We see great spinoffs all the time in video games. Wario, for instance was a spinoff character from Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins where he played a villain. From there Wario has starred in his own series that shadowed Mario's portable outings for quite a while. Then there are cases the spinoff was never called for like Sub-Zero Mythologies. So today we are going to look at some of the stranger spinoff titles over the years.
Mario Pinball Land
So Peach is kidnapped by Bowser again and logically Mario changes himself physically into a pinball. What?! The game plays out like a Pinball title with various areas to explore and the entire game feels like Mario 64 retold as a pinball machine. Mario collects 35 stars by completing tasks on the pinball board and eventually saves the Princess who then will most likely use Mario as a human basketball.
Naruto Shippūden: Dragon Blade Chronicles
What do you get when you start retelling a story for no reason at all? You get most of the games on this feature but this is a retelling of Naruto's own story. The game sort of covers the pursuit of Itachi except that everyone now is wearing armor, scrolls and the title character (plus Sasuke) are carrying swords. Why? Because a clan of actual dragons need to be slayed for some reason. It's really confusing why any of this is going on when the plot is supposed to revolve around a race to kill Itachi.
Sonic & The Black Knight
Merlina, granddaughter of Merlin to summon Sonic the Hedgehog to save the kingdom of King Arthur from Excalibur’s sheath. You read that right the swords casing just took over a kingdom. Sonic goes through the entire game meeting knights of the round who are now portrayed by Sonic's friends. It's like a Saturday morning cartoon casting all the roles as characters from the cartoon. I will always remember Lancelot from King Arthur having rocket powered sneakers.
Shadow the Hedgehog
Now Shadow wasn't the fastest thing alive but he did have rockets in his boots. For some reason Shadow preferred riding motorcycles and firing guns. Shadow the Hedgehog just distanced itself from everything Sonic was. Fans who were already getting tired of Sonic's 3D adventures had no patience for a game that tried to be so different. It also didn't help the game was very buggy now relying on different style of game play than had been used in the previous ten years.
Yu-Gi-Oh: The Duelist of the Roses
There have been many stupid Yu-Gi-Oh spinoffs or poorly named entries like “The Passion of Joey”. Duelist of the Roses takes the cake for whacked out premises by having Yugi and Kaiba leading different sides in a retelling of the real life War of the Roses. Who thought that this was great material that lent itself to card games? Check it out on PS2 if you need to be baffled to see Henry VII played by a short teenager who gets possessed by a dead pharaoh.
