When it comes to videogames, I am a gourmet. I'm also hardcore. I play everything I can get my hands on, and that's a lot of games. I only buy a small percentage of these, usually the best. Sadly, my system is not perfect. My track record with buying good games is somewhere around 98%, but occasionally, a dud will slip in. So, after scrounging my rather large collection, I am here to present you with the five worst games I own! It's important to remember that these are not the five worst games I have played by any means. Also, in order to prevent this list from being too easy, I have eliminated all of my 2600, NES, and Game Boy (non-Advance) games. When I was younger, I made a lot more mistakes, as you'll see from a few things on this list. Hey, it's hard to be an informed buyer when you're in elementary school. Also, as happened at least once in my last Bottom 5, a few of the things on this list were gifts, and not purchased at the behest of yours truly.

Something else is worth addressing before I go on, and that is the question of why I do "Bottom 5's" instead of "Top 5's". Quite frankly, while I rave about things quite well, you should hear me rant baby. I was born to rant and complain. I'm sure whoever does commentary on this feature can back me up on that. And now, on to the listings.

5) Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest (SNES)
Oh, this pains me. To put anything with "Final Fantasy" in a worst list. Nay, anything by Square in a worst list is just weird (you leave Rad Racer 2 and the Bouncer out of this!). But, it's true. This game smokes monkey pole. When I bought it, Final Fantasy games were not the yearly event they are now here in the states. Nay, the entire life span of the SNES saw only two true Final Fantasy games released for the system. So, when this game hit the streets, you can bet I snapped it up like any good fanboy. But it sucks. Horribly. This game feels like it was created by a class of preschoolers who haven't figured out why the Zebra did it yet. It takes a few of the conventions of the Final Fantasy series, such as the Crystals, and tosses them into a horrid soup of uselessness. You can only have one extra character in your party at a time. Wow, two people, so amazing. They might even be useful, if the other character didn't have the brains and brawn of a paraplegic chipmunk. The quest of the game is mind numbingly short, and the story line makes the Berenstein Bears look deep. What about the challenge level of the game? How shall I put this...there is one spell in the game, that isn't even all that expensive, that will kill any monster in one hit. Even the final boss. Can you believe they offered strategy guides for this damn thing? If you own, or owned, a strategy guide for this game, seek professional help immediately. My cat can beat this game, and he's not bipedal and lacks opposable thumbs!

4) Tomb Raider (PSX)
I got this game and Tomb Raider 2 for the Playstation as gifts at the same time. I even had fun with them for awhile. I mean, a game where you kill a T-Rex, neato right? It would be, if the rest of the damned game wasn't so repetitive. Every level felt like the one before it, only with a different texture set. The "story", what there was of it, was lame. I'll go on record now by saying that while the Tomb Raider series is not horrible by any means, it should not have become the phenomenon it has. Blame the eye candy, I suppose. Not that there really was any. Tomb Raider is one of the worst looking games of all time, in my opinion. I mean this game looks horrid. It's from that early stage of polygonal game development, when games were making the jump to 3d no matter how it made them look. And it was bad. The textures are blinding to the point of not being able to tell one from the other, and the various animal enemies look to contain about four or five polygons each. Big ones. This might even be excusable, had Resident Evil and Super Mario 64 not come out around the same time as this game. Both of those, even now, make this game look like dog shit. Good Christ, Lara's chest forms a point. And they thought this was acceptable.

3) Tomb Raider II (PSX)
Pretty much the same as above, except for a few things. Graphics are slightly more tolerable. Weapons are cooler. The boat kicks ass. Even more repetitive than the first one, and not nearly as original. All the time spent on getting Lara's pony tail to move perfectly could have been better spent elsewhere.

2) Hexen (N64)
The last bad game I ever bought under my own free will. And I'm not sure why I did it. Really. The entire planet knows that I've liked about two first person shooters in the entirety of my gaming career. I think the only reason I was interested in this one was the fact that nothing much had come out for my N64 in awhile, and it was fantasy themed. I like fantasy. But, holy hannah, this game blows. The single player campaign is laughable. And while we did have some good times doing the death matches in the game, we still usually only did that because they were sick getting their asses handed to them by my Star Fox 64 flight skills. Quite a few questions are brought up by this game. Does it technically have 12 weapons, despite the fact that each character only has 4 to choose from? Why the hell does it have slow down, was the code written by semi-intelligent monkeys? Is there a point? Well, hell, I've gotta give it one thing: the Cleric's ultimate weapon rocks. Summoning souls to rip people apart. Yeah, gotta give it that. Did I mention it required a Controller Pak to save, at a time when no one had them, because they were useless? I didn't?

1) Eye of the Beholder (SNES)
To quote myself from the last time I did one of these lists, WHAT THE FUCK. I know why I bought this, that's easy enough to figure out. I was just getting AD&D at the time, and it seemed like a good enough idea for a game on the back of the box. Plus, it was used, and like $12. I was very young and wasn't handling my own finances yet, so this was one of the few things on the shelves of the Video Game Exchange that was actually in my price range. Just so you know, I've not bought a used game since the cartridge finally moved out of the lime light. Too many people treat CD/GD-ROM/DVD games like frisbees. Anyway, this is the most God awful piece of shit to ever be inserted in my SNES. Allow me to name some of its "Features". Approx. one frame per second refresh rate. If that. I'm serious. The game was in first person, and you could control up to four characters in a party. To move your party, you'd think you'd use the directional pad, right? Wrong. Oh no, you moved a cursor on screen to press buttons to move the party. To attack, you clicked the button under the character's facial image. Perhaps this is the reason for the slow ass refresh rate, so you actually had time to navigate this cryptic system and actually do something. Oh, but don't walk too long though, or you might have to rest. For me, the best part of the whole damned experience was getting a few of my characters poisoned and pressing the "Camp" button. When you wake up, skeletons have replaced their images, because they're DEAD! And, yet, you probably won't notice. I think I beat the whole game throwing femurs at people. Seriously. Femurs.