Ever played a bad game? No,. I don't mean a mediocre game, I mean a really bad game, one that's so bad you want to piano-wire the developer. Here are a few such horrible games. Don't buy these games and for God's sake don't spend money on them. By buying these games, you're encouraging the developers and publishers to produce more bad games. Without further ado, the list of games that really, really suck:

1. Hugo's Nitemare 3D (1994)

It's like Wolfenstein (the really old one from 1992), only a whole lot worse. Nitemare 3D combines bad graphics, bad gameplay, and bad level design to make a truly terrible first-person shooter. Worst of all, the game costs 16 dollars from the official site even though it's 11 years old. Parents, if you're looking for a cheap shooter for your kid, DO NOT buy this game. Buy a copy of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Quake III Arena, Soldier of Fortune, or Doom Collector's edition. They're actually good games, unlike this pile of dreck.

2. Thundra (2002)

What do you get when you cross a disco hall, a parking garage, and a bad Quake II level? You get the first level of Thundra, which is pitch black except for spots of colored lighting laid down as if the level designer were having a seizure. There are two enemies in the level: a generic soldier based on a modified Doom sprite and a nude fat alien in a UFO that shoots swarms of homing missiles at you. No matter where you go or what you do, the alien will kill you. Playing this game is as futile as trying to suck up Lake Superior with a Dirt Devil.

3. Any 3D remake of Pac-Man

There are billions of these, and they are all irritating and trite. None of them are better than the original game, and most of them are worse. If you're such a raving maniac Pac-Man fanatic that you must have a Pac-Man game, play a port of the original.

4. Star Wars: Master of Teras Kasi (1997)

The fact that it's a fighting game based on Star Wars is enough to make one suspicious of this game. Your suspicions are 100% confirmed. Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi is an uninspired, ugly, dull piece of drivel. The only thing it really has to do with Star Wars are the characters and locations. Play Tekken or Soul Calibur instead.

5. 3D Slot Car Racing (2002)

This is the worst game I've ever played, hands down. It looks and plays like a leaked alpha test.. The cars are "SLOT0" and "SLOT1", the levels are flat, the graphics suck, the physics are terrible, and it resembles something created for a high school programming class. This game is so bad that I cannot stress enough that you should stay away. Do not play this game, and definitely don't buy it for someone else. Valu-Soft's other titles are similarly appalling.

As the biggest movie publishers align with Sony's upcoming Blu-Ray format, I am quite worried about a fundamental defect in the design--the Blu-Ray has a larger data capacity than the other blue-laser format (50 GB instead of 45) due to a thinner protective plastic coating--0.1mm thick instead of 0.6mm for the other format and 1mm for CDs and DVDs. Let me put it another way--the extremely delicate reflective layer has one tenth the protection in a Blu-Ray disc as in a CD. With a 0.1mm layer, it would be easy to scratch through the coating and destroy the disc. Even normal use might eventually ruin the reflective layer. Worse, this format will also appear in the PlayStation 3, so small children will be handling these discs. Kids are rough on laser discs. And what if you use recordable Blu-Rays to back up your hard drive data? Imagine if you have to reformat your HD but the backup disc won't load because your arm slipped while you were putting the disc in a case and it got scratched. You're screwed! I strongly recommend that Sony change the format to make the coating thicker.