straaaange and/or not fun games

[Fatal Rewind]

Those usually go hand in hand. Make sure and have a brief description as to why it's strange (which can be good for a laugh!).

First one that comes to mind is a game that I haven't even played, but I heard about: A Boy and His Blob for the NES. Legendary video game designer David Crane came up with a bizarre one of a kid who had to do things in a game, but you had to influence his blob (o....kay) in order to accomplish tasks. From what I've heard about it, it goes under the file of "original and different, but not very fun".

Don't laugh at a video game based on an R-rated movie, but Porky's for the Atari 2600 made little sense at all: you got smacked by something, you would land in a swamp, collect gold bricks to build a ladder, and then pole vault your way over to them so you could climb out (huh?).

A homebrew for my beloved Vectrex (the last game I got, too) called I, Cyborg makes sense when you play it, but the surroundings and all make you scratch your head a bit (along with one of many holes in the plot as to why a fully-armed cyborg hasn't been stripped of his weaponry while in prison!): first you're in a bunch of corridors, you make it out in the open, then in the next level, you're in...an art gallery? Seriously, that's what it looks like--and that level is called "gallery" anyway--but what're you doing back indoors again? (I'll put up some pics later.)

And last but not least, a really bizarre arcade game called Eyes makes one of the strangest shooters I've ever played: sure, it's a straight-forward maze shooter, but you're an...eyeball? And you shoot a bunch of...objects...in the mazes, that change with every maze. Whatever, and it wasn't very fun either (make sure to scroll down to read my much more fun review of it, ha ha!).

Just a few to get this started...

[autoham]

Hahahaha. As soon as I saw this, I thought "A Boy and His Blob".

It's such a fun game. And... so weird.

You take your blob, and feed him Jellybeans to get him to do different things. A ketchup jellybean makes him into a ladder, a strawberry one makes him a trampolene, etc. And you need to find all the hidden treasures on earth, then... I don't know lol. Its been so long.

[autoham]

But another strange game was Monster Rancher for the PSX.

You live in a somewhat modern time, where 'Monsters' are part of the earth. These monsters are ancient creatures trapped in "Disks" which you can go to a shrine to revive them, and have them become your partner. These "Disks" are actually CDS... in real life. Every single CD in the world contains a monster, and some contain secret super monsters that are really cool, or special designs (One Billy Joel CD gives you a monster with a Piano Key look, hence Piano Man, and an REM CD gives you a special Dragon monster)

You then take these monsters and train them to fight in leagues, get money, get a bigger home, and go on adventures in the wild. You learn different techniques and such, but one of the bad things is, your monster has a life span. And if you don't raise it properly, it can run away, or even die.

A very fun game, and I would recommend it to anyone

[Fatal Rewind]

autoham said:

Hahahaha. As soon as I saw this, I thought "A Boy and His Blob".

That's funny!

You actually liked that game, though? I know a lot of people didn't.

Heard of Monster Rancher, didn't know what it was about though.

There is (was?) a website totally devoted to weird arcade games as well. I would say I'll have to see if I can find it later, but the search feature on the site that has it isn't that great, plus, being from years ago, it could be long gone anyway. Only games I can remember were called Timber (I think) where you have to chop down trees on peoples' property before they storm out of their houses and beat the crap out of you, and Snacks 'n Jaxson, a straaaange game where you have to feed a floating clown head (?).

And here are the pics I promised earlier from the Cyborg game:




<sub>A lightning bolt can make things difficult




These death scenes can be a bit amusing as you literally fall to pieces









Here's that cool canyon on the second
part of the game (then you go back inside
after that, for some strange reason)




The final boss is an evil version of Kryten
from the British sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf!</sub>

[cajunmonkey]

The monster rancher game sounds like these strange "scannerz" that they had out a while back. Premise was the same as Tamagotchi. But in order to gain monsters you scanned barcodes, each barcode gave a different monster.