Once upon a time, when the world was a better place to live in and there was love and beauty, the adventure genre existed. You could buy anything referred to as an 'adventure' with confidence, knowing what kind of game to expect as you more or less know what to expect when you rent a Jess Franco movie. The birds sang and everything was golden.

Now we have been boned. It'd seem someone has decided the 'adventure' name has such a wide meaning, it can used to categorize anything that doesn't fit under any of the other popular genres. Worse, some of the games featured in this article doesn't even follow this logic (ie: you have downright plain action games). But why, why did they choose this poor genre to be massacrated? Why doesn't anybody use 'shooter' to label both Doom and R-Type? Oh no sir, those respected and important games need to be properly labeled, hence the difference between 'first-person shooter' and plain 'shooter'. Nobody cares about the adventure genre anymore, so let's spread our foul message all over the world! There is such madness plaguing this industry that someone has to do something about it. So we here at Just Adventure+ have decided to grant the glorious MOTTA Awards, our response to the increasing carelessnes showed by many sites.

Basically, we decide which were the most outrageous misappropriations of the 'adventure' term during the previous year and then we proceed to ridicule and make fun of the sites found most deserving of a MOTTA Award. Obviously, the bulk of the article will be the most "notorious" adventure game of the year awards, although there might be other particular cases (you'll have to read on and find out for yourself - be warned though, it's excruciating). Of course, the "winners" will be properly notified. You will remember what the 'adventure' name stands for. You will remember us. (manic laughter here)

A little bit of background considering this is our first issue: the term MOTTA was coined up by fellow writer Ben Bowen and the winners chosen after an extensive voting campaign on the Just Adventure+ forums. The number of voters was astonishing – no more than eighty. Evidently nobody wanted to waste too much time on this. And I can see where they're coming from. Anyways, the one who agreed to do the dirty job, which is writing about these insulting awards (not ours, mind you, theirs), is yours truly.

Let's get this over with, shall we.