PETER GABRIEL: EVE

Festival season is gearing up in the UK, so I'd thought I'd play a few music games because there's no way I can afford to go to any of them. Peter Gabriel's Eve, created by Real World Multimedia based on the musician's own concepts, was released in 1996 in the middle of a 10-year hiatus between studio albums. Along with a couple of soundtracks, it's proof that the visionary wasn't idle during that time.

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EGGS OF STEEL: CHARLIE'S EGGCELLENT ADVENTURE

Having now consumed so many Easter eggs this past weekend I'm pretty sure I'm contributing to the world-wide chocolate shortage, I thought I'd take a break from eating them to go play as one. So I popped in Eggs of Steel: Charlie's Eggcellent Adventure, an obscure PlayStation platformer released in 1998 by those folks at Atlus. It may be the chocolate-addled brain talking, but what followed is one trippy nightmare filled with yolk-coloured gore and a threatening industrial landscape that's as foreboding as anything conceived by Fritz Lang.

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RODNEY GREENBLAT'S GAMES OF WONDER

   

Why is it that entertainment made specifically for young children feels like an insane acid trip? Teletubbies, In the Night Garden, Yo Gabba Gabba - each are nightmare-inducing to anyone old enough to know what LSD is. Rodney Greenblat, the Californian artist behind the PlayStation game PaRappa the Rapper created a trio of CD-ROM oddities in the 90s: Rodney's Funscreen, Rodney's Wonder Window and Dazzeloids. And each will keep you awake at night.

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POLAROID PETE: THE GEKIBO COLLECTION

Gekibo, a portmanteau of Gekisha Boy (translation: Photograph Boy) is at first glance just another of those weird Japanese games that YouTubers love to rag on about. First released on the PC-Engine in 1992, Irem's short-lived series is a satisfying mix of a shooting gallery with a platformer. It's a rather unique concept with only Pokemon Snap coming to mind that bears any kind of similarity to the gameplay on show. So why didn't we see this in the west?

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THE MUSEUM OF ANYTHING GOES

by Austin Brewer

Surreal and sometimes unnerving, The Museum Of Anything Goes is an obscure “edutainment” CD-ROM project that was left in the shadows of 1995. Developed by Michael Markowski and Maxwell S. Robinson under the development name Wayzata Technology, this interactive showcase for PC and Mac is truly a relic of multimedia past. Having little to no web presence, it only makes this strange project even eerier.

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9: THE LAST RESORT

What do you get when Robert de Niro, Aerosmith, Superman, Jim Belushi and Cher collaborate with the twisted art of Mark Rydan to make a point-n-click adventure? The answer is one of gaming history's most notorious financial bombs. Nevertheless 9: The Last Resort (1996, Tribeca Interactive) is still a fascinating surreal head-trip of a game.

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EASTERN MIND: THE LOST SOULS OF TONG NOU

Eastern Mind: The Lost Souls of Tong Nou, a Japanese adventure that came to the west in 1995, was developed almost entirely by one man - Osamu Satu. If you're unaware, he's the man behind the trippy PlayStation game LSD: Dream Simulator. Consider that a warning - things are about to get weird...

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