
Hark! That sound we hear? 'Tis the clarion call marking the start of the Oddball Parade...
Upon receiving his first kiss from a girl held captive by a gorilla - sound familiar? - Lester suddenly turns into some sort of heroic figure. Possibly the first, and only, video game to portray the transformative effect of losing one's virginity. We assume that pity kiss is as far as it went, and Lester spent the rest of his life alone in a bedsit, reliving that one moment of intimacy over and over again as he wept into his Adventure Time duvet.
10. BUBSY THE BOBCAT
His SNES and Mega Drive/Genesis debut tested players' patience with his witless, pre-level, Daffy Duck-esque pronouncements: "What could possibly go wrong!?". It's remarkable that it took two further terrible games before the clown shoe-footed feline arsehole was driven out of the games market, never to return. Also: look at that cover artwork: he appears to have Master Chief's helmet masquerading as the lower part of his face.
9. COOL SPOT
Effectively one long, shameless advert for 7-Up, the eponymous Spot is based on that red circle in the 7-Up logo. It's like releasing a game centred around a golden worm modelled after the McDonalds arches - Rad Worm - or a Pac-Man-esque take on the 'C' in the KFC logo, called C-Dawg. Or something.
8. TOILET KIDS
An unforeseen eruption of toilet water sees them being transported to a land of faeces, wherein the deadly fauna are all modelled after perfectly curled excreta. If nothing else, we're left feeling envious that our waste matter never looks quite so perfect, more typically resembling the product of a malfunctioning pipe on a chocolate factory production line.
7. ZEED
6. NINJABREADMAN
Here are some more for you: Hamurai (a beat 'em up featuring a samurai made out of ham), Furderer (a murderer who's covered in downy hair), and Assassin (basically Hitman, but with a pair of buttocks).
5. PIZZA PASTA
4.GENERAL CUSTER
After Custer was pulled from the shelves, developer Mystique followed up the game with Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em - in which a nude man sits atop a building, masturbating onto a pair of women below. A "less sexist" follow-up reversed the roles, featuring a lactating witch atop the building, shooting breast milk at a pair of excited male perverts.
3. WILD WOODY
2. LEE HARVEY OSWALD
By putting the player in the role of Lee Harvey Oswald and getting points for shooting JFK, and trying to make the assassination as close as possible to events detailed in the Warren Commission Report . A prize of $100,000 was offered to anyone who could recreate precisely the official version of events - literally putting a bounty on the head of a dead man.
1. SONIC
In his most recent game, he's taken to wearing a neck scarf, and wrapping bandages around his hands and feet. Either this is an irritating stab at making him feel edgy or relevant, or they're to hide the scars of his self-harm, as he wrestles with despair at how far his star has fallen. He's basically the Madonna of video games.
FROM THE ARCHIVE: