GP2X Crap Games Competition!

Are you a coder? Are you bored? Do you want to prove that you are a real man?
If any one of these is true, it was probably a bad idea to come here in the first place. I cannot guarantee that being a coder will help, nor can I guarantee that you will be rid of boredom, or indeed that you will be proved a real man. Especially if you're a woman.

I can, however, guarantee that this is a competition - but not only is it a competition, for there have been many competitions; it is a crap games competition! But, again, there have been a few crap games competitions in the past. So what makes this crap games competition different? What makes it stand out? Well, there are two things. The first being that it is quite frankly astounding, and the second is that it is solely for the GP2X.

I could waffle on for much longer - this stuff flows out of my eye sockets and lands on the internet with a satisfying squelchy noise, and with that metaphor, we'll get down to the details.

The Details

The premise of this competition is as simple as its potential entrants - you must make the worst game you can within the time you've been given. Of course, as with any competition, there are certain rules, though these are much more lenient than rules - let's call them guidelines, and they are detailed below, in easy-to-read numbered form. They are in no particular order.

1) Your game must run unaltered on a fresh GP2X. That means that were you to buy a GP2X right now and put your game on it, you'd be able to play it. It must run on the latest firmware (at time of writing, 2.1.1), and it would help if it ran on 2.0.0 too (which is what I run). The game archive (.zip please) must contain a .gpe file, which, when selected from the standard GP2X Game menu, will start your game. It can't run through an emulator or a pre-built engine which was not designed for the GP2X.

2) Your game must be a game. It must have some semblance of user interaction. It must have some kind of scoring system, or a timer, or a target. For example, a dot you can move around the screen is not a game. A dot you can move around to explode other dots is a game. It's that simple. However, I am prepared to revoke this rule for entries which are humorous for this reason.

3) Your game must be crap. It can be fun, it can have amazing graphics, superb sound, anything, but it must have that underlying crapness that makes a good CGC entrant. You must not be proud of your game.

4) You can't enter anything that has been released already. Even a new, crap version of your old game.

5) Please try to make a screenshot. I'm sure you're aware how much of a pain it would be to make screenshots for every game I get. SDL_SaveBMP is a useful function for making a screenshot if you're using SDL. Please also save me the hassle of converting your image by submitting your screenshot in PNG format.

6) Get your entries in before the contest closes. The deadline is 11:59PM GMT (UTC) on 10th February 2007. Yes, that's right, a deadline, which means you have to actually enter now. - Contest is over.

7) Entries must not contain adult material. Swearing is OK, racism is fine with me (provided it's intended as a joke), and inclusion of Hitler is almost mandatory (I jest, I don't want a dozen Hitler-themed games really). Strictly no sexual scenes or themes, but innuendo is fine. Nothing distasteful either. Please use your own judgement in deciding whether your entry is suitable or not. Entries that do not comply will be rejected.

8) These rules are subject to change without notice. I can do that, I'm running the competition.

Prizes

The prizes are as follows:
1st prize: 20p and a Toffee Crisp.
2nd prize: The bitter taste of defeat.
3rd prize: The even more bitter taste of defeat by the 2nd prize winner.

For my sake, I am not going to send the 20p and Toffee Crisp outside of the EU (used to be UK, but I've changed my mind; if you live outside the EU and are willing to cover postage, I'll send the prizes to you). I mean, the cost of the contest is coming up to almost £1 already. I'm not made of money.
That said, donations are welcome.

Entries

Entries, judge applications, donations, feedback and hate mail should all be sent to nickspoon0@gmail.com. I cannot be held responsible for any entries that get stuck in the tubes, accidentally deleted, forgotten about or eaten. I will apologise to you if I spill coffee on it though.

Judges

The current judges are: daclassicgamingmaster, Hooka and I.

Reviews

• CarCounter 2007
• CrapTalk 2X
• Don't Press Any Button
• Glouton
• Grue
• Paint Dry Xtreme
• Ping
• Run, Hitler, Run!
• StarHustlers
• Triangle Wars
• Virtual Wii
• Walking Simulator Extreme
• Washing Up Extreme
• What's on the menu, CrapMan?

CarCounter 2007	Entered by: Guyfawkes Reviewed by: daclassicgamingmaster Well, what do we have here? The second entry to the GP2X crap games competition! It’s so soon in the competition, and yet, here we have a game that’s already giving the competitors a run for their money! While it’s true that the graphics are far better than any crap game should be, this game makes up for its strengths in the gameplay department. Upon startup, I found myself staring at an excellent page full of instructions. “Ok”, I thought, instructions are definitely too good for this compo. Boy was I wrong! The game begins with a “plethora” of cars passing before you eyes. And by plethora, I mean one every five or six seconds. The object of CarCounter2007 is to actually count the number of cars that pass. Each level is 8 hours long, and this particular version features only one level (although I can’t be positive considering I only suffered through approximately 5 minutes of gameplay). There’s supposed to be a boss, but no one truly knows if there really is one, except of course for the coder himself. Gameplay gets worse as each car that passes stops at the flags (I think they’re flags?) to release an ear-piercing beeping noise, which continues for around five seconds. Following the honking, the car passes, and the player must wait another six seconds for it to start all over again. Count cars if you will, but I can assure you that this game belongs up there with the worst of the worst. Anyone who can stand more than ten minutes of this torture deserves a whole lot more than just my respect. Mad props to the coder for creating a Truly Terrible Title (TTT, get it? Haha, how funny am I?! Actually, I don't get it. -Nickspoon).
Crap Talk 2X	Entered by: vimacs Reviewed by: nickspoon I get the feeling that this is going to be my shortest review. Put simply, this is an uninventive entry with an uninventive name (although it's inevitable that we'll get at least 6 entries with the word "crap" in the name in an attempt to win my appreciation - it's not going to work, try worship). Essentially, Crap Talk 2X is basically not a game where you do essentially nothing. To "play", in the very loosest sense, press A. You then get, after a delay, a random phrase synthesised by Flite (ported by yours truly), chosen from a database of, supposedly, over 850, as explained in the (optional) readme. To exit, press B. That's it. Nothing else. Technically you still DO something but pushing A over and over against a black screen is also doing something. This has no gameplay. The game is plenty usable in the way that a button connected to nothing is usable. You can use it but I don't know why you would want too [sic]. It does get docked here though for not having a menu. The graphics are all that is needed for this "game" but aren't good at all. They don't really affect the gameplay but they look like they were drawn in paint. Were I to be more strict about the rules, this wouldn't qualify, however I don't mind too much. Good for the numbers. A few phrases are... moderately humorous, but overall this is just pointless and pathetic and therefore in no way innovative. I hope the reviewers in the Community Contest don't mind my stealing their material, but it's just too good to pass up. Anyway, I give in. I can't possibly make this review longer. Unless I start my autobiography here. Well, I was born in London to two loving parents named...
Don't Press Any Button	Entered by: Anppa and Sonistar Reviewed by: nickspoon (second time round ¬.¬) This game's title describes its objective simply and succinctly. Namely, you must not press a button. Any button at all. If you even think of going near one of those buttons, stop. Take a deep breath. Consider exactly what you are doing. Leave the buttons behind. The buttons are unimportant. Close your eyes and breathe in and out, slowly. Be at peace in the world, and don't press a button. Not even one of them. No, not even that one. This game offers a variety of levels, and plays like WarioWare would if it were designed by a 5-year-old on crack. Challenging tasks include not shooting or stabbing President Bush, losing your precious SPAM to a guy with a builder's hat and not saving Michael Jackson from an untimely death in a pool of paint (oh no!). Also notable is the level with J.K. Rowling in it (if you play, you'll know), which had my with my finger over the Y button many a time. Somehow I've lost my creativity about here, so I won't write any more, but this is a solid contender for that Toffee Crisp.
Glouton	Entered by: JyCet Reviewed by: Hooka When I first started this game I was reallyconfused, I hit A, B, X, Y and Start trying to start a new game... It turns out you actually have to hit SELECT to start the game though, I was impressed at the crap-factor at this point in time, and was looking forward to some high quality crap being present in game. The game appears to be a mix between the classic games Pac-man and Snake, no ghosts or nothing, but if you trap yourself in behind your own tail you're screwed! I was getting quite confused seeing as this was supposed to be a crap games contest, I would have assumed that the gameplay wouldn't be so solid! It turned out to be quite a decent game based on a cool idea, and, although it's supposed to be crap, seem pretty well rounded, minus music, sfx, high score saving, ect. The improperly spelt name did it a bonus though (unless that's French, and I'm just uncultured.). At this point I started trying to find every little piece of crap I could in the game, and all I could come up with was that the controls could have been slightly better.
Grue	Entered by: yodaofborg Reviewed by: daclassicgamingmaster Ok, um, Grue. The name itself is pretty crappy if I don't say so myself. VERY little work went into this game, and it certainly shows. There are no fancy graphics (except for the opening credit, which is OK in my book), and I believe there is no sound either. It's all text. The game is pretty interactive, which I like. It's pretty much up to the player to make sure he/she isnt devoured by a "grue" (if there really is one somewhere on the dark screen we shall never know). You start on a black screen which says "make your first step". Now while I'm a fan of this supposed "game", I would have liked to see some crappy hand-drawn text, possibly made in my favourite program, MS Paint. But it's really only a minor setback considering how bad this game really is. My first attempt didn't turn out so well, as I was instantly eaten by a grue. Upon pressing 'up', some text appeared saying I was eaten. So I pressed a button. And another button. And another. Then I mashed all the buttons. Finally, the screens changed, and the once legible text unceremoniously morphed into something that I couldnt read. Some random blue letters at the top of the screen. The topping on the crap cake was not being able to exit and/or try again. You have to shut down the GP2X! I love it! All in all, this game is pretty terrible. My only gripe would be to have the text handdrawn for extra crappiness, but the author certainly did an excellent job of submitting a crap game for this competition. Well done. I couldn't get this game to run (firmware 2.0.0), hence why there isn't a screenshot (EDIT: Screenshot handily provided by yodaofborg). I'm sure I'm not missing out on much though. -Nickspoon
Paint Dry Xtreme	Entered by: ParkyDR Reviewed by: daclassicgamingmaster After trying this entry out for the first time, I wondered how exactly I should review it. These crappy games are becoming increasingly difficult to judge fairly, so I thought I'd try something different this time around. I've decided to give a numerical value to each of the following catagories: graphics, sound, gameplay, and "misc", which will sort of encompass everything else such as button options, layout, and originality. Do not by any means think this new-ish system will be stricker- It's just to lay out my ideas a little bit better. Now, the review!! When I placed the game onto my sd and booted up, I created a link in gmenu2x for easy access. I did this of course, because I knew from the name alone that I would want to play this often. Paint Dry X-treme? Can't really get anymore exciting, can it? First off, I noticed that although a .png icon was provided, it wasn't placed in the same folder as the .gpe file. Excellent start. At that point, I booted it up and saw a nice opening screen with the title and "press b" on it in decent lettering. So I began. There are supposedly 3 options to play. One, you're "epl painter" (I think that's what it says...). In this "mode" you "cant paint 90 coats a second because your brush is broken and the man you bought it from misled you". LOL. The next "mode" is "splodge". Here, you have to "make paint from molecules to produce quick drying paint". In the final "mode" titled "Evil Painter", you have to "Help other painters when their brushes break or they need new ones". This is obviously a clever play on the title of that mode. Now, here's when all the fun began. I went through each mode, and discovered that they all do the same thing with only slight variations. In some, the paint dries faster (granted that's what the name of the mode told me), and in others you literally just watch it "dry". You look at an orange screen and watch little dots appear, which obviously symbolize it drying. The most exciting part however, was when you press B like you're told to do. A finger appears briefly and "touches" the paint. The level of interaction here is really rather sophisticated if I dont say so myself. The part that I enjoyed (and yes, I really found this clever), was that the finger appears to be a scan of the auther's finger. Now I could be wrong, but I do think that he really did scan his finger and used it in the game. If I'm wrong, well, props to him anyway. I laughed. Sound was really an abomination. Each time you press B and that finger appears, you get an annoying smacking/beeping noise. It's pretty hard to describe it, so just take my word for it: it was awful. On a scale from 1-10, 10 being the crappiest you can get, I've rated graphics a 8.75/10, sound 9.5/10, gameplay 9.75/10, and misc 8/10. Miscellaneous is consisting of directions, button options, and text choice, which was pretty difficult to read considering the color combinations chosen. To sum everything up, I felt this was a pretty crappy game. My favorite aspect was probably the finger, but the fact that the .png wasn't in the same folder was pretty funny as well. Good job Parkydr, this game was torture.
Ping	Entered by: Unfathomable Depths Reviewed by: Nickspoon What can I say about Ping? Well, I'll start with the title screen I suppose. I believe it was once meant to be colourful. Indeed, it still is, but in a "I tried to get rid of the colour because I realised I had a colour allergy, then sneezed so hard my eyeballs exploded all over the title screen" kind of way. In this competition, the right way. It also contains the rather grotesque face that has graced my screen hideously stretched whilst browsing the forums, and I must confess once made me hide behind my chair and cry for three days. The button in the lower right-hand corner is both pretty and gives helpful advice - a bad sign. It is complimented by two large black boxes with white text telling me what to do. There is also a perfectly useless command in the bottom right-hand corner below the button, stating "select and start to quit" in friendly bold capitals - select and start does indeed quit, but as I am told by the black box, the extra effort required to press the start button is unnecessary. Apparently this is also a "GP2X original", which I believe, as I have never seen such an appauling array of sickening graphical pain anywhere else. Well done. Unfortunately, what this game falls down on is its gameplay. Or should I say, what it is almost good at. For after pressing start, as clearly instructed, I am presented with a grid of squares and very little idea of what I'm meant to do with them. Helpfully the instructions were included in the e-mail, and according to them I must hold down the B button until the squares go away. Which they do, at random intervals, making this game very replayable, and maybe even have some semblance of addictiveness. While the squares are there, holding B will give me points. If they're not there, however, the fun starts. Well, not really. The surprise is, I actually lose points. This thrilling gameplay concept has kept me playing four times over - shocking, really. I am not sufficiently repulsed to play it once and then try very very hard not to club myself over the head - oh no, I enjoyed the game so much I played it four times. To see if I could get a better score. Which is where this game's fatal strengths come in. You see, at the top of the screen, above the hastily-drawn Paint background advising me to "Ping it", lay two counters. Not one, but two. One displays my score, and the other displays how much time I have remaining, which is labelled NRG for some reason I cannot fathom. Being a coder, I know how annoying it is drawing text to screen, and the status bar just emanates the feeling that too much time and effort was spent on this. And this review was much too long, but I guess I just got caught up in this charming, failed attempt at being crap. Try harder.
Run, Hitler, Run!	Entered by: A_SN and Sonistar Reviewed by: Nickspoon Ah, finally. A game starring my most favourite guy in the world, Adolf Hitler, so cunningly portrayed in this fabulous example of videogaming mastery. As I have done before in my reviews to extend them to superhuman lengths, I will deal with each individual aspect of what could be called an addictive, inspiring, beautiful game if you were a dead fish. Upon entering the game, I am greeted with a title screen with a picture of Hitler, supposedly running, but with his body shaped like a swastika and his head floating a couple of inches above his "shoulders". Hitler's magical powers of levitation will become more apparent as the game progresses beyond the very short period in which the title screen is shown. Below Hitler is a set of instructions which are, as expected, unreadable. The readme offers little advice as to what is required for the enjoyment of this game (using the word enjoyment loosely), instead referring to me as a 'n00b' for attempting to probe its depths for help. To save any potential users of the game any trouble, you make Hitler run by tapping A. I am then bluntly fed a loading screen for the loading screen, which is the previous screen without the instructions and with garish brightly-coloured hand-drawn text. If vomiting through one's eyeballs were possible, this screen may just do the trick. However, it appears that I am not capable of this, so I found the screen remarkably amusing. This loading screen lasts a short while, then another pops up. This, again, is the same as the title screen, except the instructions have been replaced by a static progress bar and the word "Loading", followed by an ellipsis. Having gotten across the fact that loading is in progress at this point, you may think that it needn't emphasise the fact. This is true, but nonetheless this screen lasts for a good... quite long. Excessively long. Once I have endured the vast desolate expanse of the loading screen, I am presented with a badly drawn Parisian landscape. There are no swearing Frenchmen, sadly (I assume too difficult to insert), so the only indication I have of the setting being France is the silly-sounding text on one of the buildings - "Cafe Machin", and from my limited knowledge of French and some educated guessing, I derived that this meant that the building was a coffee machine (According to A_SN, it isn't really, but I reckon he's lying to compensate for how rubbish French coffee is). Only the French would be insane enough to create a coffee machine the size of a building. The coffee probably isn't any good anyway. From that I realised, with a shock that literally knocked me off my chair and out of a second-floor window, that the large floating A in the background was actually meant to be realistic depiction of the Eiffel Tower. I really don't see why I never saw that before. As in reality, there is an Eiffel Tower positioned at every 500 metres so you can see one whereever you are. Oh, and the words "This is crap" appear overlaid upon the screen every once in a while in searing rainbow colours. Anyway, Hitler is strolling, along a road devoid of angry French drivers murdering tourists, in an abnormal fashion involving tipping the body backwards and forwards whilst hovering a foot above the ground with arms and legs at right angles. It's half-swimming, half-walking and half-flying. And with a total of three halves, you know it has to be great. I should try it next time I leave the house, but I fear I will fail due to my imperfect grasp of the art of levitation. Maybe I'll have to phone up Hitler and ask him about it. Pressing A moves Hitler one "step" forward. The excellent smooth scrolling present in the game is practically nonexistant until you have "walked" off the edge of the screen a few paces, at which point, the world scrolls sluggishly backwards until Hitler is visible again in the centre of the screen. If you move quickly enough, Hitler remains off-screen as the scrolling fails to catch up. Also, if Hitler stops in certain places, the scrolling stops too, but luckily it starts again when you move, so Hitler is not abandoned in the ether off the side of the screen. After walking for far too long, and with much determination, our badly-drawn Hitler finally ends up in a part of badly-drawn Paris where scrolling does not exist any more. Here, standing adjacent to a large white line along the width of the road, stands a badly-drawn Frenchman (finally) in a stripy shirt and beret, which is the traditional French dress and what all French people wear to go out when they bother to wear anything at all. Sadly, this game loses a point for realism as the Frenchman has no moustache, is not riding a bicycle and does not have one or more baguettes about his person. His right hand has been cut off and his left replaced with a small black object, the nature of which I cannot discern. Upon finishing, I am presented with a screen that informs me, with poor spelling, that the incompetent Frenchman before me has forgotten to start the stopwatch, and therefore it has taken me literally no time at all to get to the finish line; this is a lie, as Hitler is abominably slow, and the finish line is quite a signficant distance from the start. I am presented with the option of quitting or continuing, but neglecting to do anything constitutes continuing and the game begins its slow scroll all the way back to Hitler who has magically teleported to the start, ready to begin his slow levitating walk once again. It takes precisely much too long to quit, and in between unloading and an unexplained 20-second delay, I am informed that the game was created by a guy the boring alias "Adolf Schwarznigger" (he's French), who did everything and Sonistar, who, by process of elimination, did everything that was left after everything was done.
StarHustlers	Entered by: Sphinxter Reviewed by: daclassicgamingmaster Ok. Let me just start off by saying that I HATE games with big learning curves. Absolutely abhor them. I like to sit down to a game, and get right to the action. So I guess you can say in a competition like this, learning curves are good. With that said, this game has the worst learning curve probably in the history of everything ever. It's like an f'ing stock market game. I actually sat down to play this, and was greeted by an insane amount of detailed instructions in perfect English as well as perfect font. Definitely not good for a game entered in this compo. I only played briefly, because as I stated, I cant stand games with learning curves. From what I've gathered, you're some kind of Investment guy for an intersteller consulting agency. You use some kind of random generator to read the stars or something, and then make decisions that make your company lots of money. There are buy/sell stock options, "star picking", and even a way to quit? THERE'S A SYMBOL LEGEND AS WELL. WHY???? Big words are even used, such as investment, equity, and liquid. Ha. Quite frankly, the only thing crappy about this game is the learning curve. That's it. It's extremely well thought out, has a basic premise to it, button commands, a way to exit briefly to instructions if you get lost in it's rather complicated game play (you will, I promise), and it's even skinnable. Why make a crap game entry skinnable? It's insanity. There's even a high score list and decent graphics. Wayyyyyy too good for this competition. In my oh so humble opinion, I dont think this stands a chance against the other entries. With games that include a running hitler, how could it? The fact is, if the elaborate instructions were removed, it would bump this down a few notchs. Too late for that though. All in all, I see this as much better than any crap game should be. I really have no idea why some much effort was put into it. All the extras need to go, there should be little or nothing that explains how the game is played, and there most definitely shouldn't be a way to flick back to see how to execute a command. So to sum things up, I'm giving this a big meh/10. A couple of touch ups and this can easily be added to the gp2x file archives though.
Triangle Wars	Entered by: Gary Tunstall Reviewed by: nickspoon I'm not entirely sure what to do in this game at all. In fact, I doubt any game has confused me this much. It starts off with a circle in the middle of the screen, the background of which is a GP2X. Then there seem to be more circles, then a big blue triangle starts spinning inwards. Then little triangles start appearing on top of the circles, and there's a little delay every now and then. By now there are loads of circles, all spinning round in some kind of pattern, and more triangles appear. Pressing B seems to make a noise which sounds like a military radio message, I'm not sure. Pressing L or R seems to make my big triangle (for I am apparently controlling the big triangle) excrete little red triangles, which destroy other little triangles. However these little triangles, which remain entirely static, seem to pose no danger to me, as I mistakenly cruised over them an awful lot. X exits the game, which I am constantly tempted to do, and A resets the field so even more little triangles turn up, hooray. I finally finished off all those triangles with my dodgy-steering, uncertain-which-point-is-the-front blue ship, and nothing happened. The circles just kept spinning. Luckily I could start the whole dull charade again (not that I'd want to) with A. I am glad to know, however, that I currently have 114 points, although I suppose that's rather immaterial, considering one cannot die.
Virtual Wii	Entered by: Mudi Reviewed by: nickspoon At last, a Wii emulator for the GP2X. It's about time. I mean, the GP2X has two 200MHz ARM cores. That makes 400MHz. Then, because it's ARM, you multiply by 1000 to get 400GHz! Therefore, it should be simple enough to run Wii games (and the entire telecommunications system for the whole world at the same time). I can't see what all the fuss is about. Oh, right. There's nowhere to put the discs in. Anyway, Mudi's revolutionary Wii emulator thankfully comes preloaded with one game which will keep you entertained until you can smash a big enough hole in the top for a disk to fit in. The emulator offers accurate Wii remote simulation on the title screen, complete with authentic hand cursor and a real picture of a remote. The hand cursor stops at the edge of the screen, which is nice, but the remote picture doesn't. None of the channels other than the Disc Channel have been implemented yet, and their usage is discouraged with a stern "No." Fair enough, I wasn't expecting perfection from a first release. The game provided is an innovative use of a custom Mii which I don't remember creating (I was obviously so engrossed in the game that I forgot I did) wearing a fetching grey shirt. It also appears to be wearing an orange ball on its head. In the top corner, there are two 0s. However, this is where the similarities to a game of any sort end. None of the buttons do anything, except up and start. Up makes the ball fly off the top of the screen, make some peculiar beeping sound then drop back down off the bottom of the screen, before resuming its original position atop the Mii's head. I'm not entirely sure what the objective is here. I'm not even sure what train of thought possessed the author to actually do this. It has nothing to do with anything. Did he smash his head on his keyboard and see if it compiles? It seems a likely explanation. Pressing start allows you to escape from the hellish torture of this and go back to the menu. Thankfully. Pressing start again gives you a black screen with no way to get back to the menu. A nice touch, but a bit of a pain. Overall, I'd say this is probably the worst Wii emulator I've ever tried. It is also the best.
Walking Simulator Extreme	Entered by: Guyfawkes Reviewed by: Nickspoon According to Guyfawkes, this walking simulator is extreme. As I have discovered by about twenty seconds' play time, it is as far from extreme as walking can get. It is much more enjoyable to walk to the fridge and back than to play this simulator. And if you can get to the fridge and find suitable liquid sustenance within ten steps, you might not die. That is, if the Walking Simulator Extreme's simulation of walking is anything to go by. You play a (quite well-rendered, with a shadow and a full walk cycle - in this competition?) guy in a blue top and jeans who is enjoying a walk through a desert that actually appears to be flat (so maybe he's traversing a large picture of a desert, I don't know), with mountains in the background. As it happens, this two-dimensional desert is very well drawn, but the title screen informs me that it was actually stolen from a tileset. You bastard, Guyfawkes. The graphics here are much too good, and the scrolling is smooth. Terrible. Now, to the gameplay. Um. Well, there is gameplay, somewhat. There's your guy who appears to have got lost on a picture of a desert (this is actually very easy to do and could happen to anyone) and apparently he must become the walking champion. I'm not sure who he's meant to become champion by defeating, because there are no signs of life anywhere. Except, maybe, for the poisonous gas cloud coming from the mountains. Maybe that's why he's walking? To escape being painfully executed by gassing? We may never know, and indeed, the invisible perpetrator of this gas attack need not have bothered. Why? Because of this game's substantial fatal flaw. The quality that puts it beyond just a boring game, and pushes it into the realm of true crap. You see, at exactly ten steps, the guy dies, and takes his dream of ever becoming walking champion with him. Apparently, he's forgotten his water, and therefore he can only take nine full steps before snuffing it due to dehydration. Now, I can go ten steps without water and avoid dying (I've tried, though it was hard), so there can be only one logical explanation: there is fast-acting cyanide in his pedometer. One of his invisible competitors, realising that they were going to lose the walking challenge to the blue-shirted guy (on account of having no legs, as the guy walks painfully slowly), has rigged your walker's pedometer to inject the poison into him at exactly ten steps (the poison gas cloud being a backup plan). Either that, or in flat-desert-land, the atmosphere is such that you can dehydrate in ten steps. In which case, it was a very silly idea to forget the water, especially if he wanted to be walking champion.
Washing Up Extreme	Entered by: Gary Tunstall Reviewed by: nickspoon This game is surprisingly enjoyable. The previous sentence is something you would not like to hear if you're an entrant to a crap games competition. I mean, seriously, the game here was almost not bad. The concept is that you're washing up for some reason, so you control your severed arm (which presumably you ripped from your shoulder for this purpose) with the joystick, grabbing assorted kitchenware (restricted only to knives, forks and plates, maybe we could see some spoons or glasses in the next version?) with the B button, dragging it through some kind of stream of bubbles then depositing it on the other side, now you have somehow washed it, though it seemed to be clean before (again, maybe dirty forks are something for the next instalment?), and you get a point (or two for a plate, supposedly because it's quite difficult to hold with a severed arm). Sounds awful? Well, there's something oddly pleasant about it. And with cutlery coming faster and faster, it soon becomes hectic (well, it takes a little while to speed up, but still), and if the pile builds up to 20 things, stuff starts breaking, and you lose 10 points for each thing that breaks! Such tension, such excitement, such exhilaration!
What's on the menu, CrapMan?	Entered by: EvilDragon Reviewed by: Nickspoon An entry from the nefarious fire-breather himself, and I don't mean Godzilla, although I actually may do. You can never tell on the internet. Anyway, to the entry itself. There is constructive use of the horribly ugly GP2X menu backgrounds here, the title screen bringing back fond memories of accidentally choosing the E-book Viewer once, which resulted in much therapy. I given the title of the game and instructions to either push Start to play or X to exit. As much as I wanted to hit X at this point, I daringly pressed Start. To play, of course - then again, one never knows what might happen. Rabid hamsters, once. The first thing you notice is the abominable loud music. I immediately fumbled for a pair of headphones, and it dampened it slightly, however the series of offensive tones is still audible. I certainly wouldn't want the headphones in my ears. Second thing - the entire game is played on the main GP2X menu. The orange one. The ugly orange one. This would be quite a nice concept, actually, were this game not so crap. The game is rather like Pac-man, except instead of a maze the GP2X icons form barriers (nice touch, I didn't expect that, hence wondered why Mr. Blue Pac-man kept stopping randomly). The basic concept is that you must collect cookies whilst avoiding ghosts, which is difficult to do, but luckily your lives go below zero and nothing happens (death is not an obstacle to CrapMan!), so the only problem with being caught by ghosts is that your position is reset. A pain. The controls are functional but have massive dead zones which have caused my being caught by ghosts (pun intended) many a time. The ghosts always catch you fairly quickly on account of the rubbish controls, their speed which almost equals yours and their ability to walk through icons (well, they are ghosts). When you get all the cookies (which takes a while, there are a lot of cookies, and CrapMan wants them all, the greedy bastard), you get kicked back into the menu so you can, if you like, start the whole ordeal again. No thanks. Overall, this was actually a reasonable game, and would be almost OK were it not for the nasty music and horrid controls. However, the ear-piercingly loud soundtrack (to whatever extent 'soundtrack' could apply to this filth), the inability to actually end CrapMan's pitiful life by having his soul devoured by pink ghosts (I am fairly convinced CrapMan doesn't have a soul anyway) and the ease of actually getting caught, coupled with the frustrating controls makes this a surefire non-hit.

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