God Hand

As you're probably aware, Red Dead Redemption comes out this week, and hopes are running high that it could mean a dramatic shift in popularity for westerns as we know them. Regardless of whether or not it's a hit, though, videogame westerns – too frequently dismissed by jaded critics as a genre that always sucks and always sells like shit –  have been with us for a long, long time. Long enough to diversify, experiment and get really, really weird. To celebrate all this bold innovation of what's always seemed like a stale genre, we've dug up a selection of the most unusual, unorthodox and flat-out bizarre westerns we could find.

Oh, and while we realize it's going to be the first thing that pops into a lot of your heads, we'll just say up front that Custer's Revenge isn't one of them.

You turn every knob, pull every switch, press the A button, the B button, the “just get me past this effing level” button, but nothing works. After exhausting what seems to be every possible solution with no success, your burning frustration finally sears a hole through your thick ego. You have no choice, its time to put down the controller and find help. Weve all done it. Its free, easy, and available - no, not your buddys hot sister - the answer to your gaming woes. Detailed

At this year's Tokyo Game Show, we had the luck to sit down with a very talented man. Atsushi Inaba is a maverick game creator who's had his hand in a number of off the wall game titles. He first became known for the one-two-punch of Viewtiful Joe and the incomparably complex and obscure Steel Battalion (that Xbox game that required a $200 cockpit controller.) Now, he's back with two big hits: Okami and Phoenix Wright, and topping it all off with the absolutely off-the-wall God Hand. We've