The Hall of Shame 09.05.07: Ping Pals

Posted by Vincent Chiucchi on 09.05.2007

Why pay for a game you're already getting for free?

We've had plenty of bashing on this site for many of the systems out there. Lots of PS3 bashing for it's price, lots of Xbox 360 bashing for the red ring of death, and lots of Wii bashing for looking outdated. But if there's one system that seems to escape bashing on our site, it's the Nintendo DS. With the DS becoming a success with and without using the touch screen and selling way ahead of the PSP, what exactly can you bash about the DS without sounding like a fanboy for the other side?

Quite simple really: The crappy launch titles. Now to be fair, games launched at a console's release these days usually range from good to mediocre. Unless you count Zelda: TP as a Wii launched game, it seems the Xbox was the last system to have a "must buy" game at launch. But the DS had one game at launch that, still as of today, is the WORST game for the system and one of the worst games ever. And yet somehow the DS survived. This week, Ping Pals is inducted into the Hall of Shame.


This game got two 0.0's from EGM magazine. If that's not proof of how bad this is, I don't know what is

When the DS was announced, Nintendo hyped up the second screen, a touch screen, as it's biggest feature. Players would use a stylus along with the standard buttons to play games. With a new way to play games, developers would come up with many new ideas that weren't possible. Great new games such as Ouedan/Elite Beat Agents and Jump Superstars. Older games like Castlevania, WarioWare, and Super Mario 64 were given a makeover. However, things didn't start out so dandy for the DS. Besides Super Mario 64 DS, there wasn't really any must have titles to get, and even SM64 DS wasn't so great because using the touch screen for movement wasn't that comfortable.

But the worst of the worst came in the form of THQ's Ping Pals. Ping Pals was a game where you interact with others using the built-in chat feature, and the more you chat, the more credits you obtain in order to spend on items like a new background and getups for your avatar. A game where you chat with others isn't so bad of an idea except for one thing: the DS ALREADY HAD a built-in chat feature!

The DS already came with a feature called "PictoChat", a program where you chat to others with the DS. These days the feature isn't that big of a deal (at least to me. I haven't used it in months), but at least it came with the system for free. So when Nintendo already has a built-in chatting program, who in there right mind would want to pay $20 for a game where the chatting is how the majority of the game is played?

Now, I don't work in a video game company, but I assume when a new system comes out, the company making the system sends a development kit to the software companies along with information as to what the system can do. Surely Nintendo must have told them that the DS was going to have a built-in chat feature*, so making a game like Ping Pals would be pointless.

(*Then again, Nintendo doesn't exactly have a good reptutation with cooperating with third parties, so if THQ had no idea because Nintendo wouldn't confirm, ignore the next statement)

Okay, maybe it wouldn't be pointless if the game's chat was actually better then PictoChat. But amazingly, it isn't. The writing pad is smaller then PictoChat's, it's got only one pen size compared to PictoChat's two, you can't type and chat at the same time like in PictoChat, you can't call down and edit messages like PictoChat, and it excludes the instant erasing feature. So not only are you paying for something you already get for free, you're paying for something that is INFERIOR to what you already get for free! The game lets you chat with others using only one cartridge, but how exactly are you going to convince your friends that you'd rather use Ping Pals over PictoChat? Once again, who the hell in their right mind was actually going to buy this game?!


When something for free is superior to something that costs money, you know something is terribly wrong

So let's pretend that PictoChat never existed at all and Ping Pals was the only game with a built-in chat feature. Even in that scenario, Ping Pals is still a terrible game. Besides the chat feature Ping Pals allows you to play mini-games with other people so you can unlock stuff to customize your game. But the problem here is that there are only FIVE mini-games to play in this game. Five! And only two of them are multiplayer!

If It had fifty mini-games it would've been great. Twenty-five would still be good. Twenty would be close to being small. But five?! Could you imagine playing Mario Party with only five mini-games? Not only is the game limited to only five mini-games, all of them suck. One is basically guessing a number from one to ten and one is a family feud rip off. One of the multiplayer mini-games is called "Doodle", where you have to draw a doodle and your friend has to guess it right in order for both players to get coins. Since the game affects both players, you could say write out the answer instead of wasting time drawing pictures. The people who made this game obviously did not beta test these mini-games.

As for making your avatar and other crap look pretty? The game limits you to having 300 items at most in the game, but there's over 300 items in the game to collect. So, unless you sell your stuff to other players (and if you could find someone else with Ping Pals, they are your friends for life), you can't get everything in the game. That's like if all 480 or so Pokemon were in one game, but you only had enough room to fit 300, you had to give them away or just not collect them. STUPID!

In the end, all you basically do is chat, play a couple of games, and make your avatar look pretty. This is probably fun for all of one hour thanks to basically having no replay value and the fact that if you do feel like chatting with the DS, you could just use PictoChat and save your time. Ping Pals is nothing more then a total failure at everything. The Nintendo DS is damned lucky that it was born into the Nintendo line of handhelds, because by all logic launching with a game like Ping Pals would've killed the system.

So you see, not even the Nintendo DS is safe from perfection. It may have beaten out the PSP, but did the PSP launch with one of the worst games of all time? The N-Gage had a craptacular launch but not even it's worst game is as bad as Ping Pals. And yet somehow, the DS survived.

On a sidenote, there's lot of free computer programs that are better then the paying alternative (#1 most definitely being OpenOffice to Microsoft's Office Suite). If you're looking for such programs, check out this website called The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities.