Creator Oddballs - when a game company makes something that's not "normal" for them

[skykiii]

So,

Last night I was on the Switch eShop, and somehow wound up looking at all the games made (or at least published) by Arc System Works, who is normally known for over-the-top anime fighting games.

.... They made an Othello game.

I bought it (it wasn't expensive) and its actually pretty good.

And yet, its weird seeing this family board game connected to a company like Arc System Works.

It made me wonder: how often does this sort of thing happen?

Here's other examples I've heard of:

From Software--mostly known for "dark" fantasy RPGs and, of course, the Soulsborne games... once made a lighthearted co-op platformer called The Adventures of Cookie and Cream.

There used to be a company called Dynamix (who wound up owned by Sierra On-Line), who mostly made arcade-style games... and yet one of their most fondly remembered is an RPG called Betrayal at Krondor, which wound up being the only RPG they ever made.

Some of you may have heard of a classic puzzle game called Pipe Dream (sometimes called Pipe Mania), originally a PC game before appearing on damn near everything (still haven't found a Switch port tho). Here's the shocker... it was put out by LucasArts, a company that (depending on when you first heard of them) either were people who made excellent point n' click adventures, or else just tons of Star Wars games.

So those are the kind of things I'm looking for in this thread.

Do you know of any?

When listing examples, please name what the company is usually known for/usually makes, and what makes the one oddball stand out.

(I might have to do a version of this in Arts and Literature too, since I now remember that time H.P. Lovecraft wrote a parody of romance stories).

 

[Soggy Floppa]

Creative Assembly, known for the Total War series, only do strategy games, until they made Alien Isolation. A first person survival horror game, and a very good one at that.

 

[Nicholas II of Russia]

Paradox Interactive, known for making historical strategy games made their own oddball called City Skylines and knocked it out of the park, destroying SimCity and their shitty microtransactions.

 

[Jewthulhu]

destroying SimCity and their shitty microtransactions.

Half of Cities Skylines is locked behind $500 worth of DLC. Paradox is just as greedy as EA.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Rockstar games. Most known for violent open world crime games like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, once made a table tennis game called Rockstar Table Tennis that had advanced t-shirt physics. I even remember a gmod parody comic joking that it might be super violent.

Rocksteady, most known for their superhero games, got their start with Urban Chaos: Riot Responce. A hugely underrated FPS from late in the PS2s life. A robocop like dystopian future where gangs of hockey mask wearing punks are burning everything and killing people. You're Mason of T-Zero (the T is for tollerance) who goes around shooting them in the head and tasering them until they catch fire.

Will Wright and Sid Miers, both known for deep, technical nerd games like Sim City, Pirates, and Civilization, once teamed up to make ...a golf game. I never played it, so I don't know if it's a deep game about managing golfers and building a golf empire, or if it's just a strandard golf game.

I don't know if it counts, but Sandlot is most known today for the EDF games. The EDF games were always popular, but they have two games that broke that mold. One is a wii game about norse mythology, and one is a PS2 called Robot Alchemic Drive where you pilot a remote control mech, from the point of the view of the person with the controller. The EDF games also had spin offs. Main line games and most spin offs were looter shooter about killing giant insects and aliens, but there was a shmup, and a hex based turn based strategy game. They weren't made by Sandlot though.

From Software--mostly known for "dark" fantasy RPGs and, of course, the Soulsborne games... once made a lighthearted co-op platformer called The Adventures of Cookie and Cream.

What's weird about that is that, back in the day, they were known as the armoured core people. ie. Mech sims. But they always dabbled in a variety of games from Shadow Tower (a dark fantasy RPG) to Metal Wolf Chaos (an over the top mech action game). There was even a horror walking simulator for PS2 I forget the name of that was made long before Amnesia would kick off that trend.

Oddly enough, after their Soulsborne, they made some kind of murder mystery VR game, and the trailer was mass downvoted for not being a soulslike. In a way soulsborne was the outlier, but it made a shit ton of money.

I want to say Atlus and Square had a reputation for variety before they became the Persona/Final Fantasy factory, but I don't know their history off hand to give examples.

 

[Buttigieg2020]

The developers of Nioh, Team Ninja, made “Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball” which makes me laugh when I think about it.

 

[Neil]

Hi-Fi Rush was made by the Evil Within guys. A ridiculously different vibe compared to their usual style.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Nintendo made a bunch of, what appear to be, point & click adventure games/text adventure/visual novel games for NES, exclusive to Japan. They're not genres Nintendo typically develops and rarely even publishes, I think, especially for NA, so they're pretty exotic to a lot of casual fans.

Genres aside, some are also seemingly relatively mature by Nintendo standards, though given I can't play them it's hard to tell. One was a dating sim co-developed by Square, so you can add them into the mix.

 

[SIMIΔN]

Creative Assembly, known for the Total War series, only do strategy games, until they made Alien Isolation. A first person survival horror game, and a very good one at that.

Unfortunately they thought lightning would strike twice and wasted tens of millions on an unreleasably bad fortnite clone.

 

[skykiii]

There was even a horror walking simulator for PS2 I forget the name of that was made long before Amnesia would kick off that trend.

It was called Echo Night... and the PS2 installment was the third game, Echo Night Beyond.

Oddly enough, after their Soulsborne, they made some kind of murder mystery VR game, and the trailer was mass downvoted for not being a soulslike. In a way soulsborne was the outlier, but it made a shit ton of money.

.... I think I need to play this, I love murder mysteries.

I want to say Atlus and Square had a reputation for variety before they became the Persona/Final Fantasy factory, but I don't know their history off hand to give examples.

I can help you out a bit with Square.

One thing about them that needs to be mentioned... I see A LOT of people who don't realize that Square-Enix used to actually be two separate companies (and in fact, competitors). Despite that Enix was actually the bigger deal in Japan (they're the Dragon Quest people, after all), the modern company seems to feel like the "Square" part is dominant.

But yeah, focusing exclusively on the "Square" side.... this could be a case of "early company weirdness" but its amazing going back to the NES and seeing they made Rad Racer and The 3D Adventures of World Runner.

Then Final Fantasy happened and they became almost exclusively an RPG company for a long time, though the PS1 era would see them experimenting again. I remember it actually being a big deal when they brought out games like Tobal No. 1 (a 3D fighter, though most people only bought it for the Final Fantasy VII demo) and Einhander (a shmup).... though I'm not sure how much these games "count" because some games, like Bushido Blade, are a case where Square only published it, but someone else actually made it.

Nowadays its hard to tell what's actually "experimental" for them. In terms of genre nothing is off-limits, but a lot of their games do still have a similar "feel" if that makes sense

I will say... during the PS2 era I saw they had put out another racing game, Redline Racer or something like that. Though this could be a case of "they published it, someone else actually made it." Or they could be reaching back to their roots, who knows.

 

[Judge Dredd]

But yeah, focusing exclusively on the "Square" side.... this could be a case of "early company weirdness" but its amazing going back to the NES and seeing they made Rad Racer and The 3D Adventures of World Runner.

That reminds me. Before Gran Turismo, Polyphony made a cartoon racing game, and after Gran Turismo, they made a mech shmup called Omega Boost. The former I don't know much about, but the latter seemed to be mediocre for the time. Now it only exists as the black sheep of Polyphony's catalogue.

 

[Gutpuke]

Rayman Origins gotta be one hell of an oddball for Ubisoft considering they actually made a good game

 

[WTBOnlineFather]

Id Software, a company known and loved for its series of kid-friendly platformers called Commander Keen, abandoned the series after promising a 3rd trilogy to go and invent the first person shooter genre instead.

DMA Design, the authors of Lemmings and its trillion sequels, went on to create GTA.

 

[NaggotFigger]

Rayman Origins gotta be one hell of an oddball for Ubisoft considering they actually made a good game

And since then, Ubicuck ignored everything about Rayman after releasing Rayman Legends, and then shoddily release a shitty Switch port, and the only thing alive for a Rayman game was shitty ass boring mobile games. Whilst he got back with the Rabbids and made an appearance on a Netflix show; it has been 9 fucking years since RML was released; and no nothing about a new console Rayman game was announced. They just think that the limbless dude was mere nothing and not worthy to be a juggernaut competitor against Mario or Soynic. The only way to play him was by games that literally feature him as a guest character. Greedy frogs.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

I see A LOT of people who don't realize that Square-Enix used to actually be two separate companies (and in fact, competitors).

Super casuals or zoomers I suppose... Everybody else knows.

Rayman Origins gotta be one hell of an oddball for Ubisoft considering they actually made a good game

Child of Light was another, it's pretty overlooked.

 

[Islamic Jihad Rocket]

Free Radical Design, who made the Timesplitters Trilogy of FPS games made another game in between 2 and Future Perfect called Second Sight. It’s a third person action-adventure stealth game where you have psychic powers and you use those to solve puzzles or fight enemies, something like that. It was apparently made on the Timesplitters 2 engine and keeps the same style as those games.

It’s a very obscure and underrated game that sits in the shadows behind the Timesplitters series, It does look like an interesting game, I haven’t played it myself but it’s one that I’ve had on my radar for a while.

 

[ChefKiss]

That reminds me. Before Gran Turismo, Polyphony made a cartoon racing game, and after Gran Turismo, they made a mech shmup called Omega Boost. The former I don't know much about, but the latter seemed to be mediocre for the time. Now it only exists as the black sheep of Polyphony's catalogue.

It's actually pretty good, it was a victim of console wars mentality because it was made by ex-sega guys who joined polyphony

 

[Scolopendra Dramatica]

What I'm learning from this thread is that oddball projects, where the creative types got a bit more freedom, seem to grow up to be the diamond in the devs portfolio.

Between this and the staggering creativity from the indie scene these past ten years I'm convinced that there's NOTHING more fatal to a good game than investors and the management checking in on progress.

Even back in the day OG Silent Hill was a B project thrown to Konamis most useless devs looking for a resident evil clone.

 

[Croaking Spider]

Id Software, a company known and loved for its series of kid-friendly platformers called Commander Keen, abandoned the series after promising a 3rd trilogy to go and invent the first person shooter genre instead.

DMA Design, the authors of Lemmings and its trillion sequels, went on to create GTA.

I remember Commander Keen being one of the few game options growing up on the family computer. It was pretty much KC, Doom, Wacky Wheels, and Rise of the Triad.

Adjacent to iD games, Midway Games, a company known originally for pinball machines and early arcade titles, developed Doom 64.

Up until Doom Eternal's release, a good chunk of people though Doom 64 was just an N64 port of Doom and Doom 2. I'd call Doom 64 the true Doom 3. The soundtrack and lighting are great, and there's slight tweaks to the enemy roster and weapons. The chainsaw has twice the fire rate of the old one, which makes it great for locking monsters in a pain state. The chaingun has an improved rate of fire and arguably sounds better than the original. Rocket launchers and and shotguns have a slight player knockback now, and the plasma gun has a lower rate of fire, but does more damage and has a rounded projectile sprite.

Not a bad Doom game to come from a studio that isn't iD. The Unmaker even made it's way into Eternal. Shame the studio went bankrupt.

 

[Coldgrip]

Then Final Fantasy happened and they became almost exclusively an RPG company for a long time, though the PS1 era would see them experimenting again. I remember it actually being a big deal when they brought out games like Tobal No. 1 (a 3D fighter, though most people only bought it for the Final Fantasy VII demo) and Einhander (a shmup).... though I'm not sure how much these games "count" because some games, like Bushido Blade, are a case where Square only published it, but someone else actually made it.

Ehrgeiz also comes to mind. Though it as Tobal were developed by DreamFactory, a team composed of Squaresoft and Namco employees.