50 schraege Momente aus der Videospiel-'Szene'
Wieder einer dieser 'Best Of'-Sammlungen. Vllt. nicht die Beste, aber auch ganz okay. Lustig fuer Jeden, der sich fuer schraege Videospiele, schraege Szenen aus Videospielen oder schraege Hintergrund-Stories zu Videospielen interessiert und Lust hat, solch lange Texte zu lesen. [...]
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Cirque du Strange
A loving tribute to the strangest, weirdest, most interesting, or just plain wrong-est moments in PC gaming history.
Fifty (Or So) Of The Best...
1) Lara Vs. The Law
Lara Croft’s been to every corner of the world, but it was a trip to Tesco, in Brighton, to be exact, that finally pushed her over the thin blue line. Seeing the titular Tomb Raider wielding dual silver revolvers was too much for passers by, who called the cops out of fear that the scary lady might roll the place over like an Aztec burial ground. An armed response unit was promptly dispatched, tracking our digital doyenne of the D-Cup back home to a small house in Hove…
...where model and part-time Lara-like Michelle Powers had just returned from taking some publicity shots, quite oblivious to the chaos in her wake.
2) The Colour of Blood
Carmageddon tore up the moral majority back in 1997 - as you’d expect from a game that focused as much on splattering pedestrians as winning its races. In England, The Powers That Be insisted the squishy humans be replaced with green-blooded zombies, whose pressure groups still haven’t gotten out of the ground. But in the notoriously blood-shy Germany, things went one step further: the developers were forced to replace them with floating metal garbage pails. Took some of the fun out of the carnage, if you ask us.
3) Those You Leave Behind
Sometimes a game genuinely touches your heart, as was the case with Sanitarium, a cult favourite from 1998. Mostly a psychological thriller, one level stood out as a true sucker punch, with the main character temporarily becoming his dead little sister, seeing the pain and suffering her absence has caused to her family. Horrible, heartbreaking, and weird beyond measure, it’s a little moment of humanity in the midst of some genuine horror.
4) Puzzles From Hell #1
The long awaited sequel to terrifying Lovecraft horror adventure Alone in the Dark saw its hero, Edward Carnby, called back into action against evil undead pirates. Bit of a shame that its designers promptly stripped away every last scrap of menace by having him sneaking through their dark, magical mansion disguised as. uh. Santa Claus. Because they were having a party. Yes. Um. It must have made sense to somebody.
5) Terror in the Skies
The 9/11 tragedy created many scapegoats in all forms of media, and gaming was no exception. Microsoft Flight Simulator took the brunt of it, its realistic flight models being held up as a possible terrorist training tool, along with the game introduction’s cheerful cry of “Hey, John, you just about crashed into the Empire State Building! Wouldn’t that be cool?” Needless to say, this line has been excised with extreme prejudice since then.
6) Our Unrighteous Bible
There’s a big market for glitched Bibles, such as the Unrighteous Bible of 1653, which asked ‘Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the Earth?’ Not a million miles from the Caesar III manual, which on page 210 described the Medium Statue you can buy for your city as ‘Administration; Prosperity rating up to 75%.what the hell is this shit”. And you thought it was only you that got confused.
7) The First Hot Coffee
Completing a mission in Maxis’ SimCopter was meant to end with fireworks and a big brass band, and most of the time, did. However, programmer Jacques Servin - insert your own ‘big chopper’ joke here - had his own plans, adding a bit of code that would occasionally replace the final level’s such ceremony with men in swimming trunks kissing each other. Maxis fired Servin instantly, but it was too late - 80,000 copies had been sent out, and unauthorised Easter Eggs became a thing of the past.
8) Crack Gameplay
Liverpool based drug education body Healthwise hit on an odd idea for its edutainment platformer Wrecked: A Psychadelic Adventure. Turning the most common drugs into power-ups, it created a world where amphetamines sped up the main character and LSD revealed the invisible. At the end, your stash was totted up, and you were told how much prison time you were facing for completing the level. Educational!
9) Designing Men
When Dreamworks approached Clive Barker with the original design for would become Clive Barker’s Undying, their main character was a tough, hard-headed baldie called Count Magnus Wolfram. “You’ve got a gay man in charge here,” warned an unimpressed Barker. “Bring me someone fabulously sexy. Bring me somebody I want to sleep with.” Ten days later, Magnus was gone, Undying starred handsome Irish rogue Patrick Galloway, and the games industry had its only major male character to date designed specifically to be sexually attractive to other chaps.
10) Virtual Epidemic
In the beginning, there were computer viruses. Now, there’s the potential for a plague - as happened in World of Warcraft, when the appearance of a new monster, Hakkar, with an infectious attack known as Corrupted Blood began giving the MMORPG lurgy to anyone who took him on. As players returned to town, infecting other players and NPCs alike, entire cities across the many Warcraft servers fell sick, with anyone under Level 50 facing immediate death if exposed.
11) Music Pirates From Outer Space
Played Prey? Of course you have. That opening alien abduction sequence, the green beams spear down from the sky, pulling you into outer space to the sound of Don’t Fear The Reaper on your girlfriend’s bar jukebox. Stunning. But did you notice? That song’s not on there before the invasion! Yes, the vile Sphere’s first act against the Earth is to rip across a Blue Oyster Cult CD, just to have a cool song to snatch people to. Officially the coolest aliens, like, ever.
12) The Horror of Ecstatica
Rated 18. Bloody. Violent. Dark sacrificial murders. Inverted crucifixions. Death. Murder. Vengeance. Satan. Shame it. uh. looked like this, really.
[ Woody's Checkpoint: # top # ]
13) The Movie That Never Was
Broderbund’s globetrotting thief Carmen Sandiego has had many on-screen appearances, including three separate gameshows, a Saturday morning cartoon, and a spokeswomanship for Amtrack. But the one most suitable was the planned movie, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones. one that got fans excited, until it was revealed as a hoax by a couple of kids with an image editor. Too bad the same couldn’t be said for the Doom movie.
14) Let Me Introduce Myself.
Yes, a quick tribute to some of the more unfortunate names in gaming. Stand up, Space Quest love interest Admiral Beatrice Wankmeister (WEB EDIT: apparently - at least according to an article from back in the day, they didn’t know it was a ruder word outside of America. Ahem...), Everquest’s original tutorial companion Prumpy Irontoe, the waterbourne ‘floaters’ from The Tone Rebellion, the evil invading Khaak from X2: The Threat, Little Big Adventure’s world-conquering Dr. FunFrock, the evil jester Malcolm from the Kyrandia games, and our old friend, Robocop wannabe Bert Higgins: The Man From H.E.L.L (No, seriously).
15) Blood: Anaemic Edition
Over in the US, stores like Wal-Mart have such a giant effect on which games sell and which developers starve that many games have had special ‘friendlier’ editions released just for its shelves. Including Monolith’s horror FPS Blood. What did they take out? You guessed it. No splashy stuff for you…
16) The Mother / Whore Dichotomy
Roberta Williams. Game Designer. Cover Model. And such interesting covers too, as wise old Mother Goose in 1991 (with her two children). and topless in a jacuuzi for Leisure Suit Larry’s text-based predecessor, Softporn Adventure. Who came up with the idea? Sierra On-Line head Ken Williams, supposedly on a sudden whim. Ahem.
17) Invisible Children of the Apocalypse
Political correctness. Got to love it. Unless you’re Fallout, the adult RPG forced to get rid of all its killable children at the last minute to appease the European market. The problem is, they’re not all gone. Some are only invisible, getting in your way during the game, and with one pet dog still chasing and panting at its hanging on master. How sad. Sniff. A single sad tear falls.
18) The Second Hot Coffee
Back in 1999, it was EA’s turn in the spotlight, after it was discovered that the Tiger Woods 99 PGA Tour discs had accidentally gone out with a copy of the South Park short ‘The Spirit of Christmas’ on it. Sadly, Playstation users couldn’t access it, and PC owners didn’t have it on their discs. A defence that wouldn’t wash these days of course.
19) Vangers. Just. Vangers.
Part racing game, part adventure, part strategy, part actual crystalised crack on a CD-Rom. Here’s a little snippet from the walkthrough on Gamefaqs, just to give you an idea: “One cycle you might get 540 beebs for a gluek, but if you wait you might get 920 beebs for it in the next cycle.” And that’s just the start of the madness.
20) The Zombie Pirate Aunt Agatha
Ever wondered where the name ‘Guybrush Threepwood’ came from? The first part is pretty well known - it’s from Deluxe Paint, the tool used by the artist, where the initially unnamed main character sprites were simply known as the ‘guy brush’. The surname comes from… of all things… PG Wodehouse. Co-designer Dave Grossman’s cousin had a roleplaying character called Reginald Threepwood, named for Lord Emsworth - aka Clarence Threepwood - of Wodehouse’s Blandings series. The name stuck. And who says games lack culture?
21) The Name’s Hopkins. Hopkins: FBI
So there you are, investigating a bank heist, when suddenly you’re shot dead in your prime. Normally, it’d be Game Over. In fact, just five seconds ago, that was Game Over. But now? Now you’re in Purgatory; seeking to break into Heaven’s teleportation system, to return to Earth and destroy a resurrection machine. And how do you do this? By stealing a woman’s clothes while she’s in the shower, dressing in drag, and turning on the charm with an angelic guard.
Truly, a plot-twist so amazing, it actually gave people whiplash. More here
22) Mental Manipulation
God knows, you needed brainwashing to endure the 1995 ‘rolling cube’ puzzle game Endorfun, but it shot into the headlines anyway for including 100 self-affirming subliminal messages that would leap up during gameplay, such as ‘It’s okay to have everything I want’. The tabloids were particularly furious, and wasted little time getting a roomful of kids to play it to see if they became mentally unbalanced. The answer, for the record, was ‘no’.
23) !arbadacarbA
Bored of fireballs? Of lightning spells? Healing? Invisibility? Try Zork: Grand Inquisitor’s specially reversed spellbook, with such party pieces as GIVANS - make a conscious effort to stay out of other bodies - and DRATSAY - wilfully avoid sending your spirit back in time. Hours of fun, and you don’t even need to be a wizard!
24) Murder and Marketing
Bullfrog’s Syndicate Wars was a pioneer in annoying the shit out of players with in-game advertising, thanks to a deal with Manga Entertainment that saw them sticking animated Ghost in the Shell billboards throughout its futuristic world, and big Manga vans driving around its locations. Still, as annoying as the constant barrage was, at least you could fight back - blowing the goddamn vans into a million pieces via orbital satellite strikes. Will the advertisers of the future be so generous?
25) The Doom Comic
Long before the movie was a glint in anyone’s eye, id released this little masterpiece. What limited plot there was got thrown to the wolves, replaced with dialogue like “Gah! Zombies with guns! Not BIG guns, but they are guns! And I need guns! Aaah! Chainsaw! The Great Communicator! Allow me to communicate to you my desire to have your guns!”
26) Boobies Know All
...at least in 1998’s Jurassic Park FPS spin-off Trespasser, which put you firmly in the head of its female lead, with no HUD, no icons, and no numbers to keep track of. Instead, you had to regularly glance down at your heaving, fully rendered breasts, where a big red heart tattoo quite literally told you when you were about to go tits up.
27) The 3DO Blaster
Remember when the 3DO took over the market? What? You don’t? It appeared with plenty of hype, and all the latest technology - not a million miles from the PS3. However, a lack of software and a $700 price point killed it. What was interesting was that 3DO and Creative actually released a card that could turn a PC into one of these clunkers - playing games like Star Control II, and Street Fighter II, Alone in the Dark, Return Fire and… not much else. Strangely, it flopped. And not a slight flop. Full on Fosbury flop. Right on its face.
[ Woody's Checkpoint: # top # ]
28) Dopefish Woz ‘Ere
The gaming industry’s graffiti tag, the secret handshake between those that were there. This buck-toothed fish, designed by then id Software man Tom Hall, first appeared in the platform game Commander Keen: Goodbye Galaxy. Since then, developers have snuck it into (amongst others) Rise of the Triad, Wacky Wheels, all three Quakes, Jazz Jackrabbit, Descent, Battlezone, Daikatana, Anachronox, Max Payne, Hyperspace Delivery Boy, Hitman 2, Red Faction and Sin Episodes: Emergence. Truly, the Bruce Campbell of gratuitous cameos.
29) Doctors on Drugs
ER: The Game. Mostly a Sims rip-off yawner, until one mission when, out of nowhere, a ninja appears. Yes, a ninja. Closely followed by fairies. And disappearing American football players. In a hospital. And you’re on fire. And feeling dizzy. A ninja. An evil ninja. Of course, you’re drugged (of course! -Ed), but for an hour, surrealism reigns. And then you realise you’re playing ER: The Game, and uninstall it. Sanity resumes.
30) Command and Cretaceous
While the original Command and Conquer suffered from really bad expansion packs, the first offered a particular entertaining secret. Adding the -funpark parameter when running the game opened up a top secret set of five missions that pitted the standard armies of GDI and Nod against. dinosaurs. For no reason. There was even a briefing movie and bonus music track. And developers Westwood didn’t even mention it.
31) It’s Torture!
1996’s Spycraft: The Great Game featured the most disturbing mini-game ever, one deemed so unpleasant that it could be deactivated during installation. As CIA agent Thorne (kept deliberately gender neutral, until the developers blew it with a ‘thrown into clearly male prison’ bad ending), you had a choice between a fiddly, tedious puzzle, or torturing the information out of a female prisoner via the electric chair. Painful and horrible to watch, most players went with the puzzle.
32) Puzzles From Hell #2
Back in 1989, Monkey Island designer Ron Gilbert wrote an essay raging against stupid adventure games, and their “arbitrary and unconnected” solutions. “What is the reasoning?” he asked of one particularly idiotic example, only to be told “There is none. It’s an advanced puzzle.”
What was he complaining about? Surely not games like Les Manley in Search for the King. Sure, the final scene of the game is your character being trampled to death for not knowing about and subsequently picking up a ‘resurrection card’ by spontaneously sexually assaulting a fairground gypsy back at the start of the game, making her disappear, and petting her stuffed lizard… which spat the card out of its mouth. Remember, it’s not stupid. It’s an advanced puzzle!
33) Plot, The Magic Dragons
Novellas used to come with games all the time, helping - amongst other things - to explain the tech, and tell a more complicated story than the game itself could handle. Starglider, for instance, covered up its wireframe graphics with talk of a special tactical HUD. Crappy old RPG Drakkhen takes the cake though, setting up an epic, plot of blood and Armageddon courtesy of an island of evil dragons, only to instantly defuse it by making your team waste most of their time sorting out the dragons’ love lives and gossip needs instead of getting medieval on their tails.
34) The Surrealist Spin-Off Ever
No, not Codename Gordon! Not the Doom board game! No, the gold trophy could only go to those wacky Japanese. From nude skins to dodgy fan-art, many franchises spawn a slightly naughty side - but Japanese anime producer Gainax is one of the few to cash in directly. The Stripping Instrumentality Project, a PC based spin-off of its hyper-depressing giant robot show Neon Genesis Evangelion, brought the whole cast back, dropping their conspiracies, endless neuroses, and ultimately, pants, in favour of a game of Strip Mahjongg.
35) The Madness of Malkavians
One of the many beautiful moments in Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines - picking the insane Malkavian clan for your character completely changes the game’s dialogue into a mix of psychotic dementia and lucid insight far beyond the other possible character choices. It even afflicts your pet ghoul, a college girl called Heather, who takes to your blood like the finest drug, until the two of you are nattering like true psychotics, and the world is that much crazier.
36) Safety Conscious Ninja
3D Realms’ follow-up to Duke Nukem 3D, the martial arts mishmash Shadow Warrior, hit an unusual censorship problem in the UK. Ninja weapons were an instant no-go for the BBFC - you may also remember the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles - ruling out the second weapon, the shuriken. No worries! With a flick of a switch, the shuriken became darts. Much less dangerous to get hit in the face with, and much harder for little kids to find. Apparently.
37) The Girl At The Back
Want to be a game character? Opportunity can come knocking at the oddest times. Just ask Sarah Crook, the voice of French photojournalist Nico Collard in Broken Sword 3. Many actresses auditioned, many native French speakers, but none quite lived up to designer Charles Cecil’s requirements - until the girls who were helping run the audition asked to have a go, and Crook ended up immortalised on the small screen.
38) The Typing Of The Dead!
Hands down, the most brilliant reinvention of a game ever to exist. Take The House of the Dead II, complete with zombies, awful plot, and endless monster splattering… but take away the guns. Instead, give the heroic government agents Dreamcast backpacks and keyboards, with every correct bang of a key acting as a bullet. It shouldn’t work, but it does. It more than does. It’s the kind of thing the word ‘awesome’ was invented for. And there’s a sequel on the way!
39) ION Storm’s Ivory Tower
Why did John Romero’s dream company crash and burn? Many reasons. Here’s just one. Using approximately a jillion dollars of EIDOS’ money, the new company bought penthouse offices in a huge glass-topped tower in Dallas. Spotted it yet? The team melted in the heat and light, unable to even see their screens without making a tent of their cubicles with heavy black, hot cloth. Like so much of the ION Storm story, stylish and showy. Just not very smart.
40) Strumpets of Silicon
You know your industry’s made it when the porn world starts to take notice - from bizarre little clips, such as the endlessly circulating Lara Croft striptease from Playboy model Petra Verkaik, to entire movies, such as Misty Mundae: Erotic Raider. Featuring the dullest lady on lady action in the history of Sapphism, and ironically starring an actress as flat as an ironing board, it’s possibly one of the worst movies ever, excluding anything with the words ‘Power Rangers’ in the title. Oh, the things we research for you, dear reader. Unfortunately, elsewhere things get much darker, with the Japanese market going in for what can only be described as rape fantasies about its many RPG heroines. Extremely unpleasant, and that’s all the details you’re getting.
41) P...P...Pick up a Parody
Direct parodies are pretty rare, but by God, did the straight-laced Myst series deserve it. Parroty Entertainment recreated the main Myst Island, trashed by a million tourist boots, and starring John Goodman as its sloppy new king. They later went on to make Microshaft Winblows 98. which gives you a pretty good idea of the humour.
42) JFK: Reloaded
Sick or brilliant? This one-shot shooter that asked you to recreate the assassination of John F. Kennedy certainly made waves on release with its full rag-doll and ballistic model components. There was even $100,000 prize for the person who came closest to the real shot. And then, for no announced reason, the site went dark. Conspiracy theory? Or just the poor taste police?
[ Woody's Checkpoint: # top # ]
43) Twisty History
Playing Gabriel Knight 2’s story of werewolves, kings and magical operas, you might almost think it true - especially when visiting Neuschwanstein, the fairytale castle of Ludwig II of Bavaria, and its wolf-themed artwork. While much of the basis is true, the castle itself, and its decorations, are firmly reordered and Photoshopped with new artwork to help build the illusion that the world is just that little bit stranger. But you’ll be hard pressed to notice it at the time.
44) Life’s A Drag
You’re just settling into the role of Cloud Strife, supposed hero of Final Fantasy VII, when your quest to save the world from something very horrible indeed is suddenly halted by a lecherous gang lord. That might seem easy enough when you’ve got a seven foot sword in your hand… but not with Love Interest Aeris on hand to offer the alternative method: “Cloud, why don’t you dress up as a girl?” Dignity goes to the wayside in a chorus of Benny Hill music, and that’s just the start. Winning a wig from a strongman in a squats contest? Shudder.
45) Yak. Yak. Yak.
If you know Jeff Minter’s name, you’ll have been wondering why you haven’t seen it yet, if not, pull up a llama. He’s made some proper games, like Defender 2000, and light synths, and all that other stuff. but it’s lawnmower game Hovver Bovver, or the sheep-stuffed Llamatron, and epic battles against raindrops and phonebooths in Attack of the Mutant Camels that mean we can’t finish without a shout out.
46) Naked Raiden
By the time Metal Gear Solid 2 made it to the PC, everyone knew that the Playstation world’s hero, Solid Snake, had been replaced with nancy, long-haired girly man Raiden. but it’s not until the end that you finally see The Horror. Raiden, stark naked, doing cartwheel flips past the enemy, and as anatomically correct as an Action Man. Well, we all suspected…
47) Bad Mojo
An evil curse has turned you into… a cockroach. This absolutely revolting game is still turning stomachs today, thanks to the re-released version - dead rats, chopped up fish, evil spiders, and all manner of other horrors await. But it’s the behind the scenes story that really unsettles. No animals were harmed in the making of…
You Tube Clip [ca. 6.oo]
...oh. “Only animals who were on death row anyway.”
48) The Art of Evil
Are you evil? No, you’re not. Not in RPG land. Not if you’re Mystere, an Everquest player and fan-fiction writer, kicked out of the game for posting a graphic story about his Dark Elf character - the world’s most evil faction, known for heads on spikes, torture gods, and in the game itself (at the time) a quest about murdering a pregnant Halfling woman in cold-blood. Sony apologised, but the deed was done. You’re only allowed to say you’re evil. Beyond that, you gotta play nice.
49) S&M Hits The Road
What could be more wholesome than a farmyard cow and sheep working together to ensure the bestest quality butter in the whole world? Ask the cartoon adventure Toonstruck, turning sweet and innocent Marge and Polly into full on S&M bondage queens before you can say ‘Oh, that’s just wrong.’
50) Saying Goodbye
Death. It comes to us all some time, and we don’t get to respawn. So to finish off, a moment that’s as touching as it is weird - an online funeral for a Dark Age of Camelot character known as Warsinger, lost after his master succumbed to heart trouble. In honour, players from all three warring realms gathered together, surrounding his sister and girlfriends’ avatars with a giant heart, in a collective, but beautifully sombre statement that sometimes, games can extend beyond the screen.
This article originally published in PC Gamer
>> # top # | Q: Richard Cobbett.co.uk
(show me)(don't show me)
<<
Cirque du Strange
A loving tribute to the strangest, weirdest, most interesting, or just plain wrong-est moments in PC gaming history.
Fifty (Or So) Of The Best...
1) Lara Vs. The Law
Lara Croft’s been to every corner of the world, but it was a trip to Tesco, in Brighton, to be exact, that finally pushed her over the thin blue line. Seeing the titular Tomb Raider wielding dual silver revolvers was too much for passers by, who called the cops out of fear that the scary lady might roll the place over like an Aztec burial ground. An armed response unit was promptly dispatched, tracking our digital doyenne of the D-Cup back home to a small house in Hove… ...where model and part-time Lara-like Michelle Powers had just returned from taking some publicity shots, quite oblivious to the chaos in her wake.
2) The Colour of Blood
Carmageddon tore up the moral majority back in 1997 - as you’d expect from a game that focused as much on splattering pedestrians as winning its races. In England, The Powers That Be insisted the squishy humans be replaced with green-blooded zombies, whose pressure groups still haven’t gotten out of the ground. But in the notoriously blood-shy Germany, things went one step further: the developers were forced to replace them with floating metal garbage pails. Took some of the fun out of the carnage, if you ask us.
3) Those You Leave Behind
Sometimes a game genuinely touches your heart, as was the case with Sanitarium, a cult favourite from 1998. Mostly a psychological thriller, one level stood out as a true sucker punch, with the main character temporarily becoming his dead little sister, seeing the pain and suffering her absence has caused to her family. Horrible, heartbreaking, and weird beyond measure, it’s a little moment of humanity in the midst of some genuine horror.
4) Puzzles From Hell #1
The long awaited sequel to terrifying Lovecraft horror adventure Alone in the Dark saw its hero, Edward Carnby, called back into action against evil undead pirates. Bit of a shame that its designers promptly stripped away every last scrap of menace by having him sneaking through their dark, magical mansion disguised as. uh. Santa Claus. Because they were having a party. Yes. Um. It must have made sense to somebody.
5) Terror in the Skies
The 9/11 tragedy created many scapegoats in all forms of media, and gaming was no exception. Microsoft Flight Simulator took the brunt of it, its realistic flight models being held up as a possible terrorist training tool, along with the game introduction’s cheerful cry of “Hey, John, you just about crashed into the Empire State Building! Wouldn’t that be cool?” Needless to say, this line has been excised with extreme prejudice since then.
6) Our Unrighteous Bible
There’s a big market for glitched Bibles, such as the Unrighteous Bible of 1653, which asked ‘Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the Earth?’ Not a million miles from the Caesar III manual, which on page 210 described the Medium Statue you can buy for your city as ‘Administration; Prosperity rating up to 75%.what the hell is this shit”. And you thought it was only you that got confused. 7) The First Hot Coffee
Completing a mission in Maxis’ SimCopter was meant to end with fireworks and a big brass band, and most of the time, did. However, programmer Jacques Servin - insert your own ‘big chopper’ joke here - had his own plans, adding a bit of code that would occasionally replace the final level’s such ceremony with men in swimming trunks kissing each other. Maxis fired Servin instantly, but it was too late - 80,000 copies had been sent out, and unauthorised Easter Eggs became a thing of the past.
8) Crack Gameplay
Liverpool based drug education body Healthwise hit on an odd idea for its edutainment platformer Wrecked: A Psychadelic Adventure. Turning the most common drugs into power-ups, it created a world where amphetamines sped up the main character and LSD revealed the invisible. At the end, your stash was totted up, and you were told how much prison time you were facing for completing the level. Educational!
9) Designing Men
When Dreamworks approached Clive Barker with the original design for would become Clive Barker’s Undying, their main character was a tough, hard-headed baldie called Count Magnus Wolfram. “You’ve got a gay man in charge here,” warned an unimpressed Barker. “Bring me someone fabulously sexy. Bring me somebody I want to sleep with.” Ten days later, Magnus was gone, Undying starred handsome Irish rogue Patrick Galloway, and the games industry had its only major male character to date designed specifically to be sexually attractive to other chaps. 10) Virtual Epidemic
In the beginning, there were computer viruses. Now, there’s the potential for a plague - as happened in World of Warcraft, when the appearance of a new monster, Hakkar, with an infectious attack known as Corrupted Blood began giving the MMORPG lurgy to anyone who took him on. As players returned to town, infecting other players and NPCs alike, entire cities across the many Warcraft servers fell sick, with anyone under Level 50 facing immediate death if exposed.
11) Music Pirates From Outer Space
Played Prey? Of course you have. That opening alien abduction sequence, the green beams spear down from the sky, pulling you into outer space to the sound of Don’t Fear The Reaper on your girlfriend’s bar jukebox. Stunning. But did you notice? That song’s not on there before the invasion! Yes, the vile Sphere’s first act against the Earth is to rip across a Blue Oyster Cult CD, just to have a cool song to snatch people to. Officially the coolest aliens, like, ever.
12) The Horror of Ecstatica
Rated 18. Bloody. Violent. Dark sacrificial murders. Inverted crucifixions. Death. Murder. Vengeance. Satan. Shame it. uh. looked like this, really. [ Woody's Checkpoint: # top # ]
13) The Movie That Never Was
Broderbund’s globetrotting thief Carmen Sandiego has had many on-screen appearances, including three separate gameshows, a Saturday morning cartoon, and a spokeswomanship for Amtrack. But the one most suitable was the planned movie, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones. one that got fans excited, until it was revealed as a hoax by a couple of kids with an image editor. Too bad the same couldn’t be said for the Doom movie.
14) Let Me Introduce Myself.
Yes, a quick tribute to some of the more unfortunate names in gaming. Stand up, Space Quest love interest Admiral Beatrice Wankmeister (WEB EDIT: apparently - at least according to an article from back in the day, they didn’t know it was a ruder word outside of America. Ahem...), Everquest’s original tutorial companion Prumpy Irontoe, the waterbourne ‘floaters’ from The Tone Rebellion, the evil invading Khaak from X2: The Threat, Little Big Adventure’s world-conquering Dr. FunFrock, the evil jester Malcolm from the Kyrandia games, and our old friend, Robocop wannabe Bert Higgins: The Man From H.E.L.L (No, seriously).
15) Blood: Anaemic Edition
Over in the US, stores like Wal-Mart have such a giant effect on which games sell and which developers starve that many games have had special ‘friendlier’ editions released just for its shelves. Including Monolith’s horror FPS Blood. What did they take out? You guessed it. No splashy stuff for you…
16) The Mother / Whore Dichotomy
Roberta Williams. Game Designer. Cover Model. And such interesting covers too, as wise old Mother Goose in 1991 (with her two children). and topless in a jacuuzi for Leisure Suit Larry’s text-based predecessor, Softporn Adventure. Who came up with the idea? Sierra On-Line head Ken Williams, supposedly on a sudden whim. Ahem. 17) Invisible Children of the Apocalypse
Political correctness. Got to love it. Unless you’re Fallout, the adult RPG forced to get rid of all its killable children at the last minute to appease the European market. The problem is, they’re not all gone. Some are only invisible, getting in your way during the game, and with one pet dog still chasing and panting at its hanging on master. How sad. Sniff. A single sad tear falls.
18) The Second Hot Coffee
Back in 1999, it was EA’s turn in the spotlight, after it was discovered that the Tiger Woods 99 PGA Tour discs had accidentally gone out with a copy of the South Park short ‘The Spirit of Christmas’ on it. Sadly, Playstation users couldn’t access it, and PC owners didn’t have it on their discs. A defence that wouldn’t wash these days of course.
19) Vangers. Just. Vangers.
Part racing game, part adventure, part strategy, part actual crystalised crack on a CD-Rom. Here’s a little snippet from the walkthrough on Gamefaqs, just to give you an idea: “One cycle you might get 540 beebs for a gluek, but if you wait you might get 920 beebs for it in the next cycle.” And that’s just the start of the madness. 20) The Zombie Pirate Aunt Agatha
Ever wondered where the name ‘Guybrush Threepwood’ came from? The first part is pretty well known - it’s from Deluxe Paint, the tool used by the artist, where the initially unnamed main character sprites were simply known as the ‘guy brush’. The surname comes from… of all things… PG Wodehouse. Co-designer Dave Grossman’s cousin had a roleplaying character called Reginald Threepwood, named for Lord Emsworth - aka Clarence Threepwood - of Wodehouse’s Blandings series. The name stuck. And who says games lack culture?
21) The Name’s Hopkins. Hopkins: FBI
So there you are, investigating a bank heist, when suddenly you’re shot dead in your prime. Normally, it’d be Game Over. In fact, just five seconds ago, that was Game Over. But now? Now you’re in Purgatory; seeking to break into Heaven’s teleportation system, to return to Earth and destroy a resurrection machine. And how do you do this? By stealing a woman’s clothes while she’s in the shower, dressing in drag, and turning on the charm with an angelic guard. Truly, a plot-twist so amazing, it actually gave people whiplash. More here
22) Mental Manipulation
God knows, you needed brainwashing to endure the 1995 ‘rolling cube’ puzzle game Endorfun, but it shot into the headlines anyway for including 100 self-affirming subliminal messages that would leap up during gameplay, such as ‘It’s okay to have everything I want’. The tabloids were particularly furious, and wasted little time getting a roomful of kids to play it to see if they became mentally unbalanced. The answer, for the record, was ‘no’.
23) !arbadacarbA
Bored of fireballs? Of lightning spells? Healing? Invisibility? Try Zork: Grand Inquisitor’s specially reversed spellbook, with such party pieces as GIVANS - make a conscious effort to stay out of other bodies - and DRATSAY - wilfully avoid sending your spirit back in time. Hours of fun, and you don’t even need to be a wizard!
24) Murder and Marketing
Bullfrog’s Syndicate Wars was a pioneer in annoying the shit out of players with in-game advertising, thanks to a deal with Manga Entertainment that saw them sticking animated Ghost in the Shell billboards throughout its futuristic world, and big Manga vans driving around its locations. Still, as annoying as the constant barrage was, at least you could fight back - blowing the goddamn vans into a million pieces via orbital satellite strikes. Will the advertisers of the future be so generous?
25) The Doom Comic
Long before the movie was a glint in anyone’s eye, id released this little masterpiece. What limited plot there was got thrown to the wolves, replaced with dialogue like “Gah! Zombies with guns! Not BIG guns, but they are guns! And I need guns! Aaah! Chainsaw! The Great Communicator! Allow me to communicate to you my desire to have your guns!” 26) Boobies Know All
...at least in 1998’s Jurassic Park FPS spin-off Trespasser, which put you firmly in the head of its female lead, with no HUD, no icons, and no numbers to keep track of. Instead, you had to regularly glance down at your heaving, fully rendered breasts, where a big red heart tattoo quite literally told you when you were about to go tits up.
27) The 3DO Blaster
Remember when the 3DO took over the market? What? You don’t? It appeared with plenty of hype, and all the latest technology - not a million miles from the PS3. However, a lack of software and a $700 price point killed it. What was interesting was that 3DO and Creative actually released a card that could turn a PC into one of these clunkers - playing games like Star Control II, and Street Fighter II, Alone in the Dark, Return Fire and… not much else. Strangely, it flopped. And not a slight flop. Full on Fosbury flop. Right on its face.
[ Woody's Checkpoint: # top # ]
28) Dopefish Woz ‘Ere
The gaming industry’s graffiti tag, the secret handshake between those that were there. This buck-toothed fish, designed by then id Software man Tom Hall, first appeared in the platform game Commander Keen: Goodbye Galaxy. Since then, developers have snuck it into (amongst others) Rise of the Triad, Wacky Wheels, all three Quakes, Jazz Jackrabbit, Descent, Battlezone, Daikatana, Anachronox, Max Payne, Hyperspace Delivery Boy, Hitman 2, Red Faction and Sin Episodes: Emergence. Truly, the Bruce Campbell of gratuitous cameos. 29) Doctors on Drugs
ER: The Game. Mostly a Sims rip-off yawner, until one mission when, out of nowhere, a ninja appears. Yes, a ninja. Closely followed by fairies. And disappearing American football players. In a hospital. And you’re on fire. And feeling dizzy. A ninja. An evil ninja. Of course, you’re drugged (of course! -Ed), but for an hour, surrealism reigns. And then you realise you’re playing ER: The Game, and uninstall it. Sanity resumes.
30) Command and Cretaceous
While the original Command and Conquer suffered from really bad expansion packs, the first offered a particular entertaining secret. Adding the -funpark parameter when running the game opened up a top secret set of five missions that pitted the standard armies of GDI and Nod against. dinosaurs. For no reason. There was even a briefing movie and bonus music track. And developers Westwood didn’t even mention it.
31) It’s Torture!
1996’s Spycraft: The Great Game featured the most disturbing mini-game ever, one deemed so unpleasant that it could be deactivated during installation. As CIA agent Thorne (kept deliberately gender neutral, until the developers blew it with a ‘thrown into clearly male prison’ bad ending), you had a choice between a fiddly, tedious puzzle, or torturing the information out of a female prisoner via the electric chair. Painful and horrible to watch, most players went with the puzzle.
32) Puzzles From Hell #2
Back in 1989, Monkey Island designer Ron Gilbert wrote an essay raging against stupid adventure games, and their “arbitrary and unconnected” solutions. “What is the reasoning?” he asked of one particularly idiotic example, only to be told “There is none. It’s an advanced puzzle.” What was he complaining about? Surely not games like Les Manley in Search for the King. Sure, the final scene of the game is your character being trampled to death for not knowing about and subsequently picking up a ‘resurrection card’ by spontaneously sexually assaulting a fairground gypsy back at the start of the game, making her disappear, and petting her stuffed lizard… which spat the card out of its mouth. Remember, it’s not stupid. It’s an advanced puzzle!
33) Plot, The Magic Dragons
Novellas used to come with games all the time, helping - amongst other things - to explain the tech, and tell a more complicated story than the game itself could handle. Starglider, for instance, covered up its wireframe graphics with talk of a special tactical HUD. Crappy old RPG Drakkhen takes the cake though, setting up an epic, plot of blood and Armageddon courtesy of an island of evil dragons, only to instantly defuse it by making your team waste most of their time sorting out the dragons’ love lives and gossip needs instead of getting medieval on their tails.
34) The Surrealist Spin-Off Ever
No, not Codename Gordon! Not the Doom board game! No, the gold trophy could only go to those wacky Japanese. From nude skins to dodgy fan-art, many franchises spawn a slightly naughty side - but Japanese anime producer Gainax is one of the few to cash in directly. The Stripping Instrumentality Project, a PC based spin-off of its hyper-depressing giant robot show Neon Genesis Evangelion, brought the whole cast back, dropping their conspiracies, endless neuroses, and ultimately, pants, in favour of a game of Strip Mahjongg.
35) The Madness of Malkavians
One of the many beautiful moments in Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines - picking the insane Malkavian clan for your character completely changes the game’s dialogue into a mix of psychotic dementia and lucid insight far beyond the other possible character choices. It even afflicts your pet ghoul, a college girl called Heather, who takes to your blood like the finest drug, until the two of you are nattering like true psychotics, and the world is that much crazier.
36) Safety Conscious Ninja
3D Realms’ follow-up to Duke Nukem 3D, the martial arts mishmash Shadow Warrior, hit an unusual censorship problem in the UK. Ninja weapons were an instant no-go for the BBFC - you may also remember the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles - ruling out the second weapon, the shuriken. No worries! With a flick of a switch, the shuriken became darts. Much less dangerous to get hit in the face with, and much harder for little kids to find. Apparently.
37) The Girl At The Back
Want to be a game character? Opportunity can come knocking at the oddest times. Just ask Sarah Crook, the voice of French photojournalist Nico Collard in Broken Sword 3. Many actresses auditioned, many native French speakers, but none quite lived up to designer Charles Cecil’s requirements - until the girls who were helping run the audition asked to have a go, and Crook ended up immortalised on the small screen.
38) The Typing Of The Dead!
Hands down, the most brilliant reinvention of a game ever to exist. Take The House of the Dead II, complete with zombies, awful plot, and endless monster splattering… but take away the guns. Instead, give the heroic government agents Dreamcast backpacks and keyboards, with every correct bang of a key acting as a bullet. It shouldn’t work, but it does. It more than does. It’s the kind of thing the word ‘awesome’ was invented for. And there’s a sequel on the way! 39) ION Storm’s Ivory Tower
Why did John Romero’s dream company crash and burn? Many reasons. Here’s just one. Using approximately a jillion dollars of EIDOS’ money, the new company bought penthouse offices in a huge glass-topped tower in Dallas. Spotted it yet? The team melted in the heat and light, unable to even see their screens without making a tent of their cubicles with heavy black, hot cloth. Like so much of the ION Storm story, stylish and showy. Just not very smart.
40) Strumpets of Silicon
You know your industry’s made it when the porn world starts to take notice - from bizarre little clips, such as the endlessly circulating Lara Croft striptease from Playboy model Petra Verkaik, to entire movies, such as Misty Mundae: Erotic Raider. Featuring the dullest lady on lady action in the history of Sapphism, and ironically starring an actress as flat as an ironing board, it’s possibly one of the worst movies ever, excluding anything with the words ‘Power Rangers’ in the title. Oh, the things we research for you, dear reader. Unfortunately, elsewhere things get much darker, with the Japanese market going in for what can only be described as rape fantasies about its many RPG heroines. Extremely unpleasant, and that’s all the details you’re getting. 41) P...P...Pick up a Parody
Direct parodies are pretty rare, but by God, did the straight-laced Myst series deserve it. Parroty Entertainment recreated the main Myst Island, trashed by a million tourist boots, and starring John Goodman as its sloppy new king. They later went on to make Microshaft Winblows 98. which gives you a pretty good idea of the humour.
42) JFK: Reloaded
Sick or brilliant? This one-shot shooter that asked you to recreate the assassination of John F. Kennedy certainly made waves on release with its full rag-doll and ballistic model components. There was even $100,000 prize for the person who came closest to the real shot. And then, for no announced reason, the site went dark. Conspiracy theory? Or just the poor taste police? [ Woody's Checkpoint: # top # ]
43) Twisty History
Playing Gabriel Knight 2’s story of werewolves, kings and magical operas, you might almost think it true - especially when visiting Neuschwanstein, the fairytale castle of Ludwig II of Bavaria, and its wolf-themed artwork. While much of the basis is true, the castle itself, and its decorations, are firmly reordered and Photoshopped with new artwork to help build the illusion that the world is just that little bit stranger. But you’ll be hard pressed to notice it at the time.
44) Life’s A Drag
You’re just settling into the role of Cloud Strife, supposed hero of Final Fantasy VII, when your quest to save the world from something very horrible indeed is suddenly halted by a lecherous gang lord. That might seem easy enough when you’ve got a seven foot sword in your hand… but not with Love Interest Aeris on hand to offer the alternative method: “Cloud, why don’t you dress up as a girl?” Dignity goes to the wayside in a chorus of Benny Hill music, and that’s just the start. Winning a wig from a strongman in a squats contest? Shudder.
45) Yak. Yak. Yak.
If you know Jeff Minter’s name, you’ll have been wondering why you haven’t seen it yet, if not, pull up a llama. He’s made some proper games, like Defender 2000, and light synths, and all that other stuff. but it’s lawnmower game Hovver Bovver, or the sheep-stuffed Llamatron, and epic battles against raindrops and phonebooths in Attack of the Mutant Camels that mean we can’t finish without a shout out. 46) Naked Raiden
By the time Metal Gear Solid 2 made it to the PC, everyone knew that the Playstation world’s hero, Solid Snake, had been replaced with nancy, long-haired girly man Raiden. but it’s not until the end that you finally see The Horror. Raiden, stark naked, doing cartwheel flips past the enemy, and as anatomically correct as an Action Man. Well, we all suspected…
47) Bad Mojo
An evil curse has turned you into… a cockroach. This absolutely revolting game is still turning stomachs today, thanks to the re-released version - dead rats, chopped up fish, evil spiders, and all manner of other horrors await. But it’s the behind the scenes story that really unsettles. No animals were harmed in the making of…
You Tube Clip [ca. 6.oo]
...oh. “Only animals who were on death row anyway.”
48) The Art of Evil
Are you evil? No, you’re not. Not in RPG land. Not if you’re Mystere, an Everquest player and fan-fiction writer, kicked out of the game for posting a graphic story about his Dark Elf character - the world’s most evil faction, known for heads on spikes, torture gods, and in the game itself (at the time) a quest about murdering a pregnant Halfling woman in cold-blood. Sony apologised, but the deed was done. You’re only allowed to say you’re evil. Beyond that, you gotta play nice.
49) S&M Hits The Road
What could be more wholesome than a farmyard cow and sheep working together to ensure the bestest quality butter in the whole world? Ask the cartoon adventure Toonstruck, turning sweet and innocent Marge and Polly into full on S&M bondage queens before you can say ‘Oh, that’s just wrong.’
50) Saying Goodbye
Death. It comes to us all some time, and we don’t get to respawn. So to finish off, a moment that’s as touching as it is weird - an online funeral for a Dark Age of Camelot character known as Warsinger, lost after his master succumbed to heart trouble. In honour, players from all three warring realms gathered together, surrounding his sister and girlfriends’ avatars with a giant heart, in a collective, but beautifully sombre statement that sometimes, games can extend beyond the screen.
This article originally published in PC Gamer
>> # top # | Q: Richard Cobbett.co.uk
Labels: video, videogame news
posted by Woodrow at 6/11/2007 02:51:00 AM
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