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| source// Namco/Bethesda/Konami |
You can’t blame the publishers for trying to branch out – and cash in – on popular franchises (even if most video game spin-offs become the object of so much mockery and jeering), as fans inevitably tire of seeing the same old series regurgitated year in year out, and crave for something a little different.
In trying to provide a new angle on a popular series’, or to reimagine it in some way, video game spin-offs have often been so bizarre and out of keeping with their source material that they’ve been completely forgotten about since release, as the publishers start to think “Let’s just pretend that never happened, shall we?”. In other cases, they came out before their main entries really took off, and were appreciated in their time before being brushed under the carpet by more prestigious successors.
So, as the big hitters continue to march forward and rake in fans and funds by the millions, let’s remind ourselves of the obscure, weird, and sometimes wonderful games that may have famous names attached, but have since been consigned to the footnotes of gaming history.
10. Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard
Most of us think of Morrowind as being the Elder Scrolls series’ foray into the 3D realm, paving the way for the all-conquering Oblivion and later Skyrim. But around four years before Morrowind, there was this forgotten little– not exactly gem, but half-decent adventure game set in the Elder Scrolls universe.
In it, you control a young Redguard called Cyrus, who gets embroiled in the politics and upheavals of the Hammerfell region while searching for his sister. It’s much more linear than the Elder Scrolls we know and love, with a heavy focus on dialogue options, puzzle-solving, and a pretty robust sword-fighting system. It wasn’t a bad game for its time, but completely overshadowed by the incredible Morrowind and subsequent entries in the series.
The title reveals that Bethesda envisioned this game as the first of many ‘Adventures’, with each one focusing on a different race of Tamriel. Kind of a neat idea, but when Morrowind came out a few years later and blew us all away, they scrapped the idea, deciding to dedicate themselves to open-world RPGs instead.
Thank the Gods…
9. Fallout: Brotherhood Of Steel
One of the more infamous obscure spin-offs out there, Brotherhood of Steel was panned by Fallout fans for its simplistic gameplay, which was a far cry from the deep RPG systems that people expected from the series. It was so unpopular in fact, that a planned sequel was canned and the game’s storyline ditched by Bethesda from Fallout canon. Ouch!
But, dare I say it, Brotherhood of Steel wasn’t that bad. It just wasn’t really Fallout – more of a Diablo clone in which you blasted and punched your way through post-apocalyptic dungeons. It was all about picking up tons of loot, upgrading your weapons and packing bigger and better armour, all under the guise of ‘questing’; which mainly entailed you clearing roomfuls of people and radscorpions for people… to the sound of Slipknot.
Sure, it was repetitive, ugly, and decidedly more vulgar than the Fallout we all know and love, but it does have the advantage of letting you play through it with a buddy. Yeah, you don’t get that in Fallout 4, do you?
8. Metal Gear Acid
When it was first announced that the Metal Gear Solid series would be coming to the PSP, everyone was overjoyed. At first glance, it looked pretty great too, with the top-down perspective of the original Metal Gear Solid, stealth, greeny-blue military bases, and… are those battle cards I see popping up all over the screen? Ahh crap.
Yes, Metal Gear Acid was the Solid Snake adventure that nobody expected or really wanted. One of the great sagas of the video game medium was transformed into a turn-based trading card game, and while it wasn’t as good as the proper portable MGS games that would come later, it was actually pretty fun.
Each encounter in the game is played out using a hand of cards that includes weapons, melee moves and characters from the series. It was a highly tactical affair, as you had to carefully weigh up each action and each grid-based step you take, sneaking past enemies or attacking them to reach the end-of-level objectives. As you combine cards and learn the ropes, you’ll soon see that the depth of strategy here is much greater than your average Metal Gear game.
Acid’s unique gameplay hook earned it a cult following of card game fans, prompting an improved sequel to come out a few years later. An obscure spin-off success story, if ever there was one.
7. Command & Conquer: Renegade
Quite possibly the most famous strategy video games series of all time, Command & Conquer will always be fondly remembered by veteran gamers growing up in the 90s… Cha-Ching! What it definitely won’t be remembered for is Renegade, the first-person shooter released in 2002 that marked the series’ foray into a genre dominated at the time by the likes of Unreal Tournament and Quake 3.
Built on Westwood’s own in-house engine that supported some excellent (for the time) gameplay and physics, Renegade took players all over the world (well, generic battlefields all over the world), as you rampaged across vast levels on foot or in tanks, carrying out an array of military-grunt objectives. The multiplayer was also solid, with a Command and Conquer Mode which borrowed gameplay elements – such as harvesting – from the strategy games, while being a deceptively tactical online shooter.
While it wasn’t a huge hit at the time, it was popular enough that fans made Renegade X in 2009, a remake of the game in Unreal Engine 3. It’s worth checking out, even though it’s considerably faster and less tactical than the original.
6. Death By Degrees
Of all the games in this list, this is the only one that has the deluded self-confidence to have no reference to its parent series in the title (unless you count the schlocky prefix that says ‘Tekken’s Nina Williams In:’). Essentially a slightly more advanced version of the main games’ Tekken Force Mode, Death By Degrees is a 3D beat-em-up sees you punch, slash, and occasionally shoot your way through rooms of goons as the blonde assassin.
Nina’s goal is to bring about the downfall of some criminal organisation or another, though you can’t help but feel the game’s just an excuse to see Nina strutting around wearing dresses that reveal teasing bits of cleavage, or side-boob, or both. It plays much like the main Tekken games, which is a problem seeing as they’re designed for one-on-one scenarios, not five-on-one. While there are moments of fun to be had with twin ninja blades and assault rifle, it’s marred by awkward camera angles and targeting systems.
Much like the Elder Scrolls Adventures, and the Mortal Kombat Mythologies series before that, Death By Degrees was an attempt to start a whole spin-off series that would follow a different character at each outing. The reason we see much less of these spin-offs today is probably thanks to games like this, which are told as terrifying cautionary tales to baby publishers, scaring them off trying to do this kind of thing ever again.
5. Chocobo Racing
“Those Mario Kart and Diddy Kong Racing games seem to be doing pretty well for Nintendo”, thought Square to themselves. “What characters do we have that would work in a kart racing game? Ah-ha! CHOCOBOS.”
That’s right, chocobos. The ostrich-like bird from the Final Fantasy series was deemed popular enough by Square to headline its own kart-racing game, which also featured a bunch of second-rate characters from the legendary series. It’s kind of incredible that Square looked at the Final Fantasy series, and didn’t think to call this game ‘Final Fantasy Racing’, and include all the most loved and famous characters throughout the series’ eight games up to that point.
Terrible casting and title aside, Chocobo Racing had a visual style derivative of Mario Kart 64, with polygonal, popping-in backgrounds, boring pickups and bland, spritey characters. Maybe it would’ve fared vaguely better if Crash Team Racing didn’t come out several months later to show Square what a PS2 kart racing game should really look like.
4. Bomberman: Act Zero
Remember Bomberman? The cute little dude with the bowling-ball hands and giant bonce was a major video game icon in his time, and the face of some of the greatest local multiplayer experiences around.
Well, forget all those fond memories, because in 2006 Bomberman went through a ‘mature’, ‘gritty’ makeover on the Xbox 360 – if your ideas of mature and gritty are based on Micheal Bay’s Transformers movies. Played from a jarring rotating perspective, and set in a strangely dark, purpley-blue world that looks like it belongs in the Lawnmower Man, Act Zero completely violated the cheery spirit of the series. Thankfully, it was so forgettable and dissimilar from the rest of Bomberman, that hardly anyone remembered it even existed.
As if to emphasise its bad will towards gamers, the game had 99 levels, offering players one life and no way of saving. Not that you’d want to put yourself through 99 levels of this mess anyway, but still, it’s the principle, dammit!
3. Yoshi’s Safari
With Yoshi having made his big-screen debut in Super Mario World to a rapturous reception, Nintendo decided to start pushing the lovable dinosaur to be the star of his own show. Now, one option would’ve been to put him in a 2D platformer, but no, Nintendo figured to go all off-the-wall about it and cast him in an on-rails shooter that utilised the Super Nintendo Super Scope.
For all its weirdness, Yoshi’s Safari is, pardon the pun, a great blast. Made using the flashy Mode 7 graphics that were the basis for games like Mario Kart and F-Zero, the game looks beautiful as you automatically run around the on-rails worlds (that look alarmingly similar to Mario Kart), shooting iconic baddies from the Mario series. The shooting in the game is actually done by Mario who’s riding Yoshi, which technically makes this a first-person on-rails shooter that you play from the plumber’s perspective – a strange thought…
Yoshi’s Safari never got a widespread release, but it was one of the more enjoyable spin-offs in a series that’s been filled with some pretty awful ones. This next one being a case in point…
2. Hotel Mario
Now here’s a twist on the tired old Mario formula of saving the princess from a castle in every single game: shack her up in a hotel instead! As the horrible, freakishly animated CDi cut-scene at the start of this game informs you, Bowser is now keeping Peach hostage in a hotel instead of a castle, and it’s your job to go to one of these treehouse abodes and… shut all the doors.
Yep, that’s pretty much it. Mario effectively becomes a stand-in concierge for a series of samey hotels, slamming doors to prevent goombas, koopa troopas and caterpillars continually emerging from them. There’s no sense of traversal here, as each level takes place on a single screen where you repeatedly take elevators up and down to keep those doors a’shutting.
Each level has a slightly different backdrop and a unique boss at the end of it, but that does little to mask the tedious gameplay, clunky controls and those nightmarish animations that aren’t fit to be viewed by kids, or anyone really.
1. Pokémon Channel
It was between this and Pokemon Snap, but in the end the sheer meta-weirdness and relative obscurity of Pokemon Channel help it make this list.
Now this game, if it can even be called a game, is a bit of a strange one to wrap your head around. You’re cast as some indolent kid in the Pokemon universe, sitting at home and watching TV. A Pikachu then turns up at your house, and the idea is that you and the yellow rodent hang out and watch TV together – not any old TV though, but 30 or so channels dedicated entirely to Pokemon!
Throughout these channels, you’ll find exclusive anime episodes of the TV show, a newscast hosted by Psyduck, and an infomercial channel hosted by a sleazy shade-wearing Squirtle. There are a few mildly interactive channels among these, including a quiz and a ‘guess what will hatch out of the egg’ channel, but aside from that, you’ll probably find a lot more entertainment by channel-hopping on Freeview.
Once you get bored of that, you can wander around the area surrounding your house with Pikachu, engaging in a few simple mini-games, the most fun of which is definitely notplaying catch with Pikachu. Who plays video games to play a game that’s been around since the stone age? Come to think of it, who plays games to watch fake TV either?
What strange, forgotten spin-offs from your favourite series have you had the fortune or misfortune of playing? Let us know with a comment!
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