Techtite Feature Article!

"These are the games when game designers tried for something so different, so bizarre, and so odd, they were …weird! "

---from the article

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The Oddest Games I Ever Played!

A Techtite Feature Story, By Steve Akyuz

When reviewing games for this site, it often seems like every game looks alike. Has every game idea has been done already? Sometimes it seems that way, with all the many "clones" of popular games like Super Mario, Halo, Doom, and so on.

There are some exceptions though. Some games try to be different. VERY different…! These aren’t always the best games. These aren’t always the WORST games. These are the games when game designers tried for something so different, so bizarre, and so odd, they were just…weird. Here’s my list for the top ten oddest games I ever played!

10) Spare Change (Apple ][ series)

    Starting the list with one of the pioneers of "Weird" gaming; Spare Change put you in charge of an arcade. Two small video game characters called “Zerks” are sick of being in video games. They start stealing the quarters from the arcade game machines in your arcade, so they can “retire”. If they can fill their large piggy bank at the lower right of the screen, it's "Game Over"...literally! It’s up to you to get back the quarters they steal. You can either try to simply grab quarters from them and see them jump up and down in a pout(!), or you can use the arcade to fool them. Put money in the popcorn machine and the Zerks flock to the popcorn to eat it. Put money in the jukebox and they start to dance. Put money in the telephone and they use it to make a phone call. This is one of those games that wasn’t very successful, yet wasn’t very bad either. It was just…weird...though in a very good way! In fact; I don't know why someone hasn't tried to upgrade this game and offer it on all those many mini-game, pay-to-play download sites. Make it so!

9) Twisted (3DO)

    In one of the best games for the 3DO system: Twisted placed gamers in a bizarre game show. Six characters typical to TV lore of the early 1990's ---a televangelist parody, a "Vegas Elvis" parody, and a TV psychic, to name just three--- are “trapped” in the game. You chose one of these characters to play as; if you won the game, they got to escape into "the real world." Each contestant had different full-motion-video reactions to you winning or losing, adding to the game's replay value. While the game used basic mini-games as its challenges; it's what they did to enhance those mini-games that made Twisted so cool. You know those slide puzzles where you put a scrambled photo back in order? Well, imagine that with full motion video, where the puzzle photo is constantly changing. I'm surprised so few games, even to this day, have attempted such an idea. However: this was a two player game through and through, with no A.I. option for the opponents. That was perhaps its sole "flaw," though only for diehard solo gamers. Everyone else loved "Twisted" for living up to its namesake; a totally twisted game!

8) Toonstruck (PC)

    So you're playing a game that looks like an interactive cartoon, and yet the lead character is played by real-life comedian Christopher Lloyd. Why? Well, soon after the success of Disney's Who Framed Roger Rabbit, along came a game which cast sitcom comedian Christopher Lloyd alongside well-animated, unique-to-this-game cartoon characters. Lloyd played an animator named "Drew Blank," who strangely and inexplicably gets thrown into his own cartoon world, which as you guessed, needs his help to defeat the big bad guy. Why is this a "weird" game idea? Well...one allergic cartoon character is called "Snots," and another loves to bowl...from his butt. That certainly sounds weird... though was it fun? Absolutely! It helped that the voice actors were perfectly chosen; many of whom either worked or would work in such smash hits as The Simpsons and Animaniacs. While it was a classic graphic adventure game through and through, its puzzles were imaginative, and the evolving story was both funny and inspired...right down to a particularly fun “plot twist” near the middle of the story! I'm rambling a bit about this one, so let's cut to the chase: this was one of my favorite adventure games of the mid 1990’s. It’s only flaw? It never ended! The game designers had hoped to make a sequel immediately following this game, though its game distributor, "Interplay," was in dire straights at the time, and they never green lit the sequel. Then again; did they have to end game #1 with an open ending? If you ask me, games which don’t have endings to their story, are all weird.

7) Of Light and Darkness (PC)

In 1998; Cliff Johnson wanted to release a puzzle game that integrated the then-"new" full motion video technology used in many games at the time. Johnson had already made many cool puzzle games on the old black and white Macintosh (my favorite being The Fool's Errand), each of which taking full advantage of the graphics and video available at the time. That sounds interesting to me, even to this very day. Yet the game itself is barely remembered, really. How obscure was "Of Light and Darkness" as a game? As of this article's posting online; this game doesn't even have a listing on Wikipedia yet...which is a pretty good sign barely anyone played it. But...I digress. What I was getting too earlier with the Cliff Johnson comments was this: Of Light and Darkness was one...big...puzzle. The problem...? Most other full motion video games were not the sort of puzzle games that Johnson was known for. The good news? When you knew what you were doing, it was a fun puzzle game. The bad news? In one of many signs of how poorly Interplay was running things those days: the game's instructions barely told you how to play the game, making "how to play the game" an added puzzle. That's weird in itself! Yet the "post-apocalypse world" of the hereafter in this game was colorful and imaginative, as conceived by artist Gil Bruvel. With voice cast of Lolita Davidovich as the "angel," and James Woods as the "demon" of the game, this was fun to play, though why did they have to make "learning" the puzzle an added puzzle? That didn't go over well.

6) Muppets Inside (a PC CD-ROM game)

                So you’re sitting in front of your computer playing a game about Muppets. You think; okay, this is just going to be a bunch of mini games that use video of Muppets, right? Not so fast! Suddenly, a totally cool special effect makes it look like the Muppets are actually opening up "your" desktop, showing the computerized world within. Their problem: Doctor Honeydew's experiment went haywire, and they're all stuck inside your computer. Why is that so weird? Well, okay; it isn't, really, though I just really loved the cool opening video. Then there was how long it took to finish the game, which these days is not weird, though back in the days of 1990's CD-ROM games, it actually was! None of that really counts as "weird," though; I admit. No; the weird part of this game's history would have to be the poorly chosen game box, which was about five times larger than it needed to be, for no discernable reason whatsoever. This forced most game stores to shelf this game SEPARATE from all the other games, since the oversized box would not fit alongside all the "regular sized" game boxes. As a result, few people saw the game in game stores, and even fewer ever got to play it. Okay...Maybe that isn't terribly "weird" either...I'm still putting this game on my list, though. That opening video was so cool!

5) Megamania

    As early as the Atari 2600 era, it seemed like every "shoot 'em up" game was already attempted. You had games that had you shoot enemy cowboys, games that had you shoot "Space Invaders," and games that had you shoot "Asteroids." What was left to shoot? Well, how about: flying giant dice...rubber tires...and...bow ties? Megamania was, without a doubt, just plain weird, though boy it was fun! I even got to compete in a Megamania contest back in the day, and won second place...only to find out I blinked when the one photo mom took of me that day was taken. True story: I used the prize money to buy a new Colecovision...which back then wasn't as "weird" as it might sound now.

4) Bubbles (Arcade)

Someone might joke about how arcade games of the 1980's were about everything but the kitchen sink. So what does Midway do? They make an arcade game about: a KITCHEN SINK. The result was Bubbles, which is irrefutably one of the weirdest games ever conceived. Gamers might say "what about Burgertime?" Well, yeah, though at least Burgertime was about a chef who made giant hamburgers. That somehow makes more sense to me, from a game perspective. This game had you play as…a bubble? A smiley faced…BUBBLE?!? Your enemies were the various things that mess up a sink; ants, dirt, spiders, and so on. It was your job to avoid the sharp things that “pop” a bubble, as you cleaned the sink. Enter the drain when it flashes, and you dropped down into…another sink. Man; that alone was pretty weird, when you think about it! Why would one sink drain lead to another sink? The game was pretty fun, though, presuming a gamer wanted to pay a quarter to clean a sink, complete with a smiley faced bubble.

3) Microsurgeon (Intellivision, by Imagic)

    Years before Dennis Quaid made Innerspace such a hit comedy movie, a little game company called Imagic tried a rather odd game for the Intellivision game system, called Microsurgeon. The idea was that you controlled a little robot in a sick patient. You had to use your little lasers and whatnot to zap all the germs and viruses floating around. What made this game so weird? Well, for one thing the insides of this guy look too creepy. Adding to the weirdness was how travelling to the lower extremeties (ahem) led to you literally falling out of the game. I suppose the game designers didn't want young gamers learning more anatomy than they needed to in this game...! This wasn’t a bad game, really, though it was...soooo...very…weird!

2) Space Bunnies Must DIE

                As I get down to the final two on my list, I slowly get to the weirdest of the weird. One game was a huge success; the other was not. Which is which? Well, just look at the title of this one: Space…Bunnies…Must…DIE! Um…okay...why?!? Well, they apparently kidnapped some poor girl’s sister. They also try to KILL you. Okay, yeah; these space bunnies must die. The resulting game had you fight small bunnies, medium bunnies, large bunnies, and powerful "Boss" bunnies. You might think that’s the only reason this game is weird. Oh no! There’s a whole lot more weirdness to this crazy redneck rodent rampage. You see; the lead character likes to dance, so every time she sees an evil bunny, she does. I’m serious! You want to know what’s REALLY weird? The bunnies start dancing too! Then she shoots the stupid bunnies while they're dancing. Either way you look at it, that alone is worth a high mark on the Top Ten Weirdness scale! With glitches that made the game tough to finish, and one of the most bizarre open endings of all time; this was the most poorly reviewed weird game on this list. The game designers even pitched this game idea as a cartoon…and the idea was rejected. So: "Bubsy" was made into a cartoon, and this wasn't? Ouch.

...and the #1 "Weird" game on this list...?

#1: Katamari Damacy. Wow; I love this game series! Everyone loves this game series. It’s so easy to start. So challenging to finish. And best of all: it’s so…weird! Who wouldn’t want to roll up garbage until the ball was so large you could roll up people, cars, and large houses? The idea was that some alien king totally screwed up the universe. It’s up to you as his son to roll up enough total craaaa…uh, garbage, so the King can make a few planets and stars out of the junk, before anyone notices the galaxy is broken. Man; what a weird game. What a FUN game. What a fun…WEIRD…game. The good news is that this formerly exclusive Playstation game was made for the Xbox 360. The bad news: the 360’s version is the porrest-reviewed game in the series. Man; a 360 game that's the "least popular" in a game series? Yep...that's pretty weird!

---Steve Akyuz