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Weird Atari 2600 games


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I think that Worm War 1 is a weird game. It's still an awesome game, but I think it's weird.

 

Ha, no doubt about WW1. I'd like a copy of that but can't seem to find it. My sister works in a game store that sells all kinds of old games but she's never come across a copy.

 

I copped some WW1 sound effects and used them in the intro to one of the songs I recorded as a little inside joke that nobody but me and my siblings get: http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=9673685

 

As for weird games, I'll see your Worm War and raise you a Cosmic Creeps.

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Fast Food, Megamania, and Journey Escape all come to mind, but the single weirdest game I've ever played on the VCS is probably Walker, aka Clown Down Town, aka Schussel, der Polizistenschreck. It has this incredibly dreary East German vibe to it -- it's kind of the "Worker and Parasite" of VCS sidescrolling character games. The backgrounds are beautiful, but the gameplay is as if someone read about video games in a poorly translated book, and tried to implement the idea as best they could. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErLYUdP1IEs
Yes, Clown Down Town is pretty weird - but I like it! "It has this Incredibly dreary East German vibe to it" - very interesting!

 

And don't forget Fire Spinner!

Edited by Mister VCS
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  • 5 years later...

Sorry to revive a 6 year old thread, but I'm making sensible stories for a lot of these games. All of them feature a cast of characters: Captain TOM, Commander DAN, and their assistant RUBY. Captain TOM is down on his luck, usually getting kidnapped by the antagonist and transformed into its kind, which is why there are few games where he is the playable character. The playable characters are usually Commander DAN and RUBY. They're strong and brave and care about their captain.

 

For example, Worm War I is about Captain TOM being captured by giant worms and transformed into one, which leads to Commander DAN and RUBY shooting down the worms including Captain TOM's mutation so he can be rescued.

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  • 2 years later...

Centipede and Millipede are pretty damn weird with my stories for them. You're playing as Carl Lewis (tech expert of the Global Outerscope team) and Miranda Evans (the medic), shrunken down to a microscopic level and fighting bloodsucking, mutant bugs atop protagonist Jackson Stone's head. I don't know what the mushrooms would be.

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  • 1 month later...

BASIC Programming. This is one of a kind, right? Is there a programming "game" for any other console?

 

Air Raid. Game itself isn't weird, but the ultra rarity, unusual cartridge design and mystery behind "Men-A-Vision" adds to the weirdness factor.

 

Beat Em and Eat Em and all of the other Mystique porn games.

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You know, until reading this thread I hadn't really stopped to consider just how weird some of these games are. They've been a part of my life since childhood, so a clown digging around underground in search of cherries (Mr. Do) never seemed any more or less weird than a guy digging around underground looking to inflate alligators to death with a bike pump (Dig Dug). And yea, wth was up with Amidar??

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You know, until reading this thread I hadn't really stopped to consider just how weird some of these games are. They've been a part of my life since childhood, so a clown digging around underground in search of cherries (Mr. Do) never seemed any more or less weird than a guy digging around underground looking to inflate alligators to death with a bike pump (Dig Dug). And yea, wth was up with Amidar??

 

Q*bert is another weird one. You have to wonder what the heck they were smoking with regard to some of these early arcade concepts.

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BASIC Programming. This is one of a kind, right? Is there a programming "game" for any other console?

 

Air Raid. Game itself isn't weird, but the ultra rarity, unusual cartridge design and mystery behind "Men-A-Vision" adds to the weirdness factor.

 

Beat Em and Eat Em and all of the other Mystique porn games.

That seemed a thing. I have Basic cartridges for the Bally Astrocade and Odyssey2 too. I guess they tried to make the system seem more flexible and useful.

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... this is the first time I've seen Clown Downtown. It really is a depressing mockery of a game. There's bright animated backgrounds with lots of moving sprites, most of which are stolen from Activision games anyway. I recognize the scorpions from Pitfall, the birds from Frostbite and Barnstorming (same sprite in both games), the cows from Stampede, and trees from Sky Jinks (this is probably not a full list), and some sprites that are not-quite-direct rips, like the yellow planes that look like half-sized versions of the plane from Barnstorming and the balloons that look like vertically-squished versions of the balloons from Sky Jinks. Plus I'm sure I've seen the whale and the sailboat sprites before, but I can't quite place them.

 

But that's all irrelevent to gameplay, Instead, all the "action" happens in the bottom third of the screen, and that action is just a slow-moving clown with a jerky jump leaping over ... British policemen, I think? There's no other enemies. All the while creepy off-key music with no discernible melody (I swear, it just sounds like random notes) is playing, and it gets higher-pitched when you're close to running out of time.

 

It's like the nightmare version of Bobby Is Going Home (which is already kinda creepy, thanks to its off-key music and weird sprites).

Edited by Raiu
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Hands down Return of the Jedi Death Star Batlle. Any game where you play as lando shooting through a 1980s grid forcefield with weird Atari sounds is weird to me

DISCO FUCK YOURSELF! (waaaaaah I wanted to get down boogie oogie oogie)

 

Wait, so is Death Star Battle the first video game with a black protagonist? Dammit, I wish a Cyborg game had been made a year before...

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What about that game where you are a square block going through mazes and have to kill those ducks with an arrow, while searching for a lost cup? That was pretty weird :)

 

 

seriously though. There were games with weird premises, which was most 80s games. And there were games with ordinary premises but weird implementations. For the latter, I pick Spikes Peak. Mountain climbing is pretty normal, right? You start at base camp, then play hide-and-seek with the bears, until the fearsome eagle comes and even the bears run and hide. Then you do weird things with your stick for two screens, and then congrats, you reached the summit!

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I loves me some Xonox! After you survive the bears, and the eagle, then you need to use the piton to climb the ledges and avoid the falling rocks and boulders. On the next screen, you use the climbing axe to make your way up avoiding avalanches, and a yeti! Perhaps you were super-lucky and had this on a double-ender with Ghost Manor!

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