"Of all the games that inexplicably received the Nintendo Seal of Approval, these 20 are exceptionally bad. I don't know if the programmers had relatives handing out the gold approval seals, or if Nintendo just didn't seem to notice how bad the games suck. All I know is that these 20 games are about as fun as swallowing a bug. For each one, I'll give a brief description of why it's bad and rate the Graphics and Fun on a scale of one to ten. But you'll find they all score horribly low, and these ratings are just excuses for me to make fun of more specific areas of the game." - Seanbaby

Athena. This game was based on the adventures of Athena as she went on a quest to cure her boredom. She attempts this by walking sideways for a few hundred screens fighting potato bugs and guys that look like giraffes and pigs. You travel from "World of X" to "World of something else" until you can finally get it into Athena's head that she's never going to cure her boredom as long as she's stuck in this damn game. My fellow appreciator of garbage Nintendo games, Big Red, had this to say about Athena: "The point of the whole game is patently ridiculous (Athena is bored and looking for adventure! Keep her alive in the dangerous land of X!...does this sound like one of those bad D&D adventures we all had as kids, where the DM starts off the story with, 'You happen to be standing at the entrance to a dungeon. What do you do?'), and the extra stuff they tried to add in (catch the magic shell necklace and you can turn into a mermaid!) seemed designed to interest little girls who don't like Nintendo." If you take the time to look for the nonhelpful secret items, you can unlock Athena's secret subgame I call "Dress up!" This is a very exciting sequence where you make Athena's clothes clash by putting a flourescent green helmet on with her pink gogo dress. After this, I usually point at the screen and laugh at her lack of fashion sense until I am killed by a giraffe-headed man with a club. Then I curse myself for dirtying my Nintendo with the Athena cartridge. Athena struggles to hold her grotesquely large head up as she prepares to bonk her menacing enemies with her blue ladel wooden driver thing. Graphics: 2 The graphics add some challenge to the game as you spend most of your time trying to figure out what you're fighting. The masterfully designed visuals may lead to heated arguments with your friends as to whether or not a creature is a potato or a turd. Fun: 1 Athena is bored for a reason. I think it's because her game sucks. Historical Accuracy: 10 This story of the ancient adventures of Athena, goddess of war and wisdom, is painstakingly accurate. The programmers did their research well, and were able to recreate the ancient Greek world of pig men down to the tiniest of details like the pink clubs and mini skirts. Hephaestus himself would think it was real.

Bible Adventures. A game mixing all the fun of learning about God with all the excitement of wandering around aimlessly. This was an atrocity released by Wisdom Tree, a company who learned that making Christian based games was the best way to hide their lack of programming skills. Christian children everywhere were disappointed when they received this game as a gift from parents who thought (like Wisdom Tree hoped they would) that mixing video games and Christ would help them learn the magic of western mythology and grow up to be splendid citizens. The plan was flawless, and the Pope himself made a huge blue hat out of the strangely colored Bible Adventures cartridges. He was happy his sheep were finally able to praise Jesus through three gloriously unplayable games on a single baby blue colored NES cartridge! There was Noah's Ark, Baby Moses, and David and Goliath. They were all like Super Mario Brothers 2, except they had less action, more ridiculous goals, and inspirational Bible quotes. Noah's Ark was the highlight of the Bible Adventures experience, where you get to perform entertaining goals like dragging unwilling animals back to your boat for hours. In Baby Moses, you get to carry Baby Moses above your head while spiders and guys with spears try to kill you. You can throw the baby at them, but no one gets hurt, and he just hits the ground smiling. The game usually degenerates into me throwing Baby Moses into a river to watch him slowly drown and pretending it was an accident. Yeah, the game knows I meant to, but it doesn't care. When you beat the level without him, it says, "Good Work! But you forgot Baby Moses!" So even if you kill Moses, you still feel good about yourself. And isn't that the way he would want it? Very few historians knew about Noah's superhuman strength. Here he is holding three farm animals above his head to get in shape for the repopulation of Earth. Back then, fertility exercises involved lifting cows. Graphics: 5 As far as the NES goes, the graphics aren't bad. But since almost all of your time will be spent throwing Moses into the water and laughing, it doesn't really matter what the rest of the game looks like. Fun: 1 Aside from the baby's lack of buoyancy, there is nothing fun about this game. One might play it when they can't fit prayer time into their busy video gaming schedule, and I think you could use it to swear someone into the witness stand. "Please place your right hand in the air, and your left hand on Bible Adventures." Jesus Power: 8 This cartridge is capable of performing small miracles like multiplying fish, resurrection, and parting the sea. However, it is not to be subjected to extreme temperatures, and should be stored at room temperature in a clean, dry place.

Super Pitfall. This still stands as probably the grossest misuse of the word "Super" in the history of the English language. This version of Pitfall barely qualifies as a game. You play the part of a Pitfall Harry in a miner's hat the color of the Bible Adventures cartridge trying to save your lion and neice from deadly fruit bats and toads. But anyone related to Pitfall Harry isn't worth saving, and the only reason anyone would keep playing is to hope to find a more painful way to make the little guy die. You'll find yourself saying that spikes and water are too good for him. He deserves some sort of acid bath/sandpaper combination. Unfortunately, you'll never find anything satisfyingly painful enough, and you should save the trouble and not play this damn thing. If you accidentally put the game into your NES, just turn off the power, remove the cartridge, and smash Super Pitfall with a hammer. Evil fish and boring ladders. Graphics: 0 If you don't get suicidally bored from the gameplay, you might from the graphics. Fun: 0 The game itself is a waste of time, but if you take the shattered remains of the Super Pitfall cartridge, you could combine them with some dried macaroni and have a fun arts and crafts party. "*Giggle!* I made a duck out of my Super Pitfall! Quackarific!" Desecration of a Classic: 9 Pitfall isn't that clever a name to begin with, so I don't know why Super Pitfall decided to name itself after a game it has nothing in common with and can't possibly compare to.

Hudson Hawk. It's not like any game based on a movie was good (except for Batman), but Hudson Hawk was notably shitty. You were about 3 pixels high, and spent most of your time dodging video cameras and angry guard dogs. These were no ordinary guard dogs, though. Many of them were weiner dogs who you could easily distract by throwing a ball. When they did catch you, they would grab onto your ass until you remembered to hit the "throw ball" button. Most of the game's challenge came from the jumps you had to do. They weren't very bad, but I discovered that Hudson Hawk has a fear of jumping and rarely does so when you tell him. He prefers to run into pits while you hammer your controller. I found it was much more fun to jam my copy of Hudson Hawk, the movie, into the Nintendo and perform Singin' on a Star with a sock puppet I labelled, "Danny Aiello." If you time it right, sparks and smoke will come out of your NES just as you begin the extravagansic final chorus. This big mean dog will pull you off the building by your ass. But you never stop smiling. That's the kind of guy you are. Hell, you'll probably start singing while you fall five stories. Graphics: 3 The little Bruce Willis looked like a mixture of Joe Camel and a circus midget, and the programmers hired their neighbor's kids to make the backgrounds. But other than that, the graphics were all very terrible. Fun: 1 It seemed like it might have been a playable game if Hudson did what you told him and you could stand looking at the ugly screen. It's sometimes fun to throw your bouncy balls around the screen, but only if you are on heavy medication. Bruce Willis Points: -48 This is by far the worst thing associated with Bruce, but it is luckily made up for by Die Hard, Last Man Standing, and The Fifth Element. When asked about the Hudson Hawk NES game during an interview, he responded to the reporter with a left hook. Then he took out a harmonica and sang the old theme to Seagram's Golden Wine Cooler while they groaned.

Renegade. A game that definitely needed to be made. There just weren't any other games involving guys walking around and fighting bad guys on the street. And someone took that brilliant idea, added bad graphics, terrible control, monotonous situations, and called it Renegade. As an appropriate afterthought, they stuck a garbage can on the title screen. In this mockery of a fighting game, you got to fight crowds of people who looked just like you. The game helped you tell everyone apart by giving you a pair of brown slacks and a matching leather vest. So when you're done beating up the armies of evil clones, you'll be dressed for any gay western club you might want to get a light beer at. "Hello, you Renegade. Buy me a drink?" The fights would continue for hours, until you make it to empty rooms where you're forced to decide on a door. It seemed cool at first that maybe you were in a game where you could go two different ways, but it was just one more way for Renegade to piss you off. In Renegade's town, most doors are magic teleporters back to the first subway. I think it's because of the gang members' habitual use of crack. I heard it can destroy the space time continuum. Anyway, it will usually take a person of average patience about one of these to decide to never play Renegade again. Thank you for the hug. Is it okay that I just kicked your friend? Hey! You're still hugging me! What kind of a subway is this? Graphics: 1 I would think that since there was only one guy you fight in the game, they could have made him look cooler. Fun: 1 If you play this game for 30 seconds, you can just turn it off. You just got the full experience of the deep Renegade gameplay. Thrown Controller Likelihood: 97% There's nothing like forcing yourself to play this disgusting game for hours only to pick the wrong door and have to start over. The elderly, small children, and people prone to violence or seizures are recommended not to play Renegade.

On to Part Two

Hudson Hawk. It's not like any game based on a movie was good (except for Batman), but Hudson Hawk was notably shitty. You were about 3 pixels high, and spent most of your time dodging video cameras and angry guard dogs. These were no ordinary guard dogs, though. Many of them were weiner dogs who you could easily distract by throwing a ball. When they did catch you, they would grab onto your ass until you remembered to hit the "throw ball" button. Most of the game's challenge came from the jumps you had to do. They weren't very bad, but I discovered that Hudson Hawk has a fear of jumping and rarely does so when you tell him. He prefers to run into pits while you hammer your controller. I found it was much more fun to jam my copy of Hudson Hawk, the movie, into the Nintendo and perform Singin' on a Star with a sock puppet I labelled, "Danny Aiello." If you time it right, sparks and smoke will come out of your NES just as you begin the extravagansic final chorus. This big mean dog will pull you off the building by your ass. But you never stop smiling. That's the kind of guy you are. Hell, you'll probably start singing while you fall five stories. Graphics: 3 The little Bruce Willis looked like a mixture of Joe Camel and a circus midget, and the programmers hired their neighbor's kids to make the backgrounds. But other than that, the graphics were all very terrible. Fun: 1 It seemed like it might have been a playable game if Hudson did what you told him and you could stand looking at the ugly screen. It's sometimes fun to throw your bouncy balls around the screen, but only if you are on heavy medication. Bruce Willis Points: -48 This is by far the worst thing associated with Bruce, but it is luckily made up for by Die Hard, Last Man Standing, and The Fifth Element. When asked about the Hudson Hawk NES game during an interview, he responded to the reporter with a left hook. Then he took out a harmonica and sang the old theme to Seagram's Golden Wine Cooler while they groaned.

Renegade. A game that definitely needed to be made. There just weren't any other games involving guys walking around and fighting bad guys on the street. And someone took that brilliant idea, added bad graphics, terrible control, monotonous situations, and called it Renegade. As an appropriate afterthought, they stuck a garbage can on the title screen. In this mockery of a fighting game, you got to fight crowds of people who looked just like you. The game helped you tell everyone apart by giving you a pair of brown slacks and a matching leather vest. So when you're done beating up the armies of evil clones, you'll be dressed for any gay western club you might want to get a light beer at. "Hello, you Renegade. Buy me a drink?" The fights would continue for hours, until you make it to empty rooms where you're forced to decide on a door. It seemed cool at first that maybe you were in a game where you could go two different ways, but it was just one more way for Renegade to piss you off. In Renegade's town, most doors are magic teleporters back to the first subway. I think it's because of the gang members' habitual use of crack. I heard it can destroy the space time continuum. Anyway, it will usually take a person of average patience about one of these to decide to never play Renegade again. Thank you for the hug. Is it okay that I just kicked your friend? Hey! You're still hugging me! What kind of a subway is this? Graphics: 1 I would think that since there was only one guy you fight in the game, they could have made him look cooler. Fun: 1 If you play this game for 30 seconds, you can just turn it off. You just got the full experience of the deep Renegade gameplay. Thrown Controller Likelihood: 97% There's nothing like forcing yourself to play this disgusting game for hours only to pick the wrong door and have to start over. The elderly, small children, and people prone to violence or seizures are recommended not to play Renegade.

On to Part Two