I’m what they are now calling a Late Xennial, a micro generation from Generation X. Born in 1982, I can remember playing an Atari in 1986 and a Nintendo at friend’s homes around the same time before my brother got his own NES for Christmas in 1988. Our family bought an Apple IIGS in 1987 so we were on the fast track to the digital age but my childhood didn’t see a huge uptick in video games until I received a Sega Genesis for Christmas in 1990.

As you’d expect, I’m right in the wheelhouse for kids who would go to Blockbuster (and local chains) to rent video games. How many times would I rent something with a friend for the weekend and spend dozens of hours playing the hell out of it–quite often–even if the game wasn’t that fun or enjoyable!

Say what you want, but that was an awesome business model for an 8-year old kid.

Now, I’m going to share with you 3 of my favorite weird games from my childhood. Go ahead and share your favorite weird games in the comment section. Apologies if this unmasks how old or young someone is right now.

Lode Runner – 1983 – Apple IIGS

I remember a handful of games on those huge Disk II floppy discs from our first computer:

Mean 18 Golf – This YouTube video doesn’t show how each screen took about 15 seconds to load. I remember it took 2 hours to play 18 holes. But, the game had a course designer which was awesome for the time.

Mickey’s Space Adventure – This game was a precursor to Myst in that you wandered around not knowing what the heck to do while pushing random levers to try to get something, damn it anything, achieved.

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? – A couple years before this TV show brought joy to geography-loving kids everywhere I was about this action on the Apple computer.

Nothing touches my nostalgia for the Apple IIGS quite like Lode Runner, though.

This was my introduction to video game addiction. It’s not too dissimilar from Donkey Kong but I found that offering really slow and quite boring. Lode Runner with its increasingly difficult stages and reliance on speed made it far more fun to play. This game later debuted on Nintendo.

Marble Madness – March 1989 – Nintendo

This was a game my older brother rented once and I thought what a stupid idea, this can’t possibly be any fun. I was wrong!

Like many Nintendo games, the graphics do look dated. At the time, I remember this seeming really cool visually but now looking back not so much.

The person in this video is obviously really good at the game which doesn’t highlight how much frustration there would be when you couldn’t breeze right through to the finish.

Also, the soundtrack for Marble Madness was elite. When you play slower and get more inundated with it you feel the game a lot more.

Super Dodge Ball – July 1989 – Nintendo

For years, I confused this game with Super Spike Volleyball which was released 8 months after Super Dodge Ball. But, no it wasn’t a volleyball game but dodge ball instead.

I’ll be honest upon reflection this game does not seem very fun.

It wasn’t as fast-paced as I remembered which makes it kind of brutal to watch. When I was a kid, I thought it was absolute mayhem with the ball flying around like a laser. In reality, not so much.

However, I adored the traveling world tour and the scenes this game built. It’s similar to Super Spike Volleyball in that regard although that game put in minimal effort to build their backgrounds. The staff for Super Dodge Ball went way more into it with set design, plus another great soundtrack!