Not so much a remember when as a remember ugh. And I say UGH in the most loving way possible. The way a mother says it when she catches her child playing in the mud, but then quickly goes to fetch her camera for a picture to send to the grandparents. The following games are what I would consider my top seven most bizarre games. Some of these you may know, the others you may not. It’s a learning experience for all of us. Just remember that these games are all special and fun in their own way, and we wouldn’t ask them to change, would we? Of course not.

Why seven and not five or ten? Seven is my lucky number. So on with the list.

7) Super Mario Bros for the NES. At this point I’m sure some people out there think I’m crazy. Mario, everyone’s favorite mushroom guzzling turtle hunter, has become iconic in video game history. But really, sit back and think about the game for a moment, won’t you?

You play a mysterious plumber who wears red overalls, micky-mouse gloves, and a hat with the first letter of his name (naybe he’s just really forgetful?) embroidered into it. This man willingly takes his career as a plumber one step further and jumps into pipes and septic tanks in the hopes of finding his one true love. I’ve got to say, I really hope my true love doesn’t come from the bowels of the sewage system. Not only that, but he eats the food he finds in this labyrinth of pipes. Mushrooms, no less.

Add to that his arch-nemesis is a turtle. I mean come on. Poor Bowser was probably upset because his original owner, Little Johnny, went to sleep-away camp and his parents decided to flush all his ill-gotten swamp pets down the toilet. I’d be pretty angry too. Especially if some plumber was hellbent on destroying my minions and stealing my girlfriend.

Plus it’s just really weird how tolerant Mario is. If I heard the phrase, “I’m sorry, our princess is in another castle” as much as he did, I probably would have given up at the third castle. But this man continues on, strange mushroom people be damned.

6) Pokemon for the Game Boy. Outside of how bizarre the speed at which the entire pokemon phenomenon spread was, the game itself has such a strange premise. There are other monster training games out there, like Monster Rancher, that make sense. (Well, as much as an alternate reality can)

Instead of living on a ranch specially designed to raise and train monsters for tournaments, you’re given a creature that is oddly phallic in nature, or you catch one that is shaped like some sort of cream-puff. Regardless, none of the pocket monsters are particularly intimidating and yet some of them have cosmic powers capable of rending an entire planet in twain. They willingly thrust themselves into battle and sustain massive injuries over and over again. On top of all that, they pop out of containers no larger than a pool ball. A monster the size of a small continent (but still adorable) pops out of of a tennis ball.

Where is the justice? Able to sunder entire civilizations, shouldn’t the pokemon be enslaving the humans instead? It makes no sense, but thankfully video games don’t have to be rational.

5) PaRappa the Rapper for the PS. Admittedly, I adore this cheesy game and its spin-off UmJammer Lammy. What I would consider one of the precursors to guitar hero and all those other non-arcade rhythm based games, PaRappa was fun to play, but even I have to admit that it’s incredibly bizarre.

The visual style of the game sets the mood for this oddity. All the characters are completely one-dimensional but are set in a 3-D world. The main character is also a dog. That raps. Often with hilarious results. His catch phrase: “I gotta believe” becomes the theme of the game, in which you’re trying to win the heart of a walking, talking sunflower named Sunny. Throughout all of it you do everything from rapping in a dojo, to beat battling your former rap tutors outside of a gas-station bathroom. No, I’m not making this up. Man do I love this game.

The game play revolves around hitting the correct buttons on the controller in time with the music. Sound familiar? Hitting a button prompts PaRappa to rap a single line. Chain together multiple buttons and multiple lines and before you know it, you’re rapping. But can you do it well? Therein lies the challenge. A fun and hysterical challenge. (I’m always really amused at the fact that sometimes he sounds like he’s yelling, “I GOTTA-GOTTA-GOTTA-PEE-PEE-PEE”) PaRappa will always have a special place in my heart, though I’ll be the first to admit the game is pretty high up there on the weirdo scale.

And did you know PaRappa’s popularity in Japan spawned an anime based on the game? And that in the spin-off, UmJammer Lammy, she actually dies and goes to Hell to perform the “Taste of Teriyaki” song, but the American version it was censored to something completely different?

4) The entire Silent Hill series. This one is kind of a given, since the Silent Hill series is designed to be strange and partially unexplainable. It’s got all the knife swinging joy of a survival horror mixed with things that will screw with your mind and make you question why the designers made such a game.

Your main character is always going to be looking for something. A daughter, a dead wife, a way out of his apartment, whatever. At first everything seems relatively normal until something triggers a trip the likes of which no drug on this planet could possibly come close to. In Silent Hill 2, James passes out on the floor of an operating room in the hospital and wakes up to see creepy caged monsters attacking him from the ceiling with their feet. When I first played through that scene I was bouncing between: “Ew, UGH, Ah!” and “TURN ON THE LIGHTS!”.

Each of the games has a twist ending, though some are better than others. Let’s not talk about ‘mother’. And they all have multiple endings that the player earns throughout their game play. But even if you get the supposed ‘good’ endings, remember that the main character has to go through the rest of their lives with the memory of having been in Silent Hill. Not really what I would consider good.

The monsters and scenery make the game what they are, and so does the back-story of the town of Silent Hill itself. You’re going to be firing a gun uselessly at anything from a legs mannequin to the practically omnipotent Pyramid Head. And if you don’t fully believe me on the bizarre and weird aspect of these games, you clearly have not seen the infamous fukuro clip. If you haven’t and don’t know what I’m talking about, or have no idea what the Silent Hill games are like, I would not recommend googling. Though, I’m sure my saying that only entices people more. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

3) The Seventh Guest in all its various PC incarnations. Now this game makes me smile. It’s one of those fumbling 90’s attempts at laying pre-recorded film clips over CGI backgrounds. It blends pretty well, actually, though the actors hopefully didn’t quit their day jobs. It’s puzzle-based like Myst, though I found the challenges in Seventh Guest to range from, “Oh, this wasn’t so hard” to “OH GOD WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS?! THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!” (The microscope puzzle comes to mind here)

You play as Ego, a disembodied voice that only comes around every once in a while to whine, “That’s not right” when you do the puzzles. Using skeletal hands, eyeballs, brains, whatever the mouse-cursor, you navigate your way through the wicked toy designer Stauf’s mansion. Apparently Stauf’s idea of homely is walking into a room and hearing children cry, “Help me!” I know there’s nothing that lulls me to sleep at night like the rousing scream of the ghost of a dissected man on the floor above me.

The storyline is hilariously predictable, but there’s still enough of an element of fear to make the game slightly chilling. Acting aside. Old Toymaker Stauf, a murderer and mad genius, designed a crazy house full of puzzles and traps and invited seven guests over to spend the night. If any of them is able to solve the final puzzle, Stauf claims he’s willing to give them anything they want. Obvious results ensue based on the people invited. You have Greedy McGreedy, Boobie McSleepswitheveryone, and Obligatory NiceGuyWhoIsUltimatelyMartyred. It sounds hilariously zany, doesn’t it? And yet, it’s fun and challenging, and so very, very bizarre.

2) Katamari Damacy for the PS2. Now, I need you to imagine something. Imagine: You’re the executive president of a large gaming company and you’re holding a meeting at the head of a long, polished oak table. You drum your fingers as I anxiously shuffle into the board room and take my seat at the opposite end of the table. After I grovel in subservience for a few moments, you sigh and tell me to get on with my idea. I smile nervously and begin my game pitch.

“Imagine this.” I say, “In this game you play as a tiny green man with a pillsbury biscuit tube shaped head. The goal is to roll a ball over things like chairs and people until the ball gets bigger and bigger. You win when the ball is big enough to satisfy a galactic overlord with a neon codpiece.”

You ponder my proposal for a while, heming and hawing. After a few moments of tense silence, you finally leap from your chair and shout, “BRILLIANT! We’ll sell MILLIONS!”

And thus, the legacy of Katamari Damacy is born.

1) Monster Party for the NES. I cannot even begin to express how truly bizarre this game really is. Monster Party is the holy grail of weird video games. Stranger than even pyramid head, or ten plumbers leaping. This game is a delicious and often overlooked piece of video game mastery. Oh Monster Party.

The premise is short and sweet, like that oddly shaped oreo left at the bottom of the package. A young boy named Mark is walking home from baseball practice when a flying gargoyle alien monster approaches him and exclaims that Mark is ‘the one’ to save his world with his weapon of legendary power. “But this is a baseball bat,” Objects Mark. Who cares?! The bat can still deflect things like skulls or kittens, so it makes a perfect weapon.

And good news, your monster gargoyle friend will help you out sometimes! All you have to do is er. Take…pills. No, I’m not making this up. Delicious, delicious pills, kiddies. Remember that when you open the medicine cabinet for your toothpaste at night.

The game is all boss fights, and it’s actually decently challenging. Not in terms of strategy, but in terms of ‘if you can dodge all the stuff being fired at you and take minimal damage, you must be using a gameshark’.

But oh, all the fun is in the bosses. I giggle with glee as I write this. It starts with the weird eggplant flower boss and just goes uphill from there. Oh Royce, you rolling caterpillar. I see what you did there, Monster Party designers. Clever. In monster party, you fight it all. Including a giant floating piece of shrimp tempura. The bosses also fire things at you, ranging from dishes belched from the depths of an angry well, to kittens fired from the maw of a demonic box cat.

So in the end, I recommend all these games. They’re bizarre, and all have something unique and different to offer.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 31st, 2007 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Reviews, Classic Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.