Every week the hosts of TalkRadar present and answer a new "Question of the Week" - a personal inquiry which unearths some of our deepest, and sometimes most sinister, gaming memories. Everyone is encouraged to answer each week's question, so go ahead, tell us your most glorious, nostalgic, or shameful story!

Last week's question:

What peripheral let you down the most?

Below are a few of last week's answers that tickled our collective fancies, but since we can't feature them all here, check out last week's article and forum thread for more...

Crabbo wrote...
"Well, this is more out of personal stupidity, than general disappointment towards the product.. But...

The Super Scope... Around 96' I was visiting my cousins in Ft. Lauderdale. I rarely ever see them, so I was enthused. I had a really crappy time hanging out with them considering that I was much younger than they were. So to make up for it they gave me their Super Scope.

Now by this time, I didn't realize that you needed a sensor to use the damned thing. So I got home, and tried my damnedest to play "duck hunt" (also not realizing the super scope was a peripheral designed for SNES, not the NES).

I was convinced that my copy of duck hunt, just didn't work with the super scope. So I tried a few other games I owned at the time, among them "Platoon" also for the NES, and it still didn't work.

I was pretty disappointed. On a positive note though, I did end up just using it as a toy gun to play around with.

Still though.. In retrospect It makes me feel like a real idiot."

Above: Senior Editor Brett Elston playing with his Super Scope...you'd think he was just posing for a photo, but he was having way too much fun for that to be true

BonerAchieved wrote...
"Hey you pikachu, GOD THAT SUCKED, i was like 'YEAH!!!! i got my OWN pikachu, that understands me!!!'

THAT TOTALY DID NOT WORK, pikachu come here, COME HERE!!!!! GOD F**** YOU SUCK YOU SUCK!!!!

NathanXplosion wrote...
"The Sega Activator."

Mechamorbo wrote...
"I don't typically buy peripherals, so I haven't really experienced much disappointment.

However, when I was younger, my family and I would pile into a van and take a three day trek down to Florida. To say this wasn't very friendly to the environment, battery wise, is an understatement. So when we arrived, I used my Christmas money to buy a rechargeable battery pack for my Gameboy, as well as that weird looking magnifier/light that would clip onto it like some geriatric robot cyclops' glasses:

The light was fantastic for playing at night (though it ironically took batteries), but the power pack eventually would only charge if you plugged it into the wall and held the wire exactly right the entire time. It was also harder to take out than Batman on a trampoline, and when I was finally successful, I'd lost the actual backing to the battery housing. This meant any tiny movement caused all four batteries to spill out onto the floor faster than Batman on a trampoline.

By this time I'd mostly moved on from the Gameboy, but it was still annoying that it meant I couldn't really ever revisit it."

Bar1Scorpio wrote...
"I own Steel Battalion, and hardly ever have the chance to play it."

GAYMER wrote...
"The Aura Interacror. When I was just a little kid, my friends and I used to take turns wearing this while playing Mortal Kombat. What a piece of crap! It was bulky and impossible to sit on the sofa while wearing it. And if you wore it too long, it would start to burn your back!"

Sep 10, 2009

To see the rest of the stories, check out our previous QOTW articles, and for more podcast related discussion, introduce yourself in the TalkRadar forums.

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