Tired that the pursuit for realism and graphical fidelity has driven most big budget games nowadays to play and look the same? There’s a good, if peculiar, solution to your woes!
It’s time to dive deep into the vast library of PlayStation consoles, which I believe is responsible for the creation of the weirdest, most inventive, and sometimes just plain creepiest games ever made.
Mister Mosquito (PS2)
AfterMetal Gear Solidmade stealth games a thing overnight, it was only a matter of time until they got weird. In 2001, we gotMister Mosquito, a stealth game where you played as a Mosquito whose mission was to suck blood out of a family without getting noticed.
Mister Mosquitowas very weird, even when not being lewd, whichit sometimes was.I never finishedMister Mosquitobecause the novelty wore off rather quickly for me. Still, I’ll never forget expecting something akin to an actual simulator, only to find myself piloting a mosquito that behaved like aMechafrom an anime game, thrusters and targeting systems included.
LSD: Dream Emulator (PS1)
Though it’s one of the older titles on this list,LSDremains the go to game whenever someone mentions peak PlayStation games weirdness. I understand why, as you’ll have a hard time taking a screenshot that doesn’t feel like a picture taken straight out of a dream.
Interestingly, however,LSDis barely a game. There are no objectives, challenges or even a plot to speak of. It’s less like rescuing the princess from the castle, more like a chill trip through the Windows 95 screensaver museum. It doesn’t get more unique than this.
Katamari Damacy (PS2)
A simple way of describing Katamari Damacy is as “that game where you roll everything into a ball”. But, as soon as you’re done talking, someone will go “everything? Like, I’m pretty sure you may’t capture the sun”. That smartass is wrong.
InKatamari, we play as The Prince. We’re tasked by King Of All Cosmos with, well, rolling everything into a ball. We start off small, then, as the ball gets bigger with all the stuff it has picked up, we gain the ability to capture ever-larger objects.Katamari Damacyis weird, funny, easy to grasp, and also a fantastically innocent showcase of the PlayStation 2’s power.
Noby Noby Boy (PS3)
If you foundKatamari Damacyweird, nothing can prepare you forNoby Noby Boy.
Controls-wise, Noby Noby Boy is as simple as it is strange. You play as a sort of animal with a face on both ends of its body. This animal eats objects to gain the ability to stretch from both ends to an unbelievable size. Having players use the left and right analog sticks to make each respective side grow was a seemingly intuitive design choice, though it doesn’t really make the game any less confusing.
Players are used to only controlling one character at a time, andNoby Noby Boyhas you embodying two gigantic twizzlers at the same time.
And, even with all that, I’ve yet to mention the most peculiar part aboutNoby Noby Boy. Though it looks like any other kid-friendly platformer where you’re just supposed to save the world,Noby Noby Boyhad galaxy-spanning ambitions. You see,Noby Noby Boy’sgirlfriend wasn’t in another castle, she was on another planet.
Noby’sobjective was growing to the point of reaching his girlfriend across the stars, so the game recorded every single inch grown by every single player and added it to a grand total. Once the grand total of all Nobys on the Internet had grown long enough to permeate the distance between them, then Noby would have reached its goal. And guess what? It totally did onlysix years after the game’s release.Sadly, this beautiful experiment in growth and cooperation has been delisted from the PlayStation Store.
Vib Ribbon (PS1)
Upon first glance, it’s clear that you can do weirder and more minimalistic thanVib Ribbonwhen it comes to graphics, but the gameplay is up there as well.Vib Ribboncombines elements of side-scrolling with those of a rythm game. Players are walking on a treadmill that will bring obstacles based on the intensity of the game’s soundtrack.
The original Xbox got a lot of deserved love by allowing you to play whatever soundtrack over your games, butVib Ribbondid it first — and with a twist. You could amp up or lower the game’s difficulty by getting theVib RibbonCD out of the console and replacing it with whatever music CD of your choice. This gave players the chance not only to have their desired soundtrack, but to also have it influence the game itself.
Kula World (PS1)
The original PlayStation was the console that really got the ball running for 3D graphics, andKula Worldshows that in the most literal of ways. You play as a beach ball as it fully navigates and flips over floating 3D labyrinths to find keys and get to the next level. It’s a platformer like no other. The closest comparison I can think of isFezifFezhad been done over ten years prior, and in 3D.
It also had a pretty neat and ethereal soundtrack. An inferior version ofKula Worldwould easily dominate the mobile gaming landscape had it been released later, but this way it has the honor of being the strange game about being a beach ball that was ahead of its time.
Tecmo’s Deception: Invitation to Darkness
“James Bondvillain” is a term often associated with rich guys in possession of a lair of sorts filled with all sorts of deadly gadgets he’d gladly use against the good guys. In most movies and games, we tend to go against the James Bond villain-type guy. That, however, is not the case inTecmo’s Deception. Here, we play not as the hero, not as the actual villain, but as the villain’s employee who’s tasked with making the lair as dangerous as possible to prevent adventurers from breaking in.
Being bad provides some unique fun in a game that sadly didn’t spawn an entire genre .
Incredible Crisis (PS1)
As far as simplicity goes, you’ll have a hard time beatingIncredible Crisis. Most of the game’s many challenges don’t require players do more than just hit the same button repeatedly – think the torture fromMetal Gear Solid,but (even) funnier.
Still, simplicity doesn’t equate to normalcy, and the setting ofIncredible Crisisdefinitely doesn’t, either. It tells the story of a hopefully very specific point in time for a Japanese family where every member is dealing with trials, tribulations, and freak accidents worthy of a PG-13 version ofFinal Destination.It has been a long time, but I’m still hard pressed to think of a game that made kid me laugh as much as this one.
Kowloon’s Gate
In the now-goneKowloon Walled City, a relatively small place in China which illegally grew into most densely-populated city in history,Kowloon’s Gatefound one of the most mesmerizing settings in the history of gaming.
Kowloon’sGate’ssimple plot of having to find a number of magical symbols to save the world is quickly forgotten as soon as we begin to marvel at the eerily amazing visuals of cutscenes and the game’s areas.
If you’re looking for a game capable of making you feel like you’re visiting a doomed techno megalopolis in the ’90s, then this is the one for you.
In my opinion,Garageis the holy grail of strange horror games. And, ifKowloon’s Gategot you interested in the subject of Kowloon, then you should definitely try it out.
While it plays more or less like aclassic point & click adventurein a fantastical setting based on Kowloon, everything seems deliberately much more obtuse than it needed to be.Garagetakes the technology-meets-hell visuals seen inKowloon’s Gateto unimaginable heights, and adds an infinitely disturbing plot that I’d honestly have a hard time describing here.
The history ofGarageis almost as interesting as the game itself. It only came out in Japan in the late ’90s in a release so limited thatGaragebecame a thing of myth shortly after release. For two decades, many thoughtGaragewas a game made up by Internet trolls to fool people, but someone was lucky enough to find an actual copy and put the whole thing online to prove its existence. It was only in 2022, 23 years after its original release, thatGaragesaw an English language release that you can now play on Steam.
