12 Ridiculous Video Game Ideas That Should Never Have Worked

4. Pikmin

Even for the standards of Nintendo, it's easy to dismiss Pikmin as a game aimed at children, and that's just one of the reasons why it shouldn't work. Believe it or not, despite the child-friendly exterior, Pikmin is actually a pretty challenging game which requires players to use the titular creatures to reassemble their ship. Only certain coloured Pikmin can perform certain activities, so there's a high degree of strategy to it, and micro-managing all the Pikmin at once is not something young kids will probably have a very easy time with. As such, Pikmin is a game that looks like it's for kids but is in fact geared more towards adults who are still a little young at heart. It's a niche audience to fill, but the series has sold roughly 3.5 million copies to date, and has an extremely passionate fanbase to boot. As a more simplistic game it would have easily been appealing to children, but Nintendo had something a little more daring in mind, and somehow, it worked.