Yeah, well... you know what? Fuck off.
I've been bored loads of times; watching TV, having a wee (never a poo), and even while playing video games. That doesn't make me boring. It just means others have failed to entertain me sufficiently.
Anyway, some games are born boring, while others have boringness thrust upon them. I don't know what that means, but it's as good a way as any to introduce this definitive list of the ten most boring games ever, and something has to go in this bit. Please note: some of these games are deliberately dull, and some are simply dull by nature of their subject matter.
Regardless, all are so soul-crushingly mundane that I defy you to reach the end of the list.
Years later, a bona-fide transpotting simulator, Train Tracking - claiming to be the first game to ever attempt to recreate this insipid obsession - was released by a company called Demon Star. Furious, campaigning games journalist Stuart Campbell (also a former Digitiser columnist and Sensible Software employee) protested their claims by making the game freely available on his website - which is exactly the sort of thing he'd do - goading Demon Star into taking legal action.
"Nowhere in this story, the game's documentation, the scrolling message on the title screen, the company's website or anywhere else is the blatant plagiarising of someone else's game acknowledged in even the slightest passing way," Campbell wrote.
I went trainspotting with my brother-in-law once, and I said "Cheers, big ears" to a man from British Rail when he gave us directions, and my brother-in-law hit me.
The game required you to first select your lawnmower. Upon starting the engine, your gardener would do the mowing for you. Yes.
As hilariously ridiculous as this was as a concept, there have been other lawnmower simulators released since, which weren't intended as a joke, proving that some people really will buy any old shit.
You can play it here.
You know how they say that queueing was invented by the British? Yeah, well that's not true. Apparently, the first recorded mention of anybody standing in a queue was in an 1837 book about The French Revolution. It read: “If we look now at Paris, one thing is too evident: that the Bakers’ shops have got their Queues, or Tails; their long strings of purchasers, arranged in tail, so that the first come be the first served.”
It wasn't until a 1944 essay by George Orwell - which referred to our "willingness to form queues" - that it became associated with the British.
All of which begs the question: what did people do before then if they wanted bread? Was it just a free-for-all? Olde-timey people were animals.
Features included:
- 3 highly detailed and interactive vehicles!
- Manual emptying the dirt container and filling the fresh water tanks!
- Remove dirt with several different cleaning techniques to complete the demanding and varied missions!
- Detailed game world with complex AI traffic including pedestrians!
- Dynamic time of day changes and high quality particle system!
It sounds like it was intended as a joke game, but by all accounts they were deadly serious. I mean, it's great that there are people who are willing to tidy up after others - enough to make a game of it viable - but if I wanted to spend my time cleaning filth I'd do something about the enormous nest of defilement next to my bed.
It was intended as part of an anthology game for the Mega Drive, Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors, but publisher Absolute Entertainment went tits-up before it could be released. The game leaked online in 2005, where its ridiculous following grew.
The Desert Bus mini game required players to drive an empty bus across the desert - slowly racking up points as you went back and forth between your stops. The landscape never changed, save for the passage of day to night, and an insect splatting onto your windscreen roughly five hours in. Played in real time, the ultimate aim was simply to not fall asleep or lose interest.
Despite its seemingly whimsical theme, Penn Jillette has commented that it was designed as a satirical reaction to moral panic over violent games. There was also going to be a prize awarded to the player with the highest score.
According to Jillette, this "Was going to be, you got to go on Desert Bus from Tucson to Vegas with showgirls and a live band and just the most partying bus ever. You got to Vegas, we're going to put you up at the Rio, big thing, and then, you know, big shows."
Big thing.
Admittedly, the Amazing Virtual Sea Monkeys game attempted to enliven the reality somewhat by allowing you to entertain your Sea Monkeys with karaoke and new decorations for their tank, and introducing a basic virtual pet element.
However, the fact that the publishers claimed it could "also be used as a screen saver" probably tells you all you need to know.
You know what real Sea Monkeys can also be used for? STAMPING ON.
One player would hide their character behind some furniture while the other player hid their eyes. Then they would take over and attempt to find the other player. You know: like hide and seek, only fifty times more tedious and futile.
Get this: I once played hide and seek at a mate's house and during the game I glued a loofah to the bottom of his bath, and he got all mad at me, because he thought his dad - a Marxist, apparently - would blame him. Also, I dropped sweet and sour sauce on his carpet once, and he got all mad at me, because he thought his dad - a Marxist, apparently - would blame him.
And while we're talking about things being "addictive", please stop using the word "addicting" as an adjective. It's a verb, and the next person I see who writes or says something like "Oooh, this heroin is so addicting" is going to get a punch in their horrible, scrawny, throat.
Anyway. Cookie clicks could be spent on buildings, achievements and upgrades to make your clicking more productive. There was no end. Ever. Eventually, I even downloaded a plug-in which did the clicking for me, making the whole thing even more pointless than it was already.
It was, essentially, an established 10-day accounting industry training course condensed into game form. And therefore, probably as interesting as that sounds.