Incredible Crisis

It’s business time

Playstation 2000 Polygon Magic

though some might contest whether the Playstation truly deserves the accolade of ‘bringing gaming into the mainstream’ (didn’t and do that 15 years earlier?), it was undoubtedly responsible for serving up some surreal slices of Japanese game design to a much wider audience. The rhythmic minimalism of and its canine rapping and the bonkers

were all brilliant, and I still regret failing to convince my wife that we should recreate the ‘Hyper Pie Throw’ challenge from the latter at our wedding.

is a minigame compilation of sorts but with a strong overarching narrative tying together the minute-long challenges. The storyline of ‘getting home for Granny’s birthday meal’ might not seem strong, but the increasingly bizarre events which conspire against each family member making it to the party on time never fail to amuse and surprise. Whether stuck in a plummeting lift, getting mixed up in a bank robbery or caught on the frontline of an alien invasion, each scenario is shot through with a dark sense of humour.

The several dozen minigames do tend to require a fair amount of frantic button-bashing and Qte-style responses but they’re dressed up so imaginatively that they all feel different. And any game that features a section involving a femme fatale tempting you onto a Ferris wheel to give her a ‘back rub’, with her issuing very breathy instructions to go ‘a little bit further down’ before purring out ‘there…’ must be worth investigating.

Revisiting this charming oddity 20 years on, I’ve also realised how much I now empathise with Taneo, the father of the family, as he desperately tries to escape his office. As I help him flee a giant runaway wrecking ball and answer quick-fire quiz questions to fend off triviaobsessed, electric shock-issuing paramedics, it feels like a knowing wink at the little things that life sends to try us. I do wish my workplace instigated impromptu dance-offs with colleagues, too.