Weird games from your childhood

[Igor-Rowan]

If you knew about video games as a kid, you probably were aware of the usual suspects (Mario, Sonic, Doom), but what was the oddball of your gaming collection as a kid?

Although I played the Mario games, one of my first platformers was Claw, from the studio that brought us Shadows of Mordor, no really.

Then I played flash games that came in CDs dowloaded from sites, back when internet was for few, where my first "cinematic" game was Steppenwolf: The X-Creatures Project (being a kid that doesn't speak English didn't help in uncovering what it was about), I definitely already talked about it.

My first fighting game was, I kid you not, this:

Spoiler: Brace yourself for the cringe

Yup, you just saw that, a fan-made doujin fighting game based on the Powerpuff Girls.

And my first 3D game, usually one's first mind-blowing experience, was this:
Strangely enough, when I got to play Mario 64, it did blow my mind on how good it was.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

A first-person point and click PC game called Hell Cab. Anybody ever play Hell Cab? I never made much leeway into it, frankly it creeped me out. All I remember is you start off in an airport, hitch a cab in NY, visit the Empire State... then you're somehow transported to a gladiator arena in Roman times... and around this point I always died. The mixture of janky live-action FMVs and bizarre dream logic made it partcularly frightening, at least to a 5 year old. My dad seemed to think it was funny though.

Spoiler: Oh god, here it is. What the hell where they thinking?

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

I have a feeling that games in general were weirder in my childhood. And a lot more creative.

Games that stood out to me as being "weird" were stuff like Space Quest, just a quirky sense of humor and way of things panning out, and the weird stuff you had to do in order to progress the story. Adventure games always had more creativity, Sam & Max was pretty crazy as well.

On Sega Genesis/Megadrive I liked Cyborg Justice. Just a scrolling beat-em-up, but you could outfit your 'borg with different legs, torsos, arms, etc which gave you different moves, stats and abilities. You went around and bashed up other robots, and you could saw, bash or yank pieces off them (inc torsos right off the legs) and then use them to batter other robots, or change them up with your own, based on whoever you were facing. It was great fun, a little clunky in the controls, but given all the things you could do, I thought it executed rather well for it's time.

Skitchin' was another sega title which I loved, kinda like Road Rash but on Rollerblades, where you grab on to cars and slingshot off them to other cars on the freeway to race other bladers. Included stunts and violence, sick soundtrack, it was awesome. The punk nature of it reminded me of the Skate or Die series.

There was a whole lot of FMV being included in games which game them a very trippy vibe, to me anyways. Stuff like Gabriel Knight, Myst/Riven, and Night Trap were all pretty damn strange to play for me at that age.

Bit later on, there was American McGee's Alice, which I think received a sequel about 10 years later. That was pretty freaky for it's time as well, really dark take on Alice in Wonderland.

 

[DeliveryGodNoah_v1legacy]

This is going to sound weird, but for the longest time, I thought Majora's Mask was just this dream I had for YEARS.

It came out when I was about 7, and I vaguely remember seeing snippets of the game back then, but the game was so weird compared to Ocarina of Time (which I played almost religiously), that I honestly thought it was just a dream I had from playing Ocarina of Time so much.

My assumption of what happened is that my father was playing it, and when I tried to watch him he told me to just go outside or to my room to play, so I probably only saw a little bit of it but thought it was just OoT.

However years later in a Blockbuster I saw this golden cartridge with the Zelda logo on it and wanted it so bad, but I was told we couldn't.

It wouldn't be until I was about 14 when I had my first computer that I was able to find the game on the internet and indeed confirm it existed and that what I had seen as a child was confirmed.

I know the story doesn't technically count as a "weird game in my collection", but it was quite literally a "Legend" of a game to me as a child.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

Azure Dreams - An anime dating sim/roguelike/monster breeder/town builder. By the end of the game you have a harem of teen girls fawning over you and you get around town on what my friend and I called the "dong cycle."

Katamari Damacy - No explanation needed.

 

[Kyrian007]

Some of the weird ones from my younger days were coin-ops in arcades. I remember the game they made about the band Journey was in the back room of the diner in my hometown.

Spoiler: Not that Journey, this one

There were also 2nd or third tier fighters like Time Killers. The arcade in a nearby amusement park had a Street Fighter cabinet. Not street fighter 2, Street Fighter. With the actual punch buttons (both broken, obviously.)

Spoiler: Not this one, but similar to

This was the 2 player Japanese version. I believe the rare US release version was called Fighting Street and the cabinet I saw was single player only.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

I remember Solstice being kind of this quirky puzzle-platformer game.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Sacrifice is the weirdest one that I remember. That game was funny though. Very well written. Or maybe I just remember it like that because I was a kid.

 

[CaitSeith]

Phew. Where to start? Lots of my gaming experience as a child was with Commodore 64 and Amiga 500. My father and his friends saved enough money together to eventually buy computers for each one of them, and they shared programs among them (including tons of games).

I got my hands on popular stuff from the time (from Centipede to Lemmings), but also other weird stuff...

Spoiler

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

I was a SNES kid primarily. Weirdest and least-known game I enjoyed then was probably King Arthur's World.

It was kind of like Lemmings, but with much more control over your units (it's still possible for them to accidentally walk off cliffs if you don't pay attention though). Great music, especially in the Goblin Underworld, but the levels get overlong and frustrating towards the end. Zombies can turn any unit into one of their own with the slightest touch, and Trog demons teleport anywhere they want on the map to devour your troops Yoshi-style. There are no checkpoints and each area has a multitude of obstacles that can easily kill Arthur, ending your game:

Spoiler: Boss Theme. Too bad there's only 3 bosses.

Goblin Underworld Levels 1 and 3:

I can neither confirm or deny that the massively multiplayer 2D platformer King Arthur's Gold was based off it. It does have a very similar graphical style, but like I said it was not well-known.

I'll always remember the story about how Demon's Crest generated negative sales due to satanic imagery, but it's still probably better known than my previous example, being part of a Capcom spinoff series.

 

[Kyrian007]

I also played a weird meta-comicbook adventure game when I was a teenager. It was called Noctropolis. It had fmv sequences with some cheap nudity that appealed to the teenage me. But when all was said and done, the absolute best thing about it was the blooper reel that plays during the credits. Makes playing through a fairly sub-par adventure game all worth it.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Back when I was but a wee lad, I loved playing Toejam & Earl.

A couple of aliens who wanted to roll with the gangster but they all said they're too white and nerdy, and who crashed on Earth and had to collect the pieces of their ship so they could go home to Funkotron. Earth is somehow made of stacked layers floating in space connected by elevators. Your enemies include chubby little devils, the bogeyman, moles, dentists, ladies with shopping carts, dudes with lawnmowers, angry bees and gaggles of nerds. Your powerups are cupid wings, tomatoes, uncontrollably fast rocket shoes and a book that makes you fall to sleep. You can kill Santa. There's a guy who dresses like a carrot.

Weirdest part is probably that this game wasn't made in Japan.

 

[Inazuma1]

I had a game from my aunt called Young Merlin, an adventure game that almost feels like an old Sierra point and click with d-pad controls. I say point and click because it gives very few hints about what the hell you're supposed to be doing, so you're often left confused and not knowing how to progress. It was developed by a small team that I'm sure nobody remembers called Westwood Studios. Yes, THAT Westwood. Guess they wanted to dip their toes into the console market before making Command and Conquer.

 

[Imre Csete]

Some restaurant management sim, where you operate a pizza restaurant, what is actually a front for the Italian maffia. You have heist minigames each night while making appealing pizza recipes for the customers at day, so you don't go bankrupt.

 

[meiam]

Mischief makers from the N64 was pretty weird when I was a kid since I didn't know english and didn't realize the main character was just doing mischief. You could actually beat up NPC, grab them and throw them at enemy, literally shake them to steal money and even use them to help you jump further a la mario and yoshi, the level was also made up of block with similar face to the NPC. Th control were really smooth and the gameplay was fast so it felt great to play, but weird.

https://youtu.be/COSjtG8BCAI?t=7m50s

 

[Catnip1024]

I have vague memories of a computer game that was essentially an advert for some washing-up liquid / laundry company. Persil, maybe? You went around as this kid firing soap bubbles from a gun. I think.

The fact that the internet appears to have no trace of this makes me question how authentic my memories are, though.

 

[Baffle]

Circus Games. Most of it was fine, but I never worked out how to not die in the tiger round.
Cadaver. Pretty much no idea what was going on.

The weirdest one involved some sort of space maggots, but I can't quite grasp the name. Think it began with an R.

(These are early Amiga games BTW.)

 

[laggyteabag]

I used to play a game on the PS1 called KKND: Krossfire. It is a RTs game that was released in 1998, and probably handled terribly on the PS1's controller, but I honestly don't remember. The game even had a splitscreen mode, and was a lot of fun (I think) with my brother. I eventually accidentally trapped the disk under a door, and it snapped in half.

The game is the sequel to the first KKND game (that I never played), and takes place in the year 2179, after a nuclear war that pretty much destroyed the planet, and after the first war for the surface.

There are 3 factions:
The Survivors - The humans. These guys basically hid underground during the war. They're basically a traditional military force. I also remember that they had regenerating health.
Evolved - The mutants. These guys basically live in huts, worship their gods, and they also have giants wasps.
Section 9 - The robots. These guys used to be farmers, but their crops have been destroyed, and they're out for revenge. All their equipment and weapons used to be farming tech, so thats neat.

Apparently the game is on GOG for a cool ?5, but I wouldn't touch that with a 10ft barge pole. I loved the game as a kid, but the chances of me enjoying it now are slim-to-none. I try not to play older games, because i'd rather keep the memories of how cool and awesome the game was, instead of ruining it with how bad it actually is.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

Mouse-trap.

Frustration.

Kerplunk.

Go for Broke.

Mini Golf.

Crushing live bullets with bricks and losing your hearing for a few seconds as everybody goes silent within your vicinity.

Ahh, simple times.