Wow, you guys loooove to write. (We do too!) Thanks to all who entered the PS3 and Energizer Power & Play Station contest. Read the top 5 entries after the jump, then email the name of your fave to contests@gawker.com.
Kyle H:
I was in the middle of an 8vs8 Socom: Confrontation battle with 3 of my clan-mates from the PlayStation Network. It was a one-on-one firefight to decide the overall winner of the match. I got the first shot off, and victory was seemingly eminent. After the first second of firing my silenced M4A1 assault rifle, my controller dies on me. Public humiliation in the lobby after the game was non-stop, and 6 months after the fact I am still getting heckled for it when I am the last person alive and we lose the match.
Cary C:
I was talking to a nice-looking girl at a party and thought that a good way to get closer to her would be to play WarioWare Snapped on my DSi. It has a minigame for two people that requires them to put their cheeks together, which while it was weird when I did it with my male friends, was a perfect game to do with a female. Having not charged my DSi in days however, I could not make it to the game without having my DSi power off. Foolishly, I told my problem to my friend in hopes of having him lend me his DSi, and instead he takes it to the girl and plays the game with her! Long story short, they've been dating for 3 weeks now :(
Jhared S:
This one takes me back. Just the other day my Wavebird's batteries died out while I was fighting a boss in Muramasa, and I thought of this little gem...
1988. Christmas morning. Part of my haul included a brand new pair of infrared(!) controllers for my NES. Bees-knees! No more cords for me! I just had to be 10 ft from the TV and WOW! Everything worked! Sure they ate 4 AA batteries a day, but it was worth it!
10ft! That was like 7 miles to an 8 year old.
A neighborhood friend brought over a collection of games, and the two of us engorged ourselves in a day of brain-sludging. We went through a bunch of games, but I think we finally decided that Contra was to be conquered that day. I had never beaten the game - close, but I just couldn't do the stupid waterfall level by myself. But me and a buddy? Oh yeah, this game was gonna fall! We played until lunch, then paused everything to go eat. Then we gamed anew. And anew we were! I think we tore through everything. Sure we dipped into our code-gained 30 lives, but we were doing well.
Then we arrived at the final stage. BOOYAH!
Aaaand... nothing. I couldn't move. My friend couldn't move without me. I kept dying. Over and over. My mighty controller... was dead! The batteries were dead! I scrambled to find new ones. The remote? No, those were AAA. My sister's Gameboy? No, she was playing her new 'spot' game (yes, she got it - yes, she loved it). I bugged my mom, who started searching around, but we were out of luck. My dad was already out grabbing stuff - and this is well before the advent of the mighty cell phone. So my friend unpaused the game, let my die off, and continued on without me.
TO COMPLETE THE GAME!
AUGH! My first chance to actually beat a DIFFICULT freakin' game was met with battery mockery.
Honestly? I've never ever beaten Contra. Thanks for tearing open a tearful wound, Kotaku.
Eric B:
Fasten your seatbelts ladies and gentlemen, because my worst dead battery story tops anything else you are going to read. It doesn't involve getting stranded at the mall parking lot with a car that won't start. Instead, it involves football. Specifically Madden 2008. Here are the gory details:
I am at best, a very casual Madden player. In fact, I don't really even like sports games all that much. However, my gaming skills are enough to overpower my football strategy ineptitude and have allowed me to win more than a few games of Madden.
One night a few years ago, I went with some friends to eat some wings at a local sports bar. As luck would have it, they were having a Madden 2008 tournament. The grand prize was a brand new HDTV. Even though I didn't have an HDTV, I had absolutely zero interest in playing Madden. The meal was uneventful until around 8:00. The tournament was ready to start but they had an uneven number of participants. They needed 16 players but only had 15. The event emcee made an announcement asking for one more person. My friends all looked at me. "Forget it guys. I hate football." I quickly said. Well one of my buddies was already feeling the effects of his drinks and belligerently pointed at me and yelled out, "This guy right here. He'll play." Before I could object, the emcee announced to the entire place, "Well alright! C'mon down and let's get it on." My so-called friends shoved me out of the booth and towards the makeshift stage. I said a few choice words to them under my breath and then annoyed, went to the front. I had to fill out an entry form and some sort of release/waiver, which I quickly did. I was assigned the 16th spot and was sent for my first game.
Now my original plan was just to lose as quickly as possible so I could get back to enjoying my wings, but fate had other plans. Each game was two 5-minute quarters and I obliterated my first opponent by using turbos/spins/stiff-arms to shake off his defense. The second game was just as lopsided. Constant short passes were enough to give me an easy win. Two rounds down and two to go. At this point, I was glad my friends had volunteered me, but still wasn't even thinking about winning the prize. It was simply a nice diversion for the evening. The semi-final is where things got interesting. To my surprise, I would be playing against a girl. I figured she would be some chick who just entered for fun and then happened to get lucky. I was wrong. She was a serious Madden player. My usual turbo/spin moves were useless against her defense. And here's where I really suck at sports games: I know nothing about good strategy…especially in football. She did. I had two lucky passes early on that got me two touchdowns on the board. She answered back with two of her own. She added a field goal later in the game to take the lead. I figured I was done for. There was only a minute left in our match when I made an interception and ran it back in. It was a narrow victory, but it was still a win. I was in the finals!
Now keep in mind that this whole process was taking a while. There were only a limited number of Xbox 360s so there was quite a bit of downtime between matches. And because I had driven everyone that night, my friends were forced to sit around and drink more and more to pass the time while I played. It was 11:25 when the final match started. I had gotten pretty excited that I actually might win the HDTV. My final opponent was your average bar patron. He was wearing a Chicago Bears jersey and immediately told me that "(he) was awesome at Madden and was going to win that TV." My response was, "Ummm…Okay." We were told that for the championship match, we would play a full game with 5-minute quarters. We picked our teams. I went with the Titans and he chose Green Bay. The match began.
Well after the first quarter, I immediately felt sorry for anybody who was still watching us. This was shaping up to be one of the most boring games in Madden history. We were actually two very evenly matched players. Neither one of us was an expert at the game, but we had both played enough to consistently foil the other's attempts at scoring. Halftime came and the scoreboard still read 0-0. We each had a few good drives, but couldn't keep things going enough to make it to the end zone. The third quarter picked up a bit when we each managed to score. It was right after he made his touchdown that I noticed that the ring of light on my controller had started spinning. Of course this indicated low batteries but I thought nothing of it. On my 360 at home, the lights will spin for a good 2+ weeks before they actually die. We got into the 4th quarter and both frantically tried to score. Once again, we were at a stalemate. With 20 seconds left, he managed to nail a 42 yard field goal. I figured that was it. He kicked off a huge kick that I received in the end zone. I took a knee and had the ball at the 20 for one last play. Of course the only play in my mind here was the Hail Mary. I started the play and he was immediately all over me. I narrowly avoided a sack and faded back and launched the ball to the guy furthest down the field. To everyone's amazement (including my own), the pass was good! I was on my way, but his defender was right on my tail. He was about to cream me when an AI teammate took him out! I was home free! The TV was going to me mine! The place erupted as I made my way to the 30…the 20…the 10…the 8….the 8….the 8. Wait, what? I looked down and my controller was dead. THE MOTHER F'ING BATTERIES HAD DIED!!! I couldn't believe it. I heard shouts of "Go! Go!" and "What is he doing?" ring out across the crowd. "My controller is dead!" I exclaimed, seconds before an AI opponent came and took me down. The game was over and I had lost. I had certain victory and a free HDTV snatched away by a pair of dead batteries. It went from storybook ending to incredibly bad dream in a matter of seconds. The event emcee realized what happened, but was unsure of how to proceed. It was close to closing time and there was no time for another match. After talking it over with the manager for a few moments, my opponent was declared the winner. He shook my hand and smirked just before claiming his prize. A few minutes later, the manager came over and apologized for the "unfortunate incident" and gave me a free t-shirt and told me our tab for the night would be taken care of. My friends were thrilled with that, but free food and beer is not quite as good as a free television.
It was just after midnight and as you can imagine, I was in a foul mood. I wasted an entire evening playing a game I don't really like only to get screwed over at the end. My severely inebriated friends piled into my car and I drove them all home. On the car ride I got to enjoy drunkenly slurred commentary about how much I must really love Madden now, how cursed I must be, what were the odds of the batteries failing at that critical moment and how I was much better looking than my opponent. And just to add sprinkles on top of this lovely cupcake of an evening, the last friend I dropped off puked in my car. Then he got mad at me and told me it was my fault he drank so much because, "I wouldn't stop playing that dumb game."
So that's it. The night of misery you just read about was all caused by two dead AA batteries. Those drained batteries not only cost me a free HDTV (which I still don't have) but also earned me a lifetime of ridicule by my friends every time anything Madden related comes up when we are together. Thanks again dead batteries.
Tony H:
About 4-5 years ago Verizon was holding a tournament for Half-Life 2: Deathmatch. The top 8 in this tournament were flown out to L.A. for the finals, all expenses paid, and the winner would get $100,000. I was a pretty pro player at the time so I of course entered and I made it to the top 16 out of several hundred contestants. Winning the next round meant going to L.A. on Verizon's dollar at the very least. I was in the zone, I was playing a player who I thought was better than me and had beaten me almost every time we played casually in the past. I still remember the score when it happened, 14-2, a 12-point lead with only 8 minutes to go (yeah, I remember the amount of time left on the clock too). My plan was just to run around the map and avoid my opponent until time ran out when my character just stopped moving. To this day I will never use a wireless mouse or keyboard again, the batteries in my wireless keyboard ran out. I frantically searched for replacement double-As, breaking my expensive Logitech universal remote when I dropped it after tearing the batteries from the back. But by the time I replaced the batteries it was too late. The final score was 19-14, going to my opponent. What could have happened? I know I replaced the batteries a week beforehand and they usually last quite a long time with what little juice the keyboard pulled. Turns out my wife switched them with the almost dead batteries of the very remote I took them from the night before because the remote was almost out of juice and there were no fresh batteries in the house. I don't know anybody else who lost the chance at a free trip to L.A. and $100,000 (and broke a $100 remote in the process) because of dead batteries. :(
Voting is now closed...check back this week for the winner announcement!