Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Strangest Retro Videogame Plots Pondered

Posted by simoniker on from the maria-looking-miffed dept.

Thanks to TotalGames.net for its article discussing the oddest retro videogame plots of all-time. Among the highlighted titles are Sega's Genesis title, Greendog ("All you hafta do is find the six pieces of the Surfboard of the Ancients. They were hidden long ago by the Aztecs somewhere in the Caribbean"), along with Konami's N64 version of Mystical Ninja ("A giant UFO shaped like a peach has suddenly appeared in peaceful Oedo Town! The evil musical corps, The Peach Mountain Shoguns, have come to steal the Great Stage Plan.") What classic game made the least sense to you?

3 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. 2 games come to mind. by wickedj · · Score: 5, Interesting

    First up, Bad Dudes:
    What's not to love about a game that asks "Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the President?" They couldn't use, say, the FBI, CIA or the NSA. Nope, they just pick 2 "bad" dudes off the street and send them to rescue the president.

    Second, Master Blaster:
    One of the best games ever for NES. But also, one where you wonder, how much does one risk for the love of a frog. We witness a boy lose his pet frog. It lands on this radioactive box IN HIS BACKYARD!!! Then it jumps down a very, very deep hole and he follows. Luckily, he finds a kickass ride and perfect sized suit to go with it. Then he begins his journey to destroy vast amounts of robots and mutated creatures to rescue his pet frog only to find, his frog has mutated too and he must destroy. Can you feel his pain? Yeah, I didn't think so either.

  2. Not retro, but fun by oojah · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I came across a fantastic game the other day "Stair Dismount". You have to push a guy down some stairs to see how much damage you can inflict upon him.

    It looks like a rag doll physics test bed that the author decided would make a great game. It uses the Open Dynamics Engine.

    The plot:

    The legendary superhero Spector has found, to his shock, that he cannot write off all the damage he has caused to the city out of his taxes unless he proves that he has sustained significant damage in the process himself! Now it's up to you to 'help' him with this little detail..

    Download at http://jet.ro/dismount/ (Windows only, although it does mention that some people have had luck running it under Wine).

    Ace fun.

    Roger

    --
    Do you have any better hostages?
  3. Strangest retro game plot... by WWWWolf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Commodore 64 game "Army Moves", 1987 Imagine/Ocean. People probably remember this for the amazing music. It's just that back in late 1980s, it was not at all unusual to make a game where you control an army jeep that jumps. In big arcs. While shooting a lot of missiles. When I presented this game to the new gamer generation (that is, my sister), the laughter was nearly unstoppable. (The second level is boring. The helicopter you control just flies and doesn't, for example, turn into a kamikaze tomato in mid-flight and carpet-bomb the nameless enemy.)

    Then some more. "Artura", 1988 Sentient Software/Gremlin. Crappy game. Mostly notable for its great music (surprise surprise!) and the fact that King Arthur marches around and flings about a million axes at the enemy with a single button press.

    And that's just a random sample from the "A" section of C64 game selection =) The Nintendo Logic might have been odd at the time, but some C64 games were a few orders of magnitude weirder...