Filed Under » the dorklyst

There's no point getting mad about changes George Lucas makes to the original Star Wars films anymore. They're amorphous blobs more than films at this point, and have been since Lucas started seriously tinkering with them back in 1997. And that's okay! The original versions of the films still exist, so you can always cling to that, but the new ones are actually pretty fascinating, if for no other reason than Lucas makes some very strange, subtle changes. We all know (and mostly agree) how weird it was to reverse the Han/Greedo scene (the infamous "Han Shot First!" battle cry of internet nerds for the past 15 years), but there were a lot of changes made, some of which have some seriously questionable logic behind them, and these are some of the most baffling.

5. Adding More Dewbacks To The Droid Search on Tattooine

Why is the Empire using multiple giant lizards for transportation on this desert planet? If they were sand people, okay, I'd get it. Sand people aren't the most technologically advanced folk in this universe, and they use whatever is available to them.

But the Empire is not only technologically advanced, they are the MOST technologically advanced organization in the galaxy. They have a laser that blows up planets. They can have their giant Star Destroyers travel at light speed with no issue. But when they're looking for droids on a desert planet, they choose to travel by giant iguana? You have to feed and care for these giant, unwieldy animals that are difficult to control. Even a poor farmboy has a landspeeder. Why wouldn't they use one too? Odds are they have ones that are way better than Luke's, and would probably have tools to help find droids that would not be susceptible to bearded old guys waving their hands. If one or two Stormtroopers were using dewbacks it would be okay (maybe their landspeeder broke down or they were being punished for another terrible day at the shooting range), but the idea of this many Stormtroopers riding fat, slow iguanas is a little weird.

In the days before the internet, urban legends and straight-up hoaxes spread like wildfire, thanks to an overeager willingness to believe anything and nothing to keep the rumors in check. There was no one to deny the existence of wild claims like bringing dead characters back to life, with the exception of a few gaming magazines (such as EGM, which – as you'll see – often perpetuated the hoaxes themselves). And when they turned out to be untrue lies, the harsh reality of our crushed dreams stung. But you know what stung more? TRYING TO BEAT MORTAL KOMBAT 100 TIMES IN A ROW WITHOUT SUFFERING ANY DAMAGE IN ORDER TO UNLOCK THE SONYA BLADE NUDE CODE. Ahem. These are the 7 cruelest hoaxes and urban legends in videogame history.

6. Luigi is in Mario 64

Mario and Luigi go together like spaghetti and meatballs, like donuts and coffee, like mushrooms and fire flowers – so it wasn't unreasonable to assume Luigi would be a playable character in Mario's first foray into the 3rd dimension. Sure, Nintendo had specifically said it was a single-player affair, but that didn't mean whoever was playing couldn't choose between Mario and Luigi, right? Why would Nintendo leave its 2nd most recognizable plumber out of the game entirely, when even Yoshi makes an appearance?

That was the attitude the internet seized upon at the release of Super Mario 64 (note it wasn't "Super Mario Brothers 64"). Luigi had to be there somewhere. Why would Mario leave his taller, weirder brother behind? The first "clue" the internet found was "L IS REAL 2041" (or something like that) illegibly scrawled on a statue: somehow, this meant Luigi was real and in the game (other theories included promotion for Paper Mario). Coming in with the assist were numerous texture hacks, photoshopped screenshots, and tales of playing as the green plumber flooding the internet.

Shockingly, he was not in the game. But then Nintendo released the Super Mario 64 remake for the DS and he was included – along with Yoshi and Wario. It'd be nice if every rumor was eventually validated with a handheld remake.

Nintendo is an incredible company – they essentially invented the modern videogame market, are responsible for the most recognizable figures in gaming, and have always pushed innovation when they could simply rest on their laurels. However, they've also made several huge mistakes, and it's sort've a miracle they're still a company, let alone a successful one. Here are the five biggest mistakes Nintendo ever made.

5. Virtual Boy

The year was 1995 – the Super Nintendo Entertainment Systems (SNES) was already 5 years old, and the Nintendo 64 wouldn't be released for another year. Gamers wanted something new – something they hadn't experienced before: they wanted to jam their faces into a piece of plastic held up by a thin legs and play games with ugly graphics in nothing but red and black colors. Or, at least, that's what Nintendo thought was the case.

It's hard to tell what Nintendo's intention was with the Virtual Boy at all – it couldn't have been to replace the Game Boy, because it wasn't easily portable at all, and required a hard, flat surface for use. It definitely wasn't their idea of a "next gen" console, since it was developed concurrently with the Nintendo 64 (which was released a year later). It was the ugly red-headed (literally) stepchild. And, at some point, Nintendo realized that too. They rushed it to release so they could move all development resources to the upcoming Nintendo 64. The result? Nintendo's first major failure.

How bad did it do? It was only out for a year, and only 22 games were released (and less than 15 were released in North America). After that, it was gone for good. Papa told me he took it to a farm upstate, the same one he took our dog to when he got too old and sick. I bet Rex is jamming his face in it right now.

Fun Fact: The game largely thought to be the worst one for the Virtual Boy was Water World. And when you consider Virtual Boy is Nintendo's worst system – that may make Water World for Virtual Boy the worst game in history. Good news, ET for Atari.

Videogames are at their best when they transport us to another world. Whether it be the chance to save an alien planet or to live in a parallel universe where we have something resembling athletic ability, videogames let us see what it would be like to live in other places and times. Unfortunately, sometimes those lives are really, really terrible. Here are the 7 videogames worlds you seriously don't want to live in.

7) Sim City (Sim City, The Sims)

Whoo boy. You sure picked a great place to live! We've got a baseball stadium. It's all the way across town. And a park. It's only a few feet square, but it's there! A hospital across the river. It's not powered right now, but we're working on it. A police station. Okay, maybe there aren't any roads going to it, but how are you supposed to keep everything connected when tornadoes come through every few years?

Okay, you look worried. So I'll be straight with you: our mayor is only 11 years old. And I know, I know – that seems a little young for someone to be responsible for the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. And you're right: he's going to throw a few tornados at you to keep you on your toes. And sometimes he'll set taxes super high just to see what happens. But here's the good news: you're living right next to a nuclear power plant because people wanted more residential zones and Mayor Kid was in a bad mood because of Mom stuff.

Oh, hey, also, your wife is cheating on you. Mayor Kid is also her god and told her to. Sorry.

With NASA's space shuttle program retired, our hopes of getting full-fledged spaceships are diminishing quickly. Will we ever be able to traverse the vast expanses of the universe? Will we ever travel from one corner of the galaxy to the other in an instant? Will we ever make the Kessel Run to see if that Han Solo was lying about being able to make it in under 12 parsecs? Right now, it's not looking promising.

So until we have lightspeed-capable spaceships in real life, we'll have to live out our dreams in videogames. Here are the 7 greatest spaceships in videogame history.

7. SR-1 and SR-2 SSV Normandy (Mass Effect series)

The Normandy is a marvel of engineering, being the only ship in the galaxy capable of stealth flight in space. The Normandy is also a symbol of galactic co-operation, having been jointly designed by once bitter enemies, the humans and turians. But more than any of that, what makes the Normandy is its personality. From the no frills SR-1 in the first game, the sleek and shiny SR-2 in the second to its final iteration in the third as half-gutted, half-upgraded masterpiece, the Normandy mirrors the progress of Shepard and company.

What makes the Normandy so special, though, is not its design, or even its narrative function, what makes the Normandy especially memorable is that, in all three games, the Normandy is Shepard's home. More than a base of operations or a weapon-system, it's home to all the colorful personalities Shepard encounters in the galaxy. It's the one constant in a galaxy quickly spiralling out of control. It isn't just a nifty vehicle or a minor setting; right from the beginning the player knows that that this is their ship and, often, it's all they have.

Role-playing games, be they Japanese or fun, are designed to present a captivating world for your characters to explore. Whether they be frozen fantasy landscapes, lush magic jungles, or neon space futures, good RPG worlds can make you want to leave your dreary 9-5s behind and fight an evil empire or encroaching alien menace. Unfortunately, that's the only good part about living in a role-playing world. Everything else is terrible.

7. Heroes Steal From You

As a meager dirt farmer, you have spent years scraping to buy medicine for your sick wife. Sure, it meant living in a one-room house without a bathroom, but it's worth it for her. And who knows? Word has it the Chosen One is passing through town. Seeing him could boost your wife's spirits! In fact, here he comes now!

"Hello, Chosen One! Welcome to our village!" you say before he smashes your pots and chests, stealing all your medicine and the only three gold pieces keeping you from homelessness. He has thousands of gold pieces, and powerful medicine he'll never even use during the final battle because it's too valuable, but he takes your goods anyway.

6. Shops Don't Sell Anything You Want

Happy Birthday! You get a gun-sword and a bag of potato seeds! What? You wanted a new watch? Too bad! Your village shop only sells pain killers, pain makers, and onions. Even though you've lived in your town your whole life, the sales folks only market their goods to strangers passing through for 15 minutes. If you've got a few hundred gold pieces, maybe you could buy some shields and use them as cereal bowls. Except there's no cereal or spoons either.

Any programmer worth his salt wants to create a villain that strikes terror in the heart of his players. Throwing creepy looking monsters at us, followed by ghoulish foes, one after the other, is their attempt to stop Player One from reaching the end. If they succeed, we quake in our gamer boots at the sight of a real spooky baddie.

But sometimes, a weird phenomenon takes place. Programmers pull an ol' switcheroo and a tiny minion ends up being a major pain in the ass. Here is our tribute to the little guys that left us with twitchy eyeballs and a warm, piping slice of humble pie.

6. The Hammer Bros (Super Mario Bros.)

Beating your first koopa troopa is easier than flicking a paper football. So when you finally meet up with the Hammer Brothers, it seems like it should be a cake walk. After all, you're programmed to believe that once you smash a turtle, another turtle should be just as easy. That's science.

Wrong. The Hammer Brothers are real jerks. They don't move in a predictable pattern like most baddies. They hop around like Dance Dance Revolution pros, showering a barrage of evil, evil hammers at your plumber's crack. Once I waited fourteen full minutes for a gap before I got the nerve to race under them. But just when I thought I was home free, I got hit with the HANDLE of a rogue hammer. It wasn't even the hammery part!

5. Heaven Smile (Killer 7)

Try saying "Heaven Smile" without grinning. Go ahead. I'll wait. You can't. It's impossible. The words "heaven" and "smile" bring about visions of giant bouncy castles filled with cheap beer and meatlover's pizzas.

But there's nothing heavenly or smiley about these guys. First off, they are completely invisible. Your only hint that you could run smack dab into one is a maniacal giggle that would make Stephen King's Pennywise whimper. But once you switch over to first-person mode to reveal the Heaven Smiles in all their gradient glory, it may be too late: they are already running after you. And they can only be killed by aiming at certain pressure points.

And if you unload and manage to miss completely? They latch onto your trembling ass and explode on contact.

Thanks for voting in our search for the greatest PC game of all time! We've got your results here, but heads up, we only included the highest voted game from each series. No one wants to read about the same game three times. We'd have to copy/paste the previous entry and add "but with better graphics!" to the bottom. And that would be dumb. So sorry, Starcraft II, but Starcraft beat you handily. Nostalgia is a powerful thing. Not as powerful as a Battlecruiser, but still.

15. Counter-Strike

It's easy to overlook Counter-Strike today. The landscape is bullet-riddled with team-based, high-budget war simulators. Battlefield and Modern Warfare get all the attention, but those games are for n00bs. Counter-Strike is for l337 h4×0rs. Anyone can hop into one of the yearly triple-A shooters, run off as a lone gun and score some kills. They're mindless. Not only will you die instantly if you try that in CS, you won't have fun. Counter-Strike isn't built for the shoot/die/respawn/repeat mindset. It takes skill and team work to win, like a sport. N00bs spend a lot of time watching games from the grave. If you're willing to stick with it long enough to learn what you're doing, it's very rewarding. No other multiplayer game quite captures the feeling of being the last surviving member of your team and taking out the final opponent in de_dust.

14. Mass Effect 2

It's not easy creating a sequel to a game that received near perfect reviews across the board, but Mass Effect 2 not only lived up to its predecessor, it eclipsed it. It even allowed you to bring over the Commander Shepard you created in the first game. The Shepard that made you proud. The one that sometimes punched a deserving news reporter in the face. Or, if you messed up so badly that you'd rather pretend he never existed, it allowed you to hand craft a new Shepard with trillion dollar plastic surgery. How they can practically rebuild a man from scratch but not fix Joker's limp is still a mystery.

They weren't always the nicest guys, but the Empire got sh*t done. Sometimes you've got to crack a few Alderaans to make a space omelet. The Empire turned a sand-hating drama queen into the galaxy's most notorious badass. And at the very least, we can all agree that the movies were way better when they were in charge. With that in mind, here's our tribute to the glorious Galactic Empire.

6. Technological Innovation

Well before Anakin picked up his first lightsaber, the galaxy was under the rule of the Old Republic. During its 25,000 year reign, there were startlingly few technological innovations. The Jedi still use the same sh*tty lightsabers, soldiers use the same sh*tty blasters, and ships travel using the same sh*tty hyperdrive systems.

Now compare that to the Empire. In less than 20 years, the Empire revolutionized space warfare with the creation of the Death Star, making all large warships functionally obsolete. They also invented the AT-AT, making all ground fortifications equally obsolete. They created the Executor, Sun Crusher, and cloaking technology. The Empire did more in a couple decades than the Republic did in several thousand.

5. Religious Freedom

During the reign of the Old Republic there was only 1 religion: the Force. Everywhere you went, you had to deal with self-important, self-righteous Jedi prattling about how the Force is everywhere and binds the galaxy together. And not only were they everywhere, they were indoctrinating children!

And then came the Clone Wars, the Empire, and the eradication of the Jedi. Suddenly, the galaxy got its first real taste of religious freedom. As Han Solo best said, "Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other. I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny." People all across the galaxy were finally free to believe that they controlled their own destiny.

It's February. And you know what that means. No, not appreciation of one another and romantic indulgences! We have a much more important holiday to celebrate: President's Day! Because you totally knew that was coming up and most certainly did not just treat it as an excuse from work.

While the names of Lincoln, Washington and Roosevelt were no doubt cheered and praised, the names of sucky presidents were whispered in hushed tones and evil hisses. Garfield. Cleveland. That one guy who died after 32 days in office. But let us not be ashamed of these fine men. Misery loves company, so let us celebrate the bad and give them company. Let us observe the six worst leaders in videogame history.

6. Arcturus Mengsk (Starcraft)

Arcturus Mengsk is basically what would have happened if Luke Skywalker had, at the end of Return of the Jedi, thought, "You know what? That whole Empire thing wasn't actually so bad. I mean, I could totally rule the universe and not be a dick about it." Only then he would be a dick about it, and would grow a sweet beard and develop a southern accent. Oh, and he wouldn't have Force powers anymore, or a lightsaber.

Okay, so maybe Luke Skywalker was a bad allegory. Point remains, Mengsk was a rebel fighter that led numerous attacks against the Terran Confederacy due to their oppressive regime, frequently praised by his comrades-in-arms for his single-minded determination. To pretty much everyone's surprise, Mengsk actually succeeded in tearing down the Confederacy, only to install his own dictatorial government, the Terran Dominion. The man clearly has no sense of irony either, as he embraces his new position by giving himself the title "Emperor." Now if only he could shoot lightning like that other Emperor…

5. Garrosh Hellscream (Warcraft)

Okay okay, I'll stop with the Star Wars stuff. Let's jump back from sci-fi then and instead observe some medieval fantasy leaders, like Mr. Hellscream here. And since we're doing that, let's start with a little family history. Garrosh's father bound the orcs to demons as slaves thanks to an insatiable desire for power and a hot-blooded attitude. Okay? Eternal damnation and slavery in exchange for a bigger war peen. Clearly a family with values in the right place.

Garrosh, having all but dissolved truces with the Forsaken and the Darkspear trolls while expelling most non-orc inhabitants from Orgimmar, isn't faring much better. The guy even attacked Thrall in attempt to show dominance during the Horde's invasion of Northrend. This isn't like Obama vs. McCain or Bush vs. Gore. This is Clinton stepping away and putting Randy "Macho Man" Savage in his place. He's a-gonna git'cha! OH YEAHHH!!