Ribbit King - Perfecting The Art Of Frog Golf?

Thanks to The Next Level for its hands-on preview of Bandai's PlayStation 2/GameCube title Ribbit King, a unique new game in which "you play frog golf, or 'frolf' for short. You put a frog on a catapult and smack it around a course littered with traps and point bonuses, and the person with the highest score at the end wins." The previewer notes that "even by my standards, this is an oddball", before concluding: "Ribbit King is due out in June from Bandai, and should retail for $20 on both PS2 and GameCube. Though the demo had a few issues here and there, I can definitely say that for sheer lunacy it looks to be a must-have game."

Weirdness = Goodness

[Yorrike]

Yes, I realise it's not English, but if it were, it would exactly describe my feelings towards games like this.

I can see myself spending ages playing this game, much as I did with Gitaroo Man [gamespot.com], which I've sunk close to 100 hours into over the years.

The price is also right, perhaps because less mainstream games usually go on nothing but gameplay, which can bring overall development costs down (and the graphics on this aren't fantastic, but who cares if you're having fun?).

Re:Weird........

[pommaq]

If you're into weird games, you picked the wrong console. Both the Cube and PS2 have quite an assortment of oddball japanese games, but the XBox is a very american machine: thus it gets mainstream US stuff and misses out on the wacky offerings from Japan. Why not buy yourself one of the other consoles? It's not like they're expensive anymore.

We need games like this.

[SuperMo0]

Games like this prove that gaming companies are up for the challenge of selling a game that is totally out of left field and/or seem like they were made on an acid binge. It takes guts to sell this kind of game, and I admire them for taking the chance.