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Editor’s note: Brian highlights a few of his favorite non-space marine game characters. I’m glad this wasn’t a strict Top X list or else I’d have to start building the case for Noby Noby Boy, Mr. Mosquito, maybe the Vib Ribbon rabbit, and others I haven’t thought of yet…but I don’t! -Demian
I’ve been playing videogames for over 25 years (yeah, I’m old), and in that time, I’ve gotten pretty used to seeing the same sorts of player characters over and over. Soldiers (both of the normal and super variety), spies, secret agents, space marines, mobsters, treasure hunters, knights, robots, lawmen, pirates, wizards, talking animals, average Joes, androgynous teenagers…they’ve all become old hat by now. But some games have thrown convention to the wind and come up with some truly original, interesting, and downright odd protagonists, and I’d like to draw your attention to some of my favorites (more after the jump)….
Sentient Unicycles from Space — Uniracers
Uniracers was one of those games that I rented once on a whim — the kind that you passed by in the video store, said “What the heck is that?” picked up, brought home, and were rewarded for your troubles by a fun game. Uniracers combined trippy, fast-moving visuals and a great soundtrack with a solid stunt-based racer that happened to have some of the creepiest characters I’ve ever come across.
See, instead of racing as dudes on unicycles, you race as the unicycles themselves, completely riderless and lacking any anthropomorphized features (like the eyes on the adorable Stunt Race FX vehicles), which makes them all look possessed, and/or evil. Upping the creepiness factor even further, if you read the backstory from the instruction manual, the Uniracers are a race of dedicated racing machines that were apparently created by a very bored supreme being who was trying to impress a goddess who “thought he lacked a creative imagination.”
If the fact that we’re dealing with a bunch of possessed unicycles that were created as some sort of cosmic pick-up line isn’t weird enough, the manual goes on to describe how the very best racers will eventually be found and challenged by the mysterious “Anti-Uni,” the Uniracers version of the Anti-Christ. Ooooooookaaaaaaaaaaay….
Alai, Mimi, Baby, and Gongon — Super Monkey Ball
Super Monkey Ball is essentially what would happen if a labyrinth game and Marble Madness had a baby — a challenging puzzle/action game in which players maneuver a ball around 3D platform mazes by using the analog stick to tilt the level. The concept is sound, and the game itself is fun, but you have to wonder what on earth possessed the developers to make the main characters a family of monkeys encased in plastic balls.
Now, I’m not saying that it’s weird that they decided to put something in the ball to make it more interesting to look at while playing. But why not something that people are used to seeing inside balls, like hamsters or American Gladiators contestants?
Then, at the completion of every level, your sphere-encased monkey does a little happy dance and then flies off into the sky to go to the next one — which always led me to wonder, if the monkey can fly, then why did I just have to roll him over the whole damned level?
Harman Smith — Killer7
Since we’re already talking about creepy evil things, this is a perfect time to discuss Harman Smith, the delightful protagonist of Killer7. While having an assassin as a main character is nothing new, you don’t often find videogame protagonists that are wheelchair-bound; or, are wheelchair-bound with multiple personalities; or, are wheelchair-bound with multiple personalities that are actually different physical people that he can transform into, that he then uses to run around shooting nitrous oxide-addicted suicide bombers in the face. I wish I was making this up.
But no, Killer7 is all too real, and is one of the more interesting games I’ve ever played. Developed by Suda 51’s Grasshopper Manufacture (which then followed it up with No More Heroes for the Wii), it’s not so much a game per se as it is a *package* in which Suda 51 chose to put his art and story into. The gameplay options are extremely limited — your movement is on rails and each puzzle is actually labeled with the picture of the character whose abilities you’ll need to solve it — so really, the player’s only job is to occasionally shoot stuff and wonder what the hell is going on.
I’ve gotta say, though, after reading Gamefaq’s 113-page dissertation on the story…I still don’t know.
The Burger King — Sneak King
In these tumultuous times of console wars and crazed fanboys, you can be absolutely sure that all gamers will agree on at least one thing. Advergames — those unholy marriages of a company looking to hawk its wares and a developer out to make a quick buck — absolutely suck. Back in the fall of ’06, when Burger King announced that they would be selling three different advergames for the original Xbox and 360, I shook my head, wondering who in the world would ever buy this pandering crap. To my surprise, however, the games started generating a lot of buzz on the message boards I was frequenting at the time, so I went to my local BK one night and picked them up.
Big Bumpin’ was as horrible as I’d predicted, and I lacked the courage to even take the greasy shrinkwrap off of Pocketbike Racer. Sneak King, however, turned out to be the most sublimely bizarre experience that I have ever interacted with, and I’ll do my best to do justice to it here.
In Sneak King, you take the role of the King himself, in full royal regalia and the iconic plastic mask — you can tell it’s a mask, as going into first-person mode shows a view through two eyeholes and lets you listen to the King’s Darth Vader-ish breathing (?) — delivering delectable BK items to hungry people wandering around such varied areas as a suburban cul-de-sac, a busy downtown area, and a saw mill (??). Instead of setting up a cart or a store or something along those lines, the King’s only way to deliver the food is to sneak up on one of the many hungry individuals wandering around and surprise them with it, delivering the flamebroiled treats with a flourish (????).
The gameplay elements sort of make sense — it plays like a non-violent version of Manhunt — but the concept is just so weird that I wonder how in the flying hell somebody thought this game would make people want to buy more Burger King food. Not to mention that if I was walking down the street and some guy in the King costume suddenly jumped out of a dumpster, I’d be too busy running for my life to appreciate his high-level flourish techniques.
The Cheer Squad — Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan
As we wind down, let’s leave behind the creepy stuff and take a look at the delightfully odd protagonists of the DS import hit Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan (which was eventually redesigned for an English-speaking audience as Elite Beat Agents). In the game, the Ouendan are a squad of cheerleaders who show up when called upon by ordinary citizens to help them make it through whatever the arduous task of the day is, which is actually pretty plausible when you think about it (I know I could sure use three guys shouting, whistling, and pounding on drums to help me get through my day at work).
While most of the stuff they help with is pretty run of the mill — a high school student needs to pass his entrance exams, a secretary needs to impress her boss, an aspiring mayor needs to win the election — some of the later stages can get pretty out there. There’s the Godzilla-like scenario where a salaryman takes on a giant mutated rat, a couple of bumbling police officers are tasked with repelling an alien robot invasion, and a young man who was recently killed needs to let his former girlfriend know that he still loves her by knocking over her coffee cup, revving his motorcycle’s engine, and basically being a poltergeist (not making that one up either, folks).
In the game’s final stage, the Ouendan are tasked with saving the planet itself, leading the entire world in a cheer that will repel an incoming asteroid by sheer force of will bolstered by the Perfect Cheer. Now why didn’t Bruce Willis think of that in Armageddon?
I hope you enjoyed this look at gaming’s stranger side — keep it in mind the next time you start up a game and yawn with boredom at the sight of yet another space marine.
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