Stacy Conradt
The Quick 10: 10 Bizarre Video Games
by Stacy Conradt - August 28, 2009 - 4:14 PM

q10

Everyone knows the video game classics – you can’t go wrong with Mario, Zelda, or Donkey Kong. But there are some games out there that make you really wonder what the publisher was thinking when they green-lighted the idea. Although, to be fair, a couple of plumbers wandering around in a fantasy world jumping down pipes and talking to human toadstools doesn’t sound very profitable either… At any rate, here are 10 video games I thought were particularly strange.

1. Grey’s Anatomy: The Video Game. IGN sums this up perfectly and eloquently with one word: Seriously? It’s apparently a collection of mini-games that includes such thrillers as ripping up photographs, flicking away doubts and, yes, surgery (that part might actually be pretty cool). Seems slightly unnecessary.

ninjabread2. Ninjabread Man. The name totally made me laugh, but the game is definitely… half-baked, if you will? Yes, you’re a gingerbread man with throwing stars and a machete, which is sweet. But according to all of the reviews, the gameplay is terrible, the graphics are abysmal, and the bugs are rampant. But still… it’s a murderous pastry! How often does that happen?? Oh, wait…

3. Bible Buffet. This was for the NES circa 1993. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with games that reference religion. But I don’t really understand the food reference. Evil food is out to get you, and you’re armed only with utensils to ward them off (and nary a spork in the bunch). And according to the reviews, the most religious reference you’ll get in this game is the title, so color me ultra confused.

4. Speaking of weird food-based games… BurgerTime. The entire premise of the game is to build sandwiches while avoiding tyrannical eggs, pickles, and hot dogs (cleverly named Mr. Egg, Mr. Pickle, and Mr. Hot Dog). Despite the incredibly strange premise, this sucker is ridiculously addicting. Between this and Marble Madness, I lost a good chunk of my childhood to the NES. I can hear the music in my head right now. And I think you should too.

5. Captain Novolin. Diabetics, unite! We all know there’s brand placement in video games, but this SNES game is ridiculous. The eponymous hero is diabetic and he’s trying to rescue the mayor of the town, but aliens keep trying to thwart him by turning themselves into cake and cookies. He replenishes his life meter by eating healthy meals to keep his blood sugar at safe levels. It was sponsored by Novo Nordisk, the makers of Novolin insulin. Sounds like… fun…?

journey6. Journey Escape. Yes. As in the band Journey. As in Steve Perry. As in Atari. You had to get each band member through a throng of obsessed fangirls and intrusive paparazzi. Every time a band member was held up by an obstacle, money came out of the bank account. Zero money = dead Journey. I think you’ll agree that the likenesses are amazing, no? You can read more about it here and even play it if you want to download an emulator. If anyone does, please let us know how awesome it is.

7. Desert Bus. This was only one piece of a 1995 Sega game that actually never got released, but it’s too weird to not mention. As part of Penn and Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors game, players had to pilot a bus through the desert from Tucson to Vegas. You have no passengers, and you can only go a maximum of 45 mph. And it’s real time. Even worse, the bus veers to the right just enough so that enterprising players can’t just tape the button down and go do something else for eight hours. If you do veer off the road, your bus gets towed back to Tucson… also in real time. The scenery never changes. And if you make it to Vegas, all you have to look forward to is the return trip. You will score exactly one point if you make the one-way trip.

8. Custer’s Revenge. Wow. This one is really bad. You’re not even going to believe me. You’re General Custer, clad in nothing but a hat, boots and a bandana. That’s it. And you’re, um, visibly excited. For the whole game. Your goal is to dodge arrows and cannonballs so you can have sex with (rape, according to some women’s rights group) a naked Native American woman named Revenge. Despite the horrible and offensive plot line, the graphics are so pixel-y and, well, 1982, that it’s not like you’re getting much reality out of it. If you’re looking for a pixel-y ‘80s game to provide that kind of entertainment, you’d be better off with Leisure Suit Larry.

9. Baby Boomer. I’m willing to bet this NES game was made solely based on the “clever” title. You use the duck hunt gun to shoot things in the path of a baby who is crawling along relentlessly toward his doom. Levels include both heaven and hell. You have to protect a baby in heaven? How is that even fair?

10. Mr. Gimmick! This one sounds like many sleepless nights to me – if it doesn’t induce nightmares in a child, I don’t know what will. A little girl receives a new doll for her birthday (a gimmick doll, apparently) and loves it so much that she starts to neglect her other toys. So, naturally, her other toys kidnap her and suck her into an alternate toy-only universe. I’m a little freaked just thinking about it. If there are porcelain dolls involved, just count me out.

I know you guys have played some doozies over the years. Share them in the comments! And have a lovely weekend.

Admittedly, these are Nintendo-heavy because that’s my area of expertise. But be sure to share your weird games from any format – Sega, X-Box, heck, let’s even go back to DOS. I know there must be some strange DOS games out there.
Have a Q10 request? I’m on Twitter and I’m all ears! Err… all keys. Something.

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Comments (39)

  1. Not a single comment yet huh? Um let me see.

    Yes i can totally hear the music for burger time hahaha….what a GREAT game. i could never get past like level 6 or something.

    Oh i know 7th Cross Evolution!! This was one weird sucker!! you start off as a little slug or something and you go around eating things smaller than you and avoiding the bigger guys. then there’s this weird boss creature at the very beginning stage that kills you in one hit!!! I gues you’re supposed to go back when you’re strong enough but i never got that far even though i invested hours and hours and hours and hours to it.

    oh and then you unlock different body parts by going into this weird paint mini game where depending on the pattern and color of when you fill in different “cells” on a grid. It had absolutely NO DIRECTION whatsoever, so you just wandered around um..eating stuff.

    It was very weird. Sadly to say i did enjoy it. check it out it was on dreamcast

    posted by xanderjones on 8-28-2009 at 4:49 pm

  2. There cannot possibly be a more bizarre game than Wario Ware: Smooth Moves for the Wii. I love showing it to friends for the first time. They stand there slack-jawed watching it before jumping in wholeheartedly, picking noses, drinking water, shaking the bugs off a banana, etc. It’s an absolute classic.

    posted by Matty on 8-28-2009 at 5:06 pm

  3. My aunt has a Burger Time arcade machine in her basement.

    posted by Steven on 8-28-2009 at 5:09 pm

  4. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem for Game Cube. The long and short of this game is controlling a cast of characters through various time periods trying to find something. The weird part is when your character gets scared, weird stuff starts happening to your TV. For example, your TV might “turn itself off” for a few moments, then jump you right back into the action. One time the game was “deleting my saves.” I sat there in horror until I realized that was a joke my Gamecube was playing on me.

    posted by Chris on 8-28-2009 at 5:15 pm

  5. Attack of the Mutant Camels for the Commodore 64. (http://www.the-commodore-zone.com/articlelive/articles/83/9/Jeff-Minter/Page9.html)

    While listening to KMEL 106FM, the programmer decided to use the mascot as his hero and the frequency as the score for killing said camels.

    posted by Boofus on 8-28-2009 at 5:31 pm

  6. Has anyone ever played Dr. Brain? Its a computer game from back in the mid 90s where a Mad Scientist and his Lab Rat switched brains. You had to do a lot of memory games, puzzles, math ect. to help the Lab Rat (Rathbone) rebuild the Scientist’s brain. It was like Brain Training for kids from 7 to 15. Then there was Math Blaster! Math Blaster was an alien who, with his space ship, solved Math equations to zap space garbage into his fuel tank and process them into fuel to travel at light speed to catch his enemies who carelessly threw garbage into space. Like Captain Planet meets Space Ghost. PC Games never seem to let me down when it comes to surprises…

    posted by Kate on 8-28-2009 at 5:32 pm

  7. I burnt off many an hour playing Journey Escape as a wee bairn. Imagine my absolute confusion when I learned that there was a real life band called Journey!

    Also, I feel a deep and burning desire to find a bootleg of that Penn and Teller game! That sounds too ridiculous for words.

    posted by EMStoveken on 8-28-2009 at 6:13 pm

  8. Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker on Sega was awesome.
    I remember playing just to hear the music and use up all my “magic points” just make Michael make all the enemies on the screen do a synchronized dance number.

    posted by holly on 8-28-2009 at 6:27 pm

  9. I played Conflict on DOS. You are the prime minister of Israel, and you either make friends with your neighbors, or go to war with them. You try to disarm any nuclear activity going on in the countries around you, while secretly funding your own (if you so choose). A newspaper comes out at the end of every turn, and tells you how you are doing. Oh, and you have to keep the Palestinians happy, too. If you make your neighbors mad enough, or if you choose to nuke a neighbor, the game ends and the newspapers will judge your score. Insanely addicting to last longer than the last time you played!

    posted by Starla on 8-28-2009 at 6:36 pm

  10. I remember seeing the Journey game. Each character had a black and white photo of a band member’s face pasted onto the colorful 8-bit computer graphics. They would fly through space shooting things with their instruments.

    My brother and I loved Journey, but we just stared slack-jawed at the game going, “What the heck?”

    posted by Bryan on 8-28-2009 at 8:08 pm

  11. I always thought it was hilarious that there was a Hell’s Kitchen video game.

    posted by Jill on 8-28-2009 at 9:09 pm

  12. I had Captain Novolin as a kid (I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 3). My Certified Diabetes Educator gave it to me. She must’ve gotten it from a drug rep. But as a young diabetic kid, Captain Novolin was awesome. He was diabetic and you had to check his blood sugar and then give him insulin in between levels. Sugar was evil. Sounds like my life to this day!!!!!

    posted by C on 8-28-2009 at 9:23 pm

  13. Eternal Darkness would be my vote as well, but maybe not weird like this list. It’s a game that I’ve played through many, many times, and love every minute of, but it is very freaky when you walk into a room and the Windows Blue Screen Of Death pops up. (especially as the GameCube runs Linux, ha)

    For weird games, I think my list would include the Bug Swatter game that came in Mario Paint for the SNES. Your mouse controlled the flyswatter, and the bugs just kept coming…then when you got to 100 you got to fight the boss fly, then the game continued, but added bees and wasps and larger bugs. Great fun but weird as all get out!

    posted by Amauriel on 8-29-2009 at 12:09 am

  14. In keeping with the Bible theme, we had Bible Baseball when I was a kid. Each “pitch” was a question about something in the Bible. A correct answer would give you a hit, an incorrect answer would give you a strike. (And if you were playing in single-player mode, your wrong answers gave the computer a hit.) A hit would randomly be a single, double, triple, or home run, and just for fun, every once in a while when you got a hit, the shortstop would run out and catch the ball, and you’d be told, “You was [sic] robbed!”

    Thanks to this game, I will never forget that the second chapter of Obadiah is about “absolutely nothing” because there is only one chapter. Good times.

    posted by Rachel on 8-29-2009 at 1:17 am

  15. Back in the 80s, Nintendo put out these hypergroovy LCD video game watches. They were the size of a stack of credit cards, with L and R buttons and an LCD screen. I had a few of them, but the most bizarre one involved tiny people leaping from a burning building. You controlled two firemen holding a small trampoline, with which you would bounce the people into an ambulance at the other side of the screen. If you missed one, it hit the pavement, and turned into an angel. Three angels, game over.

    posted by Joe Maz on 8-29-2009 at 2:53 am

  16. Anyone remember M*A*S*H for the 2600?

    posted by Steve on 8-29-2009 at 5:14 am

  17. On the TurboGrafx-16 there was a game called JJ and Jeff. It was a little side scrolling platformer in which the main characters ran and jump and kicked things… but you could also crouch down and spray your enemies with something from a little aerosol can. In the japanese original one though your characters were squatting down to fart and the little gas cloud would float across the screen to kill your enemies.

    posted by CharlesP on 8-29-2009 at 6:43 am

  18. Revolution X. A horrible corporation called the New World Order (NON) Takes over the world and bans music, television, and video games. Aerosmith gets captured and you have to rescue them as the game progresses or see the bad ending. Best part…you defeated enemies by hurling CDs at them.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_X

    posted by Paula on 8-29-2009 at 10:43 am

  19. It’s the Ginger Dead man butt horn!!!!! I love that clip :-)

    posted by Rob on 8-29-2009 at 10:57 am

  20. I used to play Captain Novolin all the time! Novo Nordisk gave the game and SNES systems to doctors, who seem to have though it ridiculous. My Dad’s an endocrinologist, so they thought it was a good idea for his patients- he just brought the machine right home for us to use. Thanks Novo Nordisk! My favorite part (read:most ridiculous) of the game was that you began each day with an insulin shot that could determine how strong you started the level – it was a kind of mini game where you had to stop the meter at the right place. Weird as hell.

    posted by Steve C on 8-29-2009 at 11:19 am

  21. Don’t forget the DOS game Bouncing Babies. You move the two paramedics carrying a stretcher and must catch the babies falling out of a burning building and bounce them into the ambulance. Very strange–spent quite a bit of my elementary school years bouncing those babies.

    posted by Kate on 8-29-2009 at 11:35 am

  22. We Heart Katamari! It’s an awesome game with the simplest plot ever: role things up. You have a ball and you role up little stuff like paper clips and pennies, but then move your way up to bigger things like cats and potted plants and cars and elephants and houses and landmarks and continents and gods… And the music is fantastic.

    posted by Ethan on 8-29-2009 at 11:46 am

  23. My two favorite freak games were available in the 80′s–my absolute favorite was FOOD FIGHT by ATARI where you had to outrun maniacal chefs throwing all manner of food at you while you tried to get to the other side of the screen to eat a dripping ice cream cone; oh the quarters I pumped into that machine, love Revolution X with Aerosmith, I think I own that for every system it was developed for, and a weirder game with a line that you had to encapsulate the whole screen in shaded area boxes called Qix/Super Qix. Thank God for emulators like MAME–2 others I adored CRAZY CLIMBER and JACK AND THE BEANSTALK. You can reminisce about all these kinds of things at http://www.comicbookheroesdvdreview.com

    posted by gwolfie on 8-29-2009 at 12:40 pm

  24. lest we forget shaq-fu.

    shaquille o’neil’s kung fu sega game
    has virtually nothing to do with
    basketball, except shaq has a move
    where he throws a flaming basketball.

    posted by laustin on 8-29-2009 at 1:27 pm

  25. Wow. There’s a video game about Journey. I’m actually kind of pleased. Not that I’m particularly a Journey fan; I just think it’s awesome that a band has its own video game. Actually, that reminds me of an idea I had. I had no means of actually creating this, of course, but I seriously had an idea for a video game based on Queen based on their early days. In my idea, they were trapped in Rhye (which is a fantasy world Freddie Mercury made up that features in some of their early songs) and have to get out. I also thought it would be cool to make a video game for Pink Floyd, too. Never got around to planning that one out, though.

    Every band should have a video game.

    posted by Pippin the Mercury on 8-29-2009 at 7:51 pm

  26. Short Order, a power pad version of Burger Time that was kind of like Simon Says.

    Dizzy the Adventurer [NES and other]. The Flinstones Game. Alfred Chicken. Videomation

    I played all these on the NES

    Videomation should be on this list. It was a drawing ‘game’

    posted by Meister Jazz on 8-29-2009 at 8:24 pm

  27. BURGERTIME was the best game ever…And yes, totally addicting!!! I still have it on my computer and play it when I have the time…

    posted by Laurel on 8-29-2009 at 9:37 pm

  28. Bible Buffet and a whole slew of other games from the same company are available for play, free, at the following link:
    http://www.wisdomtreegames.com/arcade.html

    posted by Bill on 8-29-2009 at 11:28 pm

  29. @Laurel
    Totally agree with you. Burgertime is the best game I’ve ever played when I was in gradeschool which made me cut classes at one point. LOL

    posted by aion kinah on 8-30-2009 at 1:43 am

  30. Does anyone remember the one with the Domino’s character? I think it was Yo Noid! or something like that. I remember having to dodge obstacles while skateboarding to deliver the pizza.

    posted by Heather on 8-30-2009 at 3:22 am

  31. http://www.gametrailers.com/video/angry-video-screwattack/52921

    This game should have been #1 on the list.

    posted by Joe on 8-30-2009 at 12:51 pm

  32. @Bill

    Thanks for the heads up!! I love the oldschool Christian-themed games. People were so excited to make religious games that they never really stopped to give them plots or good gameplay… as a result they are some of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen.

    posted by Mary on 8-30-2009 at 6:25 pm

  33. I had a game called A Boy and His Blob where you had to feed the blob diffrent flavored jelly beans to turn him into different objects to use to defeat (I think) aliens.

    I also had a game based on the Three Stooges where in one part you had to have Stooge slap fights and you had to retrieve oyster crackers out of a big bowl of soup with a spoon.

    Kids have no idea what they’re missing now lol.

    posted by Stephanie on 8-31-2009 at 12:11 am

  34. Am I the only one that still has Journey and the 2600 to play it on?

    posted by Wayne on 8-31-2009 at 9:51 am

  35. We had an early home computer when I was a kid, an Epson with orange lettering on a black screen. I had 2 games on it. “The Orb of Zot” and some game we called ‘killing peasants’. Neither had graphics, just words. “The Orb” said stuff like, “You enter the castle and can see a door to the north and east. There is a chest here” and you’d do “o” for open “l” for light if you had something in your inventory and to move you’d do N,S,E or W. When you entered the room you’d see something like, “There’s a Chimera here!” and you’d have to battle. Awesome stuff :) The Peasant game was very pastoral. “You have X peasants and bushels of grain, each bushel can feed X peasants or plant X acres, what do you want to do this season?” and you’d determine how much went for food or growing crops. Sometimes you had to judiciously kill off peasants….

    I’ll continue in another post on the BEST GAME EVER…..

    ~Bethy

    posted by Bethy on 8-31-2009 at 3:09 pm

  36. To continue – The BEST GAME EVER

    Eric the Unready (PC platform)
    OMG was that a fun game. It was a little more fancy than my DOS games as there were graphics, but they moved VERY little and it was a word game, where you had to type your verb to do something. “Walk,” “Look,” “Open,” “throw,” “Throw Up” etc. And yes, unconventional phrases were used. It parodied TONS of movies and TV shows as you moved our hero “Eric the Unready” (A knight who got rusted into his armor in the opening scenes….) through the various levels. Fantasy Island, The Wizard of Oz, The Addams Family and Star Trek are some of the shows parodied, absolutely hilariously!

    (Video Game Gods, Hear my ferverent plea! Return this game to SOME platform in all it’s original glory!!!)

    Anyone else a fan??
    ~Bethy

    posted by Bethy on 8-31-2009 at 3:23 pm

  37. The Bible Game. It’s for the original XBox as well as the PS2. It’s set up like a game show. It also has AWESOME mini games with funny Christian rock. I love it and I’m an atheist. :D

    posted by CourtC777 on 8-31-2009 at 4:47 pm

  38. I remember that game that Bethy was talking about. There were no graphics but you had to determine the number of bushels to feed your people. I would love to play that again but doesn’t seem to be around nor do I remember the name. :(

    posted by Viny on 3-15-2010 at 1:16 am

  39. The game is Hamurabi =]

    posted by Viny on 3-15-2010 at 1:19 am

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