The 25 Most Unnecessary Games of All Time

Despite my unwavering apathy for everything Star Wars, I do understand why these games are necessary. Even if most Star Wars games do a poor job of recreating the fun of the movies, there's something to be said about a game that allows you to pick up a light saber and use your Jedi powers. Sometimes I question why people are so willing to spend money on a game they know is going to be bad (or prequels they know suck), but there's nothing unnecessary about a good, old fashioned Star Wars video game.

But even Star Wars has a limit, and Masters of Teras Kasi is so far over that limit that only the biggest fanboy can say that he likes this game. It's not just a bad game; this is easily one of the most unnecessary games of all time ... a real feat for a Star Wars game. Masters of Teras Kasi is a 3D Star Wars fighting game along the same lines as Tekken and Virtua Fighter, what could possibly go wrong?

For starters, the concept makes absolutely no sense. Does anybody actually believe that Princess Leia stands a chance against Darth Vader? And if the light sabers are supposed to be so powerful, then why does it seem like they do no damage in this game? And what reason would Han Solo and Chewbacca have to fight to the death? The concept of a Bushido Blade-style light saber game is a good one, but the moment you try to turn the Star Wars into a traditional fighting game that's when you know you've crossed the line. There is no reason this game needed to be made, and I suspect that Star Wars fans would be better off if they never had to think about this awful fighting experience.

When it comes to video game movies I often complain that there's no reason to make them, the fact that most games are inspired by specific movies and genres makes them completely unnecessary. Take Resident Evil as an example, Capcom's survival horror game is something of a love letter to a number of classic zombie movies, including just about everything that George Romero ever did. We already have those classic zombie movies, so what's the point in making another zombie movie based on a game that was inspired by a bunch of zombie movies? That would be like making a parody of a parody, sort of the video game movie equivalent of the Scary Movie franchise.

Unfortunately this theory works in the opposite direction, too. Take Scarface as the most glaring example of this template. At its core Scarface is an exciting action movie full of over-the-top characters, tons of guns, and a whole lot of drugs. If you can forgot for a moment about the tragic (and ultraviolent) ending, Scarface sounds like the perfect source material for a game. And it is, when Scarface was first brought to the PlayStation 2 is was a solid action game full of memorable characters and a lot of drug running. There's just one problem, when it was first brought to the PlayStation 2 it wasn't called Scarface ... it was called Grand Theft Auto: Vice City!

Make no mistake about it, when Rockstar Games went to make their Grand Theft Auto spin-off, Scarface was a major influence. The characters, the locations, the plot, it's all out of the classic 1983 movie. So you can imagine the double take we all had when Vivendi Games decided to turn the Oliver Stone-penned crime drama into a full-fledged Grand Theft Auto-clone. That's a phrase a lot of critics throw around without any hesitation, but Scarface really is a Grand Theft Auto-clone ... in more ways than one. Unfortunately the "real" Scarface is no competition for Vice City, which leads me to think that Vivendi should have tried to milk one of their other untapped properties (perhaps Serenity).

There's only one reason to play the original Mortal Kombat, and that's not for its stellar gameplay. Thanks to its sluggish controls and ugly animation, Mortal Kombat was never one of those games that could stand on its own against the Street Fighters of the world. But Ed Boon realized that he didn't need to create compelling gameplay just as long as he could soak the game with gallons of blood and some of the most brutal game fatalities ever seen. This emphasis on the gore paid off big for Midway, because right after its release Mortal Kombat became a massive success, spawning more than ten years worth of sequels, updates and spin-offs.

Thanks to its overwhelming success it was only a matter of time before the rights to the console version were picked up. In 1993 Mortal Kombat was released on both the Super NES and Sega Genesis. However, not every version of this game was equal. While the Sega Genesis port of this arcade hit featured all of the characters, levels, fatalities and gore, the Super NES version was severely edited. Nintendo made it clear that because their system was geared at a family-friendly market, Mortal Kombat could not be released in its original state. This meant that sweat was substituted for blood and the fatalities were changed from spines getting ripped out to people being set on fire.

By removing all of the objectionable content Nintendo gave us a chance to actually look at the game we were playing and realize that it really wasn't very good. With its bad control and shallow gameplay, Mortal Kombat is hardly the best example of a 2D fighting game. Nobody played this game because of its gameplay; they played it because you could rip people's heads off and remove their still-beating heart. Take that away and there's absolutely no reason to play Mortal Kombat, which is why this Super NES game is so completely unnecessary.

Sony is nothing if not confusing sometimes. The one-time market leader decided to launch their console close to a year late, offer two different models (after making fun of Microsoft for doing the same thing), price their console at $600, and not tell anybody about their online strategy until a week before launch. And that's not even the start of their crazy, lest I bring up the fact that the head of Sony Australia actually suggested that the price was too low! But just when you start to think that things are turning around for Sony they go off and do something else completely crazy: like release Super Rub a Dub.

In case you aren't familiar with Mr. Rub a Dub, this cute little rubber ducky was first used as a tech demo for the PlayStation 2. The original video explored the system's rendering abilities and how easy it was to create realistic water effects. Flash forward a few years and Sony is using the rubber ducky to show off their super-powered PlayStation 3, only this time around they are using dozens of rub a dubs to wow the audience with all of the independent characters the system can display on screen at once. With the cute character and impressive visuals, Sony manages to get the word out about these two consoles while also giving us a laugh at an adorable little rubber duck. But just as we started to think that we had seen the last of Mr. Rub a Dub, all of a sudden Sony decided to announce a Super Rub a Dub game for the PlayStation 3.

So here's the obvious question: How many people actually know about the importance of this character? Even if you factor in all of the journalists and game fans that watched the two E3 press conferences you're still only talking about two or three percent of the total game playing public. The rest of the gaming community will look at this game and see nothing more than a game about Burt's favorite bath toy. Worse yet, it's not even a good game about this cute rubber ducky. Instead we get a painfully frustrating game designed to make you rip out your hair and throw your cordless PlayStation 3 control across the room. To this day I have yet to meet any average gamer that actually knows who this character is, and as far as I'm concerned that little fact makes this game feel completely unnecessary.

There is nothing better than a great round of Bomberman. For twenty years this little explosives expert has been bombing our hearts and I can only hope that he does so for another twenty years. While party games have come and gone, Bomberman is still as fun and fresh as it was all those years ago. But sometimes a good idea can go horribly wrong, which is the case with Bomberman: Act Zero. In an attempt to make Bomberman more relevant to today's violence happy gamers, Hudson decided to go back to the drawing board and give us a Master Chief-influenced Bomberman that sucked all of the light hearted fun out of the room.

Much has been said about why Hudson decided to make an edgier Bomberman; some say that this is what the Japanese think of American culture, others feel that the company was under pressure to make use of the Xbox 360's powerful hardware. Whatever the case is, Bomberman: Act Zero was an abject failure from beginning to end. The levels are boring, the gameplay is unappealing, the characters look stupid and everything that was good about the other Bomberman games has been completely excised from this product.

But believe it or not the reason this game is so completely unnecessary has nothing to do with the terrible graphics, sound or gameplay. In fact, its uselessness has nothing to do with the game's presentation at all. Instead it's because this is one of the only (if not THE only) Bomberman game to not support local multiplayer support. Thanks to the game's unwieldy camera angle multiple people can't play on the same screen, which completely defeats the point of Bomberman. If you can't host a party and have a bunch of people over to try and kill each other then what's the point? A single-player Bomberman is useless and, you guessed it, unnecessary!