The Most Illogical Methods Of Transportation In Gaming

Posted in Gaming, Lists by Azrius, November 23, 2010 at 1:55 pm | 3,047 views, 48 comments

At some point in most every game, our intrepid hero(s) are going to need some means of quick movement. Whether it’s to access an otherwise inaccessible area, backtrack to an earlier point in the game or simply get somewhere faster than on foot, the majority of games include some alternative form of movement aside from walking. But let’s face it, something so simple as a vehicle or an airship, that’s boring. Some developers (mostly Nintendo, for some strange reason) have gotten rather creative regarding how they get their characters from point A to point B.

And sometimes, well, they turn out things that just don’t really work.

At a certain point in Twilight Princess, Link needs to get to the desert. It seems to be largely inaccessible from most of Hyrule. The journey would likely use up time the kingdom doesn’t have. So what’s the solution?

Shoot him out of a cannon.

Yes, that’s right. Shoot the Hero of Hyrule, quite possibly the last hope for the world (I mean, have you seen the soldiers of this kingdom? It’s no wonder it fell) out of an old cannon which might or might not work. To an area that isn’t guaranteed to have a safe landing zone.

Yep. Makes perfect sense.

At least Twilight Princess gave him some warning first, unlike Wind Waker, where you stepped onto the ship’s deck and Link was just as surprised as you were to find himself in the belly of a canon.

There’s definitely something supernatural about this blue hedgehog- so much so that he’s made the list simply by virtue of being him. Okay, granted, super speed on its own isn’t necessarily ILLOGICAL, but….okay, let’s do the math here. Sonic can:

1) Run so fast he travels through time (Sonic CD)

2) “Power Up” with the chaos emeralds and fly through space (Though curiously, he can’t seem to fly while on land)

3) Turn into a spiked ball of death that can somehow penetrate solid steel

And let’s not forget his loveable sidekick, a fox who can fly by spinning his two tails around.

I see nothing strange here. Nope, nothing at all.

Magnet boots let you walk on walls, and ceilings. But only walls and ceilings specifically designed to allow you to walk on them. The developers know this is a completely illogical way of getting around, one of their characters even says as much.

“Haven’t these people ever heard of stairs?”

The Mushroom Kingdom’s got a hell of a sewer system. I mean, you can get almost anywhere by just going through the pipes. It kind of makes sense at first, until you really stop to think about a few things. For one, the pipes are implied to have teleportation capability- in Bower’s Inside Story, for example, Mario and Luigi can use pipes he’s devoured to go to various places in the mushroom kingdom. For some reason, they’re restored to their full size when they do.

As well, you’d think, traipsing about the sewer system, Mario would start to smell a little ripe, no? Maybe get a little dirty? Yet somehow he manages to stay squeaky clean, all the time. Ergo, these must not actually be sewer pipes. So … what the hell are they, then? Why would anyone bother to build such a labyrinth? Is it a remnant of a once great, lost civilization? Some means of troop transport for Bowser? The product of a team of drunken engineers? A bored wizard?

I’m noticing a trend here: Nintendo, Nintendo, and more Nintendo.

Okay, granted, this makes almost perfect sense at first. I mean, if you’ve got a legendary phoenix that’s the size of a small passenger car, or a whale the size of a 747, there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to transport you.

The absurdity here comes when you teach fly to, oh, say, a Pidgey. A Pokemon that is roughly half the size of your head.

Damn, that pigeon’s got some massive upper body strength.

There’s also the question of why anyone would bother developing public transit (for example, The Magnet Train) in a world where trainers (and almost everyone in the Pokeverse IS a trainer of some sort) can simply hop on the back of a giant bird to get wherever they need to go.

To contact the author of this post: nicholas.greene@wildgunmen.com