Welcome to our top 10 quirky guide to the gaming universe, where we uncover weird records, hidden secrets, and absurd tales that prove video games are more than just pixels and joysticks.
Top 10 Quirky Highlights
10 The Elder Scrolls Game That’s Bigger Than Britain
Many role‑playing enthusiasts spend their time following the main storyline, ticking off quests and soaking up tutorials. They methodically clear the primary plot before even considering the optional side‑quests that litter the world.
But there’s a different breed of player—those who treat open‑world titles exactly as the name suggests. Whether it’s wandering the snow‑capped peaks of Skyrim or cruising the sun‑soaked streets of San Andreas, these explorers love to roam wherever the map permits. Of course, every virtual continent has its borders, and the size of those borders varies dramatically from one game to the next.
The second installment of Bethesda’s legendary Elder Scrolls series, “The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall,” boasts a map that the developers claim rivals the land area of Great Britain—perhaps even surpasses it. In most contemporary open‑world games, a sprint across the map takes a handful of minutes; in Daggerfall, the same journey can consume days. The current record for traversing the 874‑mile span from Land’s End to John o’Gorates in the real world sits at just over nine days, whereas the fastest known Daggerfall run clocks in at 61 hours and 54 minutes. Real‑life hikers would end up with blisters, while virtual travelers contend with centaurs, spriggans, and the occasional wereboar.
So while Daggerfall’s scale dwarfs most modern titles, it also trades the usual fantasy fauna for a more… traditional set of mythic creatures.
9 A Weird Dark Souls World Record
Speed‑runs, high‑score challenges, and lightning‑fast race‑times dominate the world‑record scene for most gamers. Yet one determined player decided to rewrite the rulebook by completing the notoriously unforgiving Dark Souls using an eclectic arsenal of controllers.
Benjamin “Bearzly” Winn of Edmonton, Canada, earned his place in the record books by finishing Dark Souls on PC nine separate times, each run employing a completely different input device. His roster of controllers reads like a gaming‑hardware hall of fame mixed with a carnival of the absurd.
He tackled the game with a Wiimote, an Xbox 360 controller wielded with a single finger, a steering wheel, a dance‑mat, a voice‑controlled microphone, a Rock Band guitar, a Rock Band piano, a Rock Band drum kit, and finally a pair of Donkey Kong bongos. Each controller presented its own unique challenges, turning a already brutal game into an even more chaotic experience.
Credit where it’s due—Bearzly’s achievement is as much a testament to perseverance as it is to creative problem‑solving.
8 ‘Duke Nukem Forever (Took) Forever’
The gaming community isn’t exactly known for its patience, especially when developers promise a release that keeps slipping further into the horizon. When a title is delayed for an extra year, expectations skyrocket; if the final product falls short, the backlash can be ferocious.
One of the most infamous sagas in recent memory is the development of Duke Nukem Forever. Announced in 1997, the game didn’t finally see the light of day until 2011—a full fourteen‑year wait, roughly the time it takes for a child to progress from birth to the end of primary school, complete a bar or bat mitzvah, and sprout a respectable amount of facial hair.
When the long‑awaited release finally arrived, players were greeted by a title many consider one of the dullest games ever made. Even the iconic “Enforcer” twin‑rocket launcher, a signature weapon of the series, never made it into commercial hands for fans to purchase.
7 That’s The Name Of The Game
Everyone’s heard of big‑name sports and action titles like Tiger Woods PGA Tour, Mike Tyson’s Punch‑Out!, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Yet the gaming world is littered with oddly specific celebrity‑endorsed games that most of us have never encountered.
These niche titles often surface when a well‑known figure lends their name to a game that either never gains traction or is intentionally obscure. Some are straightforward—like the 2008 Nintendo DS cooking simulator “Who’s Cooking? with Jamie Oliver,” which simply lets players follow the British chef’s recipes. Rumor has it that a hidden easter egg can make Oliver break down in tears if you manage to concoct a turkey‑twizzler gumbo, though that story remains unverified.
Another curious example is the 1986 Commodore 64/ZX Spectrum title “Peter Shilton’s Handball Maradona.” The game puts you in the shoes of England’s goalkeeper Peter Shilton, yet the Argentine legend Diego Maradona appears in the title solely to cash in on the infamous “Hand of God” incident from the 1986 World Cup, despite Maradona never playing in any English league.
Perhaps the most bizarre celebrity‑themed game is the 1991 Japanese release “Gorby no PipelineDaisakusen,” available on platforms like the MSX2 and Famicom. This Tetris‑style puzzle game tasks players with constructing a pipeline from Moscow to Tokyo to improve diplomatic ties between the USSR and Japan. The cover features a cartoonish Mikhail Gorbachev, complete with his recognizable birthmark. Ironically, the Soviet Union dissolved just three months after the game’s launch, and a planned sequel featuring Boris Yeltsin’s vodka distillery never materialized.
6 A Crowd‑Funded Nightmare
Enduring a fourteen‑year wait for Duke Nukem Forever was a test of patience, but the saga of Star Citizen eclipses even that in terms of prolonged anticipation. The project began with a Kickstarter campaign in 2010, spearheaded by British developer Chris Roberts, famed for the Wing Commander series.
Despite raising a staggering $339 million in pledges, the game remains perpetually “in development,” with no concrete release date announced. The sheer scale of the fundraising effort and the continued absence of a finished product have turned Star Citizen into one of the most talked‑about potential scams in the digital era.
5 Game Over
We’ve all wasted time on low‑budget, no‑frills titles that feel more like a chore than entertainment—whether it was a cheap 300‑in‑1 PC bundle or a random flash game on Miniclip. Among this sea of mediocrity, one title stands out as the epitome of a bad game: the unlicensed 1995 shoot‑’em‑up “Hong Kong 97.”
Designed by Japanese hobbyist “Kowloon” Kurasawa, the game features horrendous graphics, abysmal level design, and a storyline that follows “Chin,” a heroin‑addicted super‑soldier and distant cousin of Bruce Lee. His mission? To eradicate the entire population of China, a premise loosely tied to the political turmoil surrounding Hong Kong’s 1997 handover from Britain to China.
While often crowned the “worst game of all time,” Hong Kong 97’s claim to fame isn’t solely its poor gameplay. The title’s “Game Over” screen displays a photograph of an actual corpse, sparking a wild conspiracy theory that the dead individual was Polish boxer Leszek Bączyński, who allegedly committed suicide three years before the game’s release. Some speculated that the image might have been a murder victim, perhaps linked to Chinese retaliation over trade disputes.
Investigation later revealed that the grisly photo was lifted from a “Faces of Death” mondo film, specifically a clip showing a combatant from the Bosnian War. So while the game remains a low‑point in gaming history, its macabre backstory is even more unsettling.
4 Chris Houlihan And His Secret Room
The title of this entry may sound ominous, but the story behind it is surprisingly wholesome. In 1990, Nintendo Power held a contest that asked participants to submit photos of themselves alongside Warmech from the Final Fantasy series.
The lucky winner, a teenager named Chris Houlihan, was rewarded with a hidden room in the Super NES version of “The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.” This secret chamber, known among fans as “Chris Houlihan’s Room,” remains a permanent easter egg, granting the victor a slice of gaming immortality.
3 The Guy Who’s Been Playing Sports Management Simulator For 333 Years
Dedication to one’s craft is a celebrated virtue, and no one embodies that more than German gamer Sepp Hedel, who has spent an astonishing amount of time mastering virtual football management.
Hedel’s marathon career began with the 2017 edition of Football Manager, where he first took the helm of FC United of Manchester, steering the club for half a century. He then migrated to India, managing Bengaluru for two hundred years, before returning to England to lead Hereford FC. Over the course of his virtual tenure, he amassed 45 league titles across 83 seasons, logging a total of 1,940 hours—or roughly 81 real‑world days—behind the controller.
2 How To Make A Horror Game Gorier
Even the most graphic horror titles are limited by the fact that players remain safely behind a screen. Yet the desire for ever‑more visceral experiences has inspired developers to create hardware that bridges the gap between virtual gore and physical sensation.
Following the 2005 release of Resident Evil 4, a niche manufacturer called NubyTech introduced a blood‑splattered Chainsaw controller compatible with both GameCube and PlayStation 2. While some dismissed it as a cash‑grab, the device offered players a tactile way to feel the game’s brutal action—an approach reminiscent of Bearzly Winn’s unconventional Dark Souls controller lineup.
1 Taking Obsession A Tad Too Far
The gaming world is rife with urban legends and creepypastas—stories like the “Ben Drowned” tale surrounding The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, or the infamous Polybius arcade myth that allegedly caused severe physical symptoms for those who played it. Among these, the alleged “Final Fantasy VII House” stands out as a particularly unsettling narrative.
While the veracity of the story remains uncertain, it mirrors the complexity of the Star Citizen saga, weaving a tale of two individuals—dubbed “Jenova” and “Hojo”—who allegedly lured people into a shared living space. According to the legend, Jenova convinced tenants that they were reincarnations of characters from the game, effectively creating a real‑life cult based on a fictional universe.
Given how many hours gamers devote to immersing themselves in virtual worlds, the line between fandom and obsession can sometimes blur. Whether the Final Fantasy VII House is fact or fiction, it serves as a cautionary reminder of how powerful and potentially consuming video game narratives can become.
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About The Author: CJ Phillips is a storyteller, actor and writer living in rural West Wales. He is a little obsessed with lists.