12 Ridiculous Video Game Ideas That Should Never Have Worked

Some video games just shouldn't exist. There, I said it. We can look at some video games and just think, "How did anyone give this one the green light?", not because the game is by any means bad, but simply because it's so outlandish and ludicrous that it's hard to believe any publisher would take a gamble on releasing it. By all rights, these 12 projects should have been horrible flops, and yet through some miracle, they managed to connect with gamers and were runaway successes. Either due to their bizarre, niche premise, the seemingly aimless nature of the gameplay or the cost-prohibitive peripherals needed to actually play the game, these titles should have all failed, but instead they are a celebration of originality, even if in many cases these games ended up being run into the ground by franchise fever. Speaking of which, let's get on with the list. As there are so many surprisingly successful video game oddities out there, please add your own suggestions in the comments!

12. Guitar Hero

Guitar Hero is a musician simulator in which players have to fork out cash for a glorified plastic Fisher Price controller on top of the game itself, in order to pretend to play various classic rock tunes. In short, you're paying not much less than you could pay for a starter guitar kit to click and clack colour-coded keys in your living room. It was a fanciful project, and one that should have lost Activision millions of dollars, right? Right!? Instead, it made Activision billions of dollars between the years of 2005 and 2010, before the series died a death from over-saturation. Still, for those 5 years, it was one of the most talked-about pop culture products, featuring in a wealth of TV shows and movies, perhaps most famously being parodied in the South Park episode "Guitar Queer-O". It was a must-have item, and inspired the also-brilliant Rock Band, which followed a similar trajectory of huge popularity followed by a meteoric downfall. As I look at the three plastic Guitar Hero guitars in my closet, as much as I love the games, I have to wonder how it ever took off as it did.