The eighties were great for strange games. The graphical limitations of the hardware (think C64, Spectrum, Amstrad, Apple II, etc) meant that a certain degree of stylisation was required, while the smaller teams and lower budgets encouraged individuality and experimentation.
So you'd get games like Sentinel, Mercenary and Elite, which created their own, fully realised but mostly figurative environments. And then you'd have bizarre one-offs, like the epic Deus Ex Machina or the profoundly weird Frankie Goes to Hollywood - self-conscious art projects unselfconsciously released as mainstream entertainment. Looking back, you realise how similar eighties games were to eighties pop music - there was the same earnest pretentiousness. I mean, think about a modern pop group coming up with lyrics like Howard Jones' or Duran Duran's. Now think of EA doing Captain Blood.
Anyway, weird games live on in the indie sector, which is why I'm always loafing about on sites like Jayisgames and Playthisthing - which have, this week, thrown up two magnificently idiosyncratic titles. If you get the chance - and you remember the most indulgent of offbeat eighties titles - you've got to check out Coil(pictured), which follows the lifecycle of an alien being through a series of mini-game tableaus and sparse narrative pages that read like teenage Goth poetry, a la The Mission. The music is great.
Then go to Playthisthing and try Empyreal Nocture, described by the site as, "a 3D Gradius and Shadow Of The Collosus". You control a swarm of arrows seeking out huge floating objects to attack. It's being shown at the Student section of the Indie Game Festival taking place in San Francisco later this month.
Give those a go, and let us know of any other weird Flash/browser games that remind you of the eighties.
