10 GENIUS Ways Players Outsmarted Video Games

9. Using Turbo Controllers - Mario Party Series

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Nintendo

How many of us here can remember the aching wrists and calloused fingers we used to get when locked into a serious game of Mario Party with friends?

The inescapable pain of smashing your hand against the controller in the hopes of trouncing your friend at a mini-game is an unforgettable one and is likely the reason you shudder every time you see an N64 controller.

In several of Mario Party's mini-games, players are required to frantically hammer buttons in certain orders or combinations in order to defeat their opponents. This frenetic (and frankly tiring) exercise was not good for your fingers and was especially bad for your poor controllers.

Imagine the delight of players when they realised that most third-party controllers included a turbo function, which would rapidly press any given button that was held down. In most games, the function is next to useless, but when it comes to games like Mario Party, it's the king of exploits.

This nefarious tactic might have saved many a controller from wearing out, but that one good deed may have been outweighed by the sheer amount of friendships it ended in the process.

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UK based screenwriter, actor and one-half of the always-irreverent Kino Inferno podcast. Purveyor of cult cinema, survival horror games and low-rent slasher films.