Have you ever played a game that made you wonder what the developers were thinking when they created it? Did it make you wonder what guy at the business meeting thought that the game was a good enough idea to give it funding and a production team? I don’t know about you but I have played quite a few games over the years that have seriously made me wonder why they even exist at all. Now keep in mind that this is just my opinion. There are a whole lot of sh***y games out there that probably shouldn’t have seen the light of day, but these are a few of my favorite games that make me ask WTF?!
Mister Mosquito
This stinker of a title from the PlayStation 2 era had a whole lot of us scratching our heads and eventually cursing anyone that ever had anything to do with the creation of this game. The premise is simple: you are a mosquito that has found his way into a home in Japan. You need blood to survive, but in order to get it you have to feed off of the humans in the house without getting caught. If you do get caught, then you get squashed flat and you have to start all over again. Sounds like fun, huh? Well it’s not. Honestly the only point in the game that was even remotely interesting was when you were trying to feed off of the daughter of the house while she was in the tub. Even though you never actually see anything, it’s one of the most difficult stages to complete.
Toilet Kids
Here’s how this game starts out: you play a young kid who wakes up in the middle of the night and needs to ‘make a deposit at the porcelain bank.’ For those of you who missed it, the kid gets up to poop. Anyway, that’s when things get weird. He’s handling business when suddenly he’s sucked down the toilet and into a world where he has to run for his life and fight turds of all shapes and sizes–all while trying to find his way back out again. All poop jokes aside, one of the more bizarre things about this game is the fact that in one most inopportune cutscene, you actually see the characters twig and berries. And that is why this title from the old Turbografx 16 makes the list.
Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom
No, this is not a new series coming to Adult Swim. It is actually an old-school NES title from 1988. You play through the game as the vegetarian knight, Sir Cucumber. The game is pretty straight-forward, really. You are a knight, tasked by King Broccoli to travel the length and breadth of the Salad Kingdom, in search of Princess Tomato. Like all disappeared princesses in the Nintendo universe, she was kidnapped. And by none other than a giant, malevolent pumpkin. Of course. The most interesting thing about this game is not that it is the vegan equivalent of Zelda. It is the fact that the combat style and controls for this game may very well have been an early template or influence for Pokémon .
LSD Dream Emulator
There is really only one thing about this game that is truly interesting. It was created from a journal of dreams had by the game’s creator Hiroko Nishikawa, from Asmik Ace Entertainment. Now the weird thing about this is that it’s actually not a game at all. There’s no plot and no order of events that you have to complete. Hell, there aren’t even other characters within the game itself for you to react to or interact with. You literally just wander around and examine and interact with the objects of this crazy-ass world that was literally dreamed up by a game-maker who decided to write down everything he could remember about his dreams…for ten years. Yup. Dude spent ten years of his life writing down every vivid detail about every dream he had. Although after playing the game and reading the title, we are fairly certain he was on some seriously heavy drugs during those days.
Seaman
The best I can figure is that this game was released in 1999 and everyone believed it was going to be the end of the world or at the very least the end of technology and modern commerce, so the developers of the game didn’t really give a rat’s ass how it did on the shelves. It’s really the only logical explanation. It’s supposed to be a virtual pet game, but the pet you have is a man-fish thing that is equal parts benign and terrifying. Then the insanity grows as your seaman starts yelling at you. Sometimes he even berates you for being stupid. He even asks you questions and starts spouting gibberish. I actually read someone else’s take on this game and he said that the only reason that the Sony Dreamcast had to die was because it was the only way that anyone could ensure that this game would never come back.
The Stanley Parable
I wasn’t really sure what to think when a friend tried to explain what this game was about. You play as Stanley, a lackluster employee who sits in an office all day doing exactly what the prompts on your computer terminal tell you to do. That’s it. No questions, no thoughts, nothing… you just do what the computer tells you to. But then something weird happens. The prompts stop coming. You don’t know what to do. So Stanley does something that he’s never done before, he gets up and explores the place where he works in search of the reason behind the loss of commands being sent to his terminal. Sound fun to you? I didn’t think so. Except this game actually is pretty interesting because of its visceral feel. If you have ever worked in an office building, this game will strike a chord with you. It’s actually quite interesting, although a little slow at times.
Ai Cho Aniki
Bodybuilding was huge in the nineties. All the movie star, action heroes of the day were super-buff and presumably just as tough as they looked (boy, what a let down when we grew up and found out what they were all really like). So it’s no surprise that this game from 1995 featured bodybuilders as the protagonists of the game. Except, there really wasn’t much of a point at all to this PC pariah. Computer gamers all over gave this game a whack (though oddly it didn’t really catch on in the USA) and found that it was really nothing more than a huge collection of muscle-bound, greased-up dudes grinding on each other. Now I am told that there is actually a purpose and plot to this game, but to date, no such myth has ever been confirmed. And honestly, I am okay not knowing.
Goat Simulator
I am honestly at a loss over this title. I don’t really know what to think. I mean, during the trailer for the game a quote was displayed saying that the game was broken and stupid and that you’d be better off spending your money somewhere else. But what’s stranger than that is the fact that this game is seriously real and is seriously coming out for you to buy (or not buy) and play on your console. It’s a game about a goat that is on the loose and causing trouble. And that’s about it. It’s a game about a goat doing…well…um…goat stuff. Will I play it? Probably. Just to see if there is seriously a game out there that’s as odd as this. I need to know it really exists.
Catherine
Atlus has never been a company to pull punches when it comes to weirdness in games. They have created a full line-up of frustrating and, at times, irritating games that have made me wonder why people would even want to play them with any frequency. But naturally when I saw the trailers for Catherine , my interest was piqued. Beautiful woman and a dumb ass trying to score and then just when things started getting a little hot, everything shifted to some bizarre game where Vincent has sheep horns and is running around in his boxers. But then there’s the sheep everywhere else that are trying to warn you about what’s going on in the real world of Vincent’s life. I don’t know. It’s like the creator of Q-Bert had an idea for another game while tripping on acid and watching the Spice channel.
Icarus Proudbottom & The Curse of the Chocolate Fountain
Diarrhea fans rejoice! This game is for you. This is actually one of a few titles under the banner of Icarus Proudbottom . But this game is quite possibly one of the most bizarre games I have ever seen. It follows the story of a young fellow who has been cursed with eternal, continuous pooping. So much so that it actually lifts him skyward and even into space. If that isn’t weird enough for you, he even garners the admiration of an owl who joins him on his quest. That’s not even all…not yet. You fight your way through a ton of enemies throughout the game, but the most notorious of your enemies in the game is none other than President Barack Obama himself. Yep, they went there. Oh, and this game is free for download on your computer.