![Weirdest Spinoff Games Starring Popular Characters By /Updated: April 10, 2018 11:53 am EDT We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. Sometimes, video game makers decide to try something different with the tried-and-true characters we love. And, as so often happens when imaginations run wild, some of the resulting spinoffs get weird: Pokemon Pinball The Pokemon games are pretty standard — if supremely popular — Japanese RPGS where you go around, capturing Pokemon, training them, and basically attempting to become the very best (like no one ever was). However, all of that goes out the window in Pokemon Pinball. To be honest, though: Pokemon Pinball is the bomb. It's a super-weird spinoff but we kinda dig it? PP (heh) is a pretty standard pinball game, except it features Pokemon as bumpers. They pop up when you get high scores, and there are small mini games when you get enough points. Now, since putting Pokemon on literally anything — backpacks, bologna, t-shirts — is a license to print money, the Pokemon Pinball game sold like hotcakes. There was a sequel, which is basically the same game, just with more Pokemon. But you know what they say — you never forget your first. And for us, the original Pokemon Pinball is where it's at. Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker Toad is one of those Mario characters you love, but forget almost instantly when you're not playing the game. He's no one's favorite — a small mushroom-looking dude who squeaks when he talks, yet somehow Nintendo decided he would be the best candidate for a new game! In Toad, which emerged as a spinoff of a mini-game from Super Mario 3D World, instead of focusing on defeating Bowser and rescuing Peach, you explore different worlds and find coins and gems. Ya know, like some kind of Gem Getter. However, unlike basically every single Mario game ever, you can't actually fight back. Or even jump! It's all about exploring, solving puzzles, and trying very hard not to get hit by things. Man, if most Toads are this weak, no wonder Bowser kidnaps them all the time. It's like taking candy that is a baby. Punch-Out!!!'s Arm Wrestling Punch-Out!!! is one of the best games to ever feature a convicted rapist (at least you can beat him up at the end). Despite how Mike Tyson is literally evil, the game is still pretty good, but you know what's not? Its arm wrestling spin-off. Yeah, believe it or not, Punch-Out!!! had a spinoff that was, basically, the exact same as the main game, except instead of going through levels progressively trying to knock out stronger and stronger opponents, in this game you go farther and farther trying to ... arm wrestle people? Lame. Although, Bald Bull makes a cameo, and the last person you arm wrestle is Frankenstein, so that's neat? Look, we're not going to mince words here: this game is short and it sucks. If you're going to make a Punch-Out!!! spinoff, why not go all the way and make Kick-Out? Or, better yet, don't make a spinoff. Fallout Tactics You know what the best part of the Fallout games are? Slow, methodical, chess-like combat! Wait, that's not the best part? That's not even a part, you say? Well, dang, then you have obviously never played Fallout Tactics, which combines the world of Fallout with the action-adventure of playing chess against your uncle. You take turns moving your characters — who belong to the militant Brotherhood of Steel — as you burn through the postapocalypse Wasteland, but without all the fun of actually wandering the Wasteland. Even a lot of hardcore Fallout fans aren't big fans of this game. It's not hard to see why — it has bad graphics, a pointless story, and the most notable thing you could say about it is that it appeared in this article. The one thing we'll say is that, like all the other Fallout games, it does have multiple endings. None of them are as stupid as Fallout 3's "kill yourself because of reasons" ending, so it's officially one completely different game away from being a decent Fallout game. Metroid Prime: Federation Force Metroid Prime was a revolutionary experience. It was the first real first-person shooter that was also a platforming game. It was the first 3D Metroid game. Above all else, it — and its sequels — were some of the best games ever made. Metroid Prime: Federation Force gladly carried on its legacy by being ... in 3D. Unlike the actual Metroid Prime games, you don't actually play as Samus. Instead, you play generic space cops — what fun! But, hey, at least they're in giant mechs, so that's pretty much like Metroid, right? Oh, don't worry, gang, it also includes a three-on-three sport where you can shoot a ball across a field, just in case you were looking for more ... soccer in your Metroid? It's so weird that, with dozens of Nintendo fans begging for another game starring Samus, Nintendo went, "Wait, what's that? You want to play as these NPCs that appeared briefly in one game? Not as Samus? And you wanna play ball with them? Weird. Okay, whatever floats your boat!" Halo Wars Ah, Halo Wars: the game that no one knew they wanted. Because they didn't. It's a real-time strategy game (basically, you're a commander telling dozens of different troops what to do), which is exactly the same as the other Halo games in exactly zero ways. While the Halo games revolutionized shooters, this game revolutionized how little people could care about a Halo game. As an RTS it's fine, but about the only people who play RTS games are the nerds who D&D players picked on in high school. Thankfully though, only one was made, so we can forget about this game forever and ev– oh, there's a sequel? *Sigh*, of course there is. Above all, Halo Wars is maybe the silliest title of any game ever. Like, we get it: Halo is about a war, you don't need to remind us a second time through the title. Just show us the damn war! Pacman: The New Adventures Have you ever heard of Sonic Adventure? Or maybe Megaman Legends? They're both games that took traditionally 2D platform characters and thrust them into an awkward, pseudo-RPG-esque world of blocky graphics and bad storytelling. While those games are bad, this game is the granddaddy of them all, and it's worse than any of the others. We all know who Pac-Man is: a small three-quarter pizza-looking yellow dude who eats pellets and runs from ghosts. So let's make a video game about him ... leaving his house to go buy milk for his kid? Yep, New Adventures decided to take the simple arcade game character we know, and turn him into, basically, the Shenmue of the NES-era. He has silly adventures, there's lots of completely awful dialogue, and there's no fun to be had whatsoever. There's no mazes either! Oh, and you don't actually do anything, because it's a point-and-click. You tell pac to do something and he does it. Whoopdie scoop. There are ghosts, though! Not that you can fight them or anything. You just click a button, feed Pac a pellet, and watch him have ghost-eating fun. Not only is this a terrible, terrible game, but it inspired dozens of other terrible games. For that we say, *blepppbt* to you, New Adventures. *Fart sounds* to you. Mario is Missing We really wanted this to read "[ERROR: MISSING DATA]" but our editors decided that's too meta. So, we have to talk about Mario is Missing. Imagine all the fun, joy, and excitement of an old NES-era Mario game. You thinking of the gorgeous level designs, the great music, the excellent platforming? Now, throw all of that in the garbage, and replace the levels with small towns, Mario with Luigi, and all that boring excitement with you walking into different towns, attempting to find Mario. Because he's missing. Do you do anything fun in these towns? Oh, hell no. Seriously, all you do is walk around, talk to people, answer basic history questions (because this is an educational game, AKA the one thing kids wanted less than coal for Christmas), and then go fetch things so they'll give you items you can give to other people to give you more items and on and on and eventually you find Mario if you haven't broken the cartridge already. Mario is Missing is what you gave your kids if you were too scared to say "I hate you," but still wanted to make it really clear. Dissidia Okay, we're going to try not to laugh over the title too much, but c'mon? Dissidia? What does that even mean? Okay, we checked and it means a best-selling game. While this game is actually super weird, we're not going to pretend we're not down with it. In it, you play as dozens of different characters from different Square games, primarily the Final Fantasy series, and you just ... punch each other a lot. It's basically Smash Bros., except it takes itself too seriously to be that good. Oh, and it's for the PSP, Sony's attempt at unthroning the DS as Lord High King of the mobile game markets. Those two combined make this game, while fun, a bit too weak to ever be great. Plus, again, it's just plain weird. Dissidia would have made more sense as a Kingdom Hearts spinoff, which was actually what it started as, but honestly? Don't get us started on how weird of a spinoff Kingdom Hearts is, okay? Final Fantasy mixed with Disney is FUN, but ye gods is it weird. Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland Okay, fasten your seat belts, kids. We're gonna talk about Tingle. Tingle is the man who desperately wants to be a fairy in the Legend of Zelda games. He's incredibly obnoxious, overbearing, way too important to the games he appears in, and pretty much a bad Japanese caricature of a gay man. No one in America likes him, but seemingly everyone in Japan loves him, which is why he's gotten multiple Japan-only games all to himself. But the one with the best title is Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, which is just what it sounds like — a hellish nightmare of a game. In Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, you try to find rupees in the game while retaining your sanity in real life, as you navigate through the Zelda world as someone who isn't even a little bit interesting. You can beat up people, cook stuff, and at the end, a fairy gives you ... the happiest of happy endings. Seriously, he walks up to her, starts bobbing his head hither and thither, and then all we see are hearts and moans. Your ending is sex. Meanwhile, poor Link can barely get a peck on the cheek from Zelda. What's your secret, Tingle? Tekken Card Tournament If you have even a passing familiarity with what any of those words mean, you'll know why this game is blasphemous. Tekken has played around with genre before: it's had a solo fighting game, focusing on the adventures of one of the characters; it's had a tag team game; it even had bowling (as a mini game, but still). But this? See, Tekken is a fighting game series. Do you know what you don't do in fighting games? Play Magic the Gathering, which is basically what this game is, just rebranded with Tekken characters. Luckily, this game was only available for Android systems as a mobile game, but c'mon — if you're going to make a mobile Tekken game and it's not going to be a fighter, at least let it be something where you can actually move characters around. Like bowling — seriously that game is fun. Megaman Soccer There are a bunch of games out there that let big-time popular game characters take a break and play some sports. However, Megaman Soccer is undoubtedly the weirdest. Soccer's plot is that a sports event was attacked by robots so you, as Megaman, have to put a stop to it ... with soccer. Because, you know, why not? Aside from literally all the reasons. You then turn into dozens of copies of yourself and play soccer against the killer robots. That's not a joke, but we think it's ridiculous enough that, honestly, we can't think of a better one. As you might have guessed, Soccer is nothing like the main series. You can pick which robot to fight, but that's about the only similarity. What's more, the idea of Megaman sporting around somehow makes less sense than Mario golfing and go-karting with his mortal enemies. For one, Megaman Soccer is set in a horrifyingly nihilistic world, one where humanity is all but enslaved, and robots either serve, kill, or go through existential crises. Who has time for sports in a world like that? More importantly though, those weird Mario games are — for the most part — actually pretty good. You know what's not? This freaking game. Starfox Adventures Starfox Adventures is another game where you play as the same main characters you always love, but you do absolutely none of the stuff you like doing. For instance, is your favorite part Starfox flying? Probably, and if so, you're in luck ... for about five minutes. After that, you're done flying, and the rest of the game is you roaming around a dinosaur-ridden planet with a freaking stick. Imagine the Legend of Zelda, only furrier and it sucked. That's what this game is like, basically. You run around, fighting dinosaurs, saving people (who are also dinosaur-like) before eventually finding out the main bad guy of the series, Andross, is behind it all. At that point, you fly off to go fight him, which is what you should have been doing the whole game. What is with all of these spinoffs doing absolutely nothing we like? At this point, we're totally excited for the F-Zero game where you go fishing. Chocobo Racing Chocobo Racing takes one of the most interesting, and silliest, mainstays of Final Fantasy — the rideable, adorable Chocobos — and throws them into a gorgeously cartoony world where you race them. Yep, someone made a racing spinoff of Final Fantasy, but instead of featuring any of the main characters, it features random NPCs. And, instead of you riding the Chocobos like the title implies, you race them ... in go-karts. Because when you're a species that can run around the literal world without once getting tired, you need nothing more than wheels and gas to get around. You know how there are cult films and you can't tell if they're good or bad, but either way they're great? Chocobo Racing is the gaming equivalent of that. It's weird and fun and pretty damn awful. Like most spinoffs, now that we think about it.](https://streamgrid.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Weirdest-Spinoff-Games-Starring-Popular-Characters.webp)
There are times when video game developers decide to try something new with characters we’ve grown to love. When imaginations go wild, some of the subsequent spinoffs might be a little weird:
The Pokemon Pinball
As a Japanese role-playing game (RPG), Pokemon is one of the most popular in the world, but it’s also one of the most typical (like no one ever was). Pokemon Pinball, on the other hand, throws all of it out the window. However, I must admit that Pokemon Pinball is a blast. Even though it’s a bizarre offshoot, we sort of like it?
A pinball game using Pokemon as bumpers is called PP (heh). When you rack up enough points, you’ll see them appear in the form of mini-games. This is due in large part to the fact that putting Pokemon on everything, from backpacks to bologna, is an easy way to make money. As a follow-up to the original, there was a sequel with additional Pokemon in it. It’s true what they say about the first time: you’ll never forget it. The original Pokemon Pinball is still the best, at least in our opinion.
Captain Toad is a professional scavenger.
When you’re not playing Mario, it’s easy to forget how much you like Toad’s antics. Despite the fact that no one really likes him, Nintendo thought that he was the greatest option for a new game!
Toad, a derivation of a mini-game from Super Mario 3D World, focuses on finding money and gems rather than conquering Bowser and rescuing Peach. It’s sort of like a Gem Hunter, you know? However, you are unable to fight back, unlike in every other Mario game ever.
Jump, if you’re up for it! Exploration, problem solving, and doing your best not to be struck by anything are all part of the experience. What a shame it is if the majority of Toads are as feeble as this. It’s like snatching a piece of baby candy.
The Arm Wrestling of Punch-Out!!!
A convicted rapist’s appearance in a video game has never been better (at least you can beat him up at the end). Although Mike Tyson is nasty, the game is still very excellent, but what’s not? It’s a spin-off of arm wrestling.
Punch-Out is, in fact, a reality. You could play this version of the game in a completely different way: instead of attempting to knock out more and more powerful opponents as you progressed through stages, you tried to… arm wrestle people? Lame. You do get to arm wrestle with Frankenstein’s monster in the end, however, so there’s that.
“This game is short and it stinks,” we’re not going to mince words about it. Make Kick-Out, instead of just making another Punch-Out!!! offshoot. If you don’t want to produce a spinoff, don’t do it.
Techniques for Surviving the Fallout
What’s the finest thing about the Fallout video games? Combat that moves like a chess piece by piece! This is not the finest part, right? Then what is this supposed to be? I guess it means that you’ve never played Fallout Tactics, an action-adventure game where you play chess against your uncle in the Fallout universe. As you blaze across the postapocalyptic Wasteland, you take turns moving your characters—members of the Brotherhood of Steel—without the joy of really traversing the Wasteland.
Even die-hard Fallout fans have their doubts about this title. You can understand why – the visuals are terrible, the storyline is meaningless, and the only thing noteworthy about it is its inclusion in this post. One thing we can say about it is that it has different endings, much like the rest of the Fallout games. Fallout 3’s “kill yourself because of reasons” ending is the worst of them all, therefore it’s now one game away from becoming a nice Fallout game.
This is the Federation Force version of Metroid Prime.
The experience of playing Metroid Prime was revolutionary. For the first time, a first-person shooter and platforming game were both included in the same game. First Metroid game to use 3D graphics.
It and its successors are among the greatest video games ever developed. Metroid Prime: Federation Force proudly continued the heritage of its predecessor by being… in 3D.
You don’t play as Samus as in the original Metroid Prime games. It’s a lot of fun to play a bunch of generic space police instead! The fact that they’re riding around on these massive mechs does at least bring to mind Metroid, right? If you’re searching for more soccer in your Metroid, there’s a three-on-three sport where you can blast a ball across the pitch.
In the face of widespread demand from Nintendo fans, the company decided not to make a new Samus game “What the heck is this? Do you wish to take on the roles of NPCs from a single game? Isn’t Samus as good as you? And you’d want to engage in a game of baseball with them? Weird. Okay, that’s OK with me!”
The Battle of Halo Wars
Ah, Halo Wars: the game that no one wanted but now does. Due to the fact that they did not. A real-time strategy game (in which you function as a general in charge of a large number of soldiers), it differs from the previous Halo titles in precisely zero ways from the original.
Halo games changed the way people played shooters, but this game changed the way people cared about Halo games. Only geeks who were bullied by D&D players in high school enjoy RTS games, and this one is OK as an RTS. Thankfully, there was only one of this game, so we can put it out of our minds and go on to the next one.
Furthermore, the game’s title, Halo Wars, is one of the most ridiculous I’ve ever seen. To be honest, you don’t have to remind us that Halo is about fighting a war every time you mention it. We want to see the conflict!
Pacman: The Next Generation
Sonic Adventure is a popular video game series. What about Megaman Legends? Blocky visuals and terrible narration are the hallmarks of both games, which feature 2D platform characters in a pseudo-RPG setting. These other games are horrible, but this one takes the cake for being the worst of the bunch.
Pac-Man is a little yellow pizza-looking character that eats pellets and flees from ghosts, and we all know who he is. What if we made a video game about him going to get milk for his child and then returning?
The NES-era Shenmue is exactly what New Adventures wanted to do with the simple arcade game character we all know. He goes on pointless escapades, and the conversation is consistently terrible.
It’s a ridiculous waste of time. Neither are there any labyrinths here! And because it’s a point-and-click, there’s nothing you can do. Pac does what you instruct him to do.
What a whoop. But there are phantoms here! There’s nothing you can do about it. Pac’s pleasure begins when you press a button, give him a pellet, and watch him devour ghosts.
In addition to being a poor game, it served as an inspiration for a plethora of other awful games. New Adventures, we say “blepppbt” to you. It sounds like a snort to me.
Mario has vanished.
Our first choice was “[ERROR: MISSING DATA],” but our editors deemed it to be too meta for the purpose of this exercise. Mario is missing, so we’ll have to speak about it.
Imagine all the fun, joy, and excitement of an old NES-era Mario game. Consider the stunning visuals, fantastic audio, and seamless platforming. Just do rid of the stages and replace them with town squares, and you’ll have a far more exciting adventure in your quest to locate Mario. Because he hasn’t been seen in public.
In these towns, do you have anything to do? Nope. Just walk around and talk to people and answer basic history questions (because this is an educational game… the one thing kids wanted less than coal for Christmas) and then go fetch things so they’ll give you items you can give to other people to get even more items and on and on and on and eventually you find Mario if your cartridge hasn’t already been broken. Honestly, it’s all you do in the whole game.
Your kids would get Mario is Missing if they were afraid of saying “I hate you” but yet wanted to make it obvious.
Dissidia
No offence to the title, but c’mon, let’s try not to laugh too hard. Dissidia? I don’t know what it means. The best-selling game, as determined by our research, is what we have here.
However, we’re not going to pretend that this game is anything but odd. Many characters from Square’s Final Fantasy games appear in this game, and you play as them all while punching one other mercilessly. If you’re a fan of the Smash Bros. series, you’ll probably like this.
Of course, this is a game for the PSP, Sony’s bid to dethrone the DS as mobile gaming’s Lord High King. This game is entertaining, but it’s not amazing because of those two factors. In addition, it’s simply plain strange.
The original plan for Dissidia was to be a Kingdom Hearts spin-off, and that’s what it started off as. But really? The Kingdom Hearts spinoff is an odd one, so don’t bring it up. Disney and Final Fantasy make for an interesting combination, but it’s also fun.
Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland, Just-Picked
You can now buckle up, kids. We’re going to discuss Tingle today. In The Legend of Zelda series, Tingle is the human who longs to be a fairy. He’s a horrible Japanese parody of a homosexual guy since he’s arrogant, pushy, and crucial to the games he appears in.
No one in the United States likes him, but in Japan, it seems like everyone loves him, so he’s given his own series of games that are exclusively available in Japan.
There are a lot of great games out there, but the one with the finest name is Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland. For those who aren’t even somewhat interested in the Zelda universe, Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland is the perfect place to discover rupees while maintaining sanity in the real world. Beat people up and make food; in the end a fairy grants you the happiest of happy endings. When he moves up to her and begins bobbing his head, all we hear are sighs and heartbeats. The climax of your story is a sexual one.
Zelda, on the other hand, can barely give Link a kiss on the cheek. Tingle, what is your secret?
Tournament of Tekken Cards
You’ll understand why this game is blasphemous if you know even a little bit about what any of those terms signify. Tekken has experimented with other genres in the past, including a solo fighting game that followed the exploits of a single character, a tag team fighting game, and even a bowling game (as a mini game, but still). But what’s the matter with this?
The Tekken series is, as the name suggests, a fighting game series. What do you do in fighting games that you don’t in other games? Play Tekken-themed Magic the Gathering, which is essentially the same game. A mobile Tekken game that wasn’t exactly a fighting game should at least include the option of moving characters around. Bowling, for example, is a lot of fun.
Soccer with Megaman
In a number of titles, well-known video game characters may relax by participating in sports. Nevertheless, Megaman Soccer stands out as the most bizarre.
A sporting event has been assaulted by robots, and Megaman must put a stop to it… by playing soccer. As a matter of course. Other than that, there are many explanations. After that, you’ll be able to transform into hundreds of duplicates of yourself and take against the killer robots in a game of soccer. That’s not a joke, but it’s so absurd that we haven’t come up with anything else.
Soccer, as you may have suspected, is quite different from the rest of the series. Selecting which robot to battle is the sole commonality between them. What’s more, the thought of Megaman playing golf and go-karting with his deadliest adversaries doesn’t make sense.
As a starting point, the world of Megaman Soccer is one in which humans are almost completely enslaved, and robots either serve, murder or go through existential crises. In a world like that, who has time for sports?
Even more crucially, the odd Mario games are, by and large, really excellent. What’s not one of these? This game is a complete waste of time.
Starfox: The Great and Powerful
Starfox Adventures is another another game in which you play as the characters you’ve come to know and love, but you’re forced to do nothing you like. Is flying your favourite element of the game? Possibly, and if so, you’re in luck… for a little while. There is no flying in the remainder of the game; instead, you’re left to explore a dinosaur-infested world with a friggin stick.
You could compare it to The Legend of Zelda, but it would be furrier and worse. Basically, that’s what this game is like. Throughout the game, you’ll be battling dinosaurs and rescuing the lives of humans (who look like dinosaurs) until you discover that the series’ primary antagonist, Andross, is behind it all. To combat him at this moment is exactly what you should have been doing throughout the whole game. What’s going on with all of these spinoffs that we don’t enjoy? The F-Zero game where you go fishing has us all pumped up at this point.
This is the Chocobo Race.
Take one of Final Fantasy’s most engaging and silly characters, the rideable and lovable Chocobos, and place them in an animated cartoon environment where you may race against each other. In fact, a Final Fantasy racing game that doesn’t contain any of the game’s major protagonists uses a cast of non-player characters instead.
You don’t really ride the Chocobos, but rather race them in go-karts, as the title suggests. It’s because when you can run around the whole planet without ever getting weary, you just need wheels and petrol to move about.
Cult films are notorious for their inability to be classified as excellent or awful, yet no matter how you look at it, they’re all wonderful. It’s like a video game version of it. It’s bizarre, entertaining, and downright horrifying all at the same time. Now that we think about it, it’s just like most spinoffs, too.