7 Terrible Ideas for Platformers that Worked Weirdly Well

platform games are supposed to be straightforward you control a character who runs jumps with perfect timing and repeats those two things until bowser's skeleton is melted into a fused lump of solid bone easy but there's nothing straightforward about these platformers games that twisted the premise with concepts so bizarre it's a wonder they ever got signed off and an even bigger wonder that against all odds they turned out to be generally pretty good and sometimes outstandingly great even though the pitch is something like you are a chicken boy in charge of an egg [Music] behold these terrible ideas for platformers that ended up working weirdly well [Music] [Music] eggs which are a staple part of the human diet only get weirder the more you think about them and the same is true of our first game in which you play a heroic boy called billy who sets out to save morning land using his legendary chicken suit which gives him quote power over all eggs [Music] i mean we'll ask tony stark but i wouldn't count on avengers membership if i were you billy the game your eyes are beholding and that your brain is fighting to make sense of is billy hatcher and the giant egg [Music] this gamecube platformer was developed by sonic team who presumably in 2003 decided that things were going so well with sonic they could afford to take a break and make an absolutely hat stand game about rolling eggs around until they get big enough that you can command them to hatch billy hatcher is tasked with saving morning land from an army of invading crows bringing perpetual darkness and what is even more baffling than that plot is that the game is actually somehow pretty darn great [Music] without an egg to control billy is like anyone else who walks around dressed as a chicken liable to be quickly killed however taking control of an egg opens up a bevy of brilliant moves to defend himself like dunking dashing or firing the egg off in a way that nails enemies on the rebound kind of like the leviathan axe in god of war but if everything was chickens actually that sounds great and it is while rolling eggs around a chicken world while dressed as a chicken is kind of a tough sales pitch sega bet that the innovative gameplay and frenetic vibe of billy hatcher would win the day [Music] and boy were they wrong sales figures are thought to be terrible and certainly billy hatcher never got a sequel meaning this standalone platformer remains preserved as it were in amber beloved exclusively by the few who played it or anyone who really really loves eggs [Music] or pate's eggs i guess [Music] iggy's wrecking balls has quite the legacy not only is it one of the weirdest platform games ever made it also has perhaps gaming's most confusing apostrophe seriously are these the wrecking balls that iggy has or is iggy himself wrecking balls we may never know because the main character of iggy's wrecking balls is a spherical iguana who only says things like later dude beneath its bafflingly weird exterior the game is essentially a race you have to out-platform these other balls with faces to the top of vertical structures which you can do because each ball with a face has a grappling hook of course [Music] that hook can also be used to smash opponents making for a chaotic and competitive platformer that requires fluid grappling skills to zip your way upwards as fast as possible it feels a bit like spider-man if stan lee and steve ditko had been told they had exactly one second to finalize spider-man's character design i am number one speaking to ign iggy's wrecking balls project manager jules watson said i'm still amazed today that we even got to make it because it's so odd and yet wrecking balls is pretty fun to play also it supported four players which makes it odd there isn't a thriving vertical ball bouncing esports community based around it yet today the only record the game is breaking is again the record for most confusing apostrophe oh wait i just remembered cruisin usa okay the second most confusing apostrophe [Music] mischief makers for the n64 had almost everything going against it from the word go [Music] for one thing it came out a year after super mario 64 immediately making this 2d side scroller seem retro and boring in comparison [Music] a problem not helped by the game's concept which is that you are a robotic maid servant called marina lightyears sent to investigate an sos signal from the worst named planet in all of video games planet clancer [Music] worse yet planet clancer is full of cancels beings balls and blocks that all have silently screaming sad faces that are almost always filling the screen as if the game is trying very hard to give itself a bad review [Music] it's almost a relief then to find that beneath the unappealing surface is a surprisingly fun platformer with a unique gimmick namely that everything in the game can be grabbed and shaken [Music] marina can vault acrobatically around levels by chaining together grabs and shaking objects will do things like make explosives fall out also and we cannot overstate the importance of this when you shake something which you will do an awful lot marina says shake shake in a charming way the constant grabbing and shaking makes mischief makers really quite satisfying to play something you wouldn't expect from a game that looks to be fair like a dream edvard munch would have after falling asleep playing contra mischief makers earned positive but not exactly glowing reviews when it came out in 1997 but has experienced something of a reappraisal since probably because 25 years later everyone who played it is still yelling shake shake to themselves every time they roll dice or use a can of whipped cream [Music] glover tells the age-old story of a wizard being turned to stone in an explosion but just before the explosion can destroy all the kingdom's magic crystals the wizard's glove turns the crystals into bouncy balls [Music] tail is old as time to be honest we're not sure we could come up with a premise any more coherent to explain glover the platform game where you play as a smiling sentient glove maneuvering a ball from one end of a level to the other does it make sense no does it sound fun when described not really does this aggressive marketing campaign that try to persuade players glover was actually more fun than normal games do anything to change your mind there's only one hero who possesses the strength the skill and the courage to save the world single-handedly again no do you kind of want to play tomb raider though [Music] except in a surprising twist glover is good actually the game world is populated with enemies but your real foe is the world itself as you bounce throw and slap your bouncy ball or one of several other balls each with its own behaviors through a series of puzzling stages all set to a soundtrack that is a hit vaporwave ep just waiting for whoever is willing to slow down the music 50 [Music] a glover sequel was announced but later ended up cancelled which is a shame because two entire games is probably the exact length of time it would take for the concept of glover to start making sense [Music] ask any zookeeper and they'll tell you ape escape is the worst case scenario something they spend hundreds of hours training for and why they keep cyanide pills in the corner of their mouths because if the apes get the upper hand you do not want to be taken alive pretty damn flippant then of first party sony developer japan studio to make a whole game about escaping apes [Music] betting big that you the player would be into the concept of spending an entire game sprinting furiously after runaway chimps with a shrimping net or should i say a chimping net [Music] well actually it's a time net because the idea behind ape escape is also that an ape named spectre with an experimental helmet has taken control of a time you know what we're just gonna let the professor explain the time station has been activated by spectre and you're being transported back in time you'll soon arrive in the lost land when dinosaurs roam the earth spectre has sent the apes back in time to try to change the course of history spectre couldn't have picked a worse army for world domination than the apes however because all these time-displaced simeons do is sit around waiting to be startled into running away from you and your stun gun net and other advanced ape-capturing tools yes ape escape might have a premise so weird it's liable to bring on a tension headache but in fact this ps1 platformer was released to critical acclaim [Music] the apes are just hard enough to catch that actually bagging one is bizarrely satisfying while the game has a unique control scheme where items are assigned to the right control stick because this was in fact a game built for the playstation's recently released twin stick dual shock controller ape escape went on to spawn several sequels starting with ape escape 2 for the ps2 in 2001 a new ape escape for the gritty naughties as exemplified by the cover which features an ape with a machine gun apologies to any zookeepers watching you shouldn't even have to think about that scenario [Music] you have to give this next game points for confidence proudly declaring its hero the robot on wheels as if being on wheels is in any way remarkable for a robot tell it to marimba rocket developers those game developers wouldn't you know it were sucker punch best known these days for ghosts of sushima and the infamous series but back in 1999 they released their first ever game robot rocket on wheels for the n64 this game is about a robot who works at the obscene sounding whoopee world amusement park and must stop a jealous raccoon mascot wrecking the park before opening day and is about 500 more special than that plot summary makes it sound why because this platformer amazingly has a full physics engine a feat almost unthinkable at the time and indeed in a rocket retrospective in 2014 rocket developer don mussil said the physics engine on rocket is astonishingly good and something that nintendo didn't really think was possible the fact that objects in rocket bounce crash and spring in a realistic way makes the game an awful lot of fun to actually play [Music] and is key to solving many of the puzzles which include winning a game of naughts and crosses against a chicken oh crap the chicken has a winning move time for drastic action [Music] i'm not proud of having to resort to that to be honest rocket earned positive reviews when it was released critics clearly able to see past the fact that the first level is called clowny island and is full of clowns that steal your things [Music] and to the deeper game whose bouncy unpredictable physics made it one of the most singular platformers of the 90s [Music] there's no time to list all of its interesting ideas so we'll settle for just a couple in the first level alone the roller coaster designing minigame and the hot dog car okay now that's a less usual way for a robot to be on wheels [Music] a story about a kindly trash cleanup robot that tidies up earth once all the humans have effed off to space might work for a kid's film but you wouldn't think it would translate to a run and gun platformer right i mean wally can't even shoot from crouched useless but consider vector man for the sega genesis the game where you play a garbage clean-up droid or orbot that absolutely kicks ass in vectorman by the year 2049 earth cities forests and ice caps lie in a polluted ruin which frankly in 2022 is sounding like an optimistic time frame with humanity absent an all-powerful being called warhead is created when a nuclear bomb is accidentally welded onto the head of the orbot in charge of cleaning up earth which again in 2022 seems like exactly the kind of that will absolutely happen [Music] enter vectorman who looks like a teenage mutant ninja turtle partway through being dissolved in acid and is immune to warheads mind control because he was delivering a shipment of sludge to the sun at the time obviously vector man might have a dizzyingly weird premise but despite that it's a dizzyingly good action platformer distinguished from the hordes of generic similar games floating around at the time by its stunning animations and super satisfying platforming that earned the game rave reviews with double jumps enemies that blow apart just right and enormous boss fights i'd like to see wally take on this thing no seriously i really would like to see that pixar call me i can have this storyboarded in a month so those are some platformers that sounded terrible on paper but in practice they were actually pretty fun can you think of any others let us know in the comments which of these games were your favorites if you ever played them also let us know in the comments give us a like if you enjoyed the video hit that subscribe button and we shall see you next time thank you for watching bye

Channel: Outside Xtra

Views: 394,149

Keywords: Ellen Rose, Luke Westaway, Outside Xtra

Id: 12q2J1QGVVo

Length: 16min 0sec (960 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 18 2022