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Deae Tonosama Appare Ichiban is obviously meant to be something of a joke game, but understanding that this game is a joke and keeping up with the joke are two very different things. Whether you’re battling unfortunately stereotypical characters on Earth or heading to space to battle moon rabbits, there’s not a single moment in this game when you’ll feel like you have a grasp on what is happening or how any of this came to be. The game itself isn’t that good, but it’s a hell of a ride.
3. Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit!
It’s sometimes strange to think that the Tim Allen sitcom Home Improvement was once big enough for developer Imagineering to justify turning the show into a video game. It’s always strange to think that the Home Improvement video game largely consists of Tim Allen battling dinosaurs, robots, and mummies in order to recover lost tools that appear to be easily replaceable.
In many ways, this game represents a generation of licensed games that desperately tried to turn any somewhat popular property into something kids might rent for a few days or even buy. The game even includes an instructional manual that simply states “Real Men Don’t Need Instructions” (a joke that sadly captures the spirit of the show rather nicely). I can’t help but be a little impressed that someone managed to convince their boss that they should make a game where Tim Allen shoots dinosaurs in the face with a nail gun. Then again, what else could you possibly do with a Home Improvement game for the SNES?
2. Drakkhen
It’s probably a little more accurate to call Drakkhen “confusing” rather than “weird,” but I ultimately feel that it belongs in that second category as well. After all, what’s weirder than a sprawling RPG narrative that was originally written in English, adapted by a French development team, translated into Japanese, and then re-translated into English for very confused SNES fans?
Even if Drakkhen’s story wasn’t an incomprehensible mess, the rest of the game would have still been a confounding disaster. It was always a bad idea to try to port one of the most ambitious PC RPGs of its era to the SNES (especially during the console’s earliest days), but trying to play this thing reveals a series of truly weird design decisions. Characters die at random, certain monsters become invincible for no apparent reason, and most combat sequences are determined by chaotic randomness. You pretty much have to follow a very specific series of steps to survive this apparently open-ended RPG, which is certainly one of the weirdest things you can say about that kind of game.
1. BS The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets
What if I told you that Nintendo made a spiritual sequel to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past that featured an original storyline, new dungeons, special timed events, and even voice acting. You’d probably want to know how you can play it as soon as possible, right? Well, that’s when I’d be forced to tell you that in order to officially play the game, you’ll need to travel back in time to 1997, go to Japan, and try to beat that game across one-hour play sessions spread out over a couple of years.
BS The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets was broadcast via the ill-fated BS-X Broadcasting System add-on (a.k.a. the Satellaview) for the Super Famicom. The game was only broadcast to BS-X users for one hour a week during specific timeframes (it was basically an interactive television program). Each broadcast of the game was slightly different than the one before (different episodes of the same show), and after the broadcasts finished in 1998, it was never officially released in any other capacity.
Source: Den of Geek
