Bring back the weird

Once upon a time videogames were quirky almost by definition – a pill-munching yellow puck chased by cuddly ghosts or a portly plumber jumping flaming barrels to rescue his princess chum from the clutches of an angry gorilla anyone? However, as videogames have marched into the mainstream it seems that some of the wanton madness has been lost en route.

Put another way, when the San Francisco Chronicle compiled the nine (nine?) most ‘bizarre’ video games of all time only two titles from the last five years made the shortlist, and none were on next-generation gaming platforms. Anyway, see what you make of their slightly truncated countdown:

Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee (1997; PlayStation)
An action/adventure from the warped mind of Lorne Lanning. Help Abe, a bug-eyed ‘Mudokon,’ prevent the evil ‘Glukkons’ from turning his compatriots into meat popsicles. Er, okay...

Alien Hominid (2004; Gamecube, PlayStation 2)
Sure, this side-scrolling blaster has also appeared on Xbox LIVE Arcade. Nevertheless it started life as a sketchy-looking PC Flash game and owes a big debt of gratitude to the old skool likes of Contra and Metal Slug.

Frog Bog (1982; Intellivision)
They surely don’t make ‘em like this anymore – which is probably a good thing. In short, one or two players are frogs, leaping from lily pad to lily pad catching as many flies as possible. The player with the most flies as night falls wins, and that’s it!

Rez (2002; PS2)
A dazzling piece of wire-frame eyecandy that managed to combine its rather basic shooting gameplay with mesmerising trance music. Made a hugely welcome return on Xbox LIVE Arcade last year, resplendent with stunning HD visuals.

Grim Fandango (1998; PC)
A hard-boiled point-and-click adventure played out by skeletons and other spooky characters from the Mexican ‘Day of the Dead’ festival. Yep, you could say that this one’s properly bizarre.

BurgerTime (1982; arcade, Intellivision)
Help Peter Pepper build a better burger by capturing the necessary components, many of which have come to life and are wandering the single-screen platform environments. This sort of thing passed for entertainment back in the day, but we note that no-one’s been in a rush to resurrect it since.

Katamari Damacy (2004; PS2)
Roll random objects up into increasingly massive balls in order to restore the stars to the night sky. Or something like that. Either way it’s a simple but utterly genius concept, is madder than a bucket of badgers and we love it unreservedly.

Elite Beat Agents (2006; Nintendo DS)
Tough-talking Men in Black help assorted citizens overcome their difficulties and chase away an alien invasion via the medium of synchronised cheerleading. Impossibly joyous in every way.

Seaman (1999; Dreamcast)
Nurture a larval fish-thing until it grows a human face and starts insulting you. Leonard Nimoy, for reasons best known to himself, handled the narration duties. If there was an educational component it must have passed us by, and it certainly frightened the kids. Us too, for that matter.

Well, there you have it. So what’s missing from this list? We can certainly think of a few deserving candidates, but we’d like to hear your suggestions? And is it really the case that next-gen games just aren‘t weird enough any more…?