Top 10 most bizarre gaming plotlines

6: Shenmue 2

The original Shenmue stands out as one of the best titles to grace the Dreamcast’s CD tray. It had everything - roaming gameplay, interesting storyline, great graphics and martial arts. However, in the bizarre stakes you know you’re in trouble when your game is named after a mystical tree that makes only a cameo appearance at the end of the second game.

The first game is fine: it works through at a great pace with lots of action, adventuring and investigation, I even ignored the few dodgy moments in the first game such as when Ryo went down to the docks and said: "Can you tell me where I can find some sailors?". The second game picked up where the first left off, as you travel across to China and the plot thickens.

However, as the game draws to a close you start to get this worrying feeling that things are going a bit crazy. My suspicions were aroused when I was asked to punch pink leaves from a falling tree. It was a task that worked within the context of the game but it seemed a bit too far out, a bit too Mr Miyagi. As odd as it was, it didn’t prepare me for the drastic plot twist. From that point the game hurtles at an incredible speed towards some bizarre religious spiritual ending in the countryside.


"Wait a minute!" I cry hopelessly, wondering why the game ends so abruptly in such a strange fashion. Rather than actually finish the story, which has become increasingly weird, it just says "To be Continued…" To this day I believe the ending of this Japanese masterpiece was rushed through, with an empty promise filling in the massive holes left in the plotline. Imagine if you got to the end of a classical opera and the tenor started beatboxing, it wouldn’t work and neither did this.

Still, Shenmue was an amazing game, making people do menial tasks they wouldn’t willingly do in real life such as lift boxes for hours on end. It pushed things forward in terms of graphics and playing styles, so it can be forgiven for its sins on the promise/hope that there will be more Shenmue in the future.

5: Jet Set Willy

I think this feature needs at least one really old school title, because there were some crazy people around in the 80’s. I’ve chosen Jet Set Willy, a platform game from 1984 that was originally for the Spectrum. The basic gist of the game was that you played Willy, who had just hosted a party but now had to clean up all the mess. The house was full of adventures, as any normal house is, which were unbelievably difficult and often impossible.

For example, one ‘feature’ of the game was that if you went into the attic before the end of the game whenever you tried to leave you would instantly die. Another feature was if you fell from a platform too far, and travelled through another screen, you would not only die but be reborn into the same fatal fall over and over until all your lives were gone. A very frustrating factor made worse by the amount of time it took to reset the old cassette tapes that games came on.

In the modern nitpicking era we would probably say this game was simply buggy but for retro gamers this all added to the character of this peculiar yet brilliant game. When you went into school after your marathon Jet Set Willy sessions you’d happily relate to each other your brilliant adventures and ponder about the meaning of why once you’d entered the attic you could never leave. Also, why exactly did this game have "If I were a Rich Man" as its theme tune? Was it that rich people employ cleaners to sort out the post-party detritus? Answers on a post card please. The ultimate odd factor for this game was that it actually couldn’t be completed without hacks, and if that’s not odd I don’t know what is.