FAIL: I still occasionally die to the first Goomba in World 1-1...

EXPLANATION: By far the my biggest continual fail is my tendencies to get killed by the very first Goomba in Super Mario Brothers. This is something that should NEVER happen to anyone and yet I still fall to the hands of the casually walking mushroom even though I have beaten every 2D Mario to date! I try to rationalize this by saying that the original Super Mario Bros. has much different physics and floating feel compared to the rest of the 2D Mario games, but in reality I am only fooling myself!

FAIL: I was stuck in the Forest Temple for over a year...

EXPLANATION: Let's be real for a minute. I don't care who you are, but the first time you played the Forest Temple you had to have been a little creeped out. The first time I played the Forest Temple I was 9 years old. So here is the story: I was having the time of my life beating the first 3 dungeons as a child. Then it happened. I pulled the Master Sword from the pedestal and EVERYTHING changed. Gone was this friendly game where everything was bright and colorful, and now I was greeted with the darkest game I had ever played at the time! I walked out of the Temple of Time and am greeted by a dilapidated Hyrule Market and freaking zombies that suck my blood? No thanks! I go back to see my homies in Kokiri Forest and the place is now infested with killer Deku plants and shrubs! I make my way towards the Forest Temple and am speared to death by these giant armor wearing sasquatches that make this awful blood curdling yell...and this was only just the build up to the temple! So I finally make it into the temple...and what am I greeted is one of the creepiest songs in the game! The temple is dark and dank and that one twisting hallway always filled me with dread. The thing that absolutely terrified me the most however, were the Wallmasters. You know, those hands that drop from the ceiling and chase you around to try and take you back to the start of the temple? Yeah those. Man, I kid you not every time I saw that shadow of a hand start to enclose around me, I would almost poop my pants. That is why I left the Forest Temple and did everything I could possibly do before I had to go and finally face my fears. I got the red tunic, blue tunic, the Iron Boots, and Epona ALL before I went back to the Forest Temple. And it took me over a year to finally conquer my fears. So after writing all this I am asking myself: "Why is this my favorite game of all-time?" And to answer simply, this game changed my childhood.

FAIL: The struggle was real against the first boss Belcha

EXPLANATION: The Donkey Kong Country games are notoriously difficult, however they are a fair difficult. They typically start somewhat easy and lead into much harder and more complex levels. The case with Donkey Kong Country 3 is that my struggle was SO real with the first boss in the game: Belcha. Basically, Belcha is this giant living barrel that you have to throw exploding barrels into its mouth which eventually pushes it back into a giant crevasse. Sound simple? Well it is supposed to be. I remember the first time I played DKC3. I was actually in college at a friends house and it would be an understatement to say they had the time of their life, laughing and mocking me as I desperately struggled to beat Belcha. I did in fact eventually beat Belcha after over an hour of attempts and dozens of lives lost, but it wasn't a sweet victory as all my friends saw me struggle with such an easy boss. My pain was their pleasure.

FAIL: Deleting my friends save file

EXPLAINATION: You will see with the next couple of fails, that I have a bad history with save files. This fail starts at my best friends 10th birthday party at his house. There were dozens of us in attendance. As I was walking around his game room I stumbled across Banjo Kazooie. I was super excited as it was a game that I had seen dozens of commercials and read all sorts of cool information on in magazines! So I popped it into his N64 and started the game up. I had no idea what I was doing in the file select menu and somehow I inadvertently deleted his save file, which he had poured dozens of hours into collecting Jiggys and music notes. I will never, for the life of me, forget his face when he walked into the room and saw the opening cut scene playing. His jaw hit the floor and was in shock. He instantly came over, yanked the controller out of my hand, and restarted the system, hoping it was all just a bad dream. It wasn't. I single handedly ruined his 10th birthday party and to this day, 15 years later, he still doesn't let me live it down.

FAIL: I can't beat the first level in this game

EXPLAINATION: I have never been one for espionage type of games. I do not have the patience or the cunning to be good at them. So when I saw a copy of Metal Gear Solid the Twin Snakes come in to our local mom and pop game store I scooped it up in a hurry. The Metal Gear series was praised by everyone . I knew how amazing they were and the awesome story that they told and I was so ready to experience it first hand. Unfortunately I never did get to experience it as I tried countless times to beat the first level and never could. Oh Metal Gear, I long for what could have been...

FAIL: Saving over my save file to play Ada Wong's story

EXPLAINATION: Not much to say here except that I accidentally saved over my normal save file to play Ada Wong's story and in the process deleted pretty much everything. It still pains me to this day.

FAIL: Once again saving over my old save file to start a new game.

EXPLAINATION: Not much to say again except that I inadvertently saved over my original save file that I had 100% and pumped 50+ hours into with a new save file. One day I just decided I wanted to play the game over again and unknowingly saved over my original. Negligence at its finest and I felt like the kid in that youtube video where his mom cancelled his WoW account...only I had no one to blame but myself (key word was felt, I never acted like he did and I definitely didn't shove a remote up my butt haha).

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YersIyzsOpc

FAIL: Thinking that the Robot Master selection screen was picking what robot I got to play as

EXPLAINATION: This fail was an honest mistake and quite frankly an easy one to make as a 5 year old. I remember playing Mega Man 6 for the first time when my cousin brought it over. I distinctly recall selecting Tomahawk Man because I thought he looked awesome and I couldn't wait to play as him. I couldn't figure out why every robot that I picked, I always started out as this little blue guy that shot dinky bullets out of his arm. Quite frankly I was baffled and this was well before internet access was readily available and I wasn't in school yet, so I had no one to ask but my cousins, who all were in on the joke at this point. It wasn't until much later that they finally explained the whole scope of the Mega Man games that I finally understood...but not before all my cousins (I come from a big family; 19 cousins) got a good laugh. I was only 5 for Pete's sake cut me some slack guys!!