There’s plenty of weirdness to be found within the Super Nintendo’s legendary library, but it’s another thing entirely to be weird and still a good game overall. While infamous games like Shaq-Fu are weird and not altogether very good by conventional standards, there’s also strange, obscure titles from both Japan and the west that are as bizarre as they are enjoyable. Let’s focus on those titles with this look at weird SNES games that are actually quite good.
Gourmet Warriors
Developer: Winds
Publisher: Virgin
It only takes about a minute and a half of playing a surreal brawler called Gourmet Warriors to realize that no other fighter of this era looks quite like it.
A game that lives up to its name, Gourmet Fighters has you choosing between three characters named Bonjour, Mademoiselle, and Très Bien. And that’s basically as vanilla as the weirdness gets.
The mechanics of Gourmet Fighters should be familiar to anyone who has played Final Fight or any number of side-scrolling fighting games, but if Cody spent most of his time whaling on dudes with tofu heads instead. The level designs, ranging from slums to trains and spaceships, are beautifully bright and dynamic. The game even has you collecting food items to cook gourmet dishes with powerful healing properties. But it’s when you start fighting wildly designed killer robots and other thugs that you start to appreciate the particular strain this game’s developers, Winds, must have been smoking.
If constant poses that would make Liv Morgan proud, freakish enemies, and some just generally great animations for 1995 sound good to you, Gourmet Warriors also got a nice worldwide rerelease in 2019.
Shin Megami Tensei
Developer: Atlus
Publisher: Atlus
Shin Megami Tensei took Japan by storm in the fall of 1992, but western audiences would have to wait years for a chance at an official localization. When you come to this game’s heady, apocalyptic vision of a world torn apart by demons, religious armies, and the endlessly stupid machinations of the worst of humanity, it’s not hard to see why this game just wasn’t going to leave Japan in the early 90s. Especially when some people still believed Dungeons & Dragons was satanic, and not a nice excuse to be an orc for an afternoon.
Of course, Shin Megami Tensei as a franchise has only gotten weirder, darker, and considerably more popular worldwide in the years since the third game in the Megami Tensei series’ release.
Shin Megami Tensei introduced several compelling, unique, and rather insane concepts that have become staples of the franchise, most notably the ability to not only make allies of the demons you encounter, but the opportunity to fuse multiple demons together to create something altogether new.
Shin Megami Tensei is still a weird, viciously dark game in a modern context. Over thirty years later, you can only imagine the reception this game might have received in the U.S. or anywhere beyond Japan.
Super Bonk
Developer: A.I. Co
Publisher: Hudson
Attacking your many enemies with your comically large bald caveman head is just one of the ways the Bonk series made itself memorable throughout the 90s. Super Bonk continued that tradition, while adding a few features and taking full advantage of the power of the SNES. The result is a graphically vibrant, visually amusing game that also manages to a strange member of the same genre as games like Super Mario World and Sonic the Hedgehog.
Where Super Bonk gets particularly ridiculous is in the various power-ups you can find as you time travel through a dinosaur valley, contemporary Chinatown, and even the moon. Candies can change your size to super tiny or absolutely massive. The game’s graphical strength really comes through in these transformations, with other items letting you turn into creatures like dinosaurs or crabs. There are even propeller seeds that give you the ability to fly.
Super Bonk absolutely deserves your time, if you’re new to all of these games. Its addictive gameplay provides a nice introduction to an endlessly odd, fun platforming title.
ActRaiser
Developer: Quintet
Publisher: Enix
It wasn’t too long ago that we were talking about how profoundly ahead of its time ActRaiser was on the SNES. It also happens to be one of the weirdest mainstream video games ever made. Must be the way this game combines an action-platforming game with the mechanics and intricacies of building and evolving an entire world.
It’s true. Not only does this 1990 classic for the SNES have you fighting a plethora of brilliantly designed, tough-as-nails monsters, but it also consists of building and then nurturing a world from the humble beginnings of just two little human beings. While there’s obviously some limitations to the depths of this game by modern standards, it’s impressive even today just much time you can sink into this sandbox platformer that also occasionally throws you into the shooter genre.
Just for this mix of genres alone, which effectively casts you as a god, we have to consider ActRaiser one of the weirdest releases in the SNES library. A solid sequel followed in 1993, which unfortunately did away with the sandbox elements.
Super Back to the Future Part II
Developer: Toshiba
Publisher: Toshiba
How is it that the stunning 16-bit Super Back to the Future Part II never made it to western shores?
The giant bobblehead-like characters are fun and look very much like the characters they’re based on. The backgrounds are lush with cartoon colors and energy, and it’s easy to fall in love with this game for the graphics and character sprites alone, even if Marty’s constant stare just makes me feel like the plastic bag flying around in American Beauty.
It also helps that from at least a plot perspective, Super Back to the Future Part II feels like something that came from the world of the film. Then you play the game, and more likely than not, you’re going to have a lot of shallow fun.
Super Back to the Future suffers from occasionally frustrating level design, like the fact that some of them are just stupidly long, and there’s also something to be said for the exhausting difficulty of some of the bosses. It’s not a perfect game by any means, but considering follows the plot of its source material, and then goes in a completely unhinged direction for almost everything else, Super Back to the Future Part II is still worth your time.
Boogerman
Developer: Interplay
Publisher: Interplay
Boogerman is about a superhero who is in essence a living monument to 90s gross-out humor. He farts and flicks his boogers at enemies like disgusting snot monsters and supervillains with very appropriate names like Revolta and Flyboy. There are very few moments in this game where you aren’t surrounded by thick, bubbling, dripping green snot. Some people have a genuinely hard time looking at this game, and it’s hard to blame them. This whole game has an unintentional body horror vibe.
For everyone else, however, Boogerman is an underrated, challenging platform game with clever visual touches and sight gags, combined with some highly memorable bosses. It has the usual 16-bit platformer issue of not quite knowing where to go at times, with stage designs that sort of blend together after a while, but this problem is mostly offset by level designs that are nevertheless filled with cute sight gags, and there’s a relatively clever story for what’s there.
Calling itself a “Flick and Pick Adventure” is also an accurate way to describe Boogerman’s entire aesthetic, but try not to let that be the whole experience. It’s a balanced platformer with some truly memorable design choices.
Deae Tonosama Appare Ichiban
Developer: Sunsoft
Publisher: Sunsoft
Deae Tonosama Appare Ichiban is an overhead multidirectional shooter game. Think Pocky and Rocky, except that those games are much, much harder. That’s the thing to keep in mind with this game about two loser princes during Feudal Japan who go up against a mysterious force that wants to rule the world. It’s a simple story but a basic plot sometimes just can’t compare to the actual experience of actually playing this madness.
The emphasis on Deae Tonosama Appare Ichiban above almost everything else is comedy, and a lot of that comedy is very cultural and of its time, so what we have left is a game that’s almost nightmarish with graphics that feature crazed monkeys, ninja demons, muscle freaks, and killer crows. Even taking cultural and historical context out of the equation, you still have a profoundly weird game in front of you.
There’s a guy with bunny ears who kind of reminds you of Zangief from Street Fighter II. At one point you rescue a dolphin who gratefully employs a small dolphin army to assist you. Deae Tonosama Appare Ichiban is a pretty shallow experience overall, but there’s just so much off-the-wall nonsense going on that you’ll more likely than not overlook its simplicity and surprising short length.
Violinist of Hameln
Developer: Daft
Publisher: Enix
Based on a long-running manga series that would inspire several TV shows and a theatrical film, with the current version of Violinist of Hameln still running at time of writing, it makes sense that this game from Enix never left Japan. Also known as Hameln no Violin Hiki¸ nothing about this series ever made huge waves in the United States. It’s unfortunate that this game languishes in a sort of obscurity, because it’s one of the most inventive SNES platformers you’ll ever come across.
You don’t need to watch the anime or read the manga to enjoy the Violinist of Hameln game, which features our hero Hameln and his associate/sidekick Flute traveling the countryside, defeating monsters, and sometimes causing them to dance uncontrollably with the power of music.
From projectiles shaped like musical notes that blast from your violin weapon, which can cause monsters to uh, unalive themselves, to the various ways in which Flute can be immeasurably helpful in your quest, music is a big part of your normal platformer strategies in this massively charming game. With bosses named after musical instruments, Violinist of Hameln is both bizarre and accessible in a way that’s genuinely fun to play. You love to see those qualities coming together so well.
Edo no Kiba
Developer: Riot
Publisher: Micro World
It seems weird that Edo no Kiba never got a western release. Perhaps, someone at Nintendo sat down, played a couple of levels, and came to the conclusion that this game was just too unusual in its concept and execution to ever appeal to gamers outside of Japan. Edo no Kiba throws a lot of insanity at you in a game in which you are constantly running, jumping, flying, or anything that just keeps you going at breakneck pace.
There’s some batshit crazy level designs for starters, particularly in stages such as the one where you’ll need to fight your way through a massive flying battleship. When you get to story beats like the fact that one of your primary enemies is the ghost of Buddha, you can believe the graphics measure up to a story that’s in Japanese, but still manages to convey the absolute lunacy going on in front of you.
Edo no Kiba can be a bit cheap at times, but overall is something just about anyone can get into. With a fundamentally good game on your hands, you can focus on stuff like how well the graphics drive all of this surreal cyberpunk imagery forward. This is a memorable blast of chaos and fun that has a lot to offer.
The King of Demons
Developer: Nihon
Publisher: KSS
Is The King of Demons, a Castlevania-like action platformer known as Majyūō in Japan, really the darkest Super Nintendo game? There’s a strong argument, as the Castlevania comparisons are apt in the beginning, but from a narrative and even visual point of view, The King of Demons becomes a slab of feverishly playable bedlam that really doesn’t have anything you can compare it to.
There is almost certainly nothing on the entire SNES console that depicts hell with a dedication to detail that borders on the unsettling. Your name is Abel, and it’s going to be your job to rescue your wife and child from the underworld. It’s not going to be easy though, with The King of Demons deserving of its reputation as a brutally difficult platformer even for the era.
But at least The King of Demons gives you neat powers like being able to turn into various demons as you progress through what might be one of the scariest 16-bit games ever made.
The unrepentantly dark story of The King of Demons very easily disqualified it from ever getting a North American release, especially with Nintendo doubling down on the system’s family friendly tone in the west. Luckily, the game got a translation and physical release in 2024, but good luck finding a copy.
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