6 Bad Ideas in Video Game Mash-Ups We'll Probably See Next

For years, game companies have been combining games that make money in order to make even more money. Occiasionally this works out pretty well.

A lot better for games than movies for some reason.

But with Marvel vs. Capcom 3 hitting shelves and selling pretty briskly, game designers will be trying to cram even more blockbusters together into the same universe. Because once you've earned enough money to fill your bathtub with molten gold, you still need to be able to buy more bathtubs that you can safely bathe in. Let's take a look forward at some of the terrible ideas we will soon see hitting shelves ...

If you're a StarCraft player, you may have wondered what goes on inside the little production buildings that are always churning out units. Those little factory workers and egg-laying aliens or whatever need to wake up every day, go to the bathroom, and cook food for the Zerglings without setting the hatchery on fire.

Now, instead of focusing on overarching combat strategy and exciting battles, you can focus on the minutiae and daily drudgery that makes those battles possible. Instead of queuing up a bunch of troops for training and focusing your attention elsewhere, why not actually sit there and click endlessly on each unit as it lift weights, does target practice, and of course sleeps and goes to the bathroom in between workout sessions?

Instead of attacking the Zerg base next door, why not try talking to them about what the intrusion of creep onto your lot is doing to property values?

Incidentally, that marauder is going to drown.

It's about time a war game showed us some realism in the day-to-day life of regular joes, in terms of bodily functions, chores, and of course, setting the stove on fire every time they try to cook.

The Firebat has different priorities.

Runaway Facebook hit FarmVille teams up with the megapopular Call of Duty: Modern Warfare to bring gritty modern combat to cartoony farms.

As in FarmVille, you build your own farms, but instead of making building decisions to make money or "because it looks pretty," your decisions are key to your strategy for defending your farm when it is invaded by other players. Rice paddies are a good choice for your perimeter, giving would-be invaders no cover on the approach. Corn mazes and hedges are also ideal for well-planned ambushes.

And of course, there's plenty of purchasable extra content.

Combining Battlefield 1942 of the blockbuster Battlefield series with the juggernaut Mario franchise gets you Super Mario Bros. 1942. Having Italians as main characters and the year of 1942 as a setting gives you a golden opportunity to make a super gritty game that will be sure to delight gamers looking for dark, serious games to shove in critics' faces in order to argue that games are art. (That is also why the game is in black and white, of course.)

Drafted by Mussolini, Mario and Luigi are sent to Stalingrad with the ill-fated Italian 8th Army for what they expect to be a quick rout. However, after a brief combat mission, the rest of the game involves no shooting, but a variety of challenges such as fleeing the initial Soviet counteroffensive.

I don't know why a Mario title is on the PS3 either but that hardly seems like the most pressing question here.

In the next stage of the game, Mario and Luigi settle in for the long siege as the Soviets encircle the Axis forces and starvation sets in. The multiplayer gets really cutthroat at this stage.

Finally, all the surviving players are brutally rounded up and sent on a merciless march into captivity, a minigame which involves the player repeatedly pressing two buttons to put down the left foot and the right foot respectively. This event takes about three days in real time, during which the player cannot pause or save, or the character will die of exposure or be shot by guards. Now that's what I call immersion!