Corrupting the Games: And the Winners…

?First of all, I want to thank Shout Factory again for donating three copies of ReBoot: Seasons 1 and 2 for this week’s contest. It was very cool of them to do, and remember, if you didn’t win, please consider picking up the set at Amazon for a mere $23 (and maybe they’ll sponsor more TR contests in the future).

Second, thank you for being bastards. Seriously, you guys are evil; whenever I run a contest where I need you to be mean-spirited and cruel, you guys always, always pony up, resulting in some seriously entertaining contest results (and a lot of contest results; it’s like some of you guys are only inspired when asked to be hideously, terribly cruel). Check out a mega-pile of Honorable Mentions, as well as the three winners, after the jump.

Uploading honorable mentions:

Hungry Donner said:

Sunblock for the Grue.

blargh said:

Game: TMNT for the NES
Plan:
1) Unfold lawn chair
2) Sit Down
3) Watch the Mainframe get destroyed

mythbri said:

The game: Sonic 2
The sneaky: I’d secretly replace one of the gold rings on some loop-the-loops with a robo-wasp. Not on EVERY loop-the-loop, and ONLY when the player has a significant amount of rings – say over 100. That way, they can be as pissed as I always was when they get Sonic all revved up in order to blast through about 5 of those loop-the-loops and get tons of rings, but then lose them all at the top of the last one, causing the player to try desperately to stop mid-roll and gather as many as he or she can before they all disappear. Try getting enough points for extra lives then, suckers!

DoctorSmashy said:

Pacman, first person.

Hostile V said:

Quadrupling the size of his opponent’s Pong paddle so it’s an immobile wall.

Arachnophobe said:

Phoenix Wright now must cite specific cases and precedent. The judge is now Judge Judy.

Steven said:

Left 4 Dead – All the zombies shout “Hey Listen!” in the voice of Navi when killed. This shout allerts all zombies in the area, and they all come towards you.

Roland Of The Tower said:

Marvel Vs Capcom 3 – Actually make it so you have to press more than 2 buttons to do specials

Tony Seven said:

No matter what game you play, when you die or make a mistake, that damn dog from duck hunt appears in the lower corner of the screen and laughs at you. EVERY. DAMN. TIME.

PMC said:

Drunk drivers in Frogger.

AgentCoop said:

Any Grand Theft Auto game: Cops now strictly enforce real-world driving laws. You must obey speed limits, stop signs, etc.

Agent_23 said:

M.C. Escher Prince of Persia

deepfreeze said:

Megabyte hacks God of War so that every battle is replaced with the sex mini-game. This might seem awesome at first, but the only way to advance is to “lose” at sex. Bob could eventually figure it out and move on…but at what cost? AT WHAT COST?

chris said:

Pacman: Some fruit are spoiled, and upset your stomach. This causes you to vomit all the pellets you so carefully collected back out.

Tom The horny said:

doctor mario with paperwork.

Dillon J. said:

Dead Rising’s text has been lowered in font even further, ruining Bob’s eyesight.

sullijo said:

Super Mario Bros – Replace all nondescript bricks with multi-coin bricks, ensuring that players take too much time and the counter runs out

Meddler said:

Suikoden: Scientists discover that, due to the earth wobbling on its axis, the Stars of Destiny have shifted. You have just spent 30 hours recruiting the wrong 108 people.

Alida said:

Atari 2600 Beat em’ and Eat em: make bob play the girl sprite.

RobCorpseEater said:

Bob, in the Fallout universe, dies from cancer before ever understanding why his hair keeps falling out.

Agent 0range said:

VVVVVV – Make the “Veni Vidi Vici” sequence a mandatory part of each stage

White Knight said:

Leisure Suit Larry (the user) is given Rohypnol and the ladies of mainframe have to defend themselves.

Ranchoth said:

The Oregon Trail–
Corruption forces the players to take the Hastings Cutoff to the California trail, and the Sierras just before the storms of 1846-47.
Also, all the Buffalo are replaced by Smilodons.

The Chu said:

X-Men for the Genesis – make the final boss battle require the user to actually soft reset the console to complete… wait.

Thunderpants said:

Insert my cat Houdini into any game Bob enters that requires picking up items. Bob will never find whatever item he needs to pass the level. Why? Because my fucking cat ate it and is still at the vets getting his intestines cut open so they can remove the thing he swallowed that blocked him up and made him puke everywhere in my apartment.

BumblebeeZ3 said:

Ace Attorney games: All stepladders are now regular ladders

P3anut said:

angry birds: give the birds wings and laugh as they fly away

LASERDRAGON said:

Lego Star Wars – You have to sift through a gigantic box of random lego pieces to build every piece of every level before you can play it.

infrafan said:

HARVEST MOON – You’re an Irish farmer in the Mid 1800’s.

intothenight said:

Chrono Trigger: Apply the Grandfather Paradox! When leveling up, be sure not to kill a monster that’s the distant ancestor of one your great-great-great-great grandfather saved your great-great-great-great grandmother from, or else they’ll never meet and fall in love, and you’ll never be born. This paradox is usually resolved in-game with a Game Over screen.

Adam E. said:

Final Fantasy XIII attacks Mainframe, and Megabyte doesn’t do a damn thing because he can’t corrupt it any further. At the end of the episode, Mainframe loses the sector.

Baltin said:

Super mario world 2: Defeating Birdo triggers an unskippable PSA about Transgenders and hate crime prevention

Bla5ter_Ma5ter said:

Replace every instance of the word “catch” in Pokemon with the word “fuck”.

Wilxy-X said:

GTA San Andreas: (works with any GTA)
Jail time = what you would get in real life for the same crime. No cutscenes. When you get caught with murder, you spend 10-20 years (RL time) in jail. You can’t start a new game while in jail. if you are arrested, the game autosaves, it also does that, when your wanted lvl goes up.

Legebrim_337 said:

Mariokart wii – Every pickup is a blue spiked shell. see how long it takes to win a race when everyone is stuck together perpetually exploding.

ceighk said:

Portal – remove Chell’s leg thingies.

Graysha said:

The Game: ET: The Game (Atari)
The Corruption: Finish the game, making it a fun, exciting, millions-of-dollars success – thereby ensuring that the Video Game Crash never happens, meaning that Nintendo is never able to swoop in, fill the gap and get a foothold in the US. The massive success of the game also helps Spielberg decide to make sequels to the film, which so horribly traumatizes a young Rob Bricken that he is unable to enjoy nerd things, leading to Topless Robot itself never existing. The End.

LJSLarsson said:

Grand Theft Auto, but with the typing-interface from the old sierra games (like Leisure Suit Larry).
A playsession could be like this.
– Steal car
I DON’T KNOW HOW TO STEAL
– Take car
YOU CAN’T TAKE THE CAR
– Use car
YOU ARE NOT IN THE CAR
– Open car door
IT’S OPEN
– Go into car
I DON’T KNOW HOW TO GO INTO
– Enter car
YOU ARE NOW IN THE CAR
– Drive car
OK
– Drive over pedestrian
YOU CAN’T DO THAT
– Kill pedestrian
WITH WHAT?
– Kill pedistrian with car
OK
YOU SEE IN THE REAR-VIEW WINDOW THAT A POLICE CAR HAS STARTED TO HUNT YOU.
– Shoot police
WITH WHAT?
– Shoot police with gun
THE POLICE DOESN’T HAVE A GUN
– Use gun on police
BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE, YOU DIE FROM A SEXUAL TRANSMITTED DISEASE. YOU SHOULD HAVE USED A CONDOM BEFORE DRINKING HOT COFFEE WITH THAT HOOKER IN THE BEGINNING OF THE GAME.
RESTART, RESTORE OR QUIT?
– Stupid game!
I DON’T KNOW HOW TO STUPID
– [punches keybord with fist several times and goes to the park to read War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy instead]

Dr. Gonzo said:

Metal Gear Solid: codec has been licensed by AT&T. You must crawl around in the shadows looking for signal.

sparts said:

In NBA Jam when you catch fire… you literally catch on fire.

Brian said:

Change the shape of the katamari ball to a pyramid.

The Amazing Rando said:

FF 7
Coming to the final boss encounter, Bob, Dot, Enzo, and Frisket enter the room, Sephiroth appears and kills Dot as Aeris. Watching his friend, and love die, Bob desperately tries to resurrect Dot, causing the game to reload over and over again, watching Dot die over and over again causes Bob to slowly slip into madness finally giving up at the futility of the situation Bob ends his own life rather than watch Dot die again, never knowing that it was all part of Megabyte’s plan, beacuse it was Megabyte that made the game make Dot into Aeris in the first place.

StuDarkJedi said:

Tetris: The blocks are a single pixel wider than the grid, making it therefore impossible to fit them together to form a line. They’d just create holes that are too small to fit a piece into. (and yes, that’s what she said.)

Grill_Monkey said:

Light Cycle game (Tron): The blue shell is introduced.

Dypsymphuliac said:

Change Mega Man so that when he absorbs another robots powers, he also absorbs all of their memories, including when they were killed by Mega Man. Get equipped with debilitating PTSD!

louieatrest said:

Replace all zombies in Resident Evil with my co-workers. It might not appear to make the game more difficult, but those bastards have been able to keep me defeated for well over a year.

Blue Bebop said:

Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball
The girls become aware of their reputation as nothing but mindless sex dolls and collectively undergo radical breast reduction surgery just before Bob’s plane lands on the island

You’ll notice that some of the HMs were less clever and more just entertaining, but the three winners are all pure evil:

Capsulesn’Coffee said:

Resident Evil 4: Ashley is 400 pounds and confined to a wheel chair.

Protecting Ashley from the villagers in RE4 is already a vastly annoying experience when she’s a mobile and vaguely adorable little girl. Making her morbidly obese would be like playing Fat Princess, but with zombies trying to eat you. Chris Redfield would do better strapping eight honey-baked hams to himself.

zombies8myballs said:

In Pitfall if you fall off the rope you don’t die, instead you fall into the same hole you fell into in the ET game.

A lot of people mentioned the E.T. Atari game, but none so diabolically as zombies8myballs. Start off playing a good game? Falling in one Pitfall‘s infinite pools drop you in the awful E.T. game? No way for Pitfall Harry to get out of the pit? The only possible things in the pit being part of E.T.’s communication device, a flower, or E.T. himself? That’s fucking evil, man. If I were playing Pitfall like that, I wouldn’t even try to get over a pit. I’d just stand away from the edge and cry.

misterclock said:

You know that center box that the ghost come out of at the start of the Pacman game? Have Pacman start the game from there, with the ghosts still inside.

This is my favorite entry of the entire contest. Beautiful in it’s simplicity. Terrifying in its evil. So little work necessary, and death almost guaranteed. Dear videogame industry — please never, ever give misterclock a job. Sincerely, everyone.

Congrats to the winners, thanks to everyone who entered, and thanks again to Shout Factory for offering the ReBoot DVDs as prizes. Game over, man!