![]() It was Saturday, under the sign of Capricorn (see zodiac and Moon Sign on January 8, 1994). The closest I get to that level of weirdness these days is stuff on itch.io, or really deep dives on Steam.We've performed the most in-depth research possible on January 8, 1994, here's what our experts found out: I’ve been playing and loving Okage: Shadow King, but it’s definitely not weird in the way of a game like, say, King’s Field or Shadow Tower (though even that franchise felt pretty formulaic after a while). There’s more budget, more polish, more formula. The PS2 also has a vast library with plenty of weird games, and they have their charm for sure, but the “weird” games on PS2 don’t feel quite as weird as the PS1. It makes it feel like the games themselves are bending at the seams. I think that sense of weirdness also extends to the visuals of PS1 games, especially that distinct texture warping effect. Stuff like LSD Dream Emulator, OverBlood, Vib Ribbon, Chaos Break, Intelligent Qube… it feels like a bunch of little companies with small budgets and strange ideas got devkits and tried to make something of them. A lot of really unpolished and experimental stuff, lots of obscure games by even more obscure developers and publishers. The PS1’s library is a lot larger, a lot weirder. It feels a lot more open than the N64 by comparison. It wasn’t the first 3D console, but it definitely feels like the first console where 3D games where seriously viable from a technical and commercial standpoint. In general, the PS1 felt like the “weirdest” console to me. ![]() For their time, there was certainly nothing like them even today, Tail of the Sun is a far cry from any “caveman simulator” like the upcoming Before or the cancelled B.C. I hope that tools getting cheaper and easier means that we’ll start seeing people outside the large glob of mainstream gaming (and I’m not saying “indie” here because indie games are often trend-followers too) making things again without reference to, or care about, how games “should” be, but now that it’s such a huge industry it’s hard to even find those things.ĪrtDink’s PS1 games - stuff like Tail of the Sun, Carnage Heart, Aquanaut’s Holiday - are some of the most iconic “weird” games in my opinion. I doubt that we would have had much of this stuff that seems so experimental if Japan hadn’t had its own game industry churning things out with an entirely different cultural context. That one seems to have been a port from a generation of consoles we never saw much over here (PC-9800, FM-7, X1) which is probably a gold mine of amazing stuff. There was even a 1991 NES RPG, Tombs & Treasure (JP: Azteka II: Templo del Sol), that was about exploring the ruins of the Mayan civilization and some kind of demonic presence beneath. Shadowrun), high fantasy (a bunch of stuff), some insane hybrid of the two (Paladin’s Quest – I recently researched who did the art on this and bought an artbook of their work and it’s amazing), some weird offshoot of a genre setting (Faxanadu, which I still think has brilliant art). In the NES/SNES era I could pick up an RPG and not know whether it was going to be scifi (e.g. But I do really miss the bizarre variety of setting that there used to be in games. I’m a world and story guy and am totally happy with a text-heavy mess. To be honest I don’t think there were a lot of weird types of action that I miss. ![]() I still don’t, really, but I appreciate that they tried some completely different new things. This is probably really obvious but Zelda 2 was weird as hell. ![]() Worth mentioning SuperBunnyHop has a video on this that is pretty good too! And while the game has several problems, I thought the core idea at the center of the dueling system was neat as hell and I’d like to see more fighting games that throw the rules away in a similar fashion and invent a new approach to the genre. When For Honor came out earlier this year, I was very excited as it seemed like a very different approach to what a fighting game could be. All things considered, the set of rules that define the fighting genre are very limiting in some ways and that’s a shame. I also wish there were more different approaches to fighting games. Yeah, often it’s done for the sake of humor, but I’d like to see more experiments like this or even just small things, like how the original Assassin’s Creed games controls were designed to associate with different parts of the body. One of the things that I have been growing more interested in over the years is how movement can be abstracted in weird fun ways in games like QWOP or Octodad or Surgeon Simulator.
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