Gaming's most ludicrous storylines

Sept 21, 2007

Videogames are, on the whole, nuts. But we love the ludicrous excesses of our games - after all, they're not textbooks, they're entertainment. Yet when it comes to the actual storylines, some games are far more barmy than others.

Mario, for instance, is pretty straightforward when you get down to it - man saves princess. It's just wrapped up in a cohesive fantasy world.Sometimes, though, the line between 'fantasy' and 'lock me up please nurse I'm a nutjob' isn't so much crossed as obliterated completely.

In some games the plot is so gloriously unhinged, the story so incredibly wrongheaded or the narrative so irrationally stupid that you just have to smile in befuddled amusement. Mario might push the realism-envelope, but the following games take ridiculousness to a whole new level...

SIMPLE 2000 SERIES VOL. 50: THE DAIBIJIN | PlayStation 2
'Experimental' doesn't go far enough to cover this tale of a Godzilla-esque beauty who wreaks havoc across Japan.

The short version
A giant menace is terrorising south Japan, destroying everything it finds. But it's no humongous fiend - this skyscraper-sized threat is Riho Futaba, a young girl clad in nothing but a skimpy blue bikini!

Some strange and mysterious force has inexplicably caused her to grow to the towering height of 48 meters (miraculously enlarging her swimsuit in the process) bestowing her with both a destructive beam that shoots from her hands and a bad temper monstrous enough to match her mammoth form. It's up to you to slow her down by piloting a variety of Army vehicles, then take enough photos of Riho's semi-naked form to discover what caused her to become so gigantic.

The short version, shortened
Bikini-clad girl colossus runs riot. Can you resist the urge to gawp at her zeppelin-sized norks in order to save Tokyo?

Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.