7. Uniracers
Is a unicycle really a character? Does that spunky single-wheeled vehicle you control count as a living thing? Depending on how you look at it, that question is either really philosophical, or really pedantic, so lets move on. Uniracers was a racing game for the SNES where you controlled haunted unicycles that moved on their own accord. Maybe they werent actually haunted, but its a fun excuse for their ability to move at high speeds without drivers. This was 1994; the Playstation wasnt out in North America yet, rudimentary 3D graphics were still mind-blowing and blockbuster, AAA games were not a thing yet. You could still make games that didnt make sense! Uniracers was well regarded, but only sold its initial 300k run before Pixar, yes, everyones beloved, family friendly film production company Pixar, decided to sue the development company, DMA Design. They claimed the uniracers looked too similar to the unicycles featured in their film, Red Dream. Thats a cold move Pixar, a really cold move. Before the series could ever really take off, you shut it right down. Who knows if Uniracers could have been successful moving into the next gen, but given the recent revival of 2D gaming over the past few years, I could see some sort of high speed, ultra challenging version of Uniracers being successful amongst the sort of crowd thats into punishing indie titles like Super Meat Boy.