There are some damn fine games out there, no question about it. But, and here's the important bit, none of them are perfect. That's why, bar some deliberately overrated examples in dying magazines desperately seeking controversy, no game has ever scored one hundred percent. Here, then, I'm going to list some brilliant games and point out the bad bits in them. Who knows, it may help game designers searching for that elusive perfect score. Disagree with some or all of my points if you want, I don't care. Actually, yes I do. I love you all, in a completely natural, heterosexual, author-to-reader 'chum' kind of way (phew, got myself out of that one. Ahem.).

Most of these games, as befits the site, are Nintendo ones. I have, however, thrown in a few from other formats for good measure.

- SUPER MARIO BROS. (NES): The game that set the standards that every other 2D platformer would attempt (and usually fail) to live up to. Masterful level design and a breadth of imagination that opened the floodgates for Shigeru Miyamoto's genius. And yet... the game couldn't scroll backwards. Incredibly annoying when you've let one too many pixels of that desperately needed power-up block to scroll off the edge of the screen and you can see it but not hit it. I know it was 1984, but surely it wouldn't have been all that difficult to make it scroll in the other direction?
(Editor's note: this lack og backwards scrolling is probably because of some technical problem they had in the beginning... Either a special chip was needed that hadn't been developed yet or it was just to save memory and CPU power...)
- THE LEGEND OF ZELDA III: A LINK TO THE PAST (SNES): Generally regarded as one of the finest games on the SNES, Zelda III was indeed great. However, Mothula, boss of the dungeon in the Lost Woods in the Dark World, was not so great. On his own, he would have been easy enough to defeat. The problem was that you were in a room surrounded by moving spikes with a floor that dragged you in alternating directions. The result was that the spikes were virtually impossible to avoid, making for a most frustrating experience.
- SUPER MARIO BROS. 3 (NES): Forget Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island and Donkey Kong Country, this is what I consider to be the finest 2D platform game around. It pushed the NES to its limits, and delivered some of the finest level designs in any platformer to date. I always thought world 7 was a bit of a let-down, though. After the imaginative excesses of Giant World and Ice World, you met... ta da! Pipe World. It was full, rather unsurprisingly, of pipes, and not much else. Sure, all the other worlds had pipes in them as well, but they were spread apart by some nice scenery. The only things in-between Pipe World's pipes were more pipes. Still a great game, though, and an essential purchase for just about anyone with the slightest interest in games. The graphically-enhanced Mario All-Stars version on the SNES ruined things a bit by adding a save feature. The greatest challenge of the original SMB3 was to battle you way through all eight worlds in one sitting, without using warp whistles and a maximum of two P-Wings.
- QUAKE (PC): Revolutionised first-person shooters and almost single-handedly popularised multi-player gaming. Whilst still rating as one of the finest Internet games, it's one-player mode is utterly dreadful. The levels might be well-designed, but they're sparsely populated and the 'shoot this, push this button, get this key' gameplay gets very tiresome very quickly. The end-of-game boss, some giant squid thing with a hyphenated name, has to rate as one of the worst ever. And as for the 'end sequence', is that a joke? No, unfortunately it isn't.
- SUPER MARIO 64 (N64): Whereas its twelve-year-old ancestor set the standards for 2D platformers, SM64 did pretty much the same thing for 3D ones. But... didn't Mario slide just a bit too much on the snow and in sand? I'll forgive the odd mistake committed by the camera system, given that it's at least a hundred times better than those used in other 3D games (except for Zelda V).
- THE FANTASTIC ADVENTURES OF DIZZY (NES): Remember this one? Dizzy was the egg-shaped hero of a series of great games on the those old 8-bit computers the Spectrum, C64 and Amstrad CPC. This game (later known as Fantastic Dizzy on the Mega Drive/Genesis, Amiga and Atari ST) was a collection of puzzle-solving and arcade bits, and was brilliant. What was incredibly annoying about it, however, was that the game was massive and needed to be scoured with a fine-tooth comb in order to locate the 255 stars that were needed to win. Two hundred and fifty-five! And there was no save feature, either. Eek.
- ELITE (BBC Micro, NES, Amiga, C64 and a whole bunch of other computers): If you've never heard of Elite, then you obviously haven't been playing games for too long. The creation of David Braben, Elite was the benchmark free-roaming game set in space where you had total control over where you went and what you did. To this day, no attempt to imitate it has succeeded (including its sequel Frontier and its bugged to Hades semi-sequel Frontier: First Encounters). It's generally agreed that the NES conversion was the best of the 8-bit versions, but it still suffered from the same annoying feature as most of the others: the Thargoids. Movement between systems was achieved via hyperspace jumps, and every now and again you would end up not at your intended destination but in the midst of a group of the aforementioned aliens. The problem was that whilst the Thargoids were at the controls of massive battlecruisers stocked to the gills with lasers, you were flying around in a tin-can armed with the space-age equivalent of a pea-shooter. Destruction was inevitable, so you just had to pray that you'd saved your game last time you docked.
- DIDDY KONG RACING (N64): Arguably the most fun cartoon racer available for the single-player (although Mario Kart beats it hands down in multiplayer mode), DKR has one major annoyance: the trees. Now, normally in racing games of this ilk, driving into a tree results in a bump and a slight speed loss. For some reason, though, Rare decided to go for something different. Committing such an offence in DKR ends up with a wobbling tree, your car bouncing backwards about half a mile and your speed dropping to virtually zero. This proves especially annoying on the Boss level in Sherbet Mountain.
- FINAL FANTASY VII (PC/PlayStation): Let's not beat around the bush with this, I love FFVII and would rate it as my favourite game of all time (yep, even more so than Zelda 64). One bit annoys me, though: just after you break into the second Mako reactor you need to hit this switch at the same time as Barret and Tifa. It can take ages and is almost painfully dull and pointless. Oh, yeah, once you've played it through once, that bit where Cloud 'rediscovers' himself after being plunged into the Lifestream with Tifa is a bit boring as well.
- THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: LINK'S AWAKENING (Game Boy): Probably the most perfect GB game, there is still one small irritation in this fourth instalment of Link's adventures: those three bad guys with the flashing playing card suits on their chests that you have to freeze with the same symbol on each. Unless you possess superhuman speed and dexterity, it turns into simple, repetitive trial and error.
- MARIO KART 64 (N64): The utter brilliance of the SNES original meant that MK64 was always going to be a bit of a let-down (like Star Wars: The Phantom Menace), which is a shame because the game's pretty good, even if the power-ups were needlessly tweaked. Two things stand out like cow-pats in a field of roses, though: the fact that the computer players cheat and have vastly improved acceleration rates, and those bloody penguins on the Sherbet Land track, which must rank as the most annoying course obstacles in the history of cartoon racing.
- FINAL FANTASY VI (SNES): FFVII may be the better game, but its prequel is a stunning example of what can be achieved without FMV cutscenes and makes it all the more bitter that Square opted not to support the N64. The random battles, where you are suddenly launched into combat without warning, are an irritating feature of the series for many. I can usually cope with them, but even I get angry on FFVI's floating continent, where you can't move more than two pixels without having to battle some extremely hard monsters.
- SUPER MARIO LAND (Game Boy): One of the Game Boy's first and finest games, but you can't scroll backwards. Hang on a minute, haven't I done this bit already? They never learn, do they?
(Editor's note: this lack og backwards scrolling is probably because of some technical problem they had in the beginning... Either a special chip was needed that hadn't been developed yet or it was just to save memory and CPU power...)

Well, I've had my say. If you know of any good games with bad bits in them, e-mail me at GarethHall@compuserve.com and I'll include them in a follow-up article. Thanks for listening.