Video games have a long history of being strange. Even some of the greatest franchises which we take for granted, like Super Mario Bros., are quirky in nature. When distilled to its core principles, it’s about a plumber saving the princess of a mushroom-themed kingdom from evil turtles. Most video games are at least a little bit quirky, even the ones which look completely serious on the outside. For example, in Call of Duty: Black Ops II, the map “Hijacked” takes place on a boat and yet, an airstrike can be called in, and it won’t sink the boat.

Some games go far beyond video games logic and become downright weird. Sony and its different models of PlayStations have been fertile grounds for such unusual games. This could be explained by the fact that Sony’s consoles have often been the best-selling of their respective generations, thus attracting all kinds of developers, games, and ideas. After all, if a concept is so strange that it becomes a gamble financially, the best bet would be to expose 💞it to the market which has the widest audience.

We have explored the libraries of every PlayStation iteration, including the handhelds, to find the strange♉st, freakiest, and weirdest games ev꧃er released on a Sony platform. Some of these games ended up spawning entire series. Others were less successful. But all of them stand as testaments to the unbridled imagination of the industry.

15 🅠 Parappa The Rapper (PS1)

This game is the proof that “weird” does not necessarily means “unsuccessful.” The description of this game can make it seems like Parappa the Rapper is just a bunch of random concepts drawn from a hat, but it’s definitely more than the sum of its parts. You play as a dog who is also a rapper, and you try to win a flower’s heart by becoming better atꦺ rapping. How can you improve? By following your sensei’s advice. Your sensei also happens to be an onion in a kimono. And that’s𓃲 it!

Despite the peculiar synopsis, the truth is that Parappa the Rapper is a trailblazer in the rhythm games department. The object of the game is to press buttons on the controller in time with the instructions of the music. While it might sound lame, this is the kind of game which will convince you after one play session. It was popular enough to both spawn a direct PS2 sequel, and a guitar-based spin-off called Um Jammer Lammy. The game is also available for PSP and PS4, in remastered form. So really, at this point, it’s kind of your fault if you haven’t played it yet🍎.

14 ༺ Killer7 (PS2) ಌ

Imagine reading this synopsis when looking up a movie: “A man who absorbs the souls of the dead can transform into their physical manifestation to stop a conspiracy where Japan tries to take over the US using invisible terrorists. At the same time, child assassins and immortal beings invading the US Senate.” This sounds like complete madness, but it’s also very intriguing. It’s also the exact story line of Killer7, a video game which takes its absurdly high-stakes 🍰narrative and complements it with experimental gameplay.

Killer7 switches from third-person to first-person depending on the situation, but most of the shooting parts are on-rails, meaning that the player is restr💜icted to a predetermined path through the environment. The challenge comes from surviving your enemies’ onslauไght, but also from solving puzzles which require the help of every personality inhabiting your character’s body.

Unlike many other games on this list, Killer7 uses its 'out-there' storyline and presentation to support its story instead of relying on♏ quirkiness as a simple gimmick. Every last strange element is part of a bigger purp🌜ose, and everything ties together neatly in the end, even the Power Rangers look-alike trying to assassinate politicians.

13 ꦜ Irritating Stick (PS1)

The entire object of this game is to guide a metal rod through a maze, without touching its borders. If you do, the game loudly buzzes to say that you messed up. If you sucꦛceed, you get a trophy, and sometimes doves fly away. Ob﷽stacles include sharp blades, rolling metal boulders, and a female robot whose nipples can extend and retract to mess up with your stick. All the while, a very excited announcer comments on your performance and narrates the selections menu, trying to make mundane activities sound exhilarating. And yet, you’re only moving a stick through a maze.

The very existence of this game was puzzling at the time of its release to most North American and European gamers. Why is navigating a stick through mazes supposed to be that much fun to begin with? The thing is, the game is based on a segment of a Japanese game show, where a real person would try to guide a metal rod through a metallic maze, which would legitimately send electric shocks to the player, while the announcer would scream at their face to try and make the player miss. The English version removed the context and the annoying announcer, leaving Irritating Stick as a puzzling stand-aloওne game. As a result, the game failed commercially and critically.

12 Chulip (PS2)🔴 𓃲

In Chulip, you play a young boy who gets rejected by the girl of his dreams. In order to win her heart, your father teaches you to become stronger by kissing people🍷. You can kiss young people, old people, soldiers, people living in garbage cans, animals, and aliens. Of course, not everybody is receptive to your quest, so you need to sneak up on them. Kissing many people gives you more health, and 🔜eventually, wins over your dream girl.

Chulip is a game full of bad life lessons which got more attention than it deserved because of its odd game mechanics. The kissing part is only a small piece of the game. The player can also be struck by lightning, shot by police officers, and save their game by using the bathroom. If one takes away the absurdity of the gameplay, Chulip becomes a tedious romp with unclear objectives and frequent cheap deaths. Its quirkiness was not enou🤪gh to overcome its flaws, and thus the game’s sales were abysmal.

11 Noby Noꦿby Boy (PS3)

The base concept is peculiar, but cute. You play as a worm-like being called “Boy,” and your aim is to stretch yourself over levels, to spread harmony or something like that. To be quite honest, I was never certain about the go꧋al, but it’s certainly relaxing as hell (and amazingly colourful). It’s a good combination for someone who wan♚ts to relax for a few moments. Your “Boy” can stretch over houses, animals and non-playable characters, and eventually over entire neighborhoods.

After someone is done stretching their worm (what a weird sentence), a player could submit the accumulated points online. In turn, this helps a bigger worm called “Girl” stretch from the Earth, to the Moon, and then to every other planet, all the way back to the Sun. The long-term goal was to foster cooperation amongst players online, all so that “Girl” could complete an entire spin around the Solar System. That ultimate goal was finally achieved in December 2015. For reference, the game was originally released in February 2009. So it took a little over six years of continuous gameplay for fans of Noby Noby Boy to reach the “end” of the game. This is one instance where a weird game was❀ not only made to elicit surprised reactions from its audience, but also to try and unite gamers the world over.

10 ༺ LSD: Dream Emulator (PS1) 𝓰

Is this even a game? LSD: Dream Emulator was only released in Japan, so any first-hand knowledge of the “game” has been accumulated through YouTube videos. I must say that these videos are unsettling in a way that I haven’t seen since the cursed VHS from the movie The Ring. It takes you through a visual representation of a dream journal from an artist at Asmik Ace (usually more renowned for their excellent wrestling g🍰ames). The scenery, the music, everything is designed to make you as uncomfortable as possible. The environments are interactive, and the setting can change when you interact with the proper object in the dreamscape.

It is unclear if there is an actual goal in LSD, although the game will wake you up from your “dream” if you reach the end of one of its settings, or if you fall off a cliff or something like that. The screen at the end of a leve🥀l does not rate you on anything substantial. Instead, it rates yo🐼ur state of mind, from “upper” to “downer,” and from “static” to “dynamic.”

So there you go. It’s a game which isn’t really a game, and it’s so random that you will rarely 🌠experience the same thing twice. I hope I was clear enough?

9 🐎 Dog's Life (PS2)

This is a game which is weird in a way that makes you wonder why anyone thought of translating this type of experience into an actual game. On the other hand, the whole thing does make sense because it is true to its source material in a way which few games are. In Dog’s Life, you play as a dog named Jake who aims to save his love, a beautiful Labrador named Daisy. As Jake, you pee on things to expand your territory, and f🌳art on people you don’t like to defeat them. Because you’re a dog, you also have access to a “Smell-o-vision” which allows you to detect smelly things. So far so good, right?

Things take a turn whe💯n the story gets involved. It’s about taking down Miss Peaches, who kidnapped your girlfriend. Miss Peaches is the head of a company which turns stray dogs into cat food. So what’s a dog to do? You fart on Miss Peaches to send her to her doom and save the Labrador.

If you𝕴 can believe it, the game was not entirely successful, although it does hold a Guinness World Record for the most voice p꧑erformed by a single voice actor, at 32.

8 🎶 Octodad: Dadliest Catch (PS3, PS4) ಌ

Octodad: Dadliest Catch 𒁏has a simple premise: you are a loving father and husband trying to make it through everyday life. Oh yeah, you also happen to be an octopus wearing human clothing. Married to a human, and somehow fathering human babies, and🦩 you desperately want to preserve your secret. Should the truth about your identity be revealed, an evil chef will take the opportunity to capture you and cook you.

The object of the game is simply to perform regular tasks without arousing suspicions as to your true identity. The problem is, all of your limbs are controlled by an extremely awkward control scheme, which means that something as simple as buying groceries or doing household chores could send your limbs flying all over the place. You will crash objects, constantly. T꧂hese actions fill up the meter signifying people’s doubts about your true identity.

The best part of the game might be the multiplayer mode, which allows four players to ♚each control a different limb of Octodad to hilarious results. Whoever first thought of a dad in human clothes, we salute you. It only s✱ounds dumb until you try it.

7 💦 No One Can Stop Mr. Domino! (PS1) 🐠

In this PlayStation classic, you play as a sentient domino who runs around 3D envi💞ronments laying down other dominoes. For example, Mr. Domino could be running around a grocery store, or a city park, putting down dominoes in a row until he gets back to the start. At that point, a chain reaction starts depending on where you put your dominoes, and you get points depending on how many dominoes fall in a sequence. No one, be it at th💝e amusement park or the casino, sees it as problematic that a single domino runs around the place while other dominoes simply appear out of nowhere. Taking a look at the different events that triggers how dominos fall only ups the weirdness factor.

At one point, Mr. Domino runs around a house, and he has to push family members down to trigger his sequence. This can be done by simply tripping them, but one cut scene depicts the mother of the family finding a bomb in her oven, which does not kill her, but only dirties up her face in some kind of Looney Tunes logic. Despite the strange concept, Mr. Domino is an enjoyable little puzzle game.

6 Mr. Mosquito (PS2)♏ 💜

Before you start thinking that Mr. Mosquito is some sort of wacky name for a deceptively complex concept, rest assured that the game is as simple as its name. You play as a mosquito, and your only purpose in life is to suck blood from the unsuspecting humans living with you. This type of riveting gameplay is rendered slightly more complicated🙈 by the fact that humans will try to kill you should your presence be detected. Luckily, you can defeat them by hitting their pressure points to relieve stress. And… that’s about all there is to it! Suck blood, don’t get caught, and you’re golden!

Mr. Mosquito was originally a Japan-only title which was localized by Eidos Interactive, under a completely different label called “Fresh Games,” as a way to distance themselves from this odd video games should it fail. It wasn’t a chart-topper, but it was successful enough in Japan to warrant a sequel, which removed some of the constraints of the original. You see, Mr. Mosquito required the player to suck blood from certain pre-programmed places on the human body. The sequel, on the other hand, allowed the player to suck blood from any bod꧑y part they wished. You can see w🦹here this is going.