Most useless powerups in videogames

Balla

Video Games Moderator

Since its first substantial addition to the vocabulary of videogames in Super Mario Bros., the power-up has become an unquestioned element of video games. Back in 1985, there was no question as to whether that enigmatically marked block would provide you with something awesome, be it a mushroom, Fire Flower, or the elusive Starman. But over time, the once-pure idea of the power-up was tainted, and as videogames grew more complex, it didn't take long before a plethora in-game of choices led to some power-ups that were marginally helpful at best. In fact, if we look just one year after Super Mario Bros., we see some power-ups that are downright malicious. In Super Mario Bros. 2 (released only in Japan and mostly known in the U.S. as The Lost Levels), the only addition to the roster of items Mario could use was a palette-swapped mushroom that did nothing but bring him closer to death. Rumor has it that a spontaneous-combustion-causing Starman was in the works, but the idea was scrapped due to the limits of the NES' processing power -- thankfully. Perhaps the most tragic of the power-ups are those that mean well but offer only two things: jack and squat. In a misguided effort to add just one more bullet point to the back of their boxes, many developers take a "kitchen sink" approach to game design by giving the player as many weapons, items, and doodads possible without really evaluating the items' worth. And while variety is the spice of life, these power-ups have all the kick of a bowl of white rice washed down with a Mylanta smoothie. Forget what you know about power-ups -- these are the power-downs. Avoid them like that little floating "P" icon that can only stand for "the plague." Super Mario Bros. 3 -- The Tanooki Suit
Back in 1990, Japan was just a place that was occasionally mentioned in movies like The Karate Kid, and rumor had it that they might've actually made videogames over there, too. Before the advent of Japanophiles, Super Mario Bros. 3 gave us our first lesson in Japanese mythology. Upon seeing the Tanooki Suit, most salty-mouthed 8-year-olds had just one question: "What the hell is a tanooki?" Of course, with today's teens coated in a thin layer of anime, it's not hard to find this answer along with the specific episode numbers of Naruto this creature might have appeared in. But back in the early '90s, and without an Internet to instruct us, we had no idea that tanookis were the trickster animals of Japanese mythology, with their large testicles being their main power source. If this fact were known, the Tanooki Suit would have unquestionably become the most popular Super Mario artifact, appearing in later generations of videogame hardware with physics models we'd rather not speak of. So how does it work? In a strictly utilitarian sense, the Tanooki Suit (using eBay terminology) is a ~!!!SUPER RARE MIB L@@K!!!~ version of the common raccoon tail; it has all of the functionality of the latter, but since it's so rare, you're a sweaty, nervous mess while using it. The situation isn't quite as bad as acquiring the Hammer Bros. suit, as most gamers usually make everyone leave the room and unplug all phones while donning this mythical gear. But for all it has to offer, the Tanooki Suit just isn't worth the anxiety. And its one special power -- turning Mario into a Buddhist statue -- is exactly as exciting as turning to stone. The effect is neat but entirely useless; just about anything the Tanooki Suit is good for can be improved upon tenfold by running and jumping -- the standard diet of any Mario game. Metal Gear Solid Series -- Cigarettes
For being supposedly "mature," the Metal Gear Solid series can get downright preachy when it comes to cancer sticks. Sure, Solid Snake is a battle-hardened stealth-expert genius fighter, but he can't escape the watchful gaze of the Morality Police when he decides to flick his Bic. Let's get one thing straight; this is a guy who mules -- yes, "condom full of heroin in your stomach" mules -- his smokes into missions to conceal them from the watchful gaze and codec-based ESP of his commanding officers. But when he wants to break them out for a very useful purpose -- like detecting lasers or looking really, really cool (the main purpose of cigarettes) -- Snake's entire network of communications goes all PSA on his ass and holds an impromptu intervention that's seemingly more important than the threat of nuclear weapons. Bust out a single cigarette and you're lectured on the addictiveness of smoking, the irreparable harm you're doing to your body, and how Flavor Country really isn't a place but a state of mind. What's most disturbing about all of this is that the abundance of lecturing is futile; after all, given Snake's exposure to radioactivity on, oh, just about every one of his missions, one thing is clear: He has cancer. It won't be long before he's wheelchair-bound and talking through a hole in his throat about the importance of nuclear safety at grade school assemblies, so why can't they let the guy have a cigarette now and then? Sheesh. Sonic the Hedgehog -- Speed Shoes
Even with the first Sonic the Hedgehog game, you could tell the premise was being stretched thin. Case in point: the speed shoes. While the original Sonic was a game lacking in power-ups, the ones we got lacked that spark of creativity apparent elsewhere in Sega's Mario-killer. The creation of the speed shoes power-up could have only resulted from the following dramatized conversation: "Well, we've got invincibility, but we need at least one more. Tell me, what do you think Sonic is best at?" "Being fast?"
"Yes. Well, what if he was...faster?"
"Truly, this brand of creativity will make us wealthy far into the next decade!" That's basically it. The speed shoes made Sonic faster, but Sonic was just as killable with the speed shoes as he was without. While the Bubsy series would eventually take the premise of "uncontrollable destructible furry animal who is always three pixels away from death running at alarming speeds," this style of play didn't really lend itself to the Sonic series. In fact, the speed shoes kind of feel like an empty gesture to prove that the Genesis had the processing power that Nintendidn't. And as time went on, the spin dash ability -- giving Sonic an instant boost of speed regardless of his location -- made the infamous red shoes even more pointless. And really, if you've played more than 10 seconds of any modern Sonic game, you'd know that Sonic needs absolutely no help careening into bottomless pits -- in fact, if they combined the Sonic and Pilotwings franchises, most people wouldn't really notice. Castlevania -- Daggers
Even before it was laden with RPG elements, the Castlevania series offered many options for aspiring vampire hunters. While the good-old-fashioned stake was nowhere to be found, items like crosses and holy water were far more practical and much tougher to make Cryptkeeper-esque puns out of -- the one thing the horror fan fears the most. Yet even with such an arsenal available for this legitimately rough series, a certain set of Transylvanian toothpicks -- otherwise known as daggers -- were a cruel joke on Simon Belmont and his heirs. The only thing "special" about these special weapons is their frequency when they are the absolute last thing you wanted to see. Shockingly, the daggers of Castlevania do have one quality the other, better power-ups don't: pure speed. But even with this superior trait, the nearly untraceable amount of damage they do to Nosferatu's minions makes them the sneezed-on cottage cheese of Castlevania's salad bar. Sure, they're fast, but you can also throw a handful of pebbles in a fraction of the time it takes to load a shotgun -- and it's not like the protagonists of Castlevania games move like ninjas or anything. Until recently, most of the Belmont clan stumbled along as best they could, crippled by severe cases of gout. So if you planned on turning one of these Eastern Europeans into a slow-moving turret of Old Word weaponry, it's best to have power on your side. And really, after Symphony of the Night's garlic proved to be much more formidable than the standard dagger, this easily tossed-away piece of cutlery lost any degree of dignity it ever had.


By Bob Mackey

The Legend of Zelda -- A Ladder
The Legend of Zelda series is famous for giving gamers an elaborate fantasy world rich in mythology and ripe for escapism. In the land of Hyrule, anything is possible, and usually made possible, through the use of the standard items dredged up from dungeons: mythical bows and arrows, mysterious potions, enchanted rods, and...a ladder. Yes, if you were a child of the '80s and seeking to re-create Link's adventures in your backyard, bombs might have been out of the question. But in order to work Hyrule's only ladder into your LARPing, you didn't have to look further than your local shed or hardware store. To be fair, the ladder in The Legend of Zelda is useful in a strictly utilitarian sense. And to be honest, the ladder is really more of a bridge, lending it a certain degree of coolness -- kids love the civil engineering. In the end, though, the ladder is one of the blandest early additions to the Zelda series, which is probably why we haven't seen it since the first game. Or have we? Since the first game, Link has possessed many basic "point A to point B" items, though they've been dressed up a little so that they don't resemble anything found in your local Home Depot. Take Twilight Princess' Dominion Rod, for instance. While it's used to move bird statues around, it's essentially a glorified version of the ladder. And before that, A Link to the Past had its Cane of Somaria, a platform- and block-creating device that could have been replaced by a plank of wood and hunk of stone. But by that point in history, about every damned thing in Hyrule was overflowing with mystery and wonder, like some terrible Harry Potter knockoff -- you couldn't pick up an everyday item like a hammer or a bottle without the adjective "magic" following closely behind. Some say that a butter knife exists in Hyrule that isn't inscribed with runes and encrusted with jewels, but that's just a rumor. Mega Man -- Leaf Shield
Throughout the 20-year history of Mega Man, there's been plenty to make fun of -- after all, the Blue Bomber has been riding on fumes for about 10 of those years. Still, nothing ever equipped by Mega Man has ever matched the uselessness and downright hilarity of the Leaf Shield. If you've never played Mega Man 2 and don't know what the Leaf Shield is, here's a good description: It's as powerful as a blustery fall day yet not quite as intimidating. Originally carried by Wood Man, whose name was the source of all third grade snickering in 1988, the Leaf Shield has the power to surround Mega Man with an intimidating storm of leaves, as if he was some forgotten Captain Planet character cut in favor of the power of heart. And if this wasn't humiliating enough, the Leaf Shield was actually less powerful than Wood Man's primary ability: making leaves fall from the sky. Really, Mega Man could have fought an oak tree and no one would've been able to tell the difference. Even though Mr. Woodman from Welcome Back, Kotter was actually more powerful than Mega Man 2's Wood Man, the Leaf Shield wasn't entirely useless. As with all weapons in the series, it inexplicably had an effect on another boss -- in this case, Air Man. Wood Man doesn't even qualify as a total failure, either, since his stage has some kick-ass music, though this could be said of any Mega Man 2 tune. Frankly, the Leaf Shield has a lot of competition from the Bubble Lead -- also in Mega Man 2 -- which slowly rolls along the ground and doesn't do much but disappoint. However, Capcom made this weapon the only thing that can hurt the game's final boss, so they have a great sense of humor -- or they're sadists. Possibly both. Any Japanese RPG -- Sleep Magic
No matter the RPG, there's usually a type of magic that someone, somewhere still insists is useful. Whether it's called "grey magic," "status magic," or "that bunch of spells you can safely ignore," this special brand of monster-weakening arcana has been completely worthless throughout most of RPG history. Some games, like Final Fantasy XII, have bucked this trend by making status magic extremely useful, if not mandatory -- but Square's franchise-redefining RPG is really the exception to the rule. In nearly everything else, though, the option to weaken creatures instead of blowing them up only prolongs the inevitable -- and nothing does this better than the all-purpose sleep spell. The main problem with sleep magic and its ilk is that if a game provided situations where such spells were actually useful, it would be more boring than public television. Think about it: If you play RPGs -- especially those of the traditional, random-encounter variety -- do you honestly want whatever you're fighting to still be standing after more than two attacks? That's the problem with sleep magic: Anything you fight is inevitably going to die, so why does it need a nap before going off to that great monster closet in the sky? The only battles that could benefit from sleep magic, and status magic in general, are boss battles, but there's a certain cost that comes with making bosses susceptible to ailments: It robs the reward from of any victory -- and we've all experienced that shameful, empty feeling that comes with the instant demise of some undead horror after casting "life" or throwing a Phoenix Down at them. Until sleep magic lets us knock out greedy shopkeepers who would dare charge the saviors of the world for potions, using it will be as futile and unfulfilling as trying to dissect the plot of the Xenosaga series. Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando -- The Meteor Gun
The geniuses at Insomniac have created countless weapons and gadgets over the course of the Ratchet and Clank series, so there are bound to be a few stinkers here and there. Or at least some that kick so much metric ass that others pale in comparison. But the Meteor Gun is the worst weapon in the history of Ratchet and Clank, not just because it sucks, but because the Meteor Gun is an upgraded version of another weapon that is exponentially cooler: the Lava Gun. That's right, not only is the Meteor Gun no fun, but it also steals fun that already exists in the game. Because of it, the Meteor Gun earns a place in the Disappointment Hall of Fame, right along with Sea Monkeys and those Ghostbusters toys that didn't work as advertised. Since the dawn of humanity, mankind has searched for a way to fire lava at the rest of mankind, which is exactly what makes the Lava Gun so amazing; it takes the childhood experience of pretending differently colored linoleum squares are made of molten rock and puts that power right into our unworthy hands. Firing streams of magma through vicious robots is really an experience that can't be had anywhere else -- which is why the upgrade to the Meteor Gun pees all over that particular parade. The fact that the Meteor Gun fires unimpressive burning rocks at foes isn't its only problem; it's also far less exciting because any kind of Meteor Gun action can easily be re-created at any rowdy family gathering with a barbeque pit. It may be possible to create lava in the comfort of your own home, but the power to fire it is rarely granted to civilians. That's probably why Insomniac changed the upgrade for the Lava Gun into the Liquid Nitrogen Gun; they're always looking to give us fun, new experiences we possibly can't kill ourselves with in real life. Super Smash Bros. Series -- The Hammer
Originating in the original Donkey Kong, the hammer made many arcade gamers ask the question, "Sure, I can hit all of these barrels with a hammer, but why can't I pound Donkey Kong on the skull?" The Smash Bros. series answered this question by not only letting us brain Donkey Kong with a hammer but also by lining up a series of Nintendo characters' heads like watermelons at a Gallagher show. Anyone is fair game for massive skull trauma in the world of Smash Bros., which is why the hammer is the game's uberweapon -- not to mention that it turns the wielder into a nearly unstoppable killing machine. So why should it be considered one of the worst power-ups in videogames? The shocking truth is that overuse of Smash Bros.' hammer may result in a real-life death by violence, or possibly loneliness. In the history of Nintendo's multiplayer couch fodder, there have been many items that inspired real-life violence from so-called "friends" invited over for some competitive gaming. With Goldeneye, we saw people who repeatedly chose Oddjob in deathmatches made into local news legends after N64 controllers were used on them in unspeakable ways. Mario Kart: Double Dash players who took advantage of the almighty Blue Shell soon found that the handle on the GameCube could easily turn the system into a pair of impromptu brass knuckles. Sadly, the violence continues with Smash Bros.' hammer, and while real-life purple nerples and Indian burns continue to result from its frequent use, our modern, passive-aggressive times have shown those annoyed by this weapon will simply shun their former friends for life. Never before has a game inspired repercussions so brutal, or so Amish.


1up.com






First of all cigarettes can be quite useful in MGS, and sleep spells are great too... stupids

Lou

Yeah I agree, whoever wrote this didn't really look into how to use these items before deciding to bitch about them... what's worse, this article is a direct ripoff of this classic site. How did he expect to get away with this in this day and age....

Seanbaby's NES Page - Useless Power-Ups

Low Ki

I think the hammer is pretty damn awesome in Super Smash Bros. and I don't think it's overused at all. Most of this guy's list was pretty shitty tbh.