11 weird classic games you may have forgotten

As someone who grew up during the rise of video game consoles, I've experienced my fair share of titles: good, bad, and sometimes just plain weird. Let's face it: one of the most popular video game franchises is about a plumber saving the princess of the Mushroom Kingdom from a giant turtle with a spiked shell. Games don't have to be realistic or super-serious, and the story doesn't always have to matter. It's all about the gameplay, especially when you're a kid.

That said, when revisiting some of my favorite games from my childhood, some of which you can play using Nintendo Switch Online, I couldn't help but wonder how the heck some of them existed and, quite frankly, how some of them seemed to just disappear. To be clear, this list isn't a roundup of bad games — though some of them are — but rather a look at some odd gems from the past you may have forgotten, for better or worse. Whether it's a strange story, odd gameplay, or just a weird choice for a console game, here are some games, in no particular order, that might leave you scratching your head.

11 Milon's Secret Castle

Where do you even get started?

Let’s start this list off with a bang with one of the strangest games I played as a child, and weird here is an understatement. Players control Milon, a character who looks like he’s sporting footie pajamas and a nightcap. The story is that in the land of Hudson, people communicate using music, and Milon can’t do that, so he’s off on an adventure to find people like him. Instead, he fights an evil Warlord who took over a castle to rescue Queen Eliza. It doesn’t seem overly strange considering other games at the time, but it is when nothing is ever explained.

Milon’s Secret Castle plops you in front of a castle, and you have to figure out what to do. Enter the castle, find instruments, find hidden bees, and shoot bubbles at respawning enemies. Yep, bubbles. It is a hodgepodge of elements that slam together in an awkward attempt at an action-adventure game. It’s definitely a “Nintendo Power” game — a video game requiring Nintendo Power magazine to figure out what you’re supposed to do. It’s not traditional, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It is bad when the controls are garbage, everything is hidden away, and there’s absolutely no direction. It's not exactly Nintendo Hard, but it's not really that much fun either.

10 SimEarth: The Living Planet

Play god

If you’re familiar with SimCity and The Sims, you may be familiar with this title, but it flew under the radar. Following in the same vein as its more popular iterations, SimEarth is a life simulation game, but we’re not starting at the city or even at the human level. We’re going microscopic. Players get to actually form a plant from the ground up and watch as it progresses from birth to death.

SimEarth: The Living Planet was ahead of its time, and it is dense. You decide what kind of atmosphere, how to terraform your planet, and how to evolve lifeforms. Players decide how the world changes and can even be vengeful deities by causing natural disasters, melting ice caps, and hitting their planet with meteors. Why is it weird? Well, not many games will give you god-like powers or require so many intricate challenges. Don’t get me wrong — SimEarth is a great game if you’re into simulation experiences. Just be ready for a very steep learning curve.

9 ActRaiser

If you build it, they will come

Another game with a god complex, ActRaiser inspired this list. Why? Because, aside from being great, what the hell is this game? It’s a side-scrolling platformer, a city builder, and you are literally a god. Players assume the role of “The Master,” and with the help of your little cherub, it’s time to rebuild the world in your image. But first, you have to take out the monsters and compel the people to worship you.

After removing the monsters, you start civilization, and your Angel pal micromanages them. So, for one part of the game, you’re coming down to smite your enemies, and in the second, you’re flying around as the Angel, shooting down any monsters trying to kill off your followers as you direct the people where to build. It sounds like there’s a lot going on, but it’s actually pretty fun.

8 Lemmings

Following the leader

We’re going to keep rolling with the god-inspired games with Lemmings. Players decide if the lemmings live or die by solving puzzles and leading them to freedom. The goal is to get a set number of lemmings through an exit door, but since these little creatures have only a few brain cells rattling around, they are not overly concerned with self-preservation. They will walk off a cliff to their ultimate demise. There are also four difficulty levels, from “Fun” to “Mayhem.”

At the start of every level, a trap door will open, unleashing the lemmings. They will walk in a straight line toward whatever is in front of them, whether that’s a pit, lava, or countless other hazards. To complete the level, you have to get enough lemmings out of the exit door. Did I mention you have a time limit? Thankfully, your lemmings aren’t completely helpless; they have a bunch of skills you can assign in real time that can help them reach their destination unscathed, like a floating skill or a pickaxe to dig. Or you can blow them all up if you are tired of looking at them.

7 Commander Keen (All)

Here’s a throwback for the ages! Commander Keen is a strange but fun side-scrolling platformer that was lost in the MS-DOS time spiral. Players control the eight-year-old genius as he traverses Mars, searching for parts of his stolen ship. It’s sci-fi magic in a platform experience. Each game in the series is episodic, following Billy Blaze — er, I mean Commander Keen — on his wild adventures. Weird and entertaining, it wasn’t as soul-crushingly difficult as many of the games at the time, and received a lot of praise for it.

What’s incredibly strange is that these games weren’t more popular and aren’t still around. The game spawned a whole series of games featuring a similar style, but it didn’t evolve much past its original idea. Commander Keen did find his way off PC and to the Game Boy Color and Nintendo Switch. However, aside from some rumblings of a sequel during Bethesda’s 2019 E3 conference, Keen’s future is pretty much as lost as his ship parts.

6 Shadowgate

A creepy, yet solid, point-and-click

A point-and-click on the NES? Yes. Though it was originally released on Macintosh and MS-DOS, Shadowgate is an eerie, puzzle adventure game. Players start the game in front of Castle Shadowgate with an exposition dump of information and their quest to defeat the Warlock Lord before he destroys the world. What comes next is a series of intricate puzzles with various solutions and various hazards that can immediately claim your life with one minor slip-up.

This game might seem simple, but it’s a tricky puzzle game with a lot of trial, error, and survival horror. Players have a limited number of torches that act as a ticking clock — once that light goes out, you die. If you don’t solve a puzzle correctly, the game is not incredibly forgiving; get used to seeing the Grim Reaper. While it may seem like a game that probably shouldn’t work well on NES, it does. Though it is very frustrating, its brand of dark humor is pretty great and will help you make it through. And when there are so many great games on the NES, it's just another that may have just fallen through the cracks.

5 Soul Blazer

Divine intervention

SNES games really did have a god complex. I debated putting Soul Blazer on this list, but I had to for the story alone. A woefully underrated action RPG, Soul Blazer deserves more recognition than it gets. Players assume the role of a “heavenly companion” sent down to the Freil Empire to fight the diabolical Deathtoll. You’re an angel sent to fight demons; this is a typical fantasy yarn being spun, but the story comes off the rails, mixing in talking plants, machines, and evil empires.

Soul Blazer is very Zelda-like in that players work through dungeons and collect MacGuffins to advance the story. But it also has some unique twists; you have to clear monster lairs to set souls free from people to plants. As you release more souls, new items, conversations, and details are revealed. While the story is largely fantasy-based, the random sci-fi elements and other genre influences blend together to make for an enjoyable gaming experience.

4 Bart’s Nightmare

Ay carumba!

The Simpsons were super popular back in the early '90s, so it’s only natural that America’s favorite family would get a game. Well, Bart’s Nightmare is certainly a game, and a very odd one at that. The plot itself is simple: Bart falls asleep while studying and dreams of a strange alternate universe where he needs to recover his lost homework. Like a real dream, this game is trippy. Bart has to walk around his dream Springfield searching for his homework while avoiding hazards like Principal Skinner, who will…put Bart in his Sunday school suit. That might not seem so bad, but the suit makes Bart slower and unable to fight off attackers.

Bart has plenty of weird things to avoid, like Jimbo and the bullies, as well as a fairy Lisa. But once you do find a page, you are transported to a mini-game of sorts, like becoming Bartzilla or being trapped in an episode of Itchy and Scratchy. Completing the mini-game earns you a page, but if you “lose too many Z’s,” you’re kicked out and back into dream Springfield.

If you get hit too many times without replenishing your Zs, Bart will wake up, and the game is over. Depending on how many papers you retrieve, you’ll get a letter grade. The icing on top of this strange cake is that it is so hard. If you manage to escape dream Springfield unscathed, you still have to make it through the mini-games — and does this game have clunky controls.

3 The Lost Vikings

So, the Vikings reached space first, too

Vikings in space. The Lost Vikings is a unique puzzle-platformer where players help three abducted Vikings escape captivity and find their way home. The concept is very strange, but the game is actually pretty fun. Players swap between the different Vikings to tap into their unique skills to solve each task. To complete a level, you have to get all three Vikings to the exit, but you have to switch between each of them to do so. Therein lies the difficulty.

Erik can run fast, bash down walls, and jump. Olaf can block enemies and glide. Baleog can defeat enemies with his sword and bow. However, if one of them dies, you all die. You need to keep all the Vikings alive to beat the levels. Thankfully, you have unlimited continues, so it’s pretty fair in that regard. While it’s not exactly something expected, The Lost Vikings has a lot of unique puzzles, and it’s pretty funny to boot.

2 Yo! Noid

That's one way to out pizza the hut

Did you want a game based on a pizza mascot? Domino's thought so. Mr. Green is causing New York City to go into a massive panic, and the mayor has called upon the Noid to put an end to the chaos, for all the pizza he can eat, of course. If you’re wondering how this happened, don’t think too hard. Yo! Noid was skinned onto a game called Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru. Capcom teamed up with Domino's to localize the game using the Noid.

The goal is for players to reach the end of the level within the time limit. Using your trusty yo-yo, it works like other platformers. Get power-ups, find extra guys, beat up the bad guys. It’s not a bad game, but it’s not remarkable either. It’s just weird to me that Domino's has a video game.