The Weirdest Video Games were Hacks

We were looking into the marvelous recent project by [Throaty Mumbo] to recreate and reimagine the forgotten world of VHS-tape-based video games. Yes, back in the day, when …. The Weirdest Video Games were Hacks.

Yes, back in the day, when computer graphics were more primitive, there were attempts to mix the gameplay of video games with the graphics from a video cassette. It worked with a light-gun that pointed at the screen while the video played, and you tried to shoot at things as they flew by. Think Duck Hunt, but in glorious VHS video quality with cheesy acting, and the same gameplay loop every time, because it’s on the tape.

The unreleased Control-Vision VHS gaming system, co-developed with none other than Steve Wozniak, took the idea a little further and ran simultaneous sub-videos, and your actions would choose which of the sub-tracks would play at any given time. This let them do things like switch between videos depending on whether you caught the bad guys or missed them entirely, for instance. These games came in the late 1980s, though, and they were all derivatives of the seminal Dragon’s Lair, which is probably the least fun video game I’ve ever had the chance to play, but among the most entertaining in a weird way.

Instead of a linear VHS tape, Dragon’s Lair, and the later but equally unplayable Space Ace, were based on the then-new video disc technology that could swap between entirely different tracks almost smoothly.