Failed Spin-offs: video games

Grandma Turismo

Designed to appeal to the older market, who are severely under-represented in the modern gaming culture. In it, you have the choice of any pre-80s hatchback, designed to get Grandma to the shops for more cat food, or to the doctors to sort out her intermittent migranes. Winning the 24-Hour Grimsby Cup can win you the coveted fibreglass Lada with a whopping 83bhp.

Super Monkey Balls

Guide Ai-Ai, Mee-Mee, Gongon and Baby through the various stages of increasing difficulty in search of testicles which, upon possession, makes them turn into Super Monkeys.

Need For Speed: London Underground

Search the various train stations of the capital city in search of amphetamines, making sure not to attract too much police attention.

WipEout 1897

Karl Benz’s “Velo” of 1894 celebrates its third birthday in this slow-paced German import in which drivers must compete over several areas of the globe, including Prussia, Cape Colony and Dominion of Canada. Cup races include the Gold Rush Challenge on the Klondike River and the Diamond Jubilee Derby in London.

Womb Raider

Designed to test your gynaecology skills in this first-person baby creation game, the title was withdrawn early due to extreme graphic content and feminist pressures.

Brian Lara‘s Crickets

Turns out that the record-breaking West Indian sportsman was a keen entomologist. It also turned out that everyone else was not.

Quaker

A mild-mannered member of the Religious Society of Friends meets his match as he enters another world through a Slipgate in order to, ultimately, defeat Shub-Niggurath in this unofficial spinoff from the Doom franchise. Although the level design and initial gameplay were encouraging, the lead character’s insistence upon sitting still, in silence, for up to hours at a time proved to be a hindrance.

Tekken Fag Tournament

Yoshimitsu, a lifelong Lucky Strikes fan, duels with Jin Kazama, an avid Marlboro Reds smoker, in this smoke-a-thon to unlock rare blends of tobacco.

The game was a failure for so many reasons; tobacco promotion and projected titular homophobia to name but a few. The real reason it was considered to be a flop was that no-one was ever a winner, and that the only way you could die was after 25 hours of gameplay, at which point cancer would set in. Even then, half of the time the characters still didn’t die.

Dirge Racer

Ridge Racer’s rather grim sequel resulted in intentionally slow driving, hearses only available in black and a soundtrack that reduced gamers to tears. The tagline “dead good” also helped Namco gain record complaints.

Shadow of the Colostomy

A young man called Wander travels across a vast land with his horse, Agro, in search of giant colostomy bags who reign supreme and affect the life of his lady friend, Mono. The preceding game already featured too many dark colours; the over-inclusion of brown did not help the sequel.

Rape Escape

Fugitive apes on heat, dispersed through time, descend upon anything with a pulse in this tasteless sequel to the first game on the PlayStation that required a Dual Shock. The game provoked the media to defend primates around the world by constantly playing that old clip of David Attenborough whispering into the camera about how great apes are, and how they are really nice, crap like that. You know the one. He’s kind of crouched at the front and they’re behind, generally messing about, playing up to the camera.

Transgenders

Optimus Prime becomes Optima Prime in a cars-to-fembots game designed to unite the gender-unspecific community of the world with the robotics industry. Gameplay waned after Optima found a split end after two steps on level 1-1.

GoldenPie

In a movie game spin-off’s spinoff, British super spy James Bond takes his latest campaign to Russia in search of Alec Trevelyan, who plans on using a giant satellite to destroy the world’s pastry and meat reserves in order to rid his life of his most hated foodstuff. James, being a true gentlemen, blows everything up in order to keep his beloved lunch.

Blast Corpse

Rare, Ltd. really hit a low with this early N64 title in which a crack team of demolition experts have to destroy buildings that get in the way of a slowly-moving, nuclear-powered corpse that could explode on contact with anything.

It also resulted in a successful lawsuit from Capcom who were miffed at the prospect of a competitor to their Resident Evil franchise.