The Weirdest Video Games were Hacks

What happened

The Weirdest Video Games were Hacks, according to Hackaday. 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. 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 seamlessly.