I sucked at video games.

[Fake Messiah]

I had a hard time with Space Invaders and Defender as a kid.

The old arcade games were made to be hard so that people wouldn't play them for too long and leave more coins.

But from my experience, at first, I was bad at almost every video game I would play which is normal because you get better at it as you play, especially in the past when there wasn't the internet and you were pretty much stuck with the stash of games you had.

Although at some games I wasn't aiming to get better at, like FPS games, which I just played with cheats so that I could kill as many people/ monsters as I could. It was such a discovery to come from school, turn on Duke Nukem or Doom, and spill some guts.

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I actually enjoyed the Lion King (SNES) but it was frustrating as hell. There weren't save files. So, every time, you'd start from the beginning level. And the second level was a tree with all these different colored monkeys that you had to roar at to get them turned the right way, so that when you jumped into the hands of the first one and got tossed from monkey to monkey, it'd take you to the parts of the tree where you needed to go. It was very easy to fall off the tree entirely and it was easy to get confused by the monkeys. You'd get tossed through this line of 3-4 of them only to realize you mistakenly turned the wrong one and ended up in the wrong place in the tree. Oh, but then, once you're done dealing with monkeys, they drop you on the back of an ostrich that starts running in a sidescroll where obstacles above and below would come in off screen. If you didn't duck or jump or have Simba jump at the right time, the ostrich would crash and you'd have to start over. There was this one part, I swear I pushed jump at but the ostrich would fall anyway. Definitely a hair pull kinda game.

I also played this game but what I found frustrating was Scar at the end. I would beat whole game several times, and yet could never figure out how to kill him. It was really unfair of them to mess it up like that especially since there was no save game.

[onlinebiker]

There's a Yiddish word for someone who sucks at so many things......


Schlub.

‘Shmegegge’ is closer. ‘Schlub’ has an almost affectionate quality, a sense of someone who tries hard but tends to fail through bad luck as much as anythring. ‘Shmegegge’ carries the sense of someone whose ineptitude and persistent foolishness merits contempt and derision.

You can feel sorry for a schlub, never for a shmegegge.

Boru

And we learn yet another useful thing today.

[arewethereyet]

And sports. I had a hard time with Space Invaders and Defender as a kid. But one of the most frustrating games came in my my adulthood. Anyone remember  the PC game "You Don't Know Jack"? It was a trivia game like Jeopardy, but on meth. 

What were some of the video games that made you want to pull your hair out?

I had several versions of "You Don't Know Jack" and enjoyed it a lot since most people in my world didn't like playing Trivial Pursuit with me (I have about 10 versions of that in the closet.) The first game I really attempted that was a real video game was "Myst" and I sucked a lot at that even with my son and his friend trying to coach me, I was awful at it. I think the only game I was actually any good at was Tetris. I play solitaire and puzzle games online quite a bit but the real deal video games just aren't my thing.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

‘Shmegegge’ is closer. ‘Schlub’ has an almost affectionate quality, a sense of someone who tries hard but tends to fail through bad luck as much as anythring. ‘Shmegegge’ carries the sense of someone whose ineptitude and persistent foolishness merits contempt and derision.

You can feel sorry for a schlub, never for a shmegegge.

Boru

And we learn yet another useful thing today.

It helps when you’re married to an Israeli. Just when I got to the point where I could suss out what she was swearing at me in Yiddish, she switched to swearing at me in Hebrew.

Boru

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

And sports. I had a hard time with Space Invaders and Defender as a kid. But one of the most frustrating games came in my my adulthood. Anyone remember  the PC game "You Don't Know Jack"? It was a trivia game like Jeopardy, but on meth. 

What were some of the video games that made you want to pull your hair out?

I had several versions of "You Don't Know Jack" and enjoyed it a lot since most people in my world didn't like playing Trivial Pursuit with me (I have about 10 versions of that in the closet.)  The first game I really attempted that was a real video game was "Myst" and I sucked a lot at that even with my son and his friend trying to coach me, I was awful at it.  I think the only game I was actually any good at was Tetris.  I play solitaire and puzzle games online quite a bit but the real deal video games just aren't my thing.

That’s me. I was never interested enough in video games to get frustrated with them. Nothing against gaming or gamers, just not my deal.

Boru

[Brian37]

And sports. I had a hard time with Space Invaders and Defender as a kid. But one of the most frustrating games came in my my adulthood. Anyone remember  the PC game "You Don't Know Jack"? It was a trivia game like Jeopardy, but on meth. 

What were some of the video games that made you want to pull your hair out?

I had several versions of "You Don't Know Jack" and enjoyed it a lot since most people in my world didn't like playing Trivial Pursuit with me (I have about 10 versions of that in the closet.)  The first game I really attempted that was a real video game was "Myst" and I sucked a lot at that even with my son and his friend trying to coach me, I was awful at it.  I think the only game I was actually any good at was Tetris.  I play solitaire and puzzle games online quite a bit but the real deal video games just aren't my thing.

I loved "You Don't Know Jack" I simply could not keep up with the speed. Just like I like the TV game show Jeopardy, but often come up with the answer slower than the contestants. If "You Don't Know Jack" allowed pause and google search it would be boring. I like Trivial Pursuit a lot more because there was no agreed time frame in answering questions, at least not the board game version.

---

Tetris frustrated the hell out of me.

[arewethereyet]

I had several versions of "You Don't Know Jack" and enjoyed it a lot since most people in my world didn't like playing Trivial Pursuit with me (I have about 10 versions of that in the closet.)  The first game I really attempted that was a real video game was "Myst" and I sucked a lot at that even with my son and his friend trying to coach me, I was awful at it.  I think the only game I was actually any good at was Tetris.  I play solitaire and puzzle games online quite a bit but the real deal video games just aren't my thing.

I loved "You Don't Know Jack" I simply could not keep up with the speed. Just like I like the TV game show Jeopardy, but often come up with the answer slower than the contestants. If "You Don't Know Jack" allowed pause and google search it would be boring. I like Trivial Pursuit a lot more because there was no agreed time frame in answering questions, at least not the board game version.

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Tetris frustrated the hell out of me.

My son-in-law says the reason he doesn't load the dishwasher is because he always sucked at Tetris.

My daughter agrees that it's easier to do it herself than to redo his attempt.