I’ve been working on cleaning up the blog a little bit. For those of you reading from Vox, check out my new site at RadDevon.com to read the stories straight from the source. Don’t worry. I’ll still be cross-posting to Vox as well for the time being. Sorry for the delay in posting the second part of this series. In this chapter, we’ll be doing bad stuff with hamsters (no, not that bad) Here comes more gaming weirdness!

Maniac Mansion

Platform: NES/PC
I’m going out on a limb to say that Maniac Mansion is the only game ever to depict a character cooking a hamster in the microwave. This was, of course, sanitized from the NES release of the game. It’s a point-and-click adventure game, a genre that is quickly becoming extinct. Luckily, independent developers aren’t content to let it die. In fact, Maniac Mansion has itself received an update in recent years. Relive the mania in glorious 16-bit color (and for free)!

Trauma Center: Under the Knife

Platform: Nintendo DS
The DS created lots of opportunity for innovation—and innovation is just code for “desirable weirdness!” Trauma Center puts you in the shoes of a rookie surgeon. Use the DS stylus to perform various procedures on patients. It can get a little tedious at times, but it’s a really unique experience. If the play mechanic isn’t weird enough for you, the story will be. Sure it may start innocuously enough, but just you wait…

PaRappa the Rapper

Platform: Playstation
Games have had music since nearly the beginning. However, until PaRappa the Rapper arrived, the music had not been the game. This game fostered a whole slew of music-based titles like FreQuency, Dance Dance Revolution, Gitaroo Man, and Guitar Hero. The characters are all very cute. The story is silly and quirky (seafood cake?). The music is fantastic and catchy. I’m talking every single song is fantastic! It’s too bad the sequel didn’t quite live up to the original. Where would we be today without this floppy-eared pioneer?

WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$

Platform: GameBoy Advance
Take a couple hundred mini-games, stuff them into a GBA cartridge, and thrust them upon the player with a scant word or two of direction and what do you have? WarioWare—arguably one of the finest portable gaming experiences ever conceived. Many of the games also carry on this sick since of humor tasking you with such things as picking a nose or avoiding a giant foot aiming to stomp you. This series really caught on and has received numerous iterations on Nintendo’s other platforms. Each new game in the series has a cool new feature that takes advantage of the hardware for which it was designed. It takes a minute to get acclimated to this game because it’s very different from a typical video game, but the payoff is immense. I can’t imagine anyone not liking it.

That’s the end! I hope everyone has a chance to try these games. They are all worth a shot to break you out of your established gaming patterns. If I missed any, please post them in the comments. Have fun!

Did you miss part 1?