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Indie Rock Beneath the facade of the world's most corporate corporation lies an incongruously indie games department. Join us on a retrospective of Sony Japan's weirdest PS2 hits.

One of the great myths in the videogame world is that Nintendo has all the first-party talent with no strong third-party support, while Sony lives and dies on third-party titles because their first-party games are so weak. Lately, Nintendo's been pretty successful in disproving their half of the easy generalization, but not as many people realize that it's not very true in Sony's case either.

Part of this is because Sony didn't make a very good first impression with their PSone output; for every Crash Bandicoot there were two more like Blasto or Legend of Dragoon. But part of it is because though Sony's first-party games can be as out-there and innovative as anything to come from Marigul (second-party developers of Cubivore and Doshin the Giant for GameCube) the vast majority of it stays in Japan, where US gamers never hear about it. (Which is not to slight Sony America's own output -- they generally own the platformer genre these days with the Jak II, Ratchet & Clank, and Sly Cooper trifecta, and games like SOCOM II and EyeToy prove they can branch out very effectively as well.)

In light of all this, and with an eye toward dispelling the myth once and for all, we've put together a chronological list of our favorite oddball games from Sony Computer Entertainment Japan, the biggest indie games publisher on Earth. You will believe a bear can sing.

Fantavision Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 3/9/2000 American Release: 10/26/2000 Genre: Fireworks Puzzle Equivalent Indie Album: The Minutemen, "What Makes a Man Start Fires?" Weirdness Level:

Fantavision was the first SCEJ production for PlayStation 2, and set the tone for every game to come. A "fireworks puzzle" game, it challenged players to pop off a chain of pyrotechnic displays in between bizarre black-and-white cinema movies of '50s-vintage American family life. Unlike many of its successors, it actually made it to the United States, and in spruced-up form besides -- the US version, upgraded with two-player competitive fireworks action, was later released in Japan as "Futari no Fantavision," or "Fantavision for Two."

IQ Remix+ Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 3/23/2000 American Release: None Genre: Brain Game Equivalent Indie Album: J-Live, "All Of The Above" Weirdness Level:

One of the few puzzle games to deviate from Tetris' "falling blocks" mode of gameplay, the Intelligent Qube series put you in control of a man running around on a grid while trying to manipulate the ever-encroaching cubes before he was crushed.

It didn't change the series much from the first two PSone games, but it is weird: the visual design is stark, with only the gray cubes and grid lines to stand out against the black, empty backgrounds. As a strange PS2 game, it definitely merits inclusion here.

Scandal Developer: Sugar & Rockets Japanese Release: 6/9/2000 American Release: None Genre: Yarudora DVD Equivalent Indie Album: The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy, "A Scandal in Bohemia" Weirdness Level:

Scandal tells an original story, a murder mystery mixed in with the political scandal of the title, but S&R happened to follow it up with a licensed project based on IG's movie Blood: The Last Vampire. They also created an unusual twist on the concept with the later Surveillance, which presents the interlocking threads of the animated story through the multiple monitors of a surveillance camera operator.

TVDJ Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 6/29/2000 American Release: None Genre: Film Action Equivalent Indie Album: Kid Koala, "Some Of My Best Friends Are DJs" Weirdness Level:

Sony's TVDJ almost, but not quite, completely failed to convey the excitement and suspense of editing video for a major Japanese television network. It was, however, a very charming visual production in the early days of cel-shading, when the technique hadn't yet been abused well beyond the boundaries of good taste and aesthetic sensibility.

TVDJ is a simple puzzle game, challenging the player to slot different chunks of some goofy cartoon video sequence into an editing timeline. You score points by coming up with something that flows in coherent fashion -- too bad the game gives you almost no cues as to what ought to follow what. The result is generally nonsensical and chaotic, although that helps provide some enjoyment for American players who can't parse the Japanese dialogue.

Bikkuri Mouse Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 7/27/2000 American Release: None Genre: Rakugaki Performance Equivalent Indie Album: Ghoti Hook, "Sumo Surprise" Weirdness Level:

With a USB port built into the machine, someone at Sony seems to have realized that the widespread proliferation of USB mice would mean no peripheral production costs for a PS2 equivalent of Mario Paint, and thus was born Bikkuri Mouse. (Though for those without, there was a version with a mouse included.)

There's not a lot to distinguish Bikkuri Mouse from Nintendo's SNES doodler, but because of precisely that fact, it's still good fun. What makes these sorts of games different from, say, messing around in MS Paint is still unclear, but they are. Somehow.

Go to find it! Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 1/11/2001 American Release: None Genre: RPG Equivalent Album: N*E*R*D, "In Search Of..." Weirdness Level:

The silliest thing about the storyline of most RPGs is the contrived explanations that the writers keep coming up with to give a band of unrelated characters reason to stick together to the end. Sagashi ni Ikouyo ("Go to find it!") solves that problem by making your relationship with your party members part of the gameplay: in order to recruit people to go down into the dungeons with you, you have to hang around town and make friends with them first.

You'll have to be a pretty friendly guy, too, because each potential party member could have a skill that you'll need in the dungeons. Some can cast different kinds of magic, while others have more specific skills like lockpicking. Alas, these features apparently weren't standout enough to make it worth a US release.

Sky Odyssey Developer: Cross Japanese Release: 01/25/2001 American Release: 11/15/2000 Genre: Flight Adventure Equivalent Indie Album: Riders in the Sky, "Cowboy Songs" Weirdness Level:

Sky Odyssey somehow managed to be one of the only SCEJ productions to see release in the United States before Japan. In the heady days of the PlayStation 2 launch in the United States, Activision thought it could get a jump on the market with a unique PS2 launch game.

Sadly, Sky Odyssey did even worse at the box office than the wretched Orphen: Scion of Sorcery -- doubly the shame, because it was such a fine game. It's simple as flight simulations go, with nothing terribly complex as far as controls are concerned, but its level design and weather effects create some of the same unique atmosphere as a later SCEJ release, Ico. If you can find it buried in your local bargain bin, snap it up for a very different console experience.

Okage: Shadow King Developer: Zener Works Japanese Release: 3/15/2001 American Release: 10/1/2001 Genre: Shadow and Ghost RPG Equivalent Indie Album: The Pixies, "Bossanova" Weirdness Level:

Sony's first attempt at a second-party RPG made an impression: it told the story of a depressed, withdrawn boy named Ari and his possession by the king of the Netherworld. It's really, really funny. Ari, on the one hand, refuses at every turn to meet the expectations of an RPG hero, and Stanley Trinidad Highhat the 3rd is more hot air and bluster than conniving demon. The rest of the story, too, proceeded to be ridiculous in a vein similar to the SNES's Earthbound.

Unfortunately, also like Earthbound, it didn't play particularly well. The combat was a little unbalanced, and it didn't bring any new features to the genre. Still, it provided some good laughs, especially with the bizarre translation SCEA lavished the game with when it finally did come to the US as Okage: Shadow King.

Check-I-TV Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 4/26/2001 American Release: None Genre: Toukou Equivalent Indie Album: Richard Hell and the Voidoids, "Blank Generation" Weirdness Level:

The genre "toukou" means "contribution" or "submission," because that's what this game is made of, contributions from players around Japan. It's the only game to ever use the little-known PlayStation 2 cellular phone interface cable, designed to download information from the game's online database and use it to fill out the substance of its presentation.

The game looks like a series of TV programs -- a quiz game show, a report on the movies of the day, and so on. Those show's content, however, isn't generated by the game. Players submit the content -- quiz questions, opinions, and such -- via their iMode cellular phones, and the game downloads that to create the programs of the day.

It's obviously a clever idea, but it doesn't seem to have gone over terribly well in Japan. It sold in no great numbers and inspired no sequels. It did, however, spawn some charming merchandise, including plush representations of its cartoon hosts: Kumapiro the bear and Hashimoto the platypus, among others.

Phase Paradox Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 5/24/2001 American Release: None Genre: Adventure Equivalent Indie Album: Portishead, "Dummy" Weirdness Level:

For whatever reason, there aren't many straight adventure games of the find-items-and-use-them type that are set in outer space. (We said there aren't many, not there aren't any, Space Quest fans.) Phase Paradox is one of the exceptions, with the neat twist of choosing between three characters to switch between at certain points, and multiple endings depending on which character you favor.

Like most of the games in this writeup, this one never made it to America. Unlike most of the games in this writeup, if you're capable of playing import games, this isn't a bad one to try -- all of the voices are dubbed in English, so there aren't any barriers to following the story.

Rimokokoron Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 6/2001 American Release: None Genre: Meddling Equivalent Album: The Vines, "Highly Evolved" Weirdness Level:

This one's so obscure, we'd never even heard of it before researching the feature. It seems plenty weird, though: an apparent precursor to Natsume's upcoming Chulip, the game has you running around a town full of whiners. Your job? Listen to them whine, apparently. Sounds … enthralling.

To top it off, the graphical style seems somewhat reminiscent of South Park with a more anime-inspired flavor. It's not hard to see why no one ever wanted to localize this bellyaching sim (literally -- the screens we saw showed townspeople complaining about their stomachs hurting), as it definitely tops our weirdness chart.

Indie Rock Beneath the facade of the world's most corporate corporation lies an incongruously indie games department. Join us on a retrospective of Sony Japan's weirdest PS2 hits.

Mosquito Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 6/21/2001 American Release: 3/12/2002 Genre: Ka Action Equivalent Album: Ike and Tina Turner, "Funkier Than A Mosquito's Tweeter" Weirdness Level:

Possibly the most famous bit of bizarre from SCEJ, since through some quirk of fate it managed to wind up released in the United States. It's called "Ka" over in Japan, which just means "mosquito," but it acquired a little more personality in the west as Mr. Mosquito.

Exactly why a developer would decide to make a blood-sucking mosquito simulation game remains one of the great mysteries of the universe, but Zoom (whoever they might be) did a pretty good job of it. Ka remains one of the most entertainingly voyeuristic action creations in gaming, and the same goes double for its sequel. Ka 2, subtitled "Let's Go Hawaii," was almost identical to its predecessor, but added twice the bikinis for a vastly improved experience.

Ico Developer: SCEI American Release: 9/24/2001 Japanese Release: 12/6/2001 Genre: Adventure Equivalent Indie Album: Sigur Rós, "Ágætis Byrjun" Weirdness Level:

A mere couple of paragraphs can't do Ico justice, but it is a pretty indie sort of game for Sony to be releasing. The graphics are great, but not in the conventional high-polish Square Enix/Namco style, and pure nonviolent (for the most part) adventure games with a fairy-tale atmosphere are tough sells.

It was a critical favorite though, especially in the US, where it captured hearts enough for EGM to give it a cover in an "overlooked games" feature. And like a good fairy tale, this one has a nice ending: the game sold in the hundreds of thousands in America, which places it squarely within the realm of commercial success. And Fumito Ueda lived happily ever after.

Sky Gunner Developer: Pixel Arts Japanese Release: 9/27/2001 American Release: 6/24/2002 Genre: Dotabata Shooting Equivalent Indie Album: Lolita No. 18, "Fubo Love NY" Weirdness Level:

"Dotabata" means "noisy" or "slapstick." Call this "slapstick shooting," then, and also call it what might have been a very original 3D action game, if its engine had been up to snuff.

Created by a small independent development house, Pixel Arts, and obviously influenced by animation director Hayao Miyazaki's fetish for bizarre aircraft design, Sky Gunner threw a massive dogfighting experience at the player. So massive, unfortunately, that the gigantic airships, hordes of fighters, and keen-looking weather effects that came together to create that experience taxed the 3D engine down into single-digit framerates and nightmares of video interlacing.

Bravo Music Developer: Desert Productions Japanese Release: 10/11/2001 American Release: 3/12/2002 Genre: Rhythm Action Equivalent Indie Album: The Great Kat, "Bloody Vivaldi" Weirdness Level:

Having already pioneered the rhythm action genre with Parappa the Rapper on PSone, Sony took it a step further with Bravo Music. Where Parappa had you playing Simon Says in time with the beat, Bravo Music upped the difficulty level by throwing the Dual Shock 2's new analog buttons into the mix: not only did you have to get the timing straight, you had to be careful about how hard your finger taps were as well.

Carrying it along was a wacky setting to match the standard set by the Parappa games. You play a conductor in charge of a school band who's determined to rock the classics in extremely public spaces, which explains why the US localization from Fresh Games was called Mad Maestro.

Primitive Language Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 10/11/2001 American Release: None Genre: Emoji Adventure Equivalent Indie Album: Prong, "Primitive Origins" Weirdness Level:

"Genshi no Kotoba" means something like "primitive language." That's what this game is about. The only entry in the fledgling "pictograph adventure" genre, it challenges you to master an entirely new language to communicate with the world.

Like Pikmin, the hero is an alien crash-landed on a foreign planet. Instead of enslaving the local insect populace, however, he sets about simply trying to talk to people. Gradually, he learns the meaning of the images that make up the local language, and uses that newfound ability to find himself a way home.

Ally of Justice Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 11/15/2001 American Release: None Genre: Tokusatsu Hero Taiken Game Equivalent Indie Album: The Flaming Lips, "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots" Weirdness Level:

Seigi no Mikata -- it means "Ally of Justice" -- is a sort of sports simulation with a difference. Call it "Let's Make a Pro Sentai Team," because instead of a baseball squad or a soccer club, you're creating and fielding a team of heroes in the tradition of Japan's endless parade of "tokusatsu" superhero TV shows.

The game lets you design heroes from many different genres, including Power Rangers-style martial-arts heroes, Kamen Rider alien heroes, and technologically enhanced cyborg creations (what did they call Big Bad Beetle Borgs over in Japan, anyway?). Then, you field your team of do-gooders in interactive action sequences. Wallop the bad guys according to plan and your ratings go up, guaranteeing billions of yen in live-appearance fees and massive merchandising spinoff deals.

Toro's Vacation Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 11/29/2001 American Release: None Genre: Carefree Vacation Story Equivalent Indie Album: Pizzicato 5, "Happy End of the World" Weirdness Level:

In Japan, Toro the cat is, along with Parappa and the Ape Escape monkeys, one of the PS2's ambassador mascots. Here, though, you're not likely to know who he is. The reason is that his big breakout hit, Dokodemo Issyo, was a collection of minigames for the Pocketstation, Sony's memory card that doubled as a small LCD game platform.

The Pocketstation has been left by the wayside since then, but Toro's stardom has endured: he's appeared in games like Dokodemo Issyo Watashi na Ehon (a children's picture-book simulator) as well as Toro's Vacation, which places the cute little guy on the streets of Japan. Your job is to use a hand cursor to teach him about his environs and help him have a good time in the big city, although you can also get a reaction by using the hand in … other ways.

Yoake no Mariko Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 12/6/2001 American Release: None Genre: Karaoke Drama Equivalent Album: Robbie Williams, "Sing When You're Winning" Weirdness Level:

What kind of game is a "Karaoke Drama," you might ask? Well, it doesn't have anything to do with tense intrigue in the cutthroat karaoke bar world, but it's not a bad description of Yoake no Mariko. You play as a actor or actress charged with hitting the right tone of voice in their bits parts for movies in a variety of genres.

The visuals are worth a mention: developed in conjunction with Spumco, the animation studio behind Ren & Stimpy, they show Jon Kricfalusi's trademark bizarre style.

Dual Hearts Developer: Matrix Japanese Release: 2/14/2002 American Release: 9/23/2002 Genre: Action RPG Equivalent Indie Album: Yo La Tengo, "I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One" Weirdness Level:

On PSone, Matrix was known for Alundra, the game that wanted you to feel pain. On PS2 though, they were smart enough to take Alundra's core concepts (enter people's dreams to solve their problems by defeating their internal demons) and tighten up everything else.

So they gave us Dual Hearts, where the tone is lighter, the puzzles are less fiddly and frustrating, and the action components are more compelling. Really, it owes as much to the action-RPG Threads of Fate (formerly known as Dewprism) as to Alundra, which is a very good thing.

Otostaz Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 5/20/2002 American Release: None Genre: Puzzle Equivalent Indie Album: Modest Mouse, "Building Nothing Out Of Something" Weirdness Level:

Otostaz is classified as a puzzle title, but it's more of a board game, in the tradition of games like Sid Sackson's Acquire that hide an abstract challenge in the guise of some theme. In this case, the theme is urban development -- the idea is to scatter pieces representing buildings around a grid that represents a bit of undeveloped land. Organizing those pieces in an advantageous fashion causes more and more valuable real estate to spring up, increasing the value of your holdings (and hence your score).

It sounds a little dry in theory, but in practice it's rather charming. The player's avatar, a little paper-doll hero, flits about the grid placing pieces while the pastel-colored skyscrapers pullulate all around him. If you enjoy watching a plan come together just right, one of the pleasures of a good strategy game, it's definitely worth a look.

My Summer Vacation 2 Developer: Millennium Kitchen Japanese Release: 7/11/2002 American Release: None Genre: Summer Vacation Adventure Equivalent Indie Album: They Might Be Giants, "No!" Weirdness Level:

All videogames involve conflict, and Boku no Natsuyasumi (My Summer Vacation) 2 is no exception. But the conflict here is a little more down-to-earth and something most gamers can relate to at some point in their lives: little Boku is fighting against the crippling boredom that threatens to consume his country vacation.

Your job is to pack Boku's days with as much excitement and interest as possible over the time allotted for his summer holiday. Success on any particular day will net you a unique diary entry rendered in a childlike, crayon-style scrawl; the more fun things you do like beetle sumo, cave exploration, and ocean diving, the better the ending you'll get when it's time for him to go back home. As much as anything, the game is interesting for the way it presents a challenge while eliminating any possibility of death, and it's a shame no one ever picked it up for a US release.

Indie Rock Beneath the facade of the world's most corporate corporation lies an incongruously indie games department. Join us on a retrospective of Sony Japan's weirdest PS2 hits.

Ape Escape 2 Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 7/18/2002 American Release: 7/2/2003 Genre: Action Equivalent Indie Album: The Dandy Warhols, "Welcome To The Monkey House" Weirdness Level:

The Ape Escape series, or "Sarugetchu" in Japan (it's a pun on the word for "monkey" and the phrase "get you!") hardly needs introduction here. What started as an experiment in adapting the Dual Shock analog sticks to a variety of platform gameplay mechanics became a world-sweeping phenomenon of monkey madness.

Or, well, it deserved to become a world-sweeping phenomenon, anyway. In truth, the monkey horde's sophomore efforts on PlayStation 2 didn't succeed on the scale of the original game, but that didn't dampen the appeal of capturing monkeys in Ape Escape 2, or capturing their pants in the simplified spinoff Piposaru. Stealing monkey pants is an idea whose time has simply not yet come.

Space Fisherman Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 10/24/2002 American Release: None Genre: Space Fishing Action Adventure Equivalent Album: McGnarley's Rant, "Fisherman's Pride" Weirdness Level:

Everybody who was following games on the web at some point remembers Space Fisherman. When Sony released a brief trailer for the game, it became a famous nine days' wonder -- the wacky cel-shaded graphics, the massive intergalactic piscine prey, and the yodeling "SPAAAACE FI-SHAAA-MAAAAN!" theme song. Ah, it was a wonderful time.

Space Fisherman was not, by the accounts of those who hung on to pick up the Japanese version, such a wonderful game -- the humor wore off after a while, and players were left with, well, a fishing game. It sits atop the Space Fishing Action Adventure genre by default, however, and will likely continue to dominate its field in perpetuity.

Dark Chronicle Developer: Level-5 Japanese Release: 11/28/2002 American Release: 2/17/2003 Genre: RPG Equivalent Indie Album: The Magnetic Fields, "69 Love Songs" Weirdness Level:

The original Dark Cloud was a little underrated in its day due to constant, unfair comparisons to Legend of Zelda, but as good as it is, it pales in comparison to its sequel (renamed Dark Cloud 2 in America for consistency's sake). The graphics were replaced with beautiful, crisp cel-shading, and the somewhat limited "town building" segments were vastly expanded to be more customizable.

But the biggest change is how mind-boggling vast the game is. It's possible to spend dozens of hours on just one aspect of the game, whether it's taking pictures to create new inventions, perfecting your golf game, embarking on random-dungeon trawls, manipulating cities in the Georama segments, customizing your weapons, and more besides. The scope and depth of Dark Chronicle is a little dizzying, and gives players about two or three times more game for their dollar than anything else out there.

XI Go Developer: Shift Japanese Release: 12/19/2002 American Release: 8/27/2003 Genre: Action Puzzle Equivalent Indie Album: Kris Kristofferson, "The Silver-Tongued Devil and I" Weirdness Level:

You say that "sai goh." Or, alternatively, you just say "Bombastic," since that's the title it bore when Capcom released it in the United States, or perhaps "Devil Dice," the name THQ gave its PlayStation predecessor.

"Xi Go" is a little more fun, though, because it's a play on the Japanese word "saigo," meaning "conclusion." This is the last game in the cult classic dice-rolling puzzle series, which grew from a Net Yaroze home-brew project into a genuine hit in Japan. It even managed to draw some pretty respectable merchandising and licensing support, which no doubt came as a kick in the teeth to makers of bigger-budget failures.

Operator's Side Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 1/30/2003 American Release: 2004 Genre: Voice Action Adventure Equivalent Indie Album: Low-Fidelity All-Stars, "How To Operate With A Blown Mind" Weirdness Level:

If you always considered Tank and Link the real heroes of the Matrix trilogy, you'll be ecstatic when this game gets released in the US in 2004 as Lifeline. On the surface, it's about a female operative trapped in a wrecked spaceship, and the horrors she encounters there. But in reality, it's about you: as her supervisor stuck in a control room, you can see her every move and communicate with her by radio, but can't act directly. All you can do is give orders and warn her of impending danger.

What's especially neat about this is that, along with Deka Voice -- also published by SCEJ -- you communicate with the onscreen agent through a USB microphone and not through canned commands on the controller. The game recognizes lots of phrases, to enhance the realism of the relationship between you and the agent, and consequently it's high on our anticipation list.

Hungry Ghosts Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 7/31/2003 American Release: None Genre: False Postmortem Worldwide Bodily Sensation Adventure Equivalent Indie Album: Nick Cave, "Murder Ballads" Weirdness Level:

It's hard to imagine a darker adventure game than Hungry Ghosts. As the game begins, you are dead, and what's worse, you were such a bastard in life that although you're currently tooling around in the land of the dead, your ultimate destination is Hell. There's no getting around that part of it.

You can still change things for yourself, however, by behaving properly in the limbo-like dimension before you're sent to your eternal reward. It won't be easy, though, as there are often no right or wrong decisions. What's good in some circumstances might be bad in others, and the netherworld is such a corrupt place by nature that coming out of it clean might be very difficult.

Of all the games on this list that aren't planned for a US release, Hungry Ghosts is easily the one we want the most. It breaks new ground for nonlinear gameplay and goes further along the path set by games like Way of the Samurai, with the addition of a creepy, bleak story and setting. It almost makes us want to go all fanboy and start a release petition. (Almost.)

Flipnic Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 8/7/2003 American Release: None Genre: Charm Pinball Equivalent Album: The Who, "Pinball Wizard" Weirdness Level:

Flipnic, the latest game from the makers of Fantavision, comes billed as "an enjoyable simple-action pinball game for you." Yes, you, so you'd better appreciate it.

Calling it "simple" seems like an unusual choice of words on Sony's part, though, because the game seems to feature some pretty involved level designs -- there are massive multi-layered boards linked by criss-crossing tracks in addition to more traditional pinball layouts, and even two-sided boards for competitive pinball action. The controls, of course, are simple, but how could they help it? It's pinball.

Chain Dive Developer: Alvion Japanese Release: 10/16/2003 American Release: None Genre: Action Equivalent Album: Lightnin' Hopkins, "Ball and Chain" Weirdness Level:

Part Bionic Commando, part Devil May Cry, Chain Dive certainly has a unique play mechanism. The postapocalyptic world it's set in is rife with grappling hook points -- don't ask us why -- which means that most of the fast-paced action happens in the air, as you swing from link to link.

It's not the most interesting setting or, frankly, a very indie one, but Chain Dive's gameplay is still weird enough to set it apart from the hordes of "stylish hard action" clones just over the horizon of the Japanese game marketplace.

Mojib Ribbon Developer: Nana-On-Sha Japanese Release: 11/20/2003 American Release: None Genre: Kotoba Rhythm Action Equivalent Indie Album: Cibo Matto, "Super Relax" Weirdness Level:

Read that genre as "writing rhythm action," and the "ribbon" bit as a nod in the direction of creator Masaya Matsuura's last bizarre little button-tapping project. The maker of Parappa the Rapper -- who, according to legend, produced the lackluster Parappa sequel so that Sony would allow him to create this game as well -- Vib-Ribbon created its stages and its sound by manipulating input from music CDs. Mojib Ribbon does the same thing, but it uses text for its raw material. Feed the game a string of Japanese text and that becomes the "level," as it were, the series of Simon-says directions you have to deliver to complete the stage. It also becomes the soundtrack, as the game's inky hero writes your text and sings your song in his charming voice.

You don't have to feed it a song, of course. You could just as easily have the little guy read poetry or car-repair instructions, although it's an open question as to how easy that might be on the ears.

Kuma Uta Developer: SCEI Japanese Release: 11/20/2003 American Release: None Genre: Enka Communication Equivalent Indie Album: Edward Bear, "Collection" Weirdness Level:

Unquestionably, this is the dumbest thing SCEJ has ever published. Ever. This is an industry where there are sim games that range from having you manage a videogame company to a superhero sentai team, but Kuma Uta trumps them all: you're the manager for a performing bear, which specializes in singing bland (we're sorry, but it's true) enka music.

The utter silliness of the concept almost wins out against the questionable execution, but in the end, it's probably just as well the game isn't coming out here: all the real fun in Kuma Uta can be had by collapsing into fits of laughter every time you look at the box art.