From Oddball Adventures to Eccentric Simulators: 16 Weird Video Games You Won’t Believe Exist

Sometimes there are things that cannot be done in a video game. They require too much memory. Too much work. They cause parts of the game to crash for no apparent reason. This is especially true when games are very large or complex, like Bethesda games.

In Fallout 3, the developers were unable to create a functional subway train due to the complexity of its systems and the size of its map. However, they came up with a clever solution. They created a non-playable character and instead of a head, they placed a subway car. This way, the character would run up and down the map unseen by players, perfectly simulating a functional subway powered by the most natural force possible: animal power.

The history of video games is filled with failed projects. In fact, we have coined our own term for when a project gets stuck in an endless loop, becoming a bottomless pit of time and money: development hell.

In this hell resided Too Human for almost ten years. Initially announced for the first PlayStation in 1999, its first teaser appeared at that year’s E3. Due to an exclusivity agreement with Nintendo, the studio Silicon Knights abandoned the project for five years. It wasn’t until 2005 that it was rescued for the Xbox 360. The game underwent a change in setting from a science fiction theme to Norse mythology. The development took two years longer than initially estimated, and then another year on top of that. The game ended up costing between $60 and $100 million, in addition to ten years of development.

The game was a resounding failure that didn’t appeal to critics or the public. It sold poorly and they lost the trust of Microsoft. To top it all off, they sued Epic Games, who provided them with the game engine, for breach of contract. And they lost the lawsuit. As a result, they were forced to destroy the code and all their unsold games that used Epic Games’ engine. This led to Silicon Knights signing bankruptcy papers on May 16, 2014, and closing their doors with only five employees remaining.

Dragon Quest is a franchise that may not be as well-known in the West, but in Japan, it holds as much, if not more, significance than Final Fantasy. Its parent company is the same, Square Enix, and although they share a similar RPG focus, Dragon Quest has a more classic style and less experimental tendencies, always relying on the character designs of Akira Toriyama and its nostalgic charm. This is also reflected in what is known as the “Dragon Quest Law.”

After releasing the first three Dragon Quest games on weekdays, Square Enix noticed that many people mysteriously fell ill on those days. Children would skip school, and adults would miss work, all because they preferred to stay at home and play Dragon Quest. That’s why, starting with Dragon Quest IV, the series creator Yuji Horii established what became known as the Dragon Quest Law. This self-regulation meant that future Dragon Quest games would only be released on weekends or national holidays, all in an effort to preserve national productivity and avoid any disruptions.

Even Americans themselves sometimes struggle to understand their own measurements. It was either a bug or a glitch that caused linebacker Christian Kirksey to have the spectacular height of 30 and a half centimeters in Madden NFL 15, a football video game. With the same strength and agility as his teammates, this tiny titan became a meme that even the game’s developer, EA, ended up parodying in a promotional video. Unfortunately, in the next game, Christian Kirksey appeared with his actual height: 1.88 meters.

Sometimes accidents lead to interesting developments. That was the case with the Corrupted Blood incident in World of Warcraft. On September 13, 2005, a new dungeon called Zul’Gurub was introduced, where its boss, Hakkar of Zul’Gurub, had a spell called Corrupted Blood that could infect players, who could then transmit it to others and suffer significant damage for a certain period of time or until they died. However, due to a programming error, Corrupted Blood was able to spread outside the dungeon and infect the entire world.

Corrupted Blood became a pandemic, and people reacted as if it were a real pandemic. Some non-playable characters acted as asymptomatic carriers, some players tried to escape to areas where they couldn’t get infected, others followed strict quarantines, and some even deliberately tried to infect as many people as possible. It wasn’t until October 8 that the game’s developer, Blizzard, managed to find a way to prevent the further spread of Corrupted Blood.

The most interesting aspect of this, apart from how a bug turned into an event that neither players nor developers expected, is how experts have used it as a research model. Both for studying the development of pandemics and the development of terrorist acts, the Corrupted Blood incident became much more than just a spell from a new boss for Blizzard. It had implications beyond the gaming world.

Sometimes, errors can be harmless. They become visual comedy moments that provide years of memories. That was the case with the disappearing faces in Assassin’s Creed Unity, a bug that only affected the PC version, specifically in combination with two specific graphics cards. In this bug, the faces of some characters, well, disappeared. This resulted in grotesque creations with bulging eyes, wacky tongues, and hair appearing out of nowhere, revealing the world behind their now absent faces. These monstrosities managed to endear themselves to the public, garnering both laughter and numerous criticisms. Even today, there is still the notion that Assassin’s Creed Unity is a broken game beyond acceptable limits. But isn’t this the price to pay for comedy?

If we were talking about eternal developments with Too Human, we have to mention the game that holds the Guinness World Record for the longest development time in history. Duke Nukem Forever was announced in 1997 as a sequel to the successful Duke Nukem 3D. However, problems soon arose. Engine changes, a team shortage, and the absence of a development plan further delayed the production of the game.

The first trailer for the game was released in 1998, greeted with enthusiasm. The next trailer wouldn’t arrive until 2001, received with interest. By 2003, only 18 people were working on the game, when the norm and minimum should have been at least double that number. In 2006, the game’s director had to restart development, only to eventually abandon the project due to the lack of progress. From there, everything went downhill. Delay after delay, with complete opacity towards the public, everyone thought it had been silently canceled. It wasn’t until September 2010 that the studio Gearbox Software acquired the Duke Nukem intellectual property, resumed development, and finally completed the game after nearly fifteen years.

Duke Nukem Forever had poor sales and mediocre reviews. It wasn’t even torn apart like Too Human: it simply felt like a game from over ten years ago. Which is exactly what it was. A game that took almost fifteen years to be released.

John Romero is indeed a legendary figure in the industry for co-creating Doom along with Tom Hall and John Carmack, but he is also known for having one of the biggest financial failures in history with Daikatana. The game had terrible AI, nonexistent level design, and despite having potential, it was hindered by one of the worst executions ever seen in the gaming industry, including its marketing campaign.

In a prime example of how not to do things, to announce Daikatana, they decided to create an advertisement that was a red poster with some black brushstrokes and, using the game’s typography, the phrase “John Romero’s about to make you his bitch.” For those who may not be familiar with the phrase, it essentially means “John Romero is going to dominate you.” It was a decision that years later, Romero would apologize for and admit was a terrible marketing move that did no favors for a game that already had its challenges in terms of finding success or winning over players.

Some bugs seem to have no reasonable explanation. For example, in FIFA 14, under very particular circumstances, players could have giant hands. Football players with gargantuan hands, bigger than their bodies, turning it into a nightmare to avoid committing fouls or making it much easier for the goalkeeper to save any shots on goal—if the game engine even recognized it. Because this bug, although bizarre, was only visual. It was as if in the game world, it was just an optical illusion. That’s why, although it’s highly amusing, it also makes us ponder the fragility of human perception. All because of footballers with giant hands.

Although it may seem common sense today, there was a time when video games didn’t have credits. Studios were afraid that other companies could contact their employees and offer them better conditions, so they didn’t allow them to sign their names, which in many cases bordered on illegality. However, this issue wasn’t given much importance since the video game industry was still in its infancy. That is, until a man named Warren Robinett decided to take a stand.

In 1980, Robinett worked for Atari on a game called Adventure. Even though he couldn’t include his name in the credits, he decided to include a secret room that could only be accessed if the player positioned themselves on a specific pixel on a particular screen. Inside the room, there was nothing more than a message that said, “Created by Warren Robinett.”

By the time Atari realized it, it was already too late. The game was already on the market, and although they wanted to remove that screen, it was simply unfeasible. However, players found it amusing. Instead of trying to suppress what had become an unpleasant incident for them, Atari decided to embrace it. From then on, rather than hiding the names of their creators, they would add them to the end of their games, similar to credits in movies. In honor of Warren Robinett’s ingenuity, they would also introduce secrets like that hidden room, which they would call “easter eggs.”

Indeed, Pro Evolution Soccer (PES), originally known as International Superstar Soccer, has been a major competitor to FIFA for almost 30 years. One significant challenge PES has faced is the limited access to official licenses from organizations like UEFA, which would allow them to use real team and player names. While some might assume they would settle for creating fantasy leagues, that is not the style of Konami, the development studio behind PES. Instead, they have employed a strategy of creating names that are similar enough to be recognizable but different enough to avoid potential legal issues and lawsuits.

Players like Batustita, Naldorinho, Ranoldo, Ruud von Mistelroum, Ziderm, notable stadiums like Blue Bridge or Trad Brick Stadium, and incredible teams like Merseyside Red, London FC, or AR Burgundy Blue make Pro Evolution Soccer the ultimate soccer game series. Because who wants to play with Messi when you can play with the legendary Roberto Larcos?

The Madden franchise, EA’s American football game, is one of the oldest in the video game industry. For years, it featured John Madden, a legendary coach and sports analyst, on its cover. Starting in 1997, the game was released annually, and in 1999, they decided that each edition’s cover should feature a promising or prominent player from the sport, based on their recent achievements. Ironically, what they started was not a kind of video game Hall of Fame for American football but what is known as the Madden Curse.

From 1999 to 2010, every athlete who graced the cover of Madden NFL experienced some form of misfortune. Whether it was an injury, a lack of achievements, or even retirement, it wasn’t until 2011 when the cover athlete, Drew Brees, didn’t suffer any negative consequences during the season. Since then, the curse seems to have diminished, as it only reoccurred in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2019. Although it’s enough to keep many believing in the Madden Curse, it hasn’t been significant enough to deter many players from refusing to appear on the cover of this multimillion-dollar franchise.

Some of the urban legends in the gaming world come to life because the developers themselves have a sense of humor that resonates with players’ wildest fantasies. That’s what happened with Diablo II, a game developed by Blizzard.

When Diablo was released, many players started to claim that there existed a Cow Level where a bunch of cows had evolved into warrior cows that sought to kill us. In the game, there were cows, but they simply mooed and behaved like regular cows. However, the developers at Blizzard, with a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor, embraced the idea and in Diablo II, they added the possibility of opening a portal to the Cow Level by combining a specific set of items. This allowed players to enter the whimsical Cow Dimension.

The Cow Level was an expansive meadow where two-legged cows wielding halberds, known as Infernal Bovines, would attack us under the leadership of the mighty Cow King. However, since these deadly bovines dropped exceptionally good items and weapons, it became a popular destination for high-level players. This turned the once urban legend into one of the most visited and well-known locations in cybercafés around the world.

Street Fighter is not a franchise that needs an introduction, but someone who did need an introduction was Sheng Long. When Ryu defeated other fighters, he would say, “You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance.” This led to one of the most famous urban legends of the 90s arcade scene, which claimed that Sheng Long was Ryu’s master. This led people to invent a thousand theories about how to unlock this secret character, but nobody could find a way to do it. Even though everyone swore they knew someone who had played as Sheng Long.

The twist of the story is that Sheng Long doesn’t actually exist. “Shen Long” was the Chinese reading of the kanji characters for “Shoryuken,” which is Ryu’s jumping right hook move. From that misunderstanding, the hypothetical master of Ryu, Sheng Long, was born. Quite literally. Because years later, in 2008, he was introduced as a playable character in Street Fighter IV, although under the name Gouken. But for those who want to believe that Sheng Long exists, they can always ignore the name displayed in the character selector.

There are things that developers cannot foresee, particularly the behavior of players. This is something that happened in Fallout 76, an online game released in 2018. After an initial failure in terms of both critical reception and player feedback, the game gradually redeemed itself through progressive updates. However, one measure that was implemented and received significant backlash was the introduction of an optional paid subscription that offered various benefits to those who chose to pay. This decision ended up dividing the game’s community into two distinct groups: those who subscribed and those who did not.

What the developers at Bethesda could never have anticipated is that those who did not pay for the subscription would engage in hunting down and targeting those who did. Considered as traitors of their class, non-subscribers would team up to seek out and kill characters who had paid for the subscription, looting all their items. This led to players who subscribed forming alliances to defend themselves. Over time, the situation has relaxed to some extent, but these dynamics continue to occur, demonstrating that even the seemingly innocuous decisions can have surreal consequences in an uncontrolled environment.

In 2007, the game developer Crytek released a game under the umbrella of EA that was considered one of the greatest engineering feats in the history of video games. It was visually spectacular and mechanically a remarkable leap forward; it was something never seen before. In fact, there were hardly any computers in the world capable of running it under optimal conditions because Crytek had designed it with their vision of how technology would evolve, rather than the technology available at that time.

People, instead of taking it negatively and boycotting the game, decided to take it with humor. This gave rise to one of the original memes, “Can it run Crysis?”. A question that would be added to any image, any discussion about technology, to automatically elicit laughter from any gamer who knew what we were talking about. A NASA computer? The servers that sustain the internet? Fifteen graphics cards connected in parallel? Who knows if those things could run Crysis.