Mashups, by their very nature, are trash. The idea of forcing together two things whose only shared characteristic is the fact that you like them appeals to a primitive desire in our pop culture lizard brains and often results in a sum worse than its parts. But, what about mashups that are supposed to be bad? What about mashups that are so bad they fly in the face of everything holy under the sun? Is it possible to make something so bad that it becomes … good?
That’s the question being posed in the fourth annual Make Something Horrible video game contest, which wrapped up earlier this week. Contestants were required to make a “really rubbish” video game from scratch that reimagined an existing title as if it had been made by a creator with a completely contrasting style. The resulting list of submissions contain abominations like Sid Meier’s: Civilization Crush Saga, Katamari’s Gate, and NSFWare, a pornographic WarioWare clone.
Though clearly started in good fun, this competition does finally answer the age-old question: What would Tetris look like as a Telltale game?
Or what if Pokemon was made by retro wargame designer Chris Crawford?
The three winners of the contest have yet to be named, but all of the games are now available for viewing and can be played in most web browsers. Though many of them are in French, and, as mentioned above, they all look like absolute dog shit. But that’s the point!