I know some of us here are more or less into videogaming, be it good old 8 bit times or the latest myst-like adventures. I personally enjoy both old fashioned and actual mainstream, straight spaceship shooters and the strangest indie games. It's because of these last ones that I felt an impulse to put this thread here, on a forum for avantgarde music. I recently discovered this game:

BRAINPIPE
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Digital_Ee ... _page.html

It is a true psychotic experience, it features psychedelic visuals and the sound part is the most weird and psychedelic of all, one must play to see it. As you pass through a tunnel, there are things on it that have a peculiar sound, you can slow down the tempo and every sound the things and tunnel make, and the mix of sounds along with the visuals just put you on a trance-like ambience quite unique in videogames. The soundscape generated is not exactly music, but sometimes there are some beats that form rythms and the result is fucking weird.

Also, the alien and psyche themes add to the outworldly atmosphere.

A demo can be downloaded here:
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Demos/DD_BP_win.html (windows, there's also for mac on the other web)

I know that this thread will probably drown in oblivion, but it can either be used for general videogames talk, if anyone is up to it.

older, but great, small logical gamie:

http://amanita-design.net/samorost-1/

There is this Japanese guy who has done a big heap of very abstract vertical and horisontal shoot'em ups (like Gradius/Darius G/R-type/Raptor you know), check them out:
http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/index_e.html

Have fun!

I think I played Samorost before, have to play it again because there is a second and maybe a third part, too. I'll try the japanese shooters too when I'm at home.

Back on independent commercial games, anyone heard about Braid? It's a platformer puzzle game set in oniric worlds with beatiful graphics and music, and intelligent and a bit hard platforming puzzles. It also has a demo and a dinosaur at a castle who tells you that the princess is in another castle. But the story behind is not what it seems. Really good game.
http://braid-game.com

I did play Raptor (a looong time ago), though only the demo version of the game. I recently found a full copy of the game but my pc doesn't support it. (Too modern, I guess!) Too bad programs like Dosbox and ScummVM only work on a finite list of oldies.

Other oldies that still manage to capture my attention:

-Halloween Harry
-Duke Nukem I / II (make that II, I was rather uninspired)
-Crystal Caves
-Gobliiins I / II / III
-The incredible Machine (TIM)

Ah, nostalgia...

Ah, I remember when me & my cousin sat at his home playing shareware versions of games from APOGEE... Jazz Jackrabbit!!

Has anyone played The Dark Eye? A very strange game, based on a number of E.A. Poe stories. Featuring none other than William S. Burroughs reading The Masque of the Red Death and Annabel Lee!
And it's clay animation!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Eye_(video_game)
It's bloody scary... never finished it. Found it as a semi-legal abandonware download a few years ago, it is probably extremely rare to find it physically. Which is a shame since it's wonderful.

This is also pretty weird; Sanitarium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitarium_(videogame)
You are a character who was in a car accident after finding out some very important secret. The action takes place inside the character's delusional mind (or is it reality which is twisted?), very morbid and unwholesome. As with the Dark Eye, I found it abandonware, and never finished it (there were a lot of glitches, and no sound), also very hard to find.

Yeah, Sanitarium was cool, but indeed, glitchy as hell. I remember in the initial phases of the game you have to towel ride yourself out of a room and the game managed to bug me three times in a row in that spot.

Freaky, engrossing, captivating but unfortunately hugely unplayable.


Another one in the genre is Phantasmagoria, an overly romantic horror story, unfolded through a seemless unending set of movies. Whatever you did in the game, a movie popped up.
Too bad the romantic factor was too farfetched in this one, if only they could have sticked to horror,...shame.

I remember I played through Sanitarium, but I can't remember if I finished it or I'm confusing the later scenes with some from another game. Anyway, Sanitarium always reminds me of the weirdest point and click adventure:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_ ... eo_game%29
Based on a short story by Harlan Ellison.

Have to check out The Dark Eye, but the clay thing reminds me of The Neverhood...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Neverhood
...another awesome game made in claymotion set in an absurd world with absurd humor and absurd music. Grrreat. I have to play this again. I remember cracking up rolling on myself laughing in an scene where the protagonist shouts unbelivable burps.

Also @ Hieronimusch, those games were cool, I remember Commander Keen and one with zombies called Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion. Gobliins I works with ScummVM and there is a fourth one that was released months ago. Never played those entirely, though, but they remind of the later Lost Vikings (I and II) that were quite funny.

edit:oh shit, scummvm runs also gobliiins 2 and 3, and also I have no mouth and I must scream, and also Legend of Kyrandia. Just for you to know.

..till the end...


Lot of high quality adventures like I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream or Riddle of Master Lu, Broken Sword later...

Where are these times?

Haha, videogame thread finally!

Most of these games you all mentioned are PC, right? I have always been more of a console player, that´s why my memories are mostly with Nintendo (NES, SNES and so on).

Weird games... Let´s see.. There was

PLOK
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plok
which had a really weird 70ies soundtrack. And the guy uses his limbs as throwing weapons. WTF?

Also Paladin´s Quest
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paladin's_Quest
felt very strange for some reason.

But yeah, there were some great PC-Adventures with very weird ideas, Gobliins! 1-3 were great with it´s funny speech (widdle-widdle-boydle! Widdle-boydle! Boydle! ), also Monkey Island 1-3 (I laughed my ass off during the banjo duell in 3), ZackMcCracken, Maniac Manson and the like... Not funny, but I remember some weird even older PC-adventures like Leisure Suit Larry 1, Space Quest, all on 286PC back in times when everyone was like "200 MB Harddisk? You´ll NEVER fill that much space"...

Those were the times...

I don't know why but Phantasmagoria seemed very weird to me when I first played it. I was young at the time so that probably had something to do with it.

There was another game kind of like it, another FMV adventure game, that had you crawling around a town in the western U.S. trying to solve a mystery. It had a lot to do with American Indian religion and mythology. The name escapes me at the moment though.

As for recent ones, I thought Shadow of the Colossus was a very cool game. Not exactly strange really, but it was different in terms of design. The designer of SotC is making a new game for PS3 called The Last Guardian that looks like it will be pretty amazing. I don't own a PS3 at the moment but I may buy one just for it.

It seems as though game developers are a lot less willing to take chances these days with their games.

What games are you playing now, if you still do?

I played World of WarCraft for an extremely long time, longer than I should have. I quit several months ago and am glad to say I haven't had the urge to play again. That game really is digital crack.

I just finished Fallout 3 and the DLCs for it (Mothership Zeta itself was pretty strange). I was afraid that the new format would ruin the nostalgia I have for the first two games, but the game has turned out to be one of my modern favorites.

For multiplayer I've been playing Call of Duty 4 and Call of Duty: World at War. I started with Doom and Quake, so I need to get my twitch shooter fix in occasionally.

I also have about 7 or 8 Xbox 360 games that I have yet to finish. It just never seems like I have time to devote to them anymore.

And I like to fire up the SNES emulator occasionally and play Chrono Trigger, my favorite game.

I never play any games these days, or hardly never, which I feel remorse for sometimes. You know, sometimes you just wanna flee into those beautiful make-believe worlds, all solitary and on your own (I never have been interested, and will never be interested in online/LAN gaming). My active gaming days ended with A., my old computer becoming too old to keep up - it was from 1999, so games like Half-Life and Unreal was the peak when it was new; I stopped keeping track of releases around 2003, nothing beyond that was possible to play. Then when I bought this computer in 2005, I reach reason B., moving together with my girlfriend. I don't blame her, but when you're all of a sudden taking care of a home and have to respect other people, you can't sit all day solving some magic quest. Unfortunately.
And since the Dreamcast system died, well... PC was my forte, but consoles were in my heart too.

We actually bought a SNES two years ago, spending a whole summer playing Super Mario. And every now and again I dig into some of my MYST games (I realised I had part I-IV, and had only finished I), or DOOM, but that is unfortunately it.

Should Phantasmagoria be released nowadays it'd most certainly have an 18+ rating, true. And I honestly believe that some age-restricted games shouldn't be played by (too) young children.

Shadow of the Collossus is indeed a truly unique game with each level being a huge mountable boss on its own. Let's hope The last Guardian keeps up to its predecessor...

I'm waiting for Fallout Goty in October (my original copy got scratched). I had never played a Fallout game before, so I couldn't compare, but although Bethesda games alwasy manage to have fecesloads of glitches and bugs, somehow they mostly deliver.

playing now:

Eternal Sonata (xbox360): typical japanese rpg madness entwined with the life and music of Chopin...only in Japan

Gobliiins likely qualifies as the weirdest game I have played. I was not very good at it, though, and never got very far.

Old, and slightly less weird, games like Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle and Leisure Suit Larry are old favourites of mine.