Also, since level 5 you've been running across magical foes like willowisps; they can't be hurt by normal weapons. You have one choice: A Combine weapon! Yes, a mighty weapon with exactly the same damage and delay as a fine steel weapon, but with the ability to strike mystical foes...which will still force-feed you your underwear if you try to take them on with less than a 3:1 advantage. You're going to find almost no upgrades anywhere unless you're taking on ghoul lords in deep, deep dungeons - and you'll need to have a full group for that. And be around level 45.

So you're still getting whupped left and right, and you decide to upgrade your armor. After all, it's been ten levels since you got bronze plate; it's time to stop looking like a tin man that got pissed on. So you trade up for one better: Store-bought Fine Steel plate! It has 2 more points of armor per piece and weighs about half as much. Two points of armor per piece, as you can probably guess, is not going to prevent you from getting your ass kicked. At least you're not wearing a yellow suit anymore.

So you slog along, desperate to get to a higher level so you can get better loot, and you hear of the fabled rubicite armor. You form a group and head off, only to find that it only drops in one dungeon and there's five groups in line ahead of you right now. Oh, and that god's avatar I mentioned? His other drop is the breastplate. And the classes that could wear chain can also wear rubicite, so you have more competition.

So you finally get your hands on rubicite. A full suit. Guess how much armor it has? Exactly as much as Fine Steel Plate, but it's red. I guess it'll make it less obvious how badly you're getting beaten...

Oh, and your other option is playing as a caster. Wizards, for example, were considered powerful, as their spells could often kill a monster before it could get to the wizard. Items almost never granted anything except armor, though, and wizards rarely got hit. You can probably see where this is going: a naked wizard at any level was at about 90% effectiveness. A naked wizard at any level was also likely to be able to kill any fully-equipped warrior that was three levels higher than the wizard was.

And then there were necromancers. Think wizards, except that the necromancer's spells deal half as much damage, but heal the necromancer by the same amount. And remember how I've gone on about how the monsters are all so much more powerful than the player characters? The necromancer's skeleton pet is treated as a normal monster for all of its attributes, so it, in turn, is several times the power level of most other classes in the game. Add to this that the necromancer could give a weapon (or two) to the pet...but weapons suck, right? Not for NPCs. Weapons only counted for NPCs in pieces; any weapon qualities that were better than the NPC's normal attack, got used. If the NPC hit for 35 and the weapon would only allow 10, the NPC hit for 35. If the weapon allowed a delay of 10, and the NPC's natural delay was 30, the NPC's attack rate tripled. So, take the 'tiny dagger' item, which was 1 damage and 11 delay but not equippable by PLAYERS, and it's obvious where this is going...

So here we have this obviously unfair playing field. What about that fantasy world mainstay, the magic potion? Surely that might bring in some fairness. They were in the game, at a price of only 90 platinum for a 50 hit point healing potion. 50 hit points, by the way, is about the same amount that a monster of level 30 takes off in one hit, or equivalent to the damage a level 9 wizard does in one spell, and 90 platinum can take up to three hours' work to acquire. Alternately, you could try to gain access to a member of the Shaman class, which gets the Alchemy skill at level 20. Unfortunately, since there's a bug in the skill training system, they can't actually train themselves at the skill - and, even if they could, all it would mean is that they could produce the same potion for you at a cost of 85 platinum instead. Oh, and you can only carry one of those potions at a time.

Yeah, items in Everquest, before any content updates or expansions, sucked horribly. Nothing was worth the time or effort. It's so mortifying in retrospect, but WHY was it so fun at the time?!

Goddamn blue shells in Mario Kart. For the person, who is at the back, using them, what good do they do?
They're a big "fuck you" to whoevers in front, but you'll never catch up fast enough to take advantage of the attack.

Jason's mother's sweater in Friday the 13th for the NES. The instruction book promises GREAT things. It will make you INVINCIBLE to Jason! Does it? No. Doesn't even enhance your defense that much. By the time you get it, Jason's mega-fast, and will rape whichever councilor you've foolishly decided to use. So, what do you get with your overconfidence after equipping the sweater? You're dead in 5 seconds, it was probably a character who had the one of the only weapons that can even do reasonable damage late in the game (pitchfork, torch), and the guy/gal was wearing somebody's dead mother's sweater. Loser.

Klobb. We used call the Klobb "the tickle machine".

The Bubble gun in earthworm jim 2. "Hey bad guy! Eat this!!! *pop pop pop*... Er... OK. Bye".

I'd have to say the worse is definitely that powerup called "The Roll." When said powerup is picked up immediately following; BAM! A video of Rick fucking Astley singing "Never Gonna Give You Up" pops up on screen and eats your character, eats your friend's characters, eats the game, and even so much as eats your console... no more gaming for you. That is the saddest powerup of all.

When I get the blue shell,I hang on to it,and fight my way back to 3rd or 4th place. Then I throw the shell,and I can usually end up in 1st.
For the people saying it awards poor players,come on. You put a good player against a noob 10 times,the good player wins 8. Letting noobs win a couple makes tommorrow's good players.

Bastard TATER The torch was mine!

Ghosts n Goblins is a fuck off nigh n impossible game, relentlessly difficult and merciless. "Oh you're half a pixel off the jerky moving platform hovering over lava?" oh well you're fucking dead.

Secondly if you remember ghosts n goblins, once you're hit once, you in your boxer shorts, what sort of numipty thinks aflaming torch is good in this situation?

Making it to the second level of Ghosts N Goblins was an achievement even my parents were impressed by. You could proudly boast about this at the dinner table and not be riddled with scorn, this game was so fucking tough it rivalled getting an A on a spelling test or scoring a hat trick at the lunch time football match.

And that torch. Fuck man. It was a ruthlessly tough to begin with but then it gives you a "power up" that removes your infinite supply of straight flying swords with a weapon that flys in a gentle arc and lands two inches infront of you. It's beyond useless it's like discovering you're in a three legged race tied to corpse.

Seriously fuck the torch, fuck it in the ear.

Pretty much the ENTIRE inventory from the nes game
Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

From the stupid custard pie to the useless exploding cigar. Nothing....NOTHING stops Judge Doom.

How is materia stupid?
Anyways,,,

the worst is the Tissue from Final fantasy. I never really understood the point of it, are you supposed to use it to cry into because you got such a worthless item? Or was it for cleaning up other messes that are made after seeing Tifa in that cowgirl outfit?

I don't think purposefully awful power ups like the poison mushrooms or bubble gun should count. My vote is for the klobb.

Also I find it funny that top spin from mega man 3 and bubble lead from mega man 2 were mentioned considering in both cases those are the only weapons that can actually defeat the final boss. Looks like some people never managed to get all the way to dr. Wily eh? Better luck next time.

Yeah, my language actually HAS upside down question marks, and even I know better than to fall for those boxs.[¿] Oh, look: A random box that wasn't here before! Oh goody!

As for my actual favorite useless powerup, hmm... I guess the Turbos in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon's Motor Kombat. The game doesn't care who is or isn't using a speed boost . You boost, shoot ahead of a throng of karts, and when the boost is over they all overtake you.

The reverse power up from Snake Rattle and Roll on NES was, without a doubt, the WORST power up ever! How is being forced to move in reverse a power up? Hit forward on the D-pad and go backward! Weee! What fun!

i have to admit while i was reading the comments my answer came to me so i skipped about 100 entries so if it's already been mentioned before then go ahead and give to the other guy. but god i couldn't wait to rant about this one.....

any fucking chocobo summon in any of the final fantasies. specifically final fantasy 7's choco/mog or something. basically it was a tiny chocobo riding on the back of a fatass chocobo. they would run at the enemies crashing into them causing a minimal amount of damage.

now i may have missed the boat on the effectiveness of the power because i used it once right when i first got it and then never used it again, but really can you blame me? it was the goofiest summon out of all the others and the weakest. and its funniness was supposed to counterbalance the overly serious tone of the rest of the summons (who bye the way were badasses) but for fuck's sake.......A MIDGET CHOCOBO RIDING ITS FATASS LOVER INTO A SWARM OF ENEMIES, LIKE THELMA AND LOUISE DRIVING OFF THE CLIFF, ONLY TO DO LITTLE TO NO DAMAGE AT ALL!!!

fucking gay is all i have to say about that. sole reason i don't respect the chocobo to this day. not once has it been properly used. except for ffx of course but barely.

Ms. Pac-Man.

Technically, Ms. Pac-Man is a harder game than Pac-Man because there are 2 warp tunnels instead of 1. The fruits move more and can enter/exit via the warp tunnels, whereas in the original game, the fruits just appeared in the center. The fruit selection are also more random, after you've eaten every one. Finally, and most importantly, because the ghosts move differently and in a more AI semi-random pattern compared to Pac-Man.

And what power up do we get to beat it? WE GET A FRAKKING BOW ON HER HEAD!!!!

...

Thank god my brother convinced me to trade in my copy of Ms. Pac-Man for Sega Genesis for Mortal Kombat II. Best trade eveh.

The worst, most utterly, utterly fucking useless pick up in gaming history has to be the random piece of paper that you can pick up in Super Smash Bros Brawl. Played the game to death and I still have know idea what it does.

don't want this to be my official entry, but the worst power-up is the Nobel Peace Prize... it gets you nothing but grief

I don't think there's not only a more worse, but more TRAGIC "power-up" than the Bad Fish in Final Fantasy 6(/3). A quick backstory: in the game the world kinda ends and you take control of one of the lead female characters Celes. Seems our yellow-haired heroine was knocked out and luckily washes up on a small island on the new worldmap. She is rescued by the engineer Cid who...*ahem*...cares for her while she's unconscious. Eventually she wakes up and Cid gives her the lowdown on what happened and how he's been...watching over her.

Then, it seems Cid is unwell and winds up bedridden. Apparently he needs food (badly!) and it's up to Celes to find it. Outside the small house on the island is a beach where there are a number of fish lazing about. You, as the player, use Celes to catch the fish (would we call this a retro minigame? If so, then no one ever gets to trash another Wii game again). Catch the fish, give 'em to Cid, Cid doesn't die. Yipee.

Unless, of course, you catch and feed him the BAD FISH. Now, what's the diff? Well, the BAD fish moves slower (thus making it easier to catch), and if you go to your inventory screen it says it's a BAD FISH (as opposed to the preferred Tasty Fish, which I like to pretend is a fish made out of ice cream. I digress). But if you didn't know to check, you'd never know! You'd think you were just feeding the yellow-coated bastard back to life. And then the record needle scratches and he's as dead as a flower-selling girl with a stick.

It's like the game is an abusive spouse. You show it love, care about it, cook it dinner, and then it goes and does this horrible, inexplicable act. What's the lesson? Don't try in life because nothing's worth it? Our "Cid"s in life will die no matter what? What a sadistic turn this game would take for you if you didn't know. And there's poor Cid, victim to a fate he had nothing to do with, besides being hungry.

Fry in hell, Bad Fish. Fry in hell.

Res sickness from world of warcraft. Cause I know when I'm playing an rpg I just love 10 minute down times and repair bills for ressing at the graveyard instead of spending the 7 minutes corpse running. Either way is a waste of time.

The landmines on bomberman. they suck. once you've collected them, its always the first thing you lay, and i always end up being the one to set them off.

Ketchup Jellybean from A Boy and his Blob.

This wonderful "power up" turns your blob into a brick wall.

Now the fact that a brick wall was useless in the game isnt what makes this a "worst" power-up, its the fact that you had to trick your blob into even eating the ketchup jellybean to find out it was worthless.

Nothing like using a good/useful power-up to even find out that your other power-up is useless

I would have to say the Mag Pulse warhead in Star Wars: Tie Fighter.

It was supposed to be this new experimental weapon developed in secret, then brought to you to field test. The weapon, when detonated on a ship, temporarily disrupts its weapon systems, leaving it vulnerable to attack. Sounds good, right? except the disruption lasts about five seconds, enough for one strafing run. perhaps enough to take out one turbo laser, or about 5% shields, tops. It is singularly useless.

The best part is that this warhead is used in replacement of all your previous warheads, so you don't get to use heavy rockets or proton torpedoes while the ship is vulnerable, oh no, you can only use your lasers. So, instead of warheads that do actual damage, you get this missile that does no damage, but instead gives you five seconds of safety, then POOF, the hurt comes right back.

Thank God you can swap it out for something actually useful during the mission prep stage.

My vote would go to "Poo Money" in Lego Star Wars - The Complete Saga. Seriously, you go through an episode and find an elusive red power brick (initially not knowing what the bonus will be until the end) only to find out it's "Poo Money".

What's the Poo Money upgrade? For an astronomical price of 100,000 studs(bucks) you get to ride a bantha, taun-taun, or other animal in the game, press a button, and the animal shits out studs(bucks) that you can collect. It's a bad investment, dude.

That's got to be quite literally the shittiest upgrade/powerup in game history.

I nominate pretty much EVERYGODDAMNTHING in Mario Kart. Fake Item box, blue shell, lightning, green shell, banana and most of all, Blooper, the squid thing that pops up out of nowhere, bobs around for a few seconds (giving you time to shout 'SWEET JESUS NOT AGAIN') then fucking ejaculates his ink all over the screen. Goddamn Blooper.

Every fucking powerup in Contra is ultimately useless unless you have the konami code.

I fucking hated contra.

Seriously...Every fucking weapon upgrade in contra.

That game was unbeatable without the konami code.

I fucking hate contra.

Pretty much all the items in Ghostbusters for the NES. First off, you need to buy your own equipment from the store before you can even play the game. Since apparently the Ghostbusters didn't make their own equipment. Fortunately, since you need to buy everything you will ever use in this game, it ALL counts towards this contest.

The streams aren't always long enough to catch all the ghosts on screen, unless you buy a longer stream, which is neigh impossible since you need to catch ghosts to make enough money to purchase this. Then when you finally fill your trap, you have to go empty it at Ghostbusters HQ. Which would be fine and all, but every time you drive some where, you're exhausting gasoline.. So you have to fill up at a gas station, wasting more money before you can even continue the game.. Plus when ever you drive somewhere you're bombarded with apparently drunk drivers, who zig zag across the road hitting you which costs you more money. This continues on for an extended amount of time, in what I can only assume is a senselessly accurate representation of Reaganomics.. Until you finally get the "Enter Zuul Building" screen.

The "Enter Zuul Building" is a limited time offer.. You can only hold four items at a time. By the time you trade in your shitty traps and beam for items that are required for the Zuul building, such as "Ghost Food" (Boo Berry?), the offer has expired.. So you have to go back, sell everything off, re-purchase your ghost beam, ghost vacuum, or trap, so that you can play the tediously repetitive game until the "Enter Zuul Building" screen shows up again. If you manage to get into the building with your Boo Berry, the ghost will all run towards it, allowing you to safely walk up the stair case... Until the bait is no longer on the screen. Out of sight, out of mind, you are now free to be attacked. If you get hit five times, you have to play the entire game over from the beginning. You can't attack the ghosts or capture them while you walk.. Failure or success in this level is completely dependent on being able to dodge ghosts while you rapidly tap the A button, and the only item you can use to avoid them only works for three of the 22 fleets of stairs.

If by some act of god you manage to defeat this game.. You are awarded with a black screen that says and I quote, "CONGLATURATION!! YOU HAVE COMPLETED A GREAT GAME. AND PROOVED THE JUSTICE OF OUR CULTURE. NOW GO AND REST OUR HEROES!"

Hehe, the Ghostbusters game has been the subject of many a nerd-grilling, including the AVGN.

Blank : It's not a fetus: it's a blind cave salamander. And I don't think that counts for an actual Poerup.

OK, maybe not quite a power up, but what about your armor in Ghouls and Ghosts? I can't think of anything more useless! What good is having a full suit of armor if it breaks in ONE FUCKING HIT!!!?!??!11??

The Worst Powerup ever HAS to be the 'Present Identity Randomizer' in Sega's 'Toejam and Earl'.

You just spent two hours collecting the last pieces of their space ship to get home to Funkotron, have dodged crazed dentists and other psychotic denizens across many levels, are about to get run over by a teleporting iocecream truck, and POOF... the identity of all your stored present powerups is hidden from you. Good luck opening the one you need now, with less than a second to react to that truck.

F*ck you, randomizer. F*ck you to hell!

Ya know what pissed me off? The fucking Laser in any Contra game. You'd be chucking along blowing assfuck aliens away with a rocket launcher and then inevitably a laser would drop out of nowhere and you'd be stuck with what was the equivalent of a Jedi that couldn't get his lightsaber up. Yeah fuck you laser, fuck you in the ass. If I wanted a sweet laser I'd play the much better Metal Slug.

Goldeen in Super Smash Bros.

Defance in FFXI. I know it's an MMORPG and it dosn't fully qualify but I still think it deserves to be here.
I'm not sure exactly how Def works in that game, there are charts and graphs and CritT and CritM values... but when it comes right down to it, it does fuck-all.
A job like Dark Knight, with kick ass top of the line heavy armor and top Def still gets raped in 3 hits. The highest armor sets in the game are around +200Def where as the lowest in end game are +120 and you still get hit for the same three digit number. It makes no sense, why should I bother spending hours upon hours in pointless guild events just to get +80 to def that will help me with nothing?
And then, as if to add insult to injury, SquareEnix release the Blue Mage job, with a spell called Cacoon that gives you an almost permanant +50% to def, there for making all use of +Def gear void.
Need I mention that the spell is level 8 and there for any one over level 16 can use it on any job? Yeah, thank you Square.

my vote is for the soul cube in doom3. yes, it's the only weapon that kills the Cyberdemon, it's just so damned cumbersome to use. you need to kill five other regular demons to charge it and then, when you use it, you got to make sure other demons don't get in the way or it'll be attacked instead of the Cyberdemon. so lame :(

The Magic Armor from the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Not only do you have to jump through numerous hoops to obtain it, you have to purchase the item. And when you put it on, it drains your rupees faster than you can say 'this game was originally made for the Gamecube'. I love this game, but I'm still not sure what use this armor has.

Absolutely anything in the Contra series that isn't the Spread Gun.

The X-ray visor from Metroid Prime 3. For starters, on its own the thing's about as good as the stickers you'd get with a model car. In order for it to be even sort of useful you'd need the Nova Beam. Of course once you have that, it only has any real use against certain types of enemies. These enemies, I believe they were referred to as "assholes" have a special super form that just so happens to fill your x-ray visor with static that makes it impossible to get a lock on them as they jump around systematically kicking the shit out of you. Even if they didn't go all super saiyan you could just guess as to where their weak points are (Hint: It's their brain, and it's in their heads).
If they really wanted to make it worthwhile they could have easily just put some mirrors in the game.

What the hemorrhaging fuck is Klobb?!

I have to agree with Elrond, and add the Jet was also a part of Fallout 3, and I was stupid enough to use it in a pinch. Spent the rest of the game with a blurry screen and a slowly decreasing health bar. That will teach me to kill indiscriminately ( who says you can get to the "evil" ending with no side effects)

It's the shittiest gun in Goldeneye, son.

My vote for worst powerup is that fucking pizza in TMNT for NES. I know you know which one I'm talking about,the one BEHIND the moving-toward-you spike wall. How many times did we all try to get it? Be honest,you tried it too,even though it's obvious you'll never get it. Hell,even the pizza you can obtain are worthless,since they're all at the end of enemy laden corridors you have to wak back through while all the enemies respawn.

That human torch guy was pretty cash,though.

I'm gonna have to go with a power up that I never really understood it's purpose: the Tanooki Suit from Super Mario Bros 3.

Really, what the hell was the point of it? The leaf was awesome, it made you sprout a tail and fly. Cool. The Tanooki suit made you fly but you looked like a damn teddy bear. Did we really need two items that made you fly?

Oh and it turned into a statue of a bald man in a robe holding a staff too.

The hell?

What the hell was the sense of being able to turn into a statue? Sure you could jump and then turn into a statue and drop on someone, but isn't a traditional stop or fireball just as good? And why didn't Mario just turn into a statue of the Tanooki Suit instead of a bald man?

Ugh,

@SpiderHyphenMan

The Blue Turtleshell is worse than that.
In Mario Kart, only the shittiest players in the last coue of places even get it, the items are only randomized per rank in the ongoing race. So this miserable shithead who launches 12 of these per lap only has a chance of knocking you out of first place, it doesn't benefit them at all since there's no chance to catch up based on wrecking someone 8 slots ahead of you. It is simply a tool to ruin the fun of others.

I'm going to have to go with the sword from Adventure. Granted, it's Atari, and fondly remembered for being a quest with an ending, but this fucking this, the greatest item in the greatest Atari game is still a chunk of burning balls.

The reason? Once the little square (you) grabs this thing, it forever points upward. Time to kill those asshole Seahorses (dragons?) that have been harassing you the whole game! Once you came across one of the jerks, looking all smug near the castle they're color coded to, you have to run circles around it so the your Sword of Forever North can poke them right it the pooper and end their floating seahorse life and prove just how much Squares rule in Adventuretown.

Some power ups are at least crummy in a game full of other, decent power-ups, but this was it! You couldn't kill anything with a key. In fact, the sword demanded that you drop your key to "wield" it, leaving your key several screens back, assuming the game remembered it was there.

Imagine somebody tosses you in a pit, with some sort of 14 ft Super Gorilla. Oh, and you're quadrapelic in this scenario, so no climbing out. Good news is, you've got a wheelchair in there powered by your mind! It doesn't turn whatsoever, but it can strafe, oddly enough, and there is a gorilla-harpoon duct taped to it.

Your only way out is the key around Gorilla-Monsters neck! Hurry and kill his ass! He's behind you, by the way and has a mean boner with your mouth's name on it.
Good luck Adventurer!

your suposed to use the green turtle shell as a rear shield, anything that hits you from behind will be deflected by it

The worst power-up is the worst because it simply doesn't exist. If it did exist it would be the single best power-up in gaming history remembered by all who play video games. It's been wanted by all of us and yet still very much unobtainable. That power up is: Dog Killer in Duck Hunt.

Is it really too much to ask Nintendo?

The pill that makes you more narrow from Arkanoid.

I submitted already, but I just remembered the shittiest power-up that must publicly be called out.
The giant wallet, or whatever it's called in the particular Zelda you're enjoying. It's usually a useless slap in the face.
This thing tends to show up pretty late in the game, after your inventory is pretty full from grinding mosters, even grass, to fill your wallet until it accepts no more rupees and running to buy more shit. After the first few hours, you tend to run around the game with a full wallet, discovering rupees you can't have. Windwaker's great, as well as it's DS sequel, because you spend precious time fishing for useful stuff, often coming up with rupees that must be discarded. Then you get this bigger wallet and can't recover a damn thing, but it will be full before you go fishing again anyway, so future trips to the ocean will result in future failure.

And again, this final, giant wallet typically shows up once you have everything, so the only bonus is a larger unchanging number at the bottom of your screen.

The worst game prize, since I can't call it a power up, it the humungous-ass gold rupee given by the deformed Spider-people in Ocarina of time for collecting golden Skultulas.
Did anyone on earth NOT wait until after they finished the game to bust their ass finding and killing these harmless spiders? They were in different places in the night or daytime, for Christ's sake. So, after endgame, after these spidery-people have given you stuff for the creatures you've killed to uncurse them, including a giant wallet that has been filled simply by running around hunting, they give you the biggest fuck-you in the universe in the form of a giant rupee that can't fit in the wallet they gave you.

Even if it could, money has become useless at this point in the game.

I'm anal about Zelea completion, but I wish I'd left their asses to rot.

My vote goes to the empty oil drum that is given to Snake in the newest Metal Gear Solid.

So it's an old derelict, hole-riddled, rusty oil drum. The idea is that Snake can hide in it, roll around, and be generally protected from being found by enemies. It's completely useless.

1 - When it's not equipped, it's gone. Where the hell does he put it. It's a goddamn oil drum. His suit is pretty cool, but I'm pretty sure they don't make it with bottomless pockets.

2 - Once you get in it, the controls don't work. It's like it's hinged on a 25 point access. The same direction on the joystick won't go the same way on the screen twice in the entire game...

3 - I don't expect the enemies to ignore an oil drum that is walking around...but if you equip it...even against a wall, and you stay completely still...the A.I come over, kick the shit out of your drum, know you over and start shooting up the place...

Worse part, as long as you're in it, you have no guns. So when the aforementioned enemies start kicking your ass, you have to go back to the menu, equip a gun and then you start retaliating...

It's a completely useless piece of shit made even more worthless by the suit that chameleons you to any surface...it's like they were laughing at us when they made it.

Just about every sub-weapon other than zero-shift was useless in Zone of the Enders 2 (never played ZOE1 so I can't really comment).

It's really pathetic when your sub-weapons are so useless when compared to the basic arsenal you have at the start that the circle button is considerably less worn out than the rest of the buttons. Why grab an enemy when you can slice it to pieces with your wrist blade? why bother with phalanx, comet or any other ranged shot other than the kickass multi-homing lasers? My R2 button got stuck due to the amount of times I abused the homing lasers, I had to replace both of my controllers halfway through the game. circle button? still works fine.

But the absolute worst power-up in ZOE2? the vector cannon. The game hyped it up as being the ULTIMATE WEAPON of great DESTRUCTIVE POWER. the way they hyped it up I seriously thought it would be the sub-weapon that would be worth my time. The ultimate game-breaker.

After getting it I was predictably seriously disappointed. Yes it was extremely destructive. Yes it did look impressive. However, it was practically useless. It took 20-30 seconds (not exhagerating) to charge up one shot, during this time you had to be stationary AND on the ground (which was ridiculous since Jehuty is flying around kicking ass for 99% of the game). Not only that, it only fired straight ahead. A single shot, no spread, only about half the size of your mecha. With enemies zipping around dodging your homing shots, the vector cannon only managed to hit the weakest enemies from rather far-away, a feat that could be accomplished in 2 seconds with the homing lasers.

The vector cannon was essential in one mission where you had to take down battleships by firing the vector-cannon on them close range down their vents a-la the death star, however the battleships weren't that big, Jehuty could have probably took them down like any number of enemies. Plus, if the BADASS ULTIMATE DEATRUCTIVE POWER-UP could only take down a battleship if you were aiming it point-blank down it's exhaust vent, I think we can safely say that your weapon is really useless.

Just to elaborate my point: think of the vector cannon like the BFG, only u need to be stationary for 20 seconds before a sing shot is fired and during the boss fight where you need it to win, you need to stand on top of the boss and wait for it to charge up to fire it point blank while the boss viciously butt-rapes you as you're standing there like an idiot.

BadNflu3nce: You are mistaken about the Mag Pulse. The amount of time it takes down an enemy's shields and weapons is perfectly sufficient for your ion cannons to completely deactivate all of their vital systems, no matter the size (yes, this would even work for capitol ships). The combination of Mag Pulse and ion cannons in Tie-Fighter was freaking devastating.

Throwing knives from Castlevania. They're weak and worthless. Most enemies are close enough by the time you've thrown one that you might as well just whip them. Also, you always end up jumping and whipping those damn candles simultaneously, automatically making you replace your triple-powered cross with the most pathetic weapon in the game. That just fucking sucks.

I was taking a triple-powered cross into a battle with Death once (this was before I knew you could just spam holy water on him over and over). I made it past the gauntlet of Axe Knights and Medusa Heads without getting hit. Then, right before the fight, I killed a random Medusa Head. Bitch spits a knife power-up on me.

"Hey Boyle! Going to fight an impossible-to-kill enemy that makes you want to kill yourself? Take the most useless fucking weapon in the entire game!"

"Thanks game! While we're at it, maybe you could kick me in the nuts until my balls bleed!"

Fuckers.

Additionally, the knife is entirely out-of-sync with the spirit of the game. People often underestimate the degree to which Castlevania inspired a legion of sadomasochism fans. Not just because of the whip, but also because of the terrible controls and the bottomless pits.

Castlevania fans like to suffer...Oh yes, indeed. Make me suffer, baby. Whip me! WHIP ME! WHIP MEEEE!

But a knife? Man, you need a safe word for that shit. Too intense.

I agree with whoever else said the Magic Armor from TP, because that was so unnecessary for all that you had to spend on it.

I personally hated the Chain Chomp and the Bullet Bill in Mario Kart, because I'd always get them in levels where there was nice gaps in the railing (Rainbow Road especially) and they would never fail to release me right as I'm headed for the edge and not enough time to correct my steering.

Between that and the wizard in the treasure chests for the Ghouls n' Ghosts series that always managed to pop up and pick the worst time to turn you into a baby or a duck, I'm at a loss. They were all really shitty things to put in a game.

@Sarah: Actually Chain Chomp isn't a powerup, he's just an obstacle in a couple of the maps, and is normally pretty easy to avoid. And Bullet Bill has saved my ass from epic failure more times than I care to mention.

The flamethrower in the original Contra takes the cake. It's actually worse than your basic rifle. Sure you can shoot 2 at a time, but it does the same amount of damage as the rifle, misses an abnormal amount of the time because it orbits itself for no reason, and is slow enough that a good number of enemies can actually outrun it. Whenever I see an F powerup in Contra I dodge it like it's a bullet.

@willroyboy: You suck at Final Fantasy. That is all there is to say on that. Choco/Mog is a great summon for many areas of the game since it has a, roughly, 50% chance to stop each monster for a short time(not as long as a full stop, but you get it really early in the game, so thats fair).

Also, FFX used chocos right? What? You don't even hear of chocobos until near the end of the game, and even then it is a pain in the ass mini game where the only worth while reward would take insane luck or hours of practice to obtain.

FF7? FANTASTIC chocobo racing mini game. You can go ALL over the world to catch chocobo, which you can then breed, feed, and race. You can get some nice rewards from racing them, but that was only the icing. The best part? You can, with enough dedication, breed chocobos that can cross mountain range, swim across rivers, and even the ocean. They can you to a few places, including a special end game dungeon with great rewards, that are impossible to get to otherwise.

I am by no means a fanboy of FF7. I think its a good game, and even great in some respects. But do I think it is the best RPG ever? No(Skies of Arcadia, for life). Do I delude myself into thinking it's graphics aged well? No. Do I think Sephiroth isn't a total clay doll of a character? No. But I will tell you what: I fucking love me some good chocobo racing.

The worst power-up, ever, is an invisibility power up from Super Smash Bros. Melee: The Cloaking Device. Picking up this little gem makes your character invisible on screen.

Yes, you pick it up and your character disappears from the screen. Your opponents can't seen you and neither can you. So congratulations, for the next ten seconds you can unintentionally walk off the edge and plummet to your death or just stay perfectly still while your opponent goes and gets one of the more game winning power-ups to beat you senseless with once your invisibility wears off.

Oh and it's even MORE useless in single player, Nintendo games have a long running tradition of having AI that cheats (having that perfect lap and you suddenly crash into a wall? Well have fun regaining first as several racers were RIGHT BEHIND YOU matching you turn for turn). So of course, you turn invisible but the computer will know EXACTLY where you are to kick your stupid ass.

Anything that you use in "Ecco the Dolphin."

At best, the item will give you a tiny bit of air (which you'll run out of soon anyway) and open a passageway (which you'll never find) OR it will hurt you. The time machine? The time machine that takes you to fight two bosses that I would bet 70% of us have NEVER SEEN? Best case scenario, you find THAT time machine, and it takes you to get slaughtered. You're a dolphin fighting an alien called the Vortex Queen, and your best help throughout the game is to sing at clams and get air bubbles.

You can get two upgrades throughout the entirety of the game. The second one confuses sharks and causes other enemies to take a slight pause before killing you. The enemies range from seahorses to giant "octopodes." Ecco sustains damage if at ANY TIME these enemies touch you.

Even after this power-up, touching a seahorse can kill you. Seahorses- the animals with such a bitch factor that the Mom knocks up the Dad and then leaves his pregnant ass, only to return each morning, pretend to fuck him, and then vanish again so he has to do all the housework. SERIOUSLY.

Seahorses can kill Ecco the time-traveling, alien-vanquishing dolphin. Worst. Powers. And Bonuses. EVER.

Remote mines in any sort of FPS, especially multiplayer. I don't think I've seen anybody use these unless they're just fucking around or using them for some sort of exploit. To use them you have to just sit around holding the little remote thing waiting for somebody to walk in the room you're camping in then you run backwards and end up hurting yourself cause the back wall wasn't far enough away from your stupid mine that you just spent 5 minutes waiting for somebody to walk over. Then you find out that the explosion didn't actually kill them but your remote blew up all your mines so you have nothing to defend yourself with while they stab you to death.

For me the worst power-up is really the red Pick-Axe or whatever is that thing in Silent Hill 1 for PS One. Now, I've played that game 4,5 times on every Level of difficulty and I love it and I've used non-pistol/shotgun very, very often, but somehow I've never used that red Pick-Axe. Why? Well, Harry needs to stand time, almost to a second, the time when he's gonna throw that swipe because otherwise the Demon Dog's gonna jump on his throat and you can't use that on those Pterodactyl things anyways. They're only useful against nurses and doctors, but why irritate yourself when you can just kick them with the tomahawk/use the pistol or just run?

By far one of the worst powerups I have come across has been in my beloved FFVII. After beating the game in around 70 hours, I went back to the game trying to uncover all the power ups and 'hidden' items. After extensive chocobo breeding, I finally get the Gold Chocobo (I think you all know where this is going). Then it was on to fight the WEAPON bosses (Emerald and Ruby). Emerald was a bitch but after I was able to beat him he gave me some sweet items such as master summon, master command, and master magic materia. Then it was off to fight Ruby.

How I hated ruby. At this point I’m well above the 99 hour limit on FFVII so I have no idea how many hours I actually dedicated myself to trying to beat him. Finally figuring out how to beat him (trial and error) by killing off two of my comrades in the beginning I was able to conquer ruby. Here I was thinking that I would get some crazy ass power up that would make everything in the FFVII world a breeze to beat. And do you know what the reward for beating ruby was?? A Desert Rose. Not gonna lie, I was pissed at first because I forgot that you could trade this for something of value from some traveler. So there was still a glimmer of hope for some super-fantastic item it could be exchanged for. Do you know that this desert rose was actually exchanged for? A gold chocobo. The same gold chocobo that I had created back in hour 80 of the game. The same damn gold chocobo that I easily spent around 40 fucking hours of gameplay to breed. THE SAME FUCKING CHOCOBO THAT I...

sucked ass

[i]SplingyDingy said:

The Cloak of Darkness from Wizards and Warriors on the NES.

You labor to get this thing, thinking "wow, cool, I can hide from enemies!" Nope. You use it, your enemies can still see you, only you can't see yourself on the screen anymore. That's an important little datum one needs when playing a game, it turns out.

It's the programmer's equivalent of a smack in the back of the head. Which would have been more useful, thinking of it.[/i]

Beat me to it.

I doubt it will be the winner, but the first thing that came to my mind is Zeus's Fury from God of War.

It had the use of auto-targeting archers, which is all well and good, but outside of an act of desperation, did anyone really use it that much? I'm sure there are some souls who tried to get the most bang for the buck out of it, but this power took the backseat to Poseidon's Rage, the Blade of Artemis, Army of Hades and even the novelty of Medusa'a Gaze (I'm thinking of the Gorgon Flash here).

It was the cheapest of the bunch to level up, and most people waited until everything else was maxed out before they touched it. Hell, even most quality FAQs state something to the effect of "It's not really that powerful, so don't worry about upgrading."

But the reason it was such a buzzkill to me is simple - this is Zeus we're talking about. King of the Gods. The baddest of the bad-asses. After being in awe of the game to that point the first time around, I'm in Athens wondering what's next when Zeus himself shows up! To quote Martin Lawrence, "Shit just got REAL!" I'm picturing lightning storms abounding, lightning chains connecting every living and undead creature on the screen, people bursting into flames with Don King hairdos - basically the worst parts of the bible. Instead, I get a hypercharged bow & arrow. Sure, I can hold down L2 and take out some neatly lined-up archers, but that's pretty much the extent of it.

It may seem like nitpicking to some, but I expected more from the Olympian Boss of All Bosses. I know it made sense for the sake of the storyline, but in God of War 2 they pawned off an upgraded version of the same ability to Typhon, who was defeated by Zeus. In simple terms, the one guy who was schooled by the other guy was better at doing what the other guy did, and that other guy was supposed to be the head guy of all the other-other guys.

The Red Skull Pin from The World Ends With You. Not only does it slow your character down to stupid levels, it's necessary to use it for around 30 battles to finish the game. Not get 100% completion, mind you, but to actually finish the first third of the game. So you think "hey, no biggie. I'll beat the level, then sell the pin." You cant. You're forced to keep the damn thing because it's "too valuable to sell," and then you've got to pick up another one every time you beat replay the game. What's worse, the battles you have to fight with it make the damn thing popular in-game, and it turns out that you've allowed the Big Bad to mind control everyone who wears the bloody thing: ie EVERYONE IN THE BLOODY CITY. To add insult to injury, during some of the cutscenes where you hear the enemies, they act like it's a massive powerboost, so most players will end up keeping the damn thing equipped to see if it eventually powers you up. Guess what: it doesn't.

DoctorSmashy said:
@Sarah: Actually Chain Chomp isn't a powerup, he's just an obstacle in a couple of the maps, and is normally pretty easy to avoid. And Bullet Bill has saved my ass from epic failure more times than I care to mention.

What the fuck are you talking about? Isn't he the babies' powerup in some of the games?

Oh Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle. I was so thrilled when I saw a video game with the main character sharing a magnificent name with myself. I was, of course, let down when I finally put the game into my Sega to find that it was a slower than piss platform that doesn't compare to the still great Sonic the Hedgehog, which brings me to the point of this thread. Of all of the amazing power-ups in the game; power bracelet (puu puu, die enemies!), the motorcycle (vroom vroom, die enemies!), and the helicopter (putaputaputa puu puu die enemies!), there was nothing more frustrating than being rewarded from an asinine game of Rochambeau with a goram pogo-stick. Once you had gotten used to navigating the level, any obstacle that hits you once, ONCE! you lose the worthless power-up and are once again, one strike away from losing a life.

@At Kid Nicky - she was talking about Mario Kart, in which Chain Chomp is not a powerup.

I'm going to start off by defining power-ups, which I'm truly disappointed with how so many people are posting bad items, not power-ups.

Power-ups are objects that instantly benefit or add extra abilities to the game character. This is contrast to an item, which may or may not have a benefit and can be used at a time chosen by the player.

I agree with most peoples post on how the goldeen pokeball in smash bros is a shitty item to get, but it's not in any way a power up.

Also, after reading most peoples post, I've decided what my post is going to be. I just got done arguing with my roommate if this is actually a power-up or not, and it might not be. However, I feel like bustin chops right now.

So, my post is going to be the konami code in the Contra games. First off the laser is a pretty shitty power up, but it does a lot of damage when it counts, and if you have a choice of using the starter gun or the laser on a boss I would choose the laser any day.

Why do I choose the konami code for Contra games though? Because, Contra is not impossible to beat without using it. It's very possible, I've done it multiple times. Just get those extra lives you so desperately crave on your own like any self respecting gamer would.

But, why just stop at the konami code then? I'll go all out and say any cheat code is a shitty power-up, because that means your a cheater and a failure at life.

Like I said, I'm bustin chops...and I win.

In Starwars Battlefront 2, if you get 6 kills with a pistol in one life - You are awarded the Precision pistol, which deals more damage and shoots faster.

8 Kills with a shotgun - You get the Flechette Shotgun, which deals a lot more damage.

But!

6 Head shots with a sniper rifle, and you get...

The fucking Beam Rifle. A sniper rifle with only one level of zoom - and it's on par with the pistols zoom. It's awkward to use, hard to aim with, and once you take it out - you have to either die or change classes to get your old sniper rifle back.

@Bustin Chops
I agree that Power Ups were ill-defined in this thread, but I adamantly disagree that any cheats or codes can be defined as power ups since they are not a part of the game proper.

@8den at least one person agrees that the Torch sucks giant Hogwarts fucking Squid testicles, I was surprised that it hadn't been mentioned before actually.

Yup, I doubt Rob's a power-up Nazi and is gonna go all gaming gestapo on us. If he did, though, a pre-gameplay code is going to be among the first shipped off to a Contra-tration Camp. See what I did there?

Starting out with extra lives is not really a power up. A 1-up mushroom, which gives you an extra life within the game is closer, but is arguable. A Super Mushroom, of course, is the very essence of power up, since it makes your character more powerful. Same goes with a power pellet, sonic's speed shoes, or any actual item that alters the gameplay and gives your character an previously nonexistent advantage.

Stuff Link finds aren't really power-ups, they're weapons. Also, I'm making all this shit up as I go. I'm just pointing out that from the high-horse of defining power-ups, throwing out the Contra code seems counter-productive to your argument. It seems the point was to let us know that you defeated Contra without being lazy, and we're very proud. That was dickish of me, it actually is pretty impressive, I don't have that kind of patience.

The Contra Code is awesome to me, since the game was a rental, and renting any hard-as-shit game when it wasn't summertime resulted in sadness, frustration, $3 lost, and plugging my own copy of Yo Noid! in instead. I see your point though, lately it seems as though game cheats are released before the game comes out, every challenging moment a temptation to use whatever God-mode is available. Once you go there, the fun is lost.

Has anyone else played MDK for the Playstation? A great game, but with a really odd catch:

1-ups are pretty innoculous looking boxes, and are pretty common. However, whenever you try to grab one, it screams like a monkey, sprouts legs, and runs like hell. They are quite fast, and the only way to catch them is to corner them. I was not expecting this the first time I found one. Imagine my surprise. I actually had to check to make sure I was actually seeing this happen. Worse than that, they're much faster than you.

I can understand 1-ups being rare. I can understand them being in hard to reach places. What I can't understand is why it would scream like a monkey, sprout legs, and outrun me. This is simply madness.

Real men know how to use laser.

I'd like to say the evil mushroom in Japan's Super Mario 2, but that would actually be a power down so I don't think it counts.

Actually, the worst is in a recent Mario game. The 1-up mushroom in Super Mario Galaxy. This is the worst simply because its legacy as one of the best power-ups has been reduced to something as a distraction as easily passable as a coin. It used to be so wonderful. Back in my day we understood the value of a 1-up Mushroom. They used to be so special, they were hidden. We couldn't just see them in a crystal we could walk to. Back then, if you ran out of lives, you had to start the game all over again and, you know what, we were grateful for it because it built character. Nowadays, kids don't have respect for the 1-up Mushroom. They got all these memory thingies in their systems to start back to wherever they left off. There was a time when you had to play a game for 4-5 hours just to have a chance at beating the game. That kind of experience made an honest 1-up mushroom valuable. That was real gaming. Not like today. Kids today are spoonfed their mushrooms like jellybeans to a blob.

And that's another thing! Young punks today, don't get references like that. They pretend to after they look it up on their googlies, but they don't know what it felt like to realize how clever you were to remember that tangerine sounded like trampoline! I'm gonna go watch my old Video Power VHS tapes. They don't make em' like that anymore.

the radiation bomb in scorched earth: mother of all games.

When the settings were set to large explosion radius this thing took over 5 minutes complete. We didn't have dial-up then so my brothers and our friends would all play on our home PC, taking turns. Most turns took a few seconds. Select weapon, pick angle, power, shot, watch explosion.

The radiation bomb took no power and no aiming so you would think would be perfect, cuts down on an already short wait time. No sir. Over 5 minutes (which is forever in gaming time), of a growing red and black pulsing sphere would slowly engulf the entire screen. Then nothing, no damage to anyone else nothing it was a worthless weapon. You just used to to screw everyone else over - which might actually make it the best weapon since most game weapons only allow to you to affect someone else in the game - the rad bomb actually was used to fuck with the people playing.

Then again using the rad bomb would usually result in yelling, fist fights, crying, and losing use of the computer. So its definitely the worst power-up.

In Disgea 1, one of the bosses is a Super Zombie made from super-strong parts that you can steal and use for yourself. You can equip Einstein's Brain, Hercules' Body, and a Horse's Weiner!

You steal, and carry around, a Horse's Weiner. You don't have to equip it. But it's in your inventory.

...penis.

IMO the worst power-ep ever has to go to the enemy guns in Valkyria Chronicles.

Let me explain. In order to get the enemy guns you are required to hunt down one particular enemy unit (usually hidden in the corner of the battlefield and standing completely still), you then had to kill that unit, made difficult by the fact that the unit was normally far more powerful than the other enemies and dodged virtually every single head-on attack. As if this wasn't enough, the game then required you to go and collect the enemies corpse, sometimes having to dodge gunfire at the same time, before the turn ended, meaning that if you didn't have any command points left, you were fucked.

Now I bet you're thinking that "surely the enemy guns are worth it", well I can categorically say that the enemy guns are never worth this trouble. First of all, you only got one gun, meaning that only ONE character could equip one, secondly, although they were normally more powerful than your current guns (until you unlocked the next main weapon upgrade within one levels time), they always came with some huge disadvantage, like an incredibly short range or lower accuracy. For example I once had one of my shocktroopers (light infantry) take an enemy machine gun into a battle, where the gun proved to be so innacurate and short ranged that I had to be standing about three feet in front of the enemy before I actually did any damage and by the time I'd got there I'd already been shot half to death by enemy gunfire.

What was even worse about the guns was the fact that no matter how shit the weapon I found was, I would always try to unlock the next one in the vain hope that the gun would actually be worth the trouble only to be bitterly dissapointed each and every time.

However the worst thing about these weapons was probably the fact that, since I needed to collect the enemy corpse to get these guns, I was effectively dirtying my units very souls by denying the family of my victims the chance to give their relative a decent burial. That's right, my characters ruined the lives of an entire family, just so that they could pick up a gun they would never use.

Anyway, rant over, didn't realise I actually felt that strongly about the whole situation until now. Stupid, fucking enemy guns!

Know what, I just checked that whole comment over just to realise that I misspelt power-up at the beginning! Another reason to hate the enemy guns from Valkyria Chronicles. Also I just remembered that If you collected all of the enemy guns you got given a medal, which didn't do anything and wasn't cared about by anyone.

The skateboard in Adventure Island is one of the worst in my book.
I hated that thing. Take the first level: you're looking for something good, like a hammer or something. Suddenly what pops out is this ugly-looking skateboard that suddenly starts rolling...straight into, inevitably, a creature or a rock. Time spent on this skateboard: for me, a few seconds. Sure, it makes you go fast, but you end up jumping over important things, like fruit. Stupid skateboard.
Oh, and I also vote for the guy who said the stuff in Final Fantasy that is supposed to be so uber-powerful, but you have to be obsessive-compulsive to get it, and most of the time you can beat the game just fine without it. Ugh.

That would be any item in just about any roleplaying game that causes a status effect (poison/sleep/dizzy/curse/blind/etc) on an enemy because weaker enemys usually die too fast and it povides no benifit at all and chances are bosses are 99.99% immune to them. And on super had bosses all you do is waste turns only to find out that the Master Genie of Kill Your Ass in Under 5 Turns is immune to everything but cramming a metal blade up his ass and you pissed you five turns away doing 0 damage. Light up a smoke ladies and gentle men because you just got screwed.

@Bruce: That "random piece of paper" is a sticker. Sometimes you would see CDs, and those are music tracks you can collect for the game; the stickers are similar collectible items you can stick on trophy bases and stuff.

The bracelet weapon in Ghouls 'n Ghosts. Or is it Ghosts 'n Goblins? The one that's kicking my ass, since it expects me to finish the game with less range, speed, and shooting in a fucked-up circle.

Oh god, my childhood is flooding back. Many of you have probably played Kid Icarus, and the damn game is hard enough as it is. But the game designers must have held a special hatred in their hearts for the unfortunate children who bought the torch thinking that it was worth anything without the pencil and the map (or any of those items without all three). There is no bullshit more frustrating than the happiness of finally getting a fucking map and then slowly coming to these observations:
"This map doesn't work. What the hell?! ..... Is that what the pencil was for?"
2 hours later...
"It's still not working. DAMMIT."
Still later...
"Wait...I need the map AND the pencil AND the torch? It would have been better if I had known this when I was AT the shop! GRRRAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"
Also, that's some poorly thought-out character design there. Fucking Pit has magical powers granted to him BY THE GODS that let him shoot limitless arrows, carry a BARREL full of bottles constantly, and FUCKING FLY, but he can't use a map without a PENCIL? Someone enroll this kid in the Mt. Olympus special ed. school.

all of the power ups from a boy and his blob for SNES...except the ladder and trampoline. Every single other jelly bean was shit.

@ Gasstank: Thank you. Every time I mention the uselessness of status effects in RPG's I'm shouted down like I'm some post of crazy person. So thank you for letting me know I ain't alone on this one.

Well, here goes. I've been robbed of my Blue Shell-hating glory, so I will say status spells in numerous RPGs.

You know the ones: "Sleep," or "Poison," or "Speed Down," "Defense Down," "Frog," and so on. You try to use them on enemies, but they only seem to work on enemies that you don't even need the spells to beat. Bosses, tougher foes? No dice.

But, if an enemy uses something like this on you? Well, that's another story altogether then, isn't it?

Alas, my wife, who actually plays such RPGs far more than I myself do, says that even worse is the diamond item in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. It bounces! It hurts enemies! It takes hearts! And for what? Hell if we know!

Also, as I believe Boyle noted, the Laser works if you know how to use it. But it is improved vastly in Contras III and up.

And the Top Spin in Mega Man 3? Same deal. There are videos on YouTube of it being used expertly. Even had a story on The Mega Man Network showing it off recently.

...dammit. Figures someone would post about the status effects between me reading this thread and replying to it. Lucky I didn't make it my entry, I guess.

Damn, I wish I'd been back from LA in time to post earlier.

Technically, my biggest gripe isn't actually a power-up, but something you power up.

In Fallout 3, which is the most recent game, there are black holes of stat improvement that serve only to distract you from important stats. Don't believe me? Let's think....

Unarmed. In Fallout there are literally hundreds of weapons available for use, among them myriad of lasers, plasma, large guns, small guns, explosives, lawn gnome launchers. Ammo is far from not abundant for at least some of these weapons. Or, you could waste levels worth of upgrades boosting your unarmed stat so you can try to feebly punch out Deathclaws and Enclave members while they respectively claw your brains out and melt you.

Or how about the wonderful SPECIAL skill Charsima, named aptly after the extremely similar tabletop game throw away stat, that one's worth wasting a whole perk to boost up.

Practically every RPG has at least one of these "abyss stats" that are only there to frustrate completion gamers who feel the need to max every stat regardless of how trivial they are to actual gameplay.

Also, the Gauntlet: Dark Legacy powerup that turns you into Pojo the fire breathing chicken. The only thing more embarrassing than going from Warrior to chicken is having the loud sound system at Dave and Busters yell it to the whole game floor.

I don't know if this counts as a power up, but I've been playing Prototype recently, and apparently, there are these nice shiny pink orbs scattered around the game world. There are 50 of them, and there is an achievement for collecting all of them. And what are they? Hints. Fucking hints. Some genius (read: douchebag) game designer thought that it would be great idea to hide hints in the game, hints which range from painfully obvious to somewhat useful. Not only are these hints themselves almost useless, thus making collecting the pink orbs a waste of time (unless you are an achievement whore), THEY ARE THE SAME FUCKING HINTS THAT SHOW UP ON THE LOADING SCREEN!! Why in the sweet blue hell would I want to collect hints that are given to me before I start the game?

Other than that, its a pretty good game though.

The Bubble-Gun: Earthworm Jim 2

It was - you guessed it - a gun. Blew bubbles. Harmed nothing. I can't believe someone took the time to physically design and program this thing. In an otherwise stellar game, this was an shit-stain.

Bonk! Atomic Punch from Team Fortress 2. It makes you invincible, which sounds good, right? Except while you're using it, you can't attack or accomplish objectives, and you're forced into a third person viewpoint that makes it nearly impossible to go where you want to. It only lasts for six seconds, and after that, you're stuck moving at half your normal speed for another six seconds.

The explanation behind it is that it makes you so energetic that you can dodge bullets, but there's a problem with this. Any attack that hits you deals knockback as usual. So the general process for using Bonk! is:

1. Drink Bonk! If you don't get killed during the startup animation, move on to step 2.

2. Run around a bit until you encounter a Soldier, Demoman or Sentry.

3. Get stuck in place by their attacks until Bonk! wears off.

4. Die horribly, get made fun of for thinking that using that powerup was a good idea.

The only alternative to Bonk! is a fairly unexciting pistol. But at least that can kill people. Bonk, on the other hand, is flashy, stupid and useless.

Just like every other energy drink.

Doubt these are counted, but hell.

What about, right, what about the Poke-Flute? How about them apples? That thing was the bollocks. So, I think it was an old man, gives you this flute, and you go wake up Snorlax, and catch him, coz like, Snorlax is pretty cool, he's like the friend that drinks all your milk, but you don't mind, because hey, you can always buy more... Sorry, off topic. Point is, after you'd woken Snorlax, that was it, flute in your inventory, cluttering up your backpack, causing you greif. Same diff with the Silph-Scope from the later games, oooh, I can see a freaking chameleon, useless. Or the water pail? Remember the water pail so you could water Sooduwoodu?

Point is, it's just another one-off item that you have to use or you can't progress. Not really worth the effort.

Kirby's sleep power

fuck that

Hypnotize Big Daddy from Bioshock. He doesn't even buy you anything...

it has to be the monks soul item in infinite undiscovery a item you equip and it stops you levelling up

@Bizmarkie...

I was a master of using remote mines in goldeneye. I was routinely cursed out by friends for being able to kill several of them at once, in different areas of the map, with the same set of mines.

One of my favorite weapons, upon reflection

Buffout, Mentats, and every non-healing drug from Fallout 3. Whereas the first two games in the series often had tasks or quests that actually required you to have certain stat be really high, in Fallout 3, there were no such quests. Plus getting a perk every level soon turned you into a god with a gun. That's Bethesda's model. Make the game a bitch at first then become Superman halfway through. When you're that tough already, who needs buffs?

They weren't completely useless though, I could always trade them for caps.

From Jet Force Gemini: Fish food. It lets you feed the fish. And not very well, either, because the fish barely even move toward it when you throw it in ponds. And you can also use it to distract a dog that is really easy to avoid anyway. It just takes up space in the inventory and pissed me off every time I'd scroll past it looking for a useful weapon.

Raiden 2 (generally found on arcade machines)was a nice isometric shooter in which you use your tiny plane to combat countless hordes of aliens.
Now there is this color changing cube flying around after every enemy going red-blue-purple in that order, for every cube you collect your weapon gets stronger up to 4 or 5 levels.
You want the purple one, it's supercalifragilisticexpilalidocious, bcause it will cover the entire screen in a purple electric laser
Every time you try to get the last purple cube it will quickly turn back to red so you're back at your original weapon, which might also cover the scren in bullets but they are as I recall a 30 dam weapon and not a 255 dam weapon, so all for naught, around this time you get hit by a small plane that dodges all your bullets and kamikazes into you
It might not be thhe most useless one, but it's fucking frustrating
*breathe*

Previous commenters sighting the Klobb from Goldeneye did not do it justice. In "License to Kill" mode, where one shot is one kill, the Klobb takes two shots. (you know, plus the 18 that sprayed around at random because the accuracy was so low)

@theholyfx

The Ketchup jelly bean is one of the more useful ones in that game, but it wasn't meant to be fed to the blob. It is true if you fed him one he would turn into a useless brick wall.

However, if the blob fell to a lower level or refused to scale a wall to join you...just toss a Ketchup jelly bean and he would magically appear right next to you.

(I only figured it out after a few hours of experimentation with the jelly beans...and trying to work out all the jelly bean related puns. Ketchup = catch up.)

http://mariokart.wikia.com/wiki/Chain_Chomp

Whoever mentioned the Poke-flute, it can also wake up sleeping Pokemon in battle. Which makes it slightly less useless.