| insert credit | feature | the insert credit cold fifty | videogame icons: compiled by tim rogers -- with a foreword by chris kohler, fulbright scholar |

the insert credit cold fifty: videogame icons: compiled by tim rogers -- with a foreword by chris kohler, fulbright scholar

32. The Boat (from Jaws)

What defines a "guilty pleasure" in videogames? Are you going to jump up and immediately point to hentai games -- Japanese cartoon sex simulators -- or are you going to say something like Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball? Or are you going to be off the wall, and say bad games?

What's the best kind of bad game? The game that you look back on years after its release, and gulp at the presumptuousness that must have been present in order for it to be spawned? Or the game that's so bad, you know immediately after booting it up?

LJN promised thrills with their game Jaws for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The box promised the thrills. It showed the familiar head of a familiar shark breaking water. The game shows us a map of a fishing resort, and a rowboat without a passenger. We control the boat, moving it around the map, and eventually we get sucked into screens that look slightly different, yet maintain unplayability. What we're supposed to do in the game, we never know. And it doesn't matter. Because, even in 1989, my friend and I -- still young and impressed by wicked graphics -- were laughing at the stupidity of a game that stars a boat without a passenger, rowing around and around in squares. Even after we took the game back to the rental shop, we spent years joking about that dumb boat.

And it looks like plenty of people still do joke about it. Check out this Official Boat FAQ, courtesy of the Gamespot message boards.

31. Trevor McFur

Mascots imitating mascots -- we've seen it before. We've heard the story, yeah. We get you. All mascots just imitate other mascots, we know. We've read your theories comparing the mouth-portions of Konami's Rocket Knight opossum Sparkster and Sega's little blue speed-demon Sonic the Hedgehog. However, we urge you to look beyond the shape of that one particular sense organ, and detect the deeper differences. Sonic runs fast, collects rings, kills robots. Sparkster wears a rocket pack, wields a sword, and rescues a princess. Totally different stories.

Now, Atari's Trevor McFur -- of Trevor McFur fame -- that's another story altogether. This little furry guy is featured in press releases and instruction manuals as a puppet-like fuzzy sculpture of a fox in pilot's clothing. Nintendo's Star Fox, Fox McCloud, is also represented in advertising materials as a fuzzy fox in pilot's clothing. Both Trevor McFur and Fox McCloud fly spaceships and defend the galaxy. Both have a last name with a "Mc" in it.

Trevor McFur, though arguably a rip-off Fox McCloud, stars in a 2D side-scrolling shooter for a 64-bit system. Fox McCloud stars in a 3D shooter on a 16-bit system. Crunch the numbers there for a second. Think of the guts that brought Trevor McFur into being. And then, like us, salute him, and give him his props.

30. Irene Lew (Ninja Gaiden 3)