What no mention of a Boy and his Blob? Feed a bag of slime jelly beans and watch him turn into crap. I had zero idea of how to get through that game.
And theres some adveture game that you get turned into a cockroach by a voodoo curse and spend the rest of the game trying to get back to normal.
Want a wacky game? How about Wacko?
You were a little alien in a tiny UFO. There were pairs of monsters milling around, and you had to shoot them to make the pair disappear. In the harder levels you could create mutants by shooting unmatched pairs.
Very unique cabinet to that game. It was actually lopsided. Haven’t seen one in probably 10 years…
BTW: I own a Tapper upright, but I’m thinking of selling it. Cool to own one, but I’m starting to run out of space in my house.
Earthworm Jim!
Ahh, the first time I ever walked into a game center in Tokyo…
The weirdest games I’ve seen lately? Hmm… Probably the “walking the dog” simulator – with it’s treadmill-and-leash controls. Or maybe the mah-jong games, with the cute anime babe opponents who lose bits of clothing when you win a round…
As for mo-cap games, besides the police one and the boxing one, there’s the samurai adventure one (you wave the hilt of a katana around), and a couple of music-related ones, which I think were called Samba-De-GO! One had you waving a tambourine around, and the other had a set of maracas. You had to wave them above your head, in front of you, or around your knee level as prompted by the on-screen cues. I am too tall to play those games.
In Japan, Percussion Freaks is known as drumMANIA (I think), and they got up to four or five iterations. Also, drumMANIA could be hooked into an adjacent guitarMANIA machine for ensemble play.
They also have simulation games for Japanese drums (Taiko no Tatsujin) and shamisen. And keyboard games, musical AND typing; there’s nothing like playing a FPS and having to type a 3 to 10 letter combination to fire your weapon.
Ludovic – More weirdness: If I remember correctly, the bear in Crystal Castles was also on a unicycle.
Sexy Parodius.
Basically, it was the horizontal scrolling shooter Gradius (or Nemesis, depending on where you are from) given a new lick of paint. That new lick of paint meant turning everything into “cutesy” graphics and having a somewhat interesting sexual undertone.
Most of these were very weird:
I’ll add:
Nuclear Reactor
Mappy
And of course: Death Race 2000
What do you mean by “Apparently”?
I’ll wager you’ve never trapped in a room with a clown before.
The horror…The Horror…
I remember a boy and his blob. I actually saw a friend beat the game once. You have to get a bunch of vitamens and go to the alien planet or something like that.
The 2nd game is Bad Mojo if I’m not mistaken. Interesting game, but definatly not for those who hate bugs.
There was a sequel called Total Carnage that was slightly based off the Gulf war. Rather fun I remember.
I remember playing a wierd Arcade game a long time ago(Maybe around 1990 or so). You played these Blues Brotherese robbers who would try to break into buildings, elude security and get away with the loot. The entire thing was a little cartoonish and shown from the side, with the side of the building cut away. I think from Level 2 onwards you could slide down on zip lines to the next building.
I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the game though.
Joust!!!
Narc sucked monkey ass. I’ve never seen such a perfect example of a game designed to do nothing but eat quarters.
How bout Frogger? Anyone else notice that the Frog can’t swim and is as big as the cars?
Incredible Crisis. Basically, you play different members of a Japanese family trying to get home in time for Grandma’s birthday party, but on the way they have to deal with bizarre crises, like Dad getting stuck on a Ferris wheel giving a back rub to a moaning blonde nympho who then leaves a bomb on the seat, or Mom being taken hostage by bank robbers in wolf masks who force her to play trumpet in their jazz ensemble.
I never managed to get through it. That game is hard on the thumbs.
Puzzle Bobble. Perhaps not as wacky as some of the ones listed, but damn if you don’t play it for hours without realising.
How about Vib Ribbon?
Basically it is a horizontal scrolling platform game, where you just have to jump over obstacles, as you miss obstacles you devolve into little worms and suchlike. However, the highly unusual retro-vector visuals makes it stand out from the crowd.
Add to that the fact that the levels are dependent on the music. The game senses the types of sounds in the music and uses that to create different obstacles. Even though it is a Playstation game it still lets you put in your own CDs to create levels based on your own music.
Definitely an unusual way to listen to your CD collection.
I’m disappointed, Mr. Jung. The game in question was Time Traveler. Holloseum was a conversion kit that replaced the unreliable laser disc player with an actual PCB with ROMS.
Let’s see: a carpenter has to run beams, walk over uncontrollable elevators and conveyor belts, jump over to take out rivets; at the same time avoid barrels thrown or rolled by a big gorilla, bouncing big rivets, floating fireballs, and hot coal pies. All this to save the ugliest drawn woman in the history of arcades. Also, there is a cheat on some machines that involves jumping and falling through the beams at barrel ! Donkey Kong wacky? Naah.
at barrel level.
Plumber.
In Ka (Mosquito, in Japanese), you play a mosquito out to feed on the Yamada family. What made this game neat was that you saw everything from the mosquito’s perspective.