(Image: Evan-Amos; check out a selection of weird games both retro and recent)
Whether you love MMORPGs or a good, single-player FPS, chances are that you – or someone you know – has more than a few favourite video games. Gaming is a huge industry today, with popular offerings like Fallout, Call of Duty, and Halo causing a major stir when new installments are released. But for every massive hit like Skyrim, there are many more weird games that are so bizarre and so out-there that you have to wonder who ever thought they were a good idea in the first place.
Sneak ‘N Peek (1982)
We’ll cut them a little bit of slack for the limitations technology placed on video games in 1982, but seriously, that only excuses so much. Released for the Atari 2600, Sneak ‘N Peek is the name for Atari’s hide-and-seek video game.
That’s right, Atari programmed and released a video game based on the old childhood favourite, hide-and-seek. The game had two options: the 1-player option pitted the player against the computer, while the 2-player option allowed two real-life friends to play hide-and-seek on the television screen rather than in real life – despite presumably sitting in a house that was likely full of hiding places.
And because technology was so limited with the Atari, Sneak ‘N Peek only has a grand total of four virtual rooms to conceal yourself in: a living room, two (nearly identical) bedrooms, and the front yard. As you can imagine, the available hiding places were similarly limited, making this one of the oddest adaptations of a real-life game we could think of. And as with many other weird games of yesteryear, you can still play it here.
Tokyo Jungle (2012)
Ever wonder what it would be like if all the people disappeared from Tokyo and the animals took over? Tokyo Jungle is exactly that, and the inherent strangeness of the game made it a hit in Japan and Europe, but not so much in America.
The story mode puts the player at the controls of a series of animals, starting off with a hungry Pomeranian who’s forced to head out into the wilderness that’s now Tokyo. You’ll form a pack of like-minded Pomeranians, and as the story progresses you’ll eventually uncover what happened to all the humans. Along the way, you’ll meet a bizarre mixture of animals, from lions and kangaroos to sika deer, hyenas, and robot dogs.
Dubbed “Grand Theft Auto with lions” by Eurogamer, it includes 80 different animals and a wide-open Tokyo setting that’s just, well, bizarre. As weird games go, this is a good one.
Where’s Waldo? (1991)
Everyone’s familiar with Waldo, the bespectacled, striped-shirt-wearing guy who makes you keep looking for him. The puzzle books were a massive hit, but as Nintendo proved beyond a doubt in 1991, not all of them need to be adapted into a video game.
The result was arguably one of the most weird games ever translated to console, and it was reflected in the reviews. The game was basically an on-screen Where’s Waldo? book, with a controller rather than a pencil. In Medium and Hard mode, the player had to scroll back and forth to view the whole level, and some of those levels were mind-numbing. In the “Cave” level, you needed to find Waldo… in the dark, hiding somewhere on a black screen.
All this demonstrated the main problem with the game: the graphics. In 1991, graphics were hardly cutting-edge and the people you had to sort through in order to find Waldo all looked pretty much the same – blocks that were vaguely people-shaped. And before you say: “Just look for the red-and-white shirt!”, that wasn’t always the case, either. To make the game even harder, some levels changed Waldo’s shirt.
Shaq-Fu (1994)
Truly weird games often generate polarizing reactions, and that’s exactly what happened with Shaq-Fu. The 1994, console-based fighting game is widely panned as one of the worst video games ever, and it features NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal tripping into another dimension in a bid to rescue a boy from a mummy.
Official reviews were mixed at the time, most likely because people weren’t sure what to make of this martial-arts basketball star. But some hated it enough that they got the domain shaqfu.com and turned it into the Shaq-Fu Liberation Front. Their goal? Collect donations to buy all the copies of the game they could find – and destroy them.
That’s some pretty hardcore gaming hate, but there’s another side to the spectrum, too. In 2014, a crowdfunding campaign kicked off to raise money for a sequel – Shaq-Fu: A Legend Reborn. It ultimately raised almost half a million dollars from donors, including one person who gave $35,000 for the honour of having Shaquille O’Neal himself DJ a private party.
Moonwalker (1990)
There was a time when Michael Jackson topped the charts, and 1990s video games loved capitalizing on big names. Moonwalker is, in retrospect, a completely bizarre console game where players dance their way to justice when they control a 16-bit Michael Jackson whose fighting moves are based on his famous choreography. Sparkles around his feet levitate you over – and at – enemies, and Bubbles the Chimp shows up while your erstwhile hero is trying to save children from the Big Bad Guys. Save the kids in the right order, and you’re rewarded with a robot Michael Jackson who can shoot laser beams out of his eyes.
In 2008, IGN took a look back at one of its most weird games to see just how bad it really is – and it’s bad. We might be a little jaded with the way video games look today, but the biggest problems cited included repetition, lazy graphics, and an undeniable weirdness.
LSD (1998)
LSD may or may not stand for the drug of the same name, but the virtual offering was referred to as Life, the Sensuous Dream and Limbo, the Silent Dream. The game itself was also known as LSD: Dream Emulator, which is exactly what it was.
Released alongside an album and a book, the bizarre video game is based on the dream journal of Asmik Ace Entertainment artist Hiroko Nishikawa. The player is enveloped into a surreal environment that’s supposedly based on Nishikawa’s real dreams. In a series of 10-minute episodes the player wanders through the dream world, bumps into other people and objects, and is transported from one ream to the next. Gamers encounter weird creatures there, too, like the Grey Man and the Abyss Demon, who help push players into random dreams and new content.
Since the whole thing is completely random, it’s supposedly impossible to visit the same place twice – except in the two to four minute Flashback mode. Gaining a cult following in Japan, the game only made it to the rest of the world in 2009 and spawned a variety of Creepypastas.
Seaman (1999)
Like many weird games, Seaman is a ‘game’ in the loosest of terms. A sort of pet simulation game, the player is responsible for checking in on their pet at least once a day, and making sure that they’re fed, cleaned and entertained – all the stuff that goes along with a normal pet.
Only, this one wasn’t normal. This one was the stuff of nightmares. The fish-creature sported the human face of the game’s producer, Yoot Saito, and the English version of the game was voiced by Leonard Nimoy.
Over the course of your Seaman’s life, players could get the creatures to evolve, mate, and evolve again, and even raise food for its consumption. At its most evolved, the Seaman turns from a fish into a weird, frog-like creature that will eventually lay eggs and start the whole life cycle over again… and even that highly evolved form had the weird, human face.
Avoid the Noid (1989) and Yo! Noid (1990)
As if one strange release based on the odd, anti-pizza Claymation creature of the Domino’s Pizza ads wasn’t enough, two weird games came to consoles and computers in the late ’80s and early ’90s. In Avoid the Noid, the player took control of a pizza delivery boy who was attempting – obviously – to deliver pizzas to Doom Industries. The apartment building was full of identical floors, and it’s up to the player to jump, somersault and hide their way to the top. All the while, wild Noids are trying to destroy their pizza.
In Yo! Noid (which came with a $1 Domino’s coupon), gamers play a Noid that’s brought in to save the city from Mr. Green and his wild slimes. Largely comprised of graphics and code re-used from another game, Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru, this weird game was just as bizarre as its predecessor – perhaps moreso, just because it was the second installment of an already strange concept. You can also play Avoid the Noid here.
Bible Adventures (1991)
The Bible might be the bestselling book of all time (with figures estimated to currently be somewhere around 5 billion), but we’re pretty sure that no one ever expected Bible stories to be presented in a bizarre, 16-bit format. Bible Adventures was never mainstream, and was sold in Christian bookshops rather than traditional game stores. The release consists of three games and three stories, and they’re weirdly interactive.
In Noah’s Ark, the player wanders through levels collecting animals, which are then stacked on top of the character and carried back to the Ark. Sometimes, animals don’t go willingly, and players must first knock them out. Health lost during these scuffles can be recharged by reading Bible verses scattered throughout the levels.
In David and Goliath, gamers must herd some sheep before they can continue on to retrieve a slingshot and ultimately face down Goliath. To win? Hit him once, in the head.
Baby Moses is perhaps the most weird game. Players control Moses’s sister, Miriam, on a quest to save Moses from the Pharaoh’s men. Along the way, the baby can be tossed around to keep him out of the reach of the guards, but if you drop him, you’d better remember to pick him up again. If you don’t – and you finish running through the level without him – you’ll be rewarded with one of the strangest messages ever: “Good work, but you forgot Baby Moses!”
Goat Simulator (2014)
Weird games – you may be relieved or concerned to hear – aren’t just a thing of the past… In 2014 Coffee Stain Studios released Goat Simulator.
Why? Even they’re not sure. The entire project started out as an in-house joke and a prototype spawned from an internal challenge for game designers to build something as fast as they could. Early videos ended up on YouTube, and it turns out that what people really, really wanted was to run around the world as a goat.
The only goal of the game – if you can even call it a goal – is to break stuff and create as much goat-caused mayhem as you possibly can. You can bash things, break things, and even lick things – to stick them to your goat tongue and thus drag stuff around.
The reaction to the weird game was surprisingly positive (IGN gave it an 8/10), especially when considering that all the glitches that didn’t impact gameplay were simply left in. As a result, you’re likely to see some pretty strange stuff, as your goat self trots along through the absolutely open world. When it comes to weird games, they don’t get much weirder than that.
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