Weirdest Video Games Ever!

Check out some of these strange video games in this article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle.   Has anybody tried any of these?

The video game industry has a rich past filled with random weirdness. Arguably the most popular arcade game in history featured an anthropomorphic yellow hockey puck that ate dots and fruit while running away from ghosts with names like Blinky and Clyde.

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But every once in a while, a video game comes along that’s so over-the-top strange that one has to assume that every person on the development team was on hallucinogens from sunup to sundown. This is a tribute to those products: the Nine Most Bizarre Video Games of All Time.

With so many trippy games to choose from, we focused on titles that were actually kind of fun to play. We also avoided licensed titles, such as Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker, Bill Laimbeer’s Combat Basketball or Kool-Aid Man, which hopefully will get their own Top Nine list some day.

Argue our choices or make your own suggestions in the SFGate.com version of this story.

Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee (1997; PlayStation): Oddworld developer Lorne Lanning gets a lifetime achievement award for developing strange games. In this mashup of “The Muppet Show” and “Soylent Green,” Abe is an alien slave called a Mudoken, who discovers his meat-packing factory is developing Mudoken Pops! and leads a revolt. It only gets weirder from there. (Peter Hartlaub)

Alien Hominid (2004; Gamecube, PlayStation 2): This skewed take on Contra, from the alien’s point of view, began as an online Flash game and looks like a notebook doodle come to life. Perfectly charming, until the cute little alien – like Pac-Man, if he sprouted arms and legs – goes and bites someone’s head off. Castle Crashers, the follow-up on Xbox Live Arcade, comes close to deranged fun. (Erick Wong)

Frog Bog (1982; Intellivision): The first console games were reasonably straight-forward: two tanks shooting each other, two cowboys shooting each other, two spaceships shooting each other. … This stoner favorite featured pink and white frogs on a lily pad, jumping in the air and using their tongues to snag moths and fireflies. A simpler version also appeared on the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64. (P.H.)

Rez (2002; for PS2): Imagine an abstract version of Tron on acid, where the inside of a sentient computer is a disorienting blend of wire frame and flat shaded visuals set to a pulsating mix of trance music. Yeah, it’s basically Space Harrier, but anything more complex and our minds would melt. (E.W.)

Grim Fandango (1998; PC): If Lorne Lanning is the Dr. Dre of delightfully bizarre game developers, then Tim Schafer is the Snoop Dogg. Schafer is also making the upcoming heavy metal-themed action game Brütal Legend. But Grim Fandango is his weirdest game – a strange mix of Aztec art, those old Choose Your Own Adventure books and “Casablanca.” (P.H.)

BurgerTime (1982; arcade): Either you’re walking over parts of a giant hamburger while anthropomorphized hot dogs, eggs and pickles chase you, or the burger’s a normal size while you’re the one who’s shrunken – which still doesn’t explain why some foodstuffs are alive and some aren’t. Or why they’re inconsistent in scale. Or why we’re thinking so hard about this. (E.W.)

Katamari Damacy (2004; PS2): Noby Noby Boy, the follow-up from creator Keita Takahasi, was a twisted contender for this list. But there’s simple genius in the original Katamari, in which rolling up a ball of junk that went from catching smaller items (erasers, mice, traffic cones) to bigger ones (cows, trees, skyscrapers) triggered some previously undiscovered pack-rat portion of the brain. (E.W.)

Elite Beat Agents (2006; Nintendo DS): You gotta believe that most music games will have a wacky premise. But in a tough situation, we could use a male cheerleading squad offering encouragement through their choreographed dance routines. And it’s because you really do want those aliens to go away, or that father to come back from the dead, that you’ll keep tapping along to the rhythm. (E.W.)

Seaman (1999; Dreamcast): This creepy-cool game featured a larva-like creature that eventually grew a face and would respond to a player’s efforts to feed and care for him by hurling insults at his “master.” Players could communicate with the creature – the narration was by Leonard Nimoy – using the Dreamcast microphone. When you eventually set the creature free into a nature preserve, it was a relief to be rid of him. (P.H.)

Teen Ink: by teens for teens

 If you have not yet discovered Teen Ink Magazine written entirely by teens for teens, check it out at www.teenink.com. This is a great way to get your art and writing published! It’s fun to read too. Whether you like blogs and blogging, making art or viewing art you can find it all in Teen Ink. There is also lots of stuff on colleges  like essays and reviews by teens. You can find poetry and  non-fiction writing including celebrity interviews done by teens. You can jump to Facebook, or MySpace from Teen Ink or find out about Freebies that you can win in various ways by being creative. If  you like to read your magazines in print instead of  as a zine,  Teen Ink is available that way too.  Try it and explore your creative side.

Spring Break

If you are lucky enough to be off of school this week, you’ll find that you have a lot of free time to do some fun activities.  Hopefully, one of those activities is picking up a good book and getting lost in it.   Here are some good spring break themed titles that might be worth checking out:

Highway to Hell – Rosemary Clement Moore-Maggie Quinn was expecting to find plenty of trouble with Lisa over Spring Break. Give a girl a bikini, a beachfront hotel, and an absent boyfriend, and it’s as good as a road map to the dark side. But Maggie doesn’t have to go looking for trouble. Trouble has started looking for her. One dead cow and a punctured gas tank later, she and Lisa are stuck in Dulcina, Texas—a town so small that it has an owner. And lately life in this small town hasn’t been all that peaceful. An eerie predator is stalking the ranchland.  Everyone in town has a theory, but not even Maggie’s psychic mojo can provide any answers. And the longer the girls are stranded, the more obvious it becomes that something is seriously wrong. Only no one—not even Maggie’s closest ally—wants to admit that they could have been forced on a detour down the highway to hell.

Brain Trust – Christopher Golden-Spring break is prime time for R&R, fun in the sun, and all things low-key. So when Jenna Blake goes to Florida with her roommate, Yoshiko, the last thing she’s expecting to find is another mystery. Well, you can take the girl out of the ME’s office, but….A series of seemingly natural deaths turn out to be suspicious when each of the bodies proves to have mysterious growths of some kind. Needless to say, despite Yoshiko’s concerns that her roommate is missing the point of a vacation, Jenna can’t stay away from this case. After autopsies, another common denominator among the victims presents itself. And when further research reveals similar deaths in other states, Jenna starts to wonder if the deaths were indeed natural. As the body count climbs, Jenna’s break gives way to a dangerous chase. With Slick and Danny back in Massachusetts, Jenna has only herself to rely on…for survival.

Feathered – Laura Kasischke-Terrible things can happen to high-school girls on spring break in Cancún. Vacationing Illinois teens Michelle and Anne know that; it’s just one of many warnings they’ve heard over the years from their mothers. Michelle becomes more apprehensive after Anne becomes mesmerized by Ander, an older man who takes them to Chichén Itzá and talks of Quetzalcoatl and blood sacrifice. But it is the familiar-seeming high-school boys they should have feared. Told in alternating chapters by Michelle in the third-person present tense and Anne in first-person past, this eerie story of attempted date rape and Anne’s absorption into the Mayan world will enthrall teen readers who have a taste for magical realism. The quiet, sinister beauty of the jungle contrasts with the frenzy of American teenagers determined to have fun; both are at the same time seductive and repulsive. From the opening sacrificial encounter to the very end, Kasischke maintains both mystery and suspense. A satisfying treatment of a familiar topic in a fresh and intriguing setting.

I Like it Like That – Cecily von Ziegesar-It’s Spring break and love is in the air. Or is that a blend of Chanel no. 9 and Gucci Rush?Is there a difference?Blair moves in with Serena and they’re back to being best friends.But will the love-fest last or will they end up tearing out one anothers newly highlighted hair?And speaking of new, Nate is on the straight and narrow, playing Nate-in-shining-armor to his crazy new girlfriend, Georgie. But he will definitely get more than he bargained for when he, Georgie, Blair and Serena end up hanging out together in Sun Valley, Idaho.Back in Manhattan Jenny is spending time with a mysteriously nice new boyfriend and Dan is spending time crying in theoffice of the Paris Review literary journal. And Vanessa, wait, is that Vanessa shopping at Barneys with a guy in a Lacoste shirt? The long cold winter is over and the sun is finally shining along Fifth Avenue.The trees are in bloom and NYC’s most fabulous are ready for a truly outrageous vacation!

Brute(ally) Addictive

2 things that seem to be universally popular with teens today are manga and videogames,  these 2 elements are combined to make 1 incredibly addicting game.  At  http://mybrute.com/, you create a “brute” (basically a little exaggerated  manga representation of yourself).  Once you have the “brute” that you like, you then assign points to basic characteristc traits (speed, strength, agility)….your “brute is now ready for action.

Your “brute”, now fully stylized to your liking, enters the battle arena where he/she dukes it out with other people’s creations.  After every battle, your character gets more experience and gets to level up and get stronger…imagine  ”Street Fighter” combined with an RPG game. I invite everybody to try our this game and I dare you to meet me in the arena