Our Most Foolish Game Moments

We here at Siliconera aren’t much for tricks — after all, we’re a news site! — but April 1 is still a great time to be a little silly. So let’s talk about our most foolish game moments! When in games have you made the biggest mistakes? Or overlooked obvious solutions? Here are some of our lowlights.

I love to speedrun Resident Evil games. Specifically Resident Evil 0! And anyone who knows about infamous “one shot” or “instakill” enemies within the franchise can probably already predict what this foolish moment might be.

I was practicing the knife-only no-save category, well aware that there was a chance a frog might completely end the run. Which happened to potentially be my personal best! And lo and behold… I took the risk of crossing a bridge where one of these infamous enemies spawn, and lost my entire run of under two hours to getting eaten by a frog.

This could have been completely avoided too! Now I’m a lot more cautious when running the game. — Kazuma

I probably have a brand-new foolish gaming moment every time I turn on a console. I’ve gotten rid of extremely precious items because I was mashing the X button out of impatience, bought region-locked items without taking into consideration if I could even use them, and utterly failed at math puzzles. You name it, I’ve probably somehow managed to do it!

But the one that stands out to me the most is when I was in seventh grade. I started up a new Final Fantasy X save file to test my friend’s claim that you could somehow defeat Geosgaeno when you first encounter it. (Spoiler alert: You can’t.) “Oh, it didn’t work. Maybe I’ll try again,” I thought, so I went to a save point and started mashing X as per usual, only to save over a file I had that was right at the final dungeon. Cue me losing a year’s worth of progress.

I didn’t beat FFX until the remaster! I was just too in shock from that. You’d figure, then, after such a horrible accident, that I no longer mash buttons so fast when in menu screens. Unfortunately? I still do. — Stephanie

I like to think I’m a careful, methodical sort of person. (Perhaps to a fault?) But I did have my foolish game moments when I was younger. One that sticks with me? My first play of a Japanese Fire Emblem game. I had just grabbed my first Super Famicom imports, including a copy of Mystery of the Emblem, and I wanted to play! So what if, uh, I hadn’t learned much Japanese yet? I can figure out menus!

So I started the first map. And I moved my units from the east side of Talys to the enemies in the west. I walked Jagen up to the first foe — he got there the fastest — and selected a weapon to attack. Except… nothing happened? So I tried again, this time using the other weapon because it was the only option. Nothing happened again! Because… I was throwing them away instead of attacking with them.

I waited a few years (and took some more Japanese courses) before trying again. — Graham

What are your most foolish game moments? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter! And read our other handy roundtables for more thoughts from the Siliconera team.