Ok first things first, controllers are expensive I know that. But when something stupid pisses you off your initial reaction is launch the sucker right? I suppose it’s not as bad as they’re wireless and only damage whatever it hits like people who forget the wrist straps on wii remotes, but in the older days they were all wired, and launching the controller usually pulled the console off the TV stand. Probably explains how I managed to get through three PS2 consoles! Anyways, here’s my top seven moments of video game induced controller tantrums.

7. Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine (SEGA Mega Drive) – Dr. Robonik

Calling Dr. Robonik a cheating git doesn’t even begin to cover it! If you’re familiar with the format of DR:MBM at all you’ll know that it’s basically a hybrid of tetris and columns and makes less sense than either. Anyways, the aim is to clear your “beans” by grouping them in permutations of 4 and combos will drop a load of non-descript beans on your opponents file. Simple? Well on level 13 you fight Robotnik. The level starts at a rate of knots and you do not have time at all to even get a foothold in the game because of the relentless raining of pieces. Of course that cheating shit knows exactly what’s coming down and always seems to recover from being stitched up within about three moves. Not only would a human player never be able to process information that quickly without being Rain Man, but he always seems to very conveniently recover and stitch you right back causing you to lose the level. It’s cheating of the highest order but at least the rewards for finally beating him gives you the prestige and knowledge that you will never have to play that pile of crap ever again!!

6. Resident Evil 5 (Xbox 360) – Albert Wesker/Jill Valentine Boss Fight

After many many collaborations with Ette on the fantastic Resident Evil 5, we come to the boss fight which happens to be Jill Valentine…and this boss is a pig. First you have to fight the cheaply teleporting and generally omnipotent Wesker who seems to dodge everything you throw at him unless you manage to sneak up behind him somehow, only for Jill to come up and shoryuken you in the back of the head. Not only were controllers thrown as a result of Albert “cheating cheap attack” Wesker dodging my relentless arsenal of exploding artillery, but fighting Jill is twice as irritating. Firstly she vaults all over the place like an acrobat with underwear made of flaming termites, but the player controlling Chris Redfield has to spam the X button to make him shout “Jill what are you doing” making her spasm into the obligatory memory replenishing migraine, you then have to grab her and smash the shit out of your controller to pull her mind control device off her tits. Sound simple? You have to do it about 8 times and that’s on easy difficulty! This is by FAR the most time consuming and shittiest bit in Res5. You can attempt to shoot the device once she’s restrained by you partner, but a pixel to the left or right off and you’ll blow her throat off, meaning you’ll have to start the whole shitty process off all over again. This is definitely one of the most frustrating boss fights ever!

5. Silent Hill Homecoming (Xbox 360) – Scarlett Boss Fight

The first time you come across Scarlett it’s a little freaky. You get all the back story about her deranged father sitting in the dark cutting himself to bleed the sin out of him. “I wonder what he’s done” you think. Before you know it a bloody great porcelain doll emerges from the pool of blood in the middle and attacks you. The boss itself is pretty frightening as it has elongated limbs which make it walk like a marionetted Peter Crouch doing a sloth impression. Why did this particular boss make me so mad? Well I’ll tell you why. Because it takes so bloody long to wear it down. You have to dodge it’s lumbering attacks with critical precision before hacking the porcelain off the legs, arms and then back. This took me ages to realise that’s what I had to do to wear it down. After about 40 attempts I managed to initialise the QTE which involved tearing the plate off it’s back. It lets out an almighty wail and shoots upwards. Phew, another boss down…until she jumps up onto the ceiling like some kind of predatory spider and squashed me dead restarting the whole fight. FUUUCCCKK!!! How was I to know there’d be a second form? The first form was hard enough and then it transforms Deception style and face fucks me? Seriously this took about 5 hours of my life to defeat and I never thought I’d get this angry at a Silent Hill game!

4. Alex Kidd In Miracle World (SEGA Master System) – Octopus Pot

Now back in the day when I was at school I heard everyon talk about the “hidden” world that you could access if you managed to punch the tentacle off the octopus on the ocean level. Seeing that I always seemed to boot the game instead of actually read the cartridge on the Master System console, that was usually a cause for anger, plus you always seemed to play that game more through sheer laziness. Anyways, punching that bloody tentacle off took ages as everything in that game seemed to kill you! When the tentacle was at maximum it wasn’t tood bad, its when it got shorter it was so much harder as the room for manouvrability wasgreatly reduced. Could I manage it? Could I fuck! It was so bloody hard and think this was the first time in my gaming career that I actually launched the damn controller! I think the fact it was harder was by default, Alex would rise to the top if you didn’t press down on the control pad. This made lining up your attack so hard and probably taught loads of kids to swear. I mean come on, does a fish constantly float towards the surface?!

3. Mortal Kombat Armaggeddon (Playstation 2) – Blaze Boss Fight

Initially I was going to put Seth from Street Fighter IV in this place but after conversing with Bear, it got me thinking about other final bosses in the beat ’em up genre. Shao Kahn on Mortal Kombat II was a bit of a pig as he was limited to about three moves including his invincible shoulder charge, big boot and spear throwing. The only chance you got was when he taunted you which left him open for the obligatory uppercut. Seth in SF4 was cheaper still, teleporting all over the place and not having any moves of his own as he emulated other characters by having a shoryuken, spinnign piledriver and sonic boom. He constantly flit about the screen like a blue bottle on LSD and had an unblockable attack which sucked you into the screen and spat you out. But I think the only boss in these games which induced more rage was Blaze in MK:Armaggeddon. This guy was basically a giant ember who spent pretty much the entire fight blocking, or cowering if you will, and then did like two moves which would kil lyou outright. That’s just bullshit if you ask me as I’d like to think that the final boss actualyl has some skill, not just a string of cheap attacks. The Mortal Kombat series from 3 onwards always had a problem with difficulty. You could set the easiest difficulty and then choose the novice series of bouts and you still couldn’t complete it because the AI was ridiculously hard. This hadn’t changed by the time that Armaggeddon cam about and Blaze certainly was more than a challenging boss. I don’t mind having a challenge but when you mount a relentless assault and they manage to take ZERO damage by raising an arm, it gets a little fucking frustrating! It almost followed the format of block, block, block, one hit death move. I can only assume it’s because the prick is made of lava!

2. Metal Gear Solid (Playstation) – Psycho Mantis

Metal Gear Solid was a great game as for the first time I learned that charging into a room guns blazing wasn’t always the best way of completing a level. Solid Snake was a really good protagonist and the game challenged you in several different tactics which personally I feel was ahead of its time. The difficulty curve was relatively reasonable as the game progressed but you came across a boss halfway through called Psycho Mantis. This guy was a camp floating gimp with a gas mask who possessed telekinetic powers. When he wasn’t floating about like a ping pong ball in a hairdryer dodging EVERY bullet you throw at him, he’s throwing Ming vases at you with his mind like a heated divorce settlement. Anyways the point was you just couldn’t shoot the prick. I spend HOURS upon hours firing off all my ammunition at him only for him to dodge every single bullet coming his way and throwing in taunts repeatedly thoughout the whole battle. Naturally this massively made me mad as I would spend hours trying to shoot this git and progress through the game, but it just wasn’t happening at all! After about 5 hours of trying I had to resort to looking up on the internet on how to beat this guy and it simply said, “put your controller in port 2”. Now who in the bloody month of fucktember would think to do that if they couldn’t shoot him?! Was there anything you picked up as intel which would give you that clue? I had to actually leave the console alone, go on the internet just to find that solution? Fuck you Hideo Kojima, fuck you Konami for making such a fucking stupid boss! I want to praise the idea but I was too angry!

1. Final Fantasy X (Playstation 2) – Tidus’ Final Weapon / Chocobo Race

This entire saga was just about 3 hours of solid swearing for me. The first part was a chocobo race whereby you had to ride a chocobo to the end of the course in under 0 seconds. No that’s not a typo, I did say ZERO seconds. The catch is that you pick up a balloon and that reduces the time by 3 seconds, hittign a seagull adds five seconds onto the time as well as slows you down. Sound simple? Well there were hardly any balloons along a decent path to the finish line and there was a shit ton of seagulls, much like if a Mr Whippy van had flipped over on Brighton pier. It was so hard to dodge the seagulls AND collect all the balloons in one sitting that you’d have to keep replaying the same fucking sequence over and over again just to get Tidus’ stupid fucking sword. I didn’t even like Tidus as a character, but it was the best weapon in the game and there’s a deal of pride from completing the game overleveled. Well anyways after many hours of constant swearing, throwing of controllers, which being wired tended to pull the console off the top too. Anyways, in one freak incident, I’d managed to beat the race with a time of -0.3 seconds which allowed me to get the legendary Caladbolg sword. But did I save the game straight away? No alas. I rushed off the Omega dungeons with my new toy only to come across a GreatMarlboro who instantaneously hit me with his “bad breath” attack. I then watched my three characters beat each othr to death very slowly seeing that they were all a high level. And there is NOTHING you can do. It casts “confusion” on your chracters which renders them retarded and they fight each other and you have no control. The thing that always annoyed me about the status ailments in the Final Fantasy series is that 1. your support characters don’t intervene and stop this stupid and cheap  facade and 2. it never wears off. Yeah it’s permanent for the duration of the fight. How fucking stupid is that. In the end after waiting 20 minutes to see if they would snap out of it and I could continue, I realised that they never were. And I never saved it after that fucking stupid chocobo race. Suffice to say I never did it again, but I certainly don’t remember getting that mad at a game ever. And perhaps I never will. And what the fuck is a Marlboro supposed to be anyways? Is it coincidence that it’s spelt the same as the cigarettes and does a bad breath attack. Either way, it’s a prick!