| RANDOM VIDEOGAME WEIRDNESS
These articles chronicle some of my strangest findings over the many years I've been playing videogames. Some are short articles covering a single game, while others feature various games. Some of these articles may eventually get expanded into larger, more in-depth features.
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I almost hate myself for this one now. Damn, I've come a long way as a writer since these humble beginnings.
Featured Games: Bad Dudes, Blaster Master, Crystalis |
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Some of the weirdest and funniest opening stories ever devised in the 8-bit era, be it through translation problems or intentional obliqueness.
Featured Games: Various, see article |
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Lots of fun with some of Castlevania II's fine examples of cryptic dialogue.
Featured Games: Castlevania II: Simon's Quest |
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The highlight here is the ridiculous dialogue in Phantom Fighter. I'd play more of that game to see more if it wasn't so crappy.
Featured Games: Various, see article |
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It's time to finally lay this puppy to rest.
Featured Games: Zelda II: The Adventure of Link |
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Okay, this one was just an excuse to put something about the cats in City Connection on the site. Really, what is with those cats???
Featured Games: City Connection, Mole Attack |
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Two things that aren't related, but got thrown together anyhow due to my haphazard way of archiving old forum posts.
Featured Games: Super Mario Bros., Snake Rattle n Roll |
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Butts and breasts and other bits that somehow slipped the Nintendo censors.
Featured Games: Various, see article |
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A shooter set in the wild west is bound to contain a few stereotypes...as well as...Bill Gates?
Featured Games: Gun.Smoke |
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Some of this crap is pretty damn frightening. I seriously can't believe the Uninvited zombie was allowed in that censorship-heavy era. Or that many uses of the word "hell" in Shadowgate.
Featured Games: Various, see article |
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More stuff that got slapped together because of forum post archiving. *Sigh*.
Featured Games: Puss n Boots, Faria, Maniac Mansion |
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More observations I threw together after playing around with a bunch of roms.
Featured Games: Various, see article |
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This is common knowledge and might not seem so strange now, but it was a little surprising when I originally found out that some of Nintendo's main competitor's games from the 8-bit era arrived on its own system.
Featured Games: Various, see article |
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A small collection of weird, inexplicable, and unsolved things in various games.
Featured Games: Various, see article |
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Along with the blatant nudity in the other article, here is some more "subliminal" stuff.
Featured Games: Code Name: Viper, Ghosts 'N Goblins, Ring King |
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| IN-DEPTH FEATURES
These articles generally cover just one game, but are intended to really plumb their depths and mysteries. Some of these oddities are actually part of a larger game shrine for another section of the site.
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This featured article is part of the Arc the Lad 4 Special. (I've got a ton more of this crap in that section.)
Featured Games: Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits |
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This featured article is part of the Donkey Kong 64 Bananza. (That section has a lot more for this game, too, including glitches and secrets.)
Featured Games: Donkey Kong 64 |
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This featured article is part of the Drakkhen Shrine.Strange guitars in the ending sequence, uncensored alcohol, and more.
Featured Games: Drakkhen |
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Three pages of random EarthBound observations and oddities. Someday I will expand this feature to cover even more of this game's weirdness.
Featured Games: EarthBound |
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This featured article is part of the Equinox Shrine. Discover the mystery of missing Room 07-02 and more.
Featured Games: Equinox, Solstice |
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This featured article is part of the Kid Icarus Shrine. It's a "miscellaneous" section, so not everything in it is a true "oddity", but there's some interesting stuff.
Featured Games: Kid Icarus |
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This featured article is part of the Knights of Justice Shrine. I now know more about this game than any living being should.
Featured Games: King Arthur & the Knights of Justice |
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This featured article is part of the Magic of Scheherazade Shrine. A collection of references, glitches, and weirdness.
Featured Games: The Magic of Scheherazade |
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Tons of unused content (including a boss fight with Sheltem!), glitches, references, regional differences, a complete text dump, theories, music, and lots more!
Featured Games: Might and Magic |
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What started out as me pointing out a naked lady in Secret of Mana exploded into a multi-page feature on the game's various secrets, oddities, and glitches.
Featured Games: Secret of Mana |
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Features one page of odd observations and cameos, and another with a bunch of my hairbrained theories about changes that were made during the development of the game and the evidence that exists to support them.
Featured Games: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time |
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| RIP-OFFS OR COINCIDENCE?
A long time ago, this used to be its own site section, but I was too lazy about keeping it updated. With only three entries, I couldn't justify having it on its own separate page anymore, so it found a home here.
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One of the most blatant rip-offs in NES history. Vic Tokai basically took several of the Mega Man games and just altered the graphics and programming a little.
Featured Games: The Krion Conquest, Mega Man |
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Blaster Master seems to have inspired a lot of "man" and "vehicle" games, but Metal Mech was a little more blatant than some (and a whole lot crappier).
Featured Games: Metal Mech, Blaster Master |
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An amazing coincidence in Zanac's Area 6 brings to mind a popular puzzler. Also spotlights a few "hidden" messages in the same level.
Featured Games: Tetris, Zanac |
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| GLITCHES & EASTER EGGS
These are articles about things you can do with certain games that you normally shouldn't be able to, either through glitches or hacking. Check out Documentation of Game Glitches for even more stuff.
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Unused game dialogue accessible through a glitch suggests a scrapped gameplay idea. Also, word straight from creator David Crane on the inspiration behind Blobert.
Featured Games: A Boy and His Blob |
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A floating tree and a walk-through wall glitch. Someday, I should expand this into a full-length feature on this game's glitches because believe me, it's got a lot.
Featured Games: Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage |
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The DrWarp, a programmer's item buried in the game's code, opens the doorway to many wonders, including unfinished areas and a hidden music track.
Featured Games: Breath of Fire |
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Many games have songs that exist in the final product, but are not used anywhere in the actual game. Sometimes they are buried deep within the rom. Other times they are tracks on the game disk.
Featured Games: Various, see article |
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A glitch discovered by Rick L can cause you to scroll from Air Man's level into a glitched-up Dr. Wily Level 2...and then get stuck there forever.
Featured Games: Mega Man 2 |
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The internet has once again helped to confirm a childhood memory so bizarre, that I thought I must've dreamed or imagined it.
Featured Games: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles |
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A major glitch in the Skull Woods dungeon leads to the discovery of a unused dungeon tile buried in the game's rom.
Featured Games: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past |
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| THE RAU GALLERY
When I originally gathered up the forum posts I wanted to archive to the site, I had written commentary from characters that I created for a comic strip many years ago. But my writing skills were so underdeveloped that the comments turned out completely unfunny and pointless. I removed them and posted the articles as is. Years later, my writing skills improved to where I was able to pull off what I couldn't before. I have many more sketches like these in the RAU Gallery section, but here I will feature only the ones that are most directly game-related.
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Featuring special guest Nicolas Cage! Is this the greatest FlyingOmelette.com game review ever?
Featured Games: Bee 52 |
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My revenge on this game for those stupid cats taking up my last house in Home Town when I accidentally answered "Yes" to Akky because I couldn't understand what she was saying!
Featured Games: Breath of Fire II, Shadowgate |
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I was playing Legend of Mana and was overly amused by the Geo area, so I wrote a sketch about it. And I finally managed to get something about that ridiculous Chrono Trigger Brink of Time album cover onto this site.
Featured Games: Legend of Mana, Final Fantasy |
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| READER CONTRIBUTIONS
These are articles featuring site reader submissions. Sometimes people send me things or post things to the forums that are too weird, funny, or worth noting for some other reason to pass up. Also featured are a couple of compilation humor articles.
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Amazing article written by regular site contributor, Andy Thorley. Andy explores the hidden wonders of Chrono Trigger that you can find by peeling away background layers with an emulator.
Featured Game: Chrono Trigger |
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When game composers reference somebody else's work, it gets documented here. Some are coincidence, many are intentional... some are left up to you to decide.
Featured Games: Various, see article |
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The first ever round of reader-submitted oddities features exploding brains.
Featured Games: Gradius, Magmax, Bionic Commando |
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In the NES era, miscommunication between Japanese and American offices could have the strangest of results.
Featured Games: Metroid, Samurai Zombie Nation |
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When Nazca line drawings and post-modern art go too far... (Are we obsessed with this crap or what?)
Featured Games: Various, see article |
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This one gave me an excuse to say something I've always wanted to say about Castlevania 2's endings. Also some weird Chrono Trigger and Arc the Lad 4 stuff.
Featured Games: Various, see article |
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More hidden background layers, glitches, and other weirdness for Appleseed, Ninja Warriors, Diddy Kong Racing, Seiken Densetsu 3 and Super Mario 64.
Featured Games: Various, see article |
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Started as a topic on the forums and I archived it to the site. Needs some clean-up, but I'm too lazy to do it right now.
Featured Games: Various, see article |
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This is like the videogame version of Roger Ebert's "Glossary of Movie Terms".
Featured Games: Various, see article |
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