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The SNES's increased computational power made a lot of things possible which would have been impossible on the NES; and like every increase in console hardware, several games came along that took wise advantage of this muscle.

However, it also opened up great new ways for games to screw up, and (as is our wont here on GameWTFs), that's where we'll spend our time this week.

For example, the SNES's graphical power allowed many more moving objects to be on the screen at the same time, including bullets and projectiles. And while sometimes that was awesome,

Other times, it lead to what I'd like to call...

Yes, nothing kills your gaming buzz like armaments that, well, couldn't kill a buzzy-bee without extended bursts of concentrated fire.

Here's five games that somewhat prominent feature weapons that would be at home in any fully-automatic popgun arsenal, and we'll start with the game pictured above:

Here we see a freeze-frame of an intense gun battle between Dr. Gilgamesh's extra limb weapon and a medieval peasant armed with a bow and arrows. In the foreground, you can see another peasant dissolving into a cloud of pixelated flesh, having been the recipient of an extended burst of Gilgamesh's bullets.

However, it's worth noting that even these basic peasants take a second or two of solid fire before they explode. For example, the archer has a fire-rate of one flaming arrow per second or so. If you pop into his line of fire right after the first arrow, and begin to rain molden death on him immediately, he'll get 1 shot off before he explodes.

A puzzling choice, and that earns Time Slip's overcompensation machine fully-not-so-good-o-matic gun a spot on my list of Ping-Pong Ball Guns.

Now, we turn from the ludicrous to the supernatural, with,

You have a lot of weapons available in Ghoul Patrol, and this one is one of the more available and useful. This ping-pong gun DOES take a fair amount of shots to stop the game's ghoulish enemies, that's pretty much true for most weapons.

But still, I think it belongs on this list for a few reasons:

Because if there's anything we've learned from Time Slip, it's that you shouldn't question yourself from another time period, or else Dr. Vince "BigMcLargeHuge" Gilgamesh may show up and fill you with seventeen times your body weight in lead!

From whacky supernatural ghouls up against a spread of silly firearms, we turn to goofy military miniatures facing off against terrifying toys in...Toys

They shoot fast, they have a terrible arc (compounded by the game's pesky isometric angle), low stopping power, and both their sprite AND ammo counter is a giant orange sphere.

Conclusion? It's ping-pong power. Q.E.D.

It seems unlikely we're going to regain any gravitas any time soon, so let's go off the deep end with...

but it's when the game begins that the Ping-Pong Ball Gun effect REALLY comes in to play: not only do you run and jump WAYYYYY too fast -- basically faster than the human eye can react (think Bubble Bobble with its too-speedy-to-be-useful Shoe power-up)

But your rate of fire is very rapid, too. Add to that the fact that your big festive yellow bullets literally BOUNCE OFF WALLS AND HILLS,

From nutty to grim, let's turn our attention to a game so serious it requires digitized Pierce Brosnan:

Indeed, this game deals with a concept so fully-realized in the 1990s, that over 20 years later, it's just about finished being a The Producers-like caper of investor-scamming, and is almost nearly kinda maybe ready to manifest itself.

I am, of course, talking about the reality-shattering power of...

Oops, that's not right. I of course meant the power of "Virtual Reality." And, like the 1990's promise of a Virtual Reality so powerful it could change the sovereignty of every human mind, let me just say...

I hope so!

But if not, I hope you found my summary of the SNES's unfortunate tendency towards "Ping Pong Ball Gun" weapons to be anticlimactic enough for this week.