Remotely starting a console by accident
What's that whirring noise? Oh--it's that system you forgot you had plugged in all this time, the same one you haven't played in years. But don't worry; your house isn't being haunted by a Wiimote-wielding poltergeist. Nope, you just happened to ever so delicately nudge the Power button on the controller whilst digging through a pile of peripherals, sending a signal to the synced console that it's time to come out of hibernation. Unfortunately for your unused console's hopes and dreams, you'll be powering it back down within seconds.
Letting a cartridge melt in a hot car
It's likely that only children of the '80s and '90s will understand the horrors of melted forms of media, be they game cartridges or VCRs. Your parents warned you about the dangers of sunburn and rolling down the windows when you leave your dog in the car, but they failed to mention what the awesome powers of the sun's unrelenting rays can do to a little piece of gray plastic. It's a harsh lesson you could only learn after finding the warped remains of an NES or SNES cart slowly liquefying in the backseat--just another one of nature's many cruelties. By comparison, modern-day game and DVD cases seem like temperature-controlled micro-climates.
Having to ever use uPlay or Origin
Ubisoft and EA can try all they want, but short of Gabe Newell being outed as a member of the KKK, nothing could make Steam anything less than the #1 digital distribution platform. So why must its competitors fight an unwinnable battle by forcing us to navigate their user-unfriendly knock-offs? We've already given these companies our money, and still yet they imprison us in inferior interfaces. Who's looking forward to playing Titanfall on Origin?! Because we aren't--and the ghost town that is our Origin friends list tells us we're not the only ones.
Being the odd one out during a multiplayer session
There's five of you, and four controller ports. Winner stays on, of course--past that, it's every gamer for his or herself. Being the lone member of the audience can be a nice reprieve during particularly intense multiplayer matches--but if you're always on the sidelines, it can give you half a mind to simply get up and walk out in a huff. We can't say we blame you.
Your mom/dad/pet/sibling trips over your controller wire
They trip over the wires, which then knocks over your console, because you were stupid enough to have it upright, and scratches YOUR COPY OF PSYCHONAUTS THAT YOU WERE ONLY HALFWAY THROUGH (THIS ISNT AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL). Which would be fine if you had money enough to get a new copy. But since you don't, all you can do is sit there and weep, cursing the world and all who inhabit it. Or in lighter cases it just unplugs your controller and nothing comes of it. Either or.
Having your wireless mouse batteries die mid-match
When a football player blows out his knee mid-play, or a soldier's gun jams in the heat of a firefight, you can sympathize with the gut-wrenching panic brought on by such a malfunction. But it's harder to empathize with someone who screamed out in confusion when they could no longer aim during a particularly intense FPS match. Had they taken moment to check and/or replace their batteries before playing, this whole debacle could've been avoided. As it stands, they're currently as defenseless as a newborn baby crawling through a beekeeper's aviary. Those thirty seconds spent scrambling to replace those dead AAAs can feel like an eternity.
Not having any replacement batteries on hand
What's worse than dead batteries? No batteries. Your mommy isn't around to stock your residence with an infinite supply of copper-tops, and your own neglect has led to a household devoid of these precious, tubular energy sources. Now, you're trapped in an internal struggle: Do you actually want to play this game badly enough to make a trip to the convenience store? The answer, most likely, is no--and sadly, you're unlikely to learn your battery-stocking lesson from this little episode.
Not having enough room on your entertainment center for your new consoles
You know that phrase "an embarrassment of riches?" That's all you'll be able to think about when your hundreds-of-dollars consoles look stupid and cluttered in front of your hundreds-of-dollars TV, no matter how you organize them. For a moment, you can start to see where fanboy loyalists are coming from; at least they'll never have more than a few consoles to make room for. All this equal-opportunity gaming is turning your living room into a mess--but that's a disorganization price you'll just have to pay.
Running out of HDMI spots on your TV
...then again, what's the point of having all your consoles near the TV if you can't hook them all up? Those stingy bastards at Panasonic/Samsung/whatever only saw fit to give you a single HDMI port to work with, an oversight you neglected to pay attention to until this very moment. Now, you're forced to explore the dank, dingy netherrealm behind your television every time you want to switch between your PS3 and 360. With all the dust clumps and spider carcasses you've encountered back there, you're starting to feel like a bonafide spelunker.
Not being able to remember that game you used to play all the time at a friend's house
Spoiler: It was probably Gauntlet Legends. The one where four of you could play and there were warlocks and vikings and stuff, and when you ate food a speaker-breaking YUM rocked the house? Yeah, Gauntlet Legends. And if it wasnt, then youre just out of luck. Its better that the game was left unremembered anyway, since its been immortalized in nostalgia. Guaranteed if you find it again youll be disappointed at how badly old games have aged. Unless, of course, it was Turtles in Time, because that game will always rock.
