#7: TACTICS OGRE: LET US CLING TOGETHER
When they needed to come up with a name for their new game, the creators of Final Fantasy Tactics apparently stuck random words up on a wall and threw darts at them while blindfolded. At least, that's the only logical explanation I can come up with for giving a game a title like Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together.
Believe it or not, Tactics Ogre is actually a series of games, with some bearing the moniker Ogre Battle rather than Tactics Ogre. But despite what the titles may have you believe, these games do not feature any tactical or battling ogres as playable characters. Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together was the second game in the series to be released way back in 1995, although western audiences probably weren't exposed to it until it was remade for the PSP in 2011. It's a tactical RPG, allowing you to build a team of characters that can specialise into different classes. The game itself was actually very well received despite its highly unusual name.
Ogres are like onions...they have layers. And you might find the story of this game's title has some layers to it as well. According to Wikipedia it was originally titled Lancelot: Somebody to Love, then was renamed to Tactics Ogre: The Bequest of King Dorgalha. I'm not entirely convinced that either of those titles would have made more sense than what the game's final title was. I'm still not entirely sure what the Let Us Cling Together subtitle refers to - whether that's supposed to be a reference to the party members sticking together through their hardships or what. Regardless, the end result is one of the strangest and oddest titles of a video game that we've seen.
Wanna take a quick look at funny pictures with captions that can help you relax effectively.
#6: STREET FIGHTER ZERO 2'
Capcom is somewhat infamous for making incremental updates to their Street Fighter series of games and differentiating them by adding seemingly arbitrary words to the title - gradually adding more and more words the more updates the game received. Who can forget Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix?
The game that probably takes the cake in this series though is Street Fighter Zero 2'. Known as Street Fighter Alpha is North America, Street Fighter Zero was a series of games released by Capcom mostly between Street Fighter II and Street Fighter III (and as if you weren't already confused enough, they also released a game titled Street Fighter Zero 2 Alpha, because Capcom).
For a start, it doesn't really make much sense to give the game a title consisting of the phrase "Zero 2" - but Capcom went one step further than that with one of their signature updates. This time...they couldn't even be bothered to add a real word to the title, and just added an apostrophe onto the end instead when they released Street Fighter Zero 2'. It's as if whoever wrote the title of the game made a typo and said "Oops...uhhh...yeah that'll do".
This was supposed to be pronounced "Dash" - so the official title of the game was read as "Street Fighter Zero 2 Dash". I guess because the apostrophe looks kind of like a dash? But don't think other versions were immune to this - oh no no no. Europe received Street Fighter Alpha 2' - but for some reason, this was not supposed to be read as "Dash", but was instead meant to be read as..."Prime". Yep. So the European version of the game, despite having that same apostrophe, was meant to read differently, as "Street Fighter Alpha 2 Prime". Your guess is as good as mine on this one. At least North America received the game as Street Fighter Alpha 2 Gold, a slightly more sane title that didn't feature random apostrophes.
Not to be outdone by its predecessor though, the Street Fighter Zero 3 series released games with "Upper" and "Double Upper" in their title (which were officially marketed as having an up arrow and two up arrows, respectively).
#5: BOOBY KIDS
In a list of weird video game titles, it's not altogether unexpected to see Japanese games heavily featured in it. Unlike some other games though, there isn't really a translation error with Booby Kids - that's just its name. In fact, it's the opposite of an error of translation into English - this NES game is a home conversion of an arcade game that had a different title, but was actually supposed to be called Booby Kids, so they changed the title to the intended name with the port to NES.
The game involves you controlling one of the Booby Kids, where you need to navigate through a maze of sorts, collect fruit and make it to the exit while avoiding the bad guys. You can protect yourself from the bad guys by digging holes in front of you that they can fall into or by setting bombs, that can also destroy parts of the environment. The bad guys will infinitely respawn, but seem to just walk around randomly and don't try to actively chase you.
The game is called Booby Kids because of the digging of holes and setting of bombs that are supposed to be booby traps. And while it does seem to make sense once you know the context, if you just looked at this title without knowing what the game was about, you'd definitely do a double take.
The game even saw a sequel on the Gameboy - titled Booby Boys. That should keep you all snickering for a while.
#4: IRRITATING STICK
Now here's a game to shake a stick at. See what I did there?
Irritating Stick is a dumb name for a game. Let's get that out there right now. It somehow simultaneously tells you what the game might be about while not telling you anything about what the game is about. So for those of you who haven't played it, I'll explain what the premise is.
Remember those high school experiments you used to make where you had a maze of wire and you needed to get a metal ring from one side to the other without touching the wire? That's essentially what Irritating Stick is - it's that concept in video game form and cranked up in classic Japanese style. You have a...uhhh...stick, that's apparently pulsing with 100,000 volts of electricity, and you need to move it from one end of the course to the other within the time limit without touching anything, including the sides of the course or any obstacles in it. If you touch anything you'll fail the course and the game will "zap" you by sending a large vibration to your controller. It's actually based on a Japanese game show where the contestants get real-life electric shocks when they mess up. The game is usually associated with being far more frustrating than fun.
I suppose, once you look at it in context, Irritating Stick doesn't sound quite as stupid of a title as it initially does - but it's not really the stick you're going to get irritated at here, it's the game itself, and probably the announcer too.
If you think this title is bad, consider for a moment that it could have actually been even worse. The Japanese word used here for "Irritating" could be more closely translated as "Vibrating"...and that is a rabbit hole I'm not going down.
#3: SPANKY'S QUEST
Now we're starting to get down to the truly ridiculous. At number 3 on this list, we have Spanky's Quest, that was released on the SNES and Gameboy.
At it's core, Spanky's Quest is a pretty innocent game about a monkey that gets captured by a witch and needs to throw balls at different kinds of walking fruit in order to obtain keys to unlock doors that eventually lead to freedom. The game actually was reasonably well received with a surprisingly good soundtrack, despite its unusual concept and its....less than innocent sounding title.
Alright, so who was the genius who thought that Spanky the monkey was a good name for a kid's video game character? The original Japanese title of the SNES version translates more closely to Monkey Reflections: The Adventures of Mr. Jiro, or Lucky Monkey in the case of the Gameboy version. So what the heck happened here? When this game was being localised into English, didn't anyone put up their hand and say "Ummm, guys? I don't think Spanky is a good name for a monkey in English..."
Somehow though, the name made it through, and now the game is probably better known for its sexually suggestive title than the game itself.
#2: WILD WOODY
Sticking with the theme of inappropriately named kid's video game characters, at number 2 we have a game released late in the Sega CD's lifespan: Wild Woody, a title that honestly sounds more like a porno movie than a kid's video game. And make no mistake - the sexual innuendo in the title was quite deliberate.
In this game you played as an anthropomorphic pencil, who defeated his enemies by rubbing them out with his eraser on his butt. He also opened crates and doors by rubbing his butt-eraser against them. I wish I was joking. He could also draw sketches to defeat enemies or power himself up in some way. One of these was a mermaid, that the developers some years later revealed had an Easter egg that showed her topless.
The game actually had an incredibly good soundtrack, but the rest of it should be best forgotten. Somehow, the creators of Sonic the Hedgehog found a way to make a 2D platformer that played incredibly poorly, with bad hit detection, imprecise controls and awkward movement, topped off with some of the corniest pre-rendered CG cinematics the 90s could cook up. All in all the game was bad, so it probably wasn't something you'd really want to play anyway.
There's no excuse of translation errors or anything with this one, the title was very much intentional. It is perhaps one of the worst titles for a video game ever conceived.
Check out my list of fun, weird and just plain amazing fact of life I have found.
#1: SEAMAN
Ding ding ding! And we have a winner! Number 1 on this list couldn't be anything else other than...ummm...Seaman. The title of this game is just a gift that keeps on giving, and I can't help but be reminded of that "Super Best Friends" South Park episode where Seaman is constantly correcting the other characters and the narrator whenever they refer to him as "Semen".
Anyway, the Dreamcast game Seaman (you bet I'm gonna keep saying that) is actually kind of a unique and interesting game. It's a virtual pet game where you can communicate with your pet Seaman (or Seamen, as you could have more than one in your tank) using a special microphone peripheral that plugged into the console's controller. The game featured voice recognition technology and your Seaman spoke back to you, answering your questions and asking you questions of his own. The Seaman itself was a weird fish-like creature with a human face that eventually evolved into...something, and getting him to that evolved state was the ultimate goal of the game.
Seaman is actually narrated by none other than the late Leonard Nimoy - and I don't think I really need to explain why hearing him say "Seaman" over and over never gets old.
"Your first step will involve preparing the tank for Seaman's arrival".
They could have thought of many better titles really than Seaman. How about "Fishman"? Or "Waterman"? Or "Oceanman"? Or "Weird evolving fish thing with a human face that speaks English - man". No, they opted to go with possibly the worst choice - Seaman. I guess we can't really complain about it too much - because it has given us much entertainment.
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