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12 Great Video Games With Ridiculous Premises

By Michael Swaim
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Video gamers have consistently demanded one thing from their hobby: entertainment. Beyond that, we don't much care what inane task we're asked to complete. Give us a crystal banana, call it a power-up, and we'll gladly leap over a robot octopus to grab it, even if it means risking a slice of our life pie.

In many cases, it' plausible to assume the designers threw darts at a board covered in nouns and verbs, smoked crack until they forgot what nouns and verbs they picked, then made Warioware. Here are 12 more insane video game premises that prove you don't have to be Tolstoy, or even coherent, to design a hit game.

Super Mario Bros.

The Premise: An Italian plumber travels through a brightly-colored fantasy world collecting coins and mushrooms. He crushes turtles and goombas (essentially brown, waddling monstrosities) to death in order to rescue a princess from being raped by a dinosaur who pilots an airship.

What Made It Ridiculous: It was enough that mushrooms made you big and flowers made you shoot fireballs from your hands. By the time they added in a raccoon suit, a mechanical boot, and a dinosaur mount, it was pretty much anything goes. At that point, a mug power-up that gives you a rake that turns you invisible would have fit in fairly easily.

Why We Didn't Care: We were too busy cursing at the screen each time we found out the Princess was in a different goddamned castle.

Mega Man

The Premise: You are a robot built from the ground up for combat by the world' greatest living mind, and yet you are four feet tall and incapable of ducking or using any weapons other than a tiny, slow-moving pellet of energy. You have been tasked with killing other robots, whose powers have themes like "leaves" and "garbage."

What Made It Ridiculous: The fact that blasting an evil robot into oblivion somehow immediately granted you their powers. If that were really the case, I would have killed Tom Cruise long ago.

Why We Didn't Care: He had a robot dog, which is basically the secret dream of every 10-year-old boy in the world.


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35 Comments

@SickRooster: Seconded. Make this the 13 Great Video Games with Ridiculous Premises.

Posted on 5/14/2008 2:57:22 PM

nice one, kenmasters. they really should have put those games in there. =P

Posted on 5/6/2008 10:28:42 PM

Here's one you missed. A little boy(or teenager,depending on which game in the series) has to rescue the most capture-prone girl in the history of capturedom. Time and time again he risks his life to save her, and how are his selfless deeds aknowledeged? They name the entire series after "Miss Talkstostrangers". Here's to you, Link!

Posted on 5/5/2008 3:11:57 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echidna for alex the prick

Posted on 4/8/2008 5:31:02 AM

How can you have a topic like this and not include katamari Damacy / Beautiful Katamari? Holy ratdicks it's the most F'ed up premise out there. The whole game is an acid trip.

Posted on 3/26/2008 9:43:14 AM

unknown

kdruylamo flbrag qlahot swlkogdjy ezfbkjy lvcjqyat cfgrl [URL]http://www.lyzwonu.vmlpictu.com[/URL] nlzaecmj pjiqa

Posted on 3/22/2008 11:15:51 PM

unknown

wfaoczh dforcsazy bsmig zdgfnp sbuwve mpbwzv adwz [URL=http://www.uegxk.aziogmec.com]gctfqb yqxthnvjz[/URL]

Posted on 3/22/2008 11:15:16 PM

unknown

sprfiz uidohtgm refkatbcn pitszda jtmzipbh ntyrbqp wthfrz tkalncj oztd

Posted on 3/22/2008 11:14:59 PM

unknown

rvoswmy rktbi tpczxu sfhuwr iepw rmejthnl ziasolcb http://www.pjiu.myugadot.com

Posted on 3/22/2008 11:14:43 PM

unknown

nklbi rtmy bahs rdksmlfx ktgae alcto kbdjqywoc

Posted on 3/22/2008 11:14:00 PM

Atlas34

Burn

Posted on 3/21/2008 10:46:21 AM

Me

Congratulations to you friend, wuzzman16. Would you/your friend like a cookie?

Posted on 3/19/2008 10:43:25 PM

my fried tony's in 11th overall on scorehero.com, he also can actually play guitar really good, and is the fastest freshman in the entire state of michigan. theres and exception to every stereotype.

Posted on 3/18/2008 1:44:39 PM

alex

just so you know big al, and i'm sure he's entirely aware echidna's don't exist (as i never tire of telling stupid people, this is a comedy site) but they aren't at all related to the platypus.. they're both just australia animals who happen to lay eggs, which were created the last time God tried acid

Posted on 3/13/2008 10:14:01 AM

There is nothing funnier than grown men playing Guitar Hero. "I rock!" they say. "At being a nerdy gimp," I say.

Posted on 2/29/2008 11:37:53 AM

Bunny

Actually echidnas themselves really are named after a monster of ancient Greek mythology. Look it up.

Posted on 2/28/2008 12:21:47 PM

Big Al

Echidnas are not imaginary. They are related to the platypus, and exist in Australia, if I remember right. I certainly don´t imagine Knuckes being inspired by greek mythology's "Mother of all Monsters".

Posted on 2/21/2008 12:49:29 PM

just read this

that smash bros pic was taken on an emulator. wheres the n64 fuzziness??

Posted on 2/21/2008 11:31:52 AM

ChozoBoy

Samus and Kirby can't co-exist? Samus was in one of the SNES Kirby games, and her Screw attack Item was in the The Great Cave Offense.

Posted on 2/21/2008 11:22:46 AM

ASS

Yep, i still remember the olden time were the arcade was the coolest spot to be and i was putting my name as Ass, good time XD

Posted on 2/13/2008 6:35:38 PM

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