SEGA Five: Bein’ bad – SEGA style

Admit it. When a game gives you the option to be bad, you go for it. Unlike the stupid real world, video games have no repercussions. While game designers may not intend for you to do these bad things, or there are in-game penalties, in the end it’s just a game so you can be bad to your heart’s content, hit the reset button and return to playing the game as it was intended. In this week’s Weekly Five, we celebrate Friday the 13th with five SEGA games which allow you to be (you guessed it) bad.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 – Killing Tails

We’ll begin with some old school badness. Every Sonic fan remembers the first time they inadvertently killed Tails in Sonic 2. I love Tails, but the little guy was asking for it. I mean, he’s a walking example of that old adage “If they jumped off a cliff, would you?”. Whatever Sonic does, Tails does as well. Though while Sonic may have been making a well timed jump to avoid a fireball, Tails’ mistimed jump usually leads to instant death. Things only get worse for Sonic’s sidekick when you enter debug mode. Debug mode opens up a whole world of badness, as you’re able to spawn spikes, enemies and other methods of hurt in an attempt to kill poor little Tails. Hey, he was asking for it after f***ing up my attempt at obtaining the seventh Chaos Emerald.

 

Shenmue – Waisting time, and money

When Shenmue was being previewed, much emphasis was put on the revenge tale. The game promised the epic mission of finding the man who murdered your father. When the game released, it was found to not only include that, but so much more. The game turned out to be a shoppers paradise, a Virtua Spending Spree, with hundreds of collectables, drinks and entertainment available for a price.

Thankfully, the game gives you more than enough money via kind donations to the “Help Ryo Find Lan Di Fund” and odd jobs that you can take up. All of this “playing good” is necessary for the moment you want to be “bad”. Once you have a sizable amount of money, you can say “good bye” to your mission and spend the rest of the game buying sugary drinks, toys and playing video games. If NPCs remind you of your mission, ignore them. Just let the clock run down to April 15th, 1987. Sure, Lan Di kills you, but you’ve had your fun waisting time and money, so the joke is on him.

 

Shadow the Hedgehog – Destroy the damn planet

Shadow the Hedgehog is a game that lets you be bad in so many ways! For starters, tell your Sonic fan friends that you’re playing Shadow the Hedgehog. They’ll probably give you shit for waisting your time on such an awful game, they’ll also probably suggest better Sonic games like Generations. Ignore them. You’re being bad. Next, play Shadow the Hedgehog, a bad game in itself. Finally, follow any of the dark paths, ideally ending the game by killing Sonic and destorying the whole damn planet (Shadow’s words, not mine). If you don’t want to kill Sonic, you have the option of killing Black Arms or Eggman. The choice is yours! But regardless of what you choose, you’re being bad.

 

The House of the Dead – Killing innocents

The House of the Dead series offers up great opportunities to be bad, but at a price. Shooting at innocents leads to your own health decreasing. I really don’t know how that works. Maybe AMS agents have some sort of device installed in their body that inject a small lethal dose of poison whenever they shoot an innocent person. However they do it, it happens and it sucks for those who want to be bad and break AMS rules. It takes a very skilled player to not only kill innocents in a HOTD game, but also maintain enough health to make it through to the end of the game. Consider it the super hard mode. Can you not only kill the undead, but also kill those you are meant to protect AND complete the game? Give it a try, and if you succeed I’ll personally mail you a Certificate of Badness.

 

Phantasy Star Online – Being a haxxor

This, in my opinion, is the ultimate in being bad. Given how many real people you interact with in Phantasy Star Online, being a badass hacking haxxor can not only ruin the game for others, but can also alert SEGA and in turn lead to a speedy banning. That was, however, back in the day. Now, the Dreamcast PSO servers are all but dead and the PC community is far from official, making hacking much easier. I’ll admit, I’m not bad enough to know how to hack PSO.

However, back in the day I did seduce haxxors with a female character I created. I said little more than one word answers and produced kawaii pictures with the picture chat function. In return, gullible hackers gave me gifts like a awesome spread needle complete with the power to paralyze an entire room. From there, I would give my hacked weapon to a friend to hold onto, I’d log off and log back on as my main character, my friend would return my weapon and I had my very own hacked item! Sure it involved cyber cross-dressing, but sometimes you have to do some unsavory things to be bad.

In the comments, tell us what naughty things you like doing in SEGA games.

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