Articles

Since the beginning of videogames, one thing has been clear: marketing executives have no idea what the appropriate time would be to use rap in commercials and advertisements. Or how rap should sound. Or what it should be about. But "having no idea what we're doing" has never stopped an executive, so terrible/awkward raps became one of the cornerstones of the videogame ad industry. These are the 8 worst raps in videogame marketing history.

8. Supersonic Controller

The Supersonic Controller had a lot of hurdles this commercial tried (and failed) to leap: selling a wireless controller when the technology wasn't good enough to make that work, selling a controller shaped like a triangle (great shape for pizza, terrible shape for a controller), and convincing you it would work for the Nintendo – even though it was a third-party non-Nintendo-approved hunk of plastic that would embarrass MadCatz.

And what better way to stumble through this all than with a family-friendly rap (thus defeating the main appeal of rap in the 80's)? The problem is (besides being awful) that the rap can't even muster up the self-confidence to sell itself. They actually include the line "It will do." It's essentially saying that it gets the job done, but "Meh, It Works, Sorta" isn't exactly the ringing endorsement they thought it was.

Ever had a moment so nerdy that you needed to tell the Internet about it? Send your submissions to dorklypwnup at gmail.

Yesterday I had to dress nicely for a photoshoot my school was doing to send out to various camps I will be working at this summer. As any other normal day, I carried my 3DS in my pocket unaware of it's pronounced outline in my dress pants. I just got the photos back and in every photo you can see a large rectangle on the front of my pants.
-Jeffrey

My wife just gave birth to our first child. We've certainly had some nerdy moments throughout this.

1. Our music playlist. At the facility, we were allowed to bring in our own music players with playlists to help the mothers relax and get through labor. Of the small playlist we selected, some of the tunes were mixes from Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and Kingdom Hearts.
2. We had a doula, a woman that acts as an assistant during the pregnancy and birth. Towards the end of the labor, my wife does the expected "Please, make this stop" and "I can't do this anymore" and my job was to keep encouraging her. "This will be a triumph…" I said. The doula chimes in, "Yes, it will!" I say, "We're going to make a note here, this will be a huge success." Again, the doula agrees, oblivious that I was working my way through Still Alive. My wife was looking at me the whole time, going "Smartass…"
3. Being the mother, she had priority in choosing the first name, Stephan, a tribute to her late sister, Stephanie. I got to choose the middle name. I wanted to go with Sabin, from Final Fantasy 6, but we're in Louisiana, and everybody would think we were honoring LSU's head coach Sabine. Almost went with Balthier, but I wasn't that attached to FFXII. So we welcomed Stephan Auron Hand into the world.

-Bob

Around the beginning of March, I found myself bored with the lack of interesting games being released. I decided that I'd make it my goal to beat every Final Fantasy made for the traditional consoles (SNES, PS1, PS2, etc.) I was so excited about this idea that I told my friend, who is a Final Fantasy fanatic, about it. Not only did he think it was a great idea, but he also decided take on the exact same task I set for myself. He now has his own personal gaming closet in my apartment. He comes over every other day, even if I'm not home; opens the closet and starts playing away. We now spend our nights lounging in chairs and playing Final Fantasy on two screens, and in no way is that depressing.
-Adam

Ever had a moment so nerdy that you needed to tell the Internet about it? Send your submissions to dorklypwnup at gmail.

Recently, I was taking a U.S. history final exam. One of the essays I had to write was on the U.S.'s role in WWI and the League of Nations. About 5 minutes before I turned my exam in, I realized that I had written League of Legends instead of League of Nations everywhere. I furiously erased as many of them as I could, and replaced them with League of Nations, but I missed one. My teacher was very confused and took a point off, citing that she had searched "League of Legends" on her computer and was disappointed that I had confused them.
-Andrew S.

I met my girlfriend by playing Mass Effect 3 multiplayer. I trapped her in the reactor on the Reactor Hazard map (on purpose). She yelled out "YOU TRAPPED ME, YOU TEAM-KILLING F*CKTARD!" I realized the quote since it came from Red vs. Blue, and it was love at that moment. Turns out she lived in the same town as me, we met up and have been happily together ever since. I'd say we're about even on the number of team-kills against each other so far.
-WM

I recently moved away from my best friend, who would always come over and have long gaming sessions together. He made the long drive over and after playing a lot of Resident Evil 6, we went to look at his grandfather's old house, which was empty and up for sale. After finding the back door open, we looked through the house – but every time I opened a door, my left trigger finger twitched, to get my gun ready for zombies.
-Samuel

Ever had a moment so nerdy that you needed to tell the Internet about it? Send your submissions to dorklypwnup at gmail.

I am a factory worker who has always loved Star Wars. One day at work, I was running a machine called the depiler when it quit, dead as a door nail. A PLC card that controlled the movement had blown. Without missing a beat I turned to my coworker and said, "Uncle Owen, this droid has a bad motivator." He had no idea what I was talking about.
-Ben

Since I heard about Pokemon X&Y coming out I decided to finally complete the pokedex (on White 2), to do this I needed to do a lot of breeding. After doing a fair few breeds I took my Ditto out of the daycare, when I looked at its nature and saw that it was 'Naive' I felt really bad for making it breed with so many pokemon. Eventually I swapped it for a Ditto with a 'Relaxed' nature so it might enjoy itself.
-Kyle

Back when Pokemon Red & Blue first came out my friend and I, like most children in the late 90's, were addicted. Towards the end of the 2000 summer, our concerned parents took away our gameboys and we were left to our own devices. We decided to try and recreate Pokemon by catching wildlife and creating arenas, e.g. a jar filled with water was a water-type arena. One memorable fight took place in this jar-arena, between a Poliwag (tadpole) and a Zubat (a leech we found. Yeah, Zubats aren't water based at all, but we had to make do). At first the two combatants idled about in the water, but suddenly the leech jumped onto the tadpole and the struggle that took place was horrific. After 3 minutes of a terrified, writhing tadpole being drained of life fluid the Zubat floated happily, sated and victorious. We never tried that sh*t again.
-Myles