IBC132 Unusual Lovecraftian Video Games

In a follow-up to our episode looking at gaming the Mythos, Tim braves the Marsh Amusement Arcade on Innsmouth's historic waterfront to look at a selection of bizarre Lovecraftian video games. From Pinball to dating simulators, if you thought all Lovecraftian video games were survival horror, you are in for a shock!
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Welcome to Insmouth Stranger. Greetings travellers and welcome to the Innsmouth Bug Club Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Mendys, and as you can see, I've brought you down to the fading Victorian opulence of Innsmouth's historic waterfront today, to the Marsh Amusement Arcades. Now we rarely venture down here, but as it's the end of holiday season, most of the minglers have gone back to Yarnafohe, so we should be safe. But yeah, just keep yourself to yourself, don't make eye contact with anybody. Otherwise, you know, you know how these things can happen. Before you know it, you're in the Gilman house, and you don't want to talk about that. Righty ho, yes, Rob will not be joining us today because he once had a very disagreeable incident with the wacker shogoth in the corner. Something very unpleasant popped out of one of the holes, and he's not been able to come back here ever since. Which I I fully understand. One last thing, just to be on the safe side, if you need any change for any of the arcade machines, come and see me. I have a little float in my bag. Uh, I will sort you out with 10 Ps and all that kind of stuff. Do not go to the window over there. Do not go to that booth. You do not want to go asking somebody in Innsmouth if you can have change. Yeah, that can end up very nasty very quickly, and before you know it, you've got gills and you're swimming around Devil's Reef. Righty ho, yes, with all that done and out of the way, today we're going to be having a very special, it's kind of a follow-up episode of sorts. In our last proper episode, we had John Hoolihan on and we were talking about all things Lovecraftian and gaming, and one of the big portions of that was looking at Lovecraftian video games, uh, something very near and dear to my heart. And during that conversation, we were talking about how pretty much every genre by now has been done. You know, uh there's the ones you'd expect. There's your your survival horror, your first-person horror, your first-person shooter, your puzzle games, your point and clicks, your text adventures, all that kind of stuff. But then there's also some really, really random ones. Some moments where you've got a you've got to puzzle why the developer thought that was a good idea in the first place, or how in the hell did that idea come about in the first place? Not so much things that make you go, ooh, as things that make you go, where? What? And I apologize for that reference, but you you get what I'm meaning. So yeah, if you were one of these people that thought that all Lovecraftian video games were survival horror or horror, or even first-person shooters, then oh boy, are you in for a little bit of a shocker? So I'm gonna be looking at five of the most random Lovecraftian video games of all time. Those ones that uh when I played them, I was kinda like, ha why? Some of them some of them are really good fun, that is you know, spoiler alert. But um and there's a whole hell of a lot more I could mention. I'll do a few honourable mentions towards the end, but I've had to narrow this down for five, otherwise we'll be here all week. So if you'd like to join me over here in the corner near the bar, uh get yourself a drink while you're at it, and where Mr. Marsh has very kindly let me set up various gaming platforms. So yeah, come on, crowd round the CRT here, and we're gonna boot up the old Sega Mega Drive, or Genesis if you're in the United States. For our first game, we're going back to 1991. Our first delightful deviation comes in the form of Wolf Teams El Viento. Wolf Team, this is one of their first games, and they actually went on to work quite heavily with Capcom on various series. This time it's the genre of action platformer, popularized by games such as Castlevania that gets a cosmic horror makeover. Now I wouldn't say it was anything like Castlevania, it doesn't have any of what we know as the Metroidvania sort of elements. This is purely a platform action game. It if I had to choose a game that it was most like, it would probably be Mega Man. It's it's most like Mega Man or Contra, one of those kind of things, right? You sort of each level is linear, you start at one end, you go to the other end, you shoot things, and you jump over stuff. That's kind of it. It's set in New York City in the 1920s and casts the player as Annette Meyer, a young Peruvian sorceress with an endless supply of bladed boomerangs and several spells at her disposal, such as uh they're all elemental, uh, Oliver spells, which will which will make perfect sense in a second. Now, the threat for this game comes in the form of a cult, uh led by Adolph Lundgren lookalike called Henry. Uh it also includes the real-life gangster Al Capone, which is strange, though his name is changed in some localization. Um, there's also a sorceress named Restiana. Now, their nefarious plot is to use a tornado, the titular El Viento, to awaken the great old one Haster. As a member of Haster's bloodline, um, which is a detail that's never properly explained, which sparks some eyebrow-raising biological questions, um Annette, yeah, okay, must traverse several levels packed with enemies, jumpy puzzles, etc. etc., on her way to the Empire State Building, where she will confront Restiana and put a stop to the ritual. Now, one of the interesting things about El Viento's plot is that it doesn't take its cues from Lovecraft. It chooses instead to focus on Orcus Derlith's vision of the Cthulhu mythos, which differs from HPL's in a few key areas, one of the most notable changes being that the great old ones are presented as elementals. For example, Squidface himself is depicted as a water elemental, while Haster is a creature of the air. This ties in nicely with the plot of Elviento, where Elviento basically is Spanish for the wind. I think it's interesting to see a developer going for a Dolethian approach to Haster and not the more traditional king in yellow of Robert Chambers. I'd be interested to know actually how many of the Lovecraftian traditionalists amongst you what would you find more objectionable? The plot or the distinctly unlovecraftian presentation. Yeah, it's n it's not it's not done in a traditional horror kind of way at all. Elviento is bright and colourful, loud and brash. And like I said, it's more akin to Mega Man than anything HPL ever conceived. Uh gameplay wise, it does exactly what it says at the tin. You jump and shoot your way through each stage before facing off with a boss at the end. Now it starts off kind of standard where you're fighting gangsters and various cultists. As the levels progress, you start like you're on the streets of New York, and then you end up in like a factory, I think it's an automobile factory, and very you know, you but they're all kind of your traditional platformer stages, but the the enemies get more and more love craftian as you go along. You've got some of the squiggly, tentacular bat things, and there's even there's a level, right? Which this one's bonkers, where you're basically on the back of a dolphin in in the river. You you swim, you're basically you're on the back of the dolphin jumping around, shooting things, right? And then there's like these I guess they're star spawn. These sort of mini Cthulhu's popping out that you have to shoot. It's it's batshit insane. It's uh that's my favourite level of the entire game, as you would probably imagine. Elviento received mixed reviews, with some publications praising its speed and action, while others criticised its brutal difficulty. I, for one, have always sucked at platform games. Even when I was young, I've never had the sort of the eye hand-eye coordination you need for those. So I I struggled to make it past the second stage. I I ended up finding cheat codes so I could so I could go through it. I imagine even seasoned gamers would struggle with this because some of the enemies, like the like the aforementioned squiggly tentacular bat things, they just kind of swarm you, and you've only got one life. So you get swarmed, you're dead, you're screwed, essentially. And you've only got three continues. So essentially three lives, right? You've got three attempts to do eight levels, I think it is. Oh man, yeah, really tough. Saying that, all you masochists out there, that this might be the game for you. You know, the sort of gamers that that love like the the Soulsborn sort of things, right? You might love it. But despite all these flaws, Elviento is an interesting diversion, and it surprises me it's not better known, seeing it's released during the peak of the late 80s, early 90s action platformer boom. It has a Love Craftian game though, it can be considered to be one of the first true curios, and pretty much little more than an interesting footnote. Uh it can be uh it can only really be recommended to the hardcore platform gamers amongst you, or or for just like me, you know, curio seekers. For the rest so yeah, for the rest of us mere mortals who are cursed with wonky hand-eye coordination, you and the the sluggish reflexes of a stone snail, you're probably best giving it a miss, unless you just want to check out like I did. Just find some cheat codes and just go through it for the for how batch it insane it is. For those of you who are into the genre and are into the game, there it was actually a prequel and a sequel released afterwards by Wolf Team. Uh they both came out on the Sega Mega C D. And uh yeah, I've not actually played either of them, but from what I can see, they kind of they carry on the story, they flesh out the character, and the cult of Haster is kind of in them, but I I from what I gather they're slightly less Lovecraftian, but there we go. Uh but I'm gonna I will be checking them out at some point. I didn't actually realise they existed until this morning. So now I'm gonna go and find them this afternoon. So Q Retro Gaming. So yeah, there we go. That's our first one, that's Elviento. Okay, so if you'd like to move round here, we have an old DOS PC set up, and this one is definitely in the what in the hell were they thinking category. We're jumping ahead to 1996 to examine a little known game by Light Shock Software for MS DOS. I booted up the Steam version of this game for the first time and found myself trying to picture the creative process. To do this, I kind of pictured it as two drunks having one of those conversations after one too many down the local boozer. Now it dodged me for a second. This is how I imagine, no hope, it went, right? The first drunk drains his glass, sets it on the bar before turning to his companion. I was playing Mortal Kombat the other night and I got to thinking. If you could put anyone, living or dead, into the game and then have them kick seven shades out of somebody, who would you go for? And the second drunk gets a faraway look in his eye, strokes his strokes his beard. Anyone living or dead, right? Right. What about dead but dreaming? Eh? What about Cthulhu? You know, the squid faced chap from Lovecraft. Um think about it, it'd be awesome. He could launch into the air on his bat wings and splat people into the floor with a tentacle attack. Ooh, he could use a tentacle to grab each limb and pull. The blood could splatter all over the screen. The first drunk slowly starts to edge away from his friend. Yeah, sounds good, I guess. Just one question. Shoot, what the hell is wrong with you? So that's how I I I imagine the concept snowballed from there. Ah dear dear me. Joking aside, Pray for Death takes that glorious simple premise and runs with it. I'm genuinely surprised this title isn't better known. It has Car Crash Cult Classic written all over it. I can only speculate that it was due to being a PC only release, slap bang in the middle of FPS fever. Also, the type of player vs player slugfest it's modelled on was generally seen on consoles and in arcades. Cause uh let's face it, joysticks and control pads fare much better in this style of game than a keyboard and mouse, right? In fact, the controls are horrible, which really doesn't help. And for so for whatever the reason, Pray for Death remains a genuine curio. The plot of Pray for Death revolves around Death himself, who's basically getting bored lording over the underworld, and decides to amuse himself by holding a fighting tournament, featuring some of the toughest souls he can find. You can choose from eight characters, including Anubis, a Minotaur, some Viking chap that's nicked for his hammer and got booted out of Alhalla, a Dominatrix that definitely isn't Catwoman, by the name of Pantera, uh a Transformers ripoff that looks at dances like Optimus Prime's long-lost crackhead cousin, and old Squid Face himself. Random doesn't cover it. There's also some guy that looks like Vlad the Impaler, who's dubbed a Knight of the Necronomicon, and who's also said to be a Cthulhu cultist. So why would agree to throw hands with his god is anyone's guess? Presentation-wise, it's a mixed bag. The backgrounds get the job done in a Mortal Kombat kind of way, and most of the character models are pretty much what you would expect from the era. Cthulhu, however, looks like a naked battle toad that has been oiled up ready for action. If the battletoads had a male stripper in their ranks, then Pray for Death's Cthulhu is it. The biggest disappointment is you don't get to perform any tentacle smiting. His finiture is an oddly balletic pirouette ending in slashing your opponent's throat. I guess my expectations were too high going into this one. Well uh, there we go. So, yeah. When I mentioned, like with Elviento, I mentioned I was awful at platformers. Now, saying goes double for fighting games. In my entire time with this game, I didn't win a single damn bout. Checking the reviews tells me that I'm not actually alone. Pray for Death is generally a tough game, and the clunky controls really, really don't help. From what I can see, even fans of the genre seem to enjoy it for what it is. Uh so I'd say if this is your bag, check it out. There's not much else I can really say about it, other than I found it genuinely hilarious, so I'd recommend it for those who are curious for the entertainment value alone. In short, if you've ever wanted to punch Cthulhu right in the tentacles, then Pray for Death is the game for you. There we go. Moving swiftly on. Now the Eagle-eyed Amongst You may have seen a Nintendo DS sitting on the table. And yeah, that wasn't just left behind by one of the Gilman children. Um no, then we will be looking into that, yes. Uh yes, a Lovecraftian random game for the Nintendo DS is up next. Yeah, because thankfully the world has people in it whose brains are wired in a different way. Uh, as we've already seen a fighting game and a platform game, right? So our next title is definitely another entry into the what the hell were they thinking category. And again, I've came up with a little scenario in my head. Uh it centers around uh a plucky young developer. We'll call him Rob, right? Yeah, we'll put this young video game developer called Rob. He gets hired by a VanQuest software in Japan and is tasked for coming up with a plot for a next entry into a popular franchise for the Nintendo DS. He's put on an ill-fitting suit, brushed his hair, toddled along to the meeting, armed with a pointy stick and a laptop. And he sort of introduces himself and he presents his idea. He explains that he he proposes that they adapt a classic story for a new generation of fans. As he dims the lights and fiddles with his laptop, uh the the assembled suits are a kind of they're hopeful, you know, because you know, adapting something like Lewis Carroll or Charles Dickens could work with with this concept, with this series. And things things seem to be going well until he puts up his first slide and a picture of HP Lovecraft pops up. So Rob uh Rob says, I don't know how familiar you are with the works of HP Lovecraft, but what I propose is an adaptation of one of his finest works, At the Mountains of Madness. The room goes silent, and he explains that Mountains of Madness was a ripping adventure yarn consuming a lost alien city. This boosts enthusiasm a little bit, you know, because they're thinking, so it might be sort of Indiana Jones kind of thing, right? So Rob continues, he decides to go into more detail. Our protagonist makes his way to the base camp and finds scenes of unmitigated terror. Bodies are strewn about the tents in various stages of dismemberment, and he trails off as a hand is raised. Uh that all sounds great. This suit at the back says, I just have one question. Shoot. You know this game is for kids, right? Yeah, here we go. Jewel Link Mysteries, Mountains of Madness, carries an age rating of three and up on the box. Something that really did make me chuckle, knowing the source material. Oh, it's fucking hilarious. Surprisingly, the main story, it which is told as a series of visual novel sequences, it's actually remarkably faithful despite having the volume turned way down. Uh it's kind of like you know them movies that you you see on UK TV, or I guess they I don't know if they have a watershed elsewhere, but before the watershed, right, you get their movies, they cut out all the bloody bits and dub over the swearing and things like that. It's kind of like that. That's how I could would would say it was. It's not to say there aren't any other changes, just that they're pretty superficial. The biggest addition is a new character, Lynn Morgan, who stars alongside Lovecraft's William Dyer in place of Gedney. I guess they wanted a romance kind of thing. To my surprise, it turns out the Jewel Link is a port of sorts of a PC hidden object game called Mystery Stories Mountain of Madness. So we're gonna look at both side by side and refer to them as Mystery and Jewel to differentiate between the two. The visual novel and hidden object sections in both games are pretty much identical, albeit with different solutions. The art's well done, uh very reminiscent of those adventure comics that I used to get from a news agent as a kid. You pretty much read what's going on, make some small choices in the visual novel sections before you're presented with the static screen. And you've got like a magnifying glass, and if you've ever played a hidden object game, then you know what you're doing. You're tasked with locating several things, and you've got to basically pixel hunt. It's that simple. Yeah, it's oddly compelling. I always I always find so-called casual games to be oddly hypnotic, you know. Actually, there's a story idea in there somewhere. Hmm, hypnotic casual gaming. Hmm, I like that, I'm gonna write that down. Where the two games differ is in the extra puzzle sections added into Duel. As it was released for the Nintendo DS, a Vanquest took advantage of the touch screen technology by adding the title dual matching game that ran through the franchise. It's as simple as it sounds. I'm sure most of you will have encountered the game type on phones as flash games, etc. You get a grid of variously coloured objects and you have to match them in groups of three, kinda like static version of Tetris or columns. Uh there's another mini game that occurs if you find fragments of the Necronomicon during the hidden object sections. If you do, you take it to another screen where you have to assemble it like a jigsaw. There's also some short timed sections after the hidden object round where you combine the things you uncovered to dig up the gems. It all works in a really, really, really weird way. Because let's face it, the cast of mountains were geologists after all, right? So it all kind of works. It's just so bizarre that somebody thought, oh, let's do a casual puzzle game for children about Mountains of Madness. There you go. At the heart, both of the games are towed-down visual novel adaptations about the Mountains of Madness, with some mini games thrown in for good measure. I've no problem admitting that I rolled my eyes when I first discovered Jewel. I fully expected this one to be a quick play to see what it was about, and then even even quicker listing on eBay. In the end, I have ended up keeping it. Uh it's fun. It's not a great game by any means, but I got sucked into its rhythm and found it to be surprisingly engaging. It's nothing earth shattering by any means, but not all games have to be, right? If you want a safe way to introduce your child to the wonders of a carnivorous cosmos, Jewel Link Mysteries has you covered, I guess. Same token, if you want some love craft to keep you sane while you lurk in a doctor's waiting room, this could be the game for you. Just don't expect anything close to horror, and you'll be fine. You know, you spend most of the time just sort of pixel hunting, looking for random objects that relate to the story of the mountains of madness. Uh it's yeah, yeah, it's fun. But not a lot else I can say about it really. There you go, that's our third game. Dual Link Mysteries Mountains of Madness. Okay, so we're gonna stick with Nintendo handhelds for our next entry. Uh so yeah, if you would like to grab a hold of that Nintendo Switch over there, we're going to we're zooming ahead to sort of current um the current generation of consoles. And um, yeah, this is one of the things that I've me and Rob have all often talked about this. Uh what we like about the Lovecraftian is how insidious it is, the fact that you can basically put it anywhere. You know, if you want to set a story in a supermarket or a post office or even in your bathroom, you know, you can you can. I mean that's the beauty of cosmic horror, is that you can do that. And even the most out there ideas seem to inspire people to get creative. Now, and I think this next game is a great example of this. The game I'm talking about is Sucker for Love, First Date. A horror-themed dating simulator slash visual novel, released in 2022 for the PC and Nintendo Switch. Now, the only way I can describe this little slice of insanity is if somebody took Yaruko Crawling with Love and Doki Doki Literature Club and smushed them together and ended up creating something both hilarious and surprisingly disturbing. Yeah, indie developer Akabaka managed to create something truly unique by uh basically going with that weird little concept. You take on the role of a horny young man known only as Darling, and the aim of the game is to smooch anthropomorphosized great old ones. Yeah, it's it's that it's that insane. At the start of the game, Darling gets hold of a pink copy of the Necronomicon and uses it to summon Luneta, who is a particularly booksome female version of Cthulhu. It's drawn in an eye-pleasing old school anime way. The resulting creature is basically what would happen if Squidface and Elvira had a daughter, then sent her to live with Vanella Fielding and Kenneth Williams in Carry On Screaming. That's the only way I can describe it. It's basically if Cthulhu is Cthulhu with Elvira's hair and huge tracts of land, to quote Monty Python, and basically once she's introduced yourself, you do what any self-respecting horny teenager with a tentacle fetish would do. You try to get her into bed. Or at least give her a kiss. Yeah, it's quite chaste in that respect. It's never like going for full-on rumpus pumpus. The goal is to smooch. There we go. It's split into three chapters. And Sucker for Love is an interesting hybrid of point and click adventure, visual novel, dating simulator, and in the final chapter, survival horror. Now that yeah, caught me off guard. We'll get to that in a minute. In each one, you're tasked with making the right dialogue choices and completing rituals. These involve donning the correct outfit, opening curtains or closing them, setting lighting, chanting Acklo like a demented deep one. Uh the way the chant is handled is one of the game's many innovative ideas. You must get the rhythm and speed right by physically dragging your cursor or finger in the switch version over the text. If you muck it up too many times, you will see one of the game's many bad endings. Yeah, there's a lot of those. Yes, you could die in this game. Or go insane. And you will a lot. You will. Failure is essential, as the final chapter can only be unlocked by experiencing all of the various endings for the first two. It sounds like a slog, but the game has a handy roadmap showing where the narrative splits into alternative paths and lets you start a new run from there. You're gonna wanna see these endings in any case as they veer between cutesy and absolutely horrifying. Early in the first chapter, you're tasked with performing a ritual so that you can speak the tongue of the great old ones. Once completed, a grotesque mouth opens up on Darling's hand. It's really weird. This sets the tone for what follows. There's a surprising amount of gory body horror in Sucker for Love, and some of it is truly revolting. Successfully wooing your eldritch suitors results in the apocalypse, but Darling doesn't care as long as he gets his smooch. There are some creepy moments throughout which can come as a bit as of a surprise to begin with. This is why I use the Dockey Dockey Literature Club reference, because that's another one. Do not be fooled by the jocular tone and kawaii art style. This you know, Sucker Love is very much a horror game at its core. Something that comes into sharp focus in its final third. After playing through Lynette's scenario, you get a visit from a young lady named M. Now she's appeared a couple of times before, and Darling thinks she's little more than a pest. He doesn't have time for mere mortals no matter how pleasing on the eye they are. And at the start of the second chapter, she reveals her true form. M is none other than Esther, a gender-swapped hasta that looks oddly like Darla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a yellow ball gown and matching eye patch for some reason. To thicken the plot even further, she admits that Darling getting the book in the first place, and the whole situation that's followed was engineered by herself. The only issue is you've been trying to woo her sister. So again with the derleth, again with the derlethian here, which uh yeah, quite interesting. Now she's intent on stealing you away from the loving embraces of Lynetta's tentacles and into her own arms by following a similar plot progression. Now Esther's chapter differs by taking a theatrical approach to the ritual chants. You must complete scenes from the king in yellow to meet her approval, which is really cool actually. But you mess it up, you die, you get it right, the world ends, you get a kiss. One issue you have to contend with in Esther's chapter is Lynetta. As these two are sisters and rivals, you have to keep them apart at all costs. Now this involves keeping the curtain closed, as Esther can only appear when the stars are visible, when Lynetta is around, and various other things that can be easy to forget. If you do forget, you get another bad ending. You die. Though having them bicker and fight over you is well worth the hassle of being sent back to the checkpoint. Some of the dialogue is actually hilarious between the two. It's proper sibling rivalry stuff that Derleth would no doubt have gotten a kick out of. In a way, it's like a Mills and Boon take on several of Derleth's stories. Pretty strange. So once you've completed all the endings of the first two chapters, you are visited by a towering Neko, or cat lady, in Egyptian goddess finery that introduces herself as Nyn Lathotep. I imagine you are rolling your eyes right now at the pun the same way I did. Yes, this is Nilathotep crossed with a Njarn cat. I would love to like some of these developers of these games that we're covering, I would love to know what they're A drinking or B smoking, and where I can get either. Oh my god, yeah, absolutely insanity. But once you've finished sniggering and shaking your head, you quickly realise that the fun and games are over. She's the auntie of Lynetta and Esther, and she is not happy. This is where the game takes a dive into survival horror. Like full on. You must banish the abominations before the creeping things in the dark come and get you. It's a frantic race against time that is surprisingly tense. Like, really, really tense. It's yeah, it it really picks up, it's it's quite startling when you get to that chapter because you you fall into the rhythm of the first two chapters, and while there are horror elements and creepy body horror imagery, once you get into this and it's kind of like oh shit, I'm gonna die, it's uh yeah, really, really well done actually. I I personally I loved this game. This is another one that I was not expecting to get on with, but I did. I really really did. Um, I know that the developers when I played it, which was a couple of years ago, the developers were making a sequel, and I think it was on early access in Steam. I haven't looked lately to see if it's come out of early access yet, because I don't do the early access thing, I I think it's a waste of time. Um personally, I'd I'm waiting for the Switch version, but um yeah, if the sequel has come out, then I'm definitely gonna play it. But I I would recommend this one out of all of these games that we've covered today. This is the one that I would recommend. Strange, in it, a bloody dating sim. But there you go. I mean, it it's often not what you're doing but how you do it, right? And I think it as long as you don't take it too seriously, then and not massively purist about these things, then you're gonna have fun with this one. Yeah. Okay, before we get to the jewel in the tarnished crown of what in the hell were they thinking Lovecraftian games, uh what I'd do a few honorable mentions. Uh, first one is Splatter House and its sequels and spin-offs. Uh Splatterhouse has the distinction of being the first Lovecraftian arcade game. It was also released on the PC engine slash turbo graph X and has since been ported to all pretty much all consoles. It's on the Switch, it's on the PS5. And uh yeah, you're basically side-scrolling beat-em-up, you're in a uh Jason Voorhees hockey mask, and there's some Lovecraftian stuff. Basically, the plot is very uh Charles Dexter Ward. But there you go. Next up, we have Fistful of Necronomicons for the ZX Spectrum, which is a text adventure, a Lovecraftian text adventure, but what makes this one bizarre is the fact that the other inspiration along with Lovecraft is Viz, the comics Viz. Uh yeah, there we go. It's basically a text adventure, which is one part Lovecraft and another part Viz. Yes, it is as mad as it sounds. After that we get Howard Phillips Love Car. Which has to take the cake for the most ridiculous title. Uh it's a vehicular combat game. You zoom around splattering abominations with a carp. That's that's it. That's pretty much it. Now we have an entire series here, which actually it comes from anime, in the anime is just as bonkers. Demon Bane. The Demon Bane games which basically take love, they're visual novels, they take um Lovecrafting concepts and put them into sort of mecha combat things. Yeah, there you go. Mecha combat Cthulhu. Very, very odd. But what gets the cake is a spin-off from the Demon Bane games by the name of Azatoth D Yoto Saisaku Densetsu, apologies for the pronunciation, for the Nintendo DS and PC. Uh, it's a blatant throwback to Snez-era racing titles, and it's pretty much what would happen if you were playing Super Mario Kart and decided that it needed more tentacles. Yeah. There you go. It was when you say it out loud, it sounds even more ridiculous than it is. We also have Musashi vs Cthulhu. As the name would imply, this takes the real-life samurai warrior Musashi Miyamoto and puts it and pits him against an endless wave of Lovecraftian enemies in feudal Japan. Side-scrolling beat-em up kind of thing. Uh yeah, it's there's no movement except you have three attacks mapped to either side of the controller, and basically you just whack things with a sword. And finally we have Foolish Mortals, which is a very simple arcade-style shoot-em-up, basically, where you get to play as old Squidface himself and fend off wave after wave of human opposition. So yeah, if somebody told me it was a port of an obscure arcade game from the 90s, I would have believed them. Everything from the static screen, vibrant colour palette, and jaunty MIDI soundtrack screams vintage coin-op. Uh yeah, it's uh it's not what you'd call original or deep, but for less than 50p on most digital platforms, what do you expect? Well, it's a good waste of half an hour. So, right, that's that's enough honourable mentions for now. I could go on, there's there's a ton more. But after that, though, I need a drink. So we'll get to our final game. Yes, the one I'm I'm basically nominating this as the most random Lovecraftian game I think I've ever played. For this title, we're zooming all the way back to 1996 and heading to the Sega Saturn. This is definitely an entry in what in the hell were they thinking? And again, I've I've got a another scenario. It features our hero Rob, right? Um this was this was his first success as a as a developer, right? He's just landed his dream job as a designer for an established video game studio and has been put in charge of an established series. And tasked with coming up with an idea for the next game. Sounds familiar? After a weekend of racking his brain, he turns up at the office, armed with a PowerPoint presentation and his pointy stick. Good morning! I hope you've had a good weekend. Ah, if we're ready, I'll turn off the lights and we'll begin. You know, there's a murmur of assent, the click of the mouse, and a black and white picture of a solemn-looking chap with a lantern jaw appears on the screen. This is HP Lovecraft, a writer of cosmic horror, weird fiction from the golden age of the pulp magazines. Though relatively unknown in his lifetime, his works have endured and have become something of a cultural phenomenon, especially here in Japan. Another click, and the picture is replaced with a hand-sketched map of New England coast. His most enduring creation is the so-called Cthulhu mythos, though he preferred the term Yog Sophothory, a series of interconnected stories set in a fictional milieu on the east coast of North America, later dubbed Lovecraft Country. Click! The next slide is a detailed fantasy world map that looks like Middle Earth as designed by someone on Acid. Another of his fictional creations is the Dreamlands, a dimension behind the wall of sleep. This is populated by killer cats and tentacle-faced rodents. It too features in several tales and has many crossovers with the wider mythos. What I propose is for our next game is this. Let's take players on a virtual, action-packed tour of Lovecraft's locales from the Arkham Sanatorium to the Dreamlands. We can get a pulse-pounding metal soundtrack written by John Petrusci of Dream Theatre, and shoot some grainy, full motion video cutscenes depicting a man in a monk's habit mucking around with an economic on. It'll be a non-stop action adventure that would change the face of gaming forever! A hush descends as the new recruit grins manically, and slowly at the rear of the room, closest to the emergency exit, a hand is raised. Yeah? Uh I have a question. Shoot. You know this is a pinball game, right? Yes, you heard correctly. Our next game is Digital Pinball Necronomicon from developer Kaze Ko Limited, and was an entry into a long line of realistic pinball simulators starting with 1993's Super Pinball Behind the Mask. It was a Japanese exclusive that has since become a collector's item and has, thankfully, received an unofficial translation, which is what I played on emulation. Fans of the digital pinball genre consider Necronomicon to be one of the finest examples of the genre. And as I I have to say, as a complete newbie to this type of game, I mean I played Pinball Fantasies on the Amiga back in like 1991, and that's pretty much it. I had a hell of a lot of fun with it. Everything I mentioned in the hypothetical scenario is true. Necronomicon features a metal soundtrack written by that dude from Dream Theatre. Lovecrafty and locales, and full motion video cutscenes to drive the plot. Again, you heard this correctly. A pinball game with a plot. I think it has a plot anyway, but it's it's hard to be sure just what in relay is going on, to be honest. Not content with dazzling the senses with its math metal shock and awe, the developer also sought to confound Little Grey Cells with cryptic movie segments. Necrodomicon opens with a man in robes flicking through a mouldering tome as a dolorous bell peals in the near distance. Now after this, and for the next couple of minutes, we are treated to the title sequence as Mitrid Pr Mr. Petrucci noodles away on the soundtrack. There are moody shots of the man in robes walking in slow motion, shots of a church complete with an abundance of candles, and a snake crawling through the eye sockets of a skull. Basically, it looks and sounds exactly like a mid-90s music video. I half expected Glenn Zanzig to come strutting out, crooning murder. Kudos to the actor for managing not to corpse as he's told to glower menacingly into the lens. Oh man. Later we see him walk slowly up some stairs while a helicopter whirrs overhead. Then later still he glowers some more before taking an economic from a glass fronted bookcase and doing a runner. So yeah, between these baffling cinematic segments, you get to play on three Lovecraft themed pinball tables: the Arkham Asylum, the Dreamlands, and the Cult of the Bloody Tong. The first two are self-explanatory. The third goes a little deeper into the lore and represents the Temple of Nihilathotep. From what I can make out from the voiceover that intones dire portance as you wallop little silver balls around, is that the Cult of the Bloody Tongue want to release Nihilath from the Dreamlands using the Necronomicon, and it's up to you to stop them by playing pinball. In any case, you must play pinball. The sanity of mankind depends on it. Or something. Away from the frequently baffling presentation, the moment-to-moment gameplay is tremendously engaging. Again, a sceptical going in, I've never really been a pinball game fan, you know, but I found myself getting into it remarkably quickly. I think it's a testament when you take into account my general ineptitude with anything requiring dexterity to how well the game handles, that I didn't find it prohibitively difficult to launch my controller off the balcony. Despite what an oddity it is, it's still an interesting game. Just do not go into it expecting coherence. If all you want is to do is flip ball bearings around a Lovecraftian table for an hour or two, Necronomicon as you covered. Oh dear. But amusingly, I've been covering this for the book I'm writing, I'll cover all these games for the book that I'm writing on Lovecraftian video games. After penning my hypothesis of the creative meeting for this, I discovered by complete accident that this wasn't the last Cthulhuid pinball simulation to hit consoles and computers. Released in 2023 as a DLC expansion to the base game Pinball FX, Wrath of the Elder Gods goes down a very similar path to Digital Pinball Necronomicon, but does minus the full motion video elements, which is a shame because they're unintentionally hilarious. It's a slick affair that is given extra depth through its use of dynamic camera and active mythos elements. Tentacles snatch balls from windows, star spawn spit extra projectiles onto the table, structures bleed, you can get your balls sucked into a vortex. And Zen Studios also doubled down on the Lovecraftium by introducing a sanity system. So completing certain challenges will accrue madness points, and the more you get, the more about the ultimate truth was revealed. Kinda works like the insight system in Bloodborne. There isn't a lot more going on from a story perspective than we imagine from a pinball sim, but I won't ruin the twist here. If you're set on playing a cosmic horror pinball game but can't track down the Sega Saturn Obscurity from the 90s, this is actually a perfectly worthy substitute. Though I would say, just just for sheer 90s nostalgia, and and if you're a fan of Dream Theatre, which I am not, I would say track down a copy of Digital Pinball Necronomicon. Oh yeah, it it it's it's baffling that it got made, but I am so happy that it did. It's one of them, right? I I think the world is a better place for having each and every one of these really, really random games that I've talked about today in it, you know. And the people who go, that's a stupid idea, uh get over it. You know, just light or not, it's uh it's all in fun, and that's what at the end of the day, that's what video gaming is supposed to be all about. That's my humble take on things, anyway. So, yes, I I hope you've enjoyed yourselves today. And um yeah, we've still got um we've still got a good hour or so before Mr. Sgt. turns up in his bus. So here we go. I'm gonna take up this big bag of coins and uh yeah, go and hit the arcades, and uh, I'm going to the bar. I need a drink. I really do need a drink after that. So, thank you very much for joining us today. I hope you've enjoyed it, and I would love to hear if any of you have played any of these randos. You know, I I I I I I kind of feel like I'm the only person who knows about half of these games, like, but they must be other people, right, who's played them. And if that's you, please let me know and let me know your experience with them. Or or even better, if you're up on your emulation skills, get yourself out there and get have a crack on them and let me know how you get on, because I'd love to know what other people m made of these these these things. So yeah, thank you for joining me today, and uh we I'll be able to speak again soon. So that's it. Um just a thank you to all of our patrons and subscribers and regular listeners and contributors. Uh, we really do appreciate your input into everything we do, and we couldn't do it without you. So thank you very much. And that's it. Goodbye from me, Tim Mendy.