Part 6 of this juggernaut of creativity and this time there's no slightly discouraging self-deprecating remarks to introduce them. This is because I was too stupid to think of any.
051. Toy Space
A space sim game with a slight difference: Everything is made out of toy-related elements and materials. For instance, your ship and crew are stuffed and you'll come across all manner of popular (public domain! public domain!) toys of yesteryear in the vast cosmos of this toy universe. Despite the setting, the game will be sufficiently complex and action-packed to appeal to any older age group; though a toned-down and simplified version would be available for the young-uns since I always thought it was cruel for purposely-kiddy-looking adult-themed cartoons and the like to have an aesthetic that appeals to children only to exclude them because of the mature content. Bit of a rant there. Yes. So really, the point of having this kind of look is to include all kinds of weird random things that you'd expect to find in space if you watched as much Star Trek as I did, only in toy-form so it's not as difficult to handle. Like a giant space amoeba lifeform thing made out of that green toy slime that was dropped on people on "You Can't Do That On Television" whenever they said "I don't know". Don't expect the computer sensors to know either, humans! er.. Humanoid toys! Whatever!
052. Suikoden Guess Who
I was racking my brain to come up with another game that would benefit from having 108 protagonists and the only one I could think of within five minutes (after which my attention invariably drawn to something more shiny) is that old board game with the clicky portraits, Guess Who. Going with traditional RPG cliches, I'm thinking the questions would go like "is your guy.... a moody loner?" or "ok, does your guy have blue hair?" or perhaps "carries an inexplicably large sword?" or maybe "turns out to be a prince of a distant country?" or even in a random leap of stunning illogic "came from an orphanage but forgot?". You could have literally minutes of fun with this game. I'm thinking the gimmick for the video game version, excepting "getting the pants sued off us" as a gimmick for the moment, would be to have to fight the characters you successfully managed to exclude from your search. This would force the players to make their enquiries far more elaborate and specific to avoid a larger confrontation: for instance, asking if the guy has an eyepatch and getting a "no" would get you into a fight with all the eyepatch guys you eliminated, which would probably be a small number. Alternatively, asking if the character is a girl will cause approximately half the cast list to suddenly attack you.
053. Warioware: Think Fast!
In this edition of Warioware the microgames last milliseconds instead of seconds, forcing you to hit a random button and hope for the best. Display your highscores online to be surreptitiously abducted from your home by men in black suits to be enrolled in a faster-than-light aircraft experimental facility. Turns out that the field of hypothetical superluminal physics always has a use for people who can pluck nosehairs and swat flies faster than they can think.
054. Helo
A chat program for kids that play Halo. Instead of promoting badly-spelled leetspeak diatribes about the ethnic background and dietary habits of your apparently transgendered mother, however, the program actually records and rewards "frags" for witty, well-timed and perfectly spelt putdowns, with bonuses for referencing classical fiction within the burn. Pwning noobs with Shakespeare quotes about "how a fool is a fool whenever a wise man is not being a fool, so sayeth I" (possibly paraphrased) is a future of erudition I want to see from these kids. In actuality, the future I want to see for the average 12 year old who frequents Halo servers is, ideally, an incredibly short one. But that's neither here nor there.
055. Happy Reaper Game
Right, so there's a few Death/Grim Reaper games out there where you control "the bloke in the cloak" directly or play as some kind of minion or salaried employee doing the same job. These games are generally as gloomy as a funeral (gee I wonder why that is), though some (like Grim Fandango) inject a fair amount of humour and joie de vivre in the underworld's goings on. Or joie de mort in this case, I guess. French puns; that's a first for me. In this, you're busy scooping up dead souls as usual, but everything's made more cheery and hopeful. Life, in this game, is horrible and depressing and thankfully short and the Reaper's job to end the harsh existence of the mortals for a happier existence of fluffy white ghosthood couldn't be peachier. With the right style of bubbly, friendly art to display a more positive underworld and Katamari-style uplifting music (or failing that, some reggae) for severing mortal coils to, Death doesn't have to be nearly as depressing.
056. Sole/Halibut
A competitive fighting game that involves hitting each other with giant fishes during that confusing period of history at the end of the 16th century. Will you be the first to find the sacred fish weapon: Holy Mackerel? Will you be able to defeat the dreaded ghost-pirate/pirate-ghost Sardines de Leon? And, more importantly, is this yet another Monty Python reference in this list? You betcha.
057. Myspace: The Game
Nope, this is not one of those "let's market something popular to kids in some vapid licence game because those little guys never seem to run out of money and stupid". Not entirely that, anyway. What this is is a detective game that exclusively uses Myspace and its various tools to allow your protagonist to solve all sorts of crimes. See, your guy was put into intensive care when his luck changed on a particular case. Since you're unable to move from your bed, sort of like the Bone Collector but not at all like that because I'm an original thinker, the only way you can continue to follow clues is via the internet. Obviously, there are things that can only be taken at face value, since the internet is one big web of lies - though certain little things show up on the Myspace pages of people involved with the case. Stuff like the occasional photo with an accidental clue in the background, or a comment about a date and place that turns out later to be the crime scene. Maybe the annoying MP3 has something to do with the case, though the computer the detective is using is left mercifully mute whenever sound isn't important. Type, click or use the stylus (depending on system) to point to clues and record them and then put the whole thing together in time to save the next victim. Or at least in enough time to get the suspect arrested before he can upload another 50 Cent track at full volume. Protip: Anyone who puts "Interests: Killing" is probably a suspect.
058. Optional Collection Subquest for Tomb Raider
Probably see this one coming from a mile away: Collectible deaths! For every interesting way you can get Lara killed, you'll receive a token of your "achievement". Collect them in sets, such as "falling onto stuff", "getting eaten by things", "traps aplenty" and "pot luck". You'll need to get creative to find all of them, so never pass by a suspicious looking switch or wobbly floor panel without checking them out first. Find every single fatality and you'll unlock a special bonus tirade of slurs and insults directed towards you from the heroine herself, for the strange people who like that sort of thing.
059. Megaman Wars
You know, the odd thing about Megaman, especially the online cyberspace one from the Network games, is that despite being a robot he's never cloned or anything. It wouldn't even be cloning, they could just get a whole bunch of them off a production line. Wily can produce thousands of those little Met helmet bots, so how difficult would it be, really? This game is an RTS that uses a whole squad of Megamen, some of which can be modified with extra powers by defeating specific robot masters in a campaign, as they invade the lands of one robot master after another. You'll need to send the right group of Megamen to fight the hordes of varied opposing robots (using Needle Man's powers to pop balloon-shaped enemies, for example) in gruelling wide-scale RTS combat zones. I'm still confused with the duplicate Megaman issue though. Didn't they have duplicates in that soccer game they made? And what was all that about, on an entirely unrelated tangent? Probably should wrap this up now.
060. Soylent Hill
Health Drinks are made out of people! And everything bad that happened is caused by Moses euthanizing his own wife and feeling guilty about it! And Pyramid Head was the name of his beloved childhood sled!
