To create a spinoff from a major gaming franchise is to temporarily free yourself of the shackles of the franchise’s established norms.
It’s not part of the main series, so you don’t need to worry too much about alienating the diehard fans or annoying the shareholders.
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With different stories, mechanics, or styles, these entries changed their series for the better.
Of course, even if you have a free pass to get experimental, some developers and publishers get a teensy bit carried away with it.
The resulting spinoffs aren’t necessarily bad (though there areplenty of bad spinoffs out there), they’re just… strange. Very, very strange, placing characters in completely alien settings or gameplay styles they’d never go near otherwise.
10Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland
Because You Demanded It?
Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland
The Legend of Zelda’s Tingle has never been the most popular character of the franchise, with many considering him mildly weird at best and creepy at worst.
Apparently someone at Nintendocarries a torch for him, though, because he got his own spinoff game for the DS: the unsettlingly-titled Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland.
This game follows Tingle on his quest to amass a fortune of Rupees to enter the magical Rupeeland. You do this by selling random junk you find in dungeons and cutting deals with NPCs.
Smart investment is vital, as Rupees are both Tingle’s money and life force. If he goes broke, he drops dead.
9Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix
Mario’s Got The Moves
Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix
In the early 2000s, Konami’sDance Dance Revolutionwasthehot ticket. No matter what arcade you went to, you’d find a kid absolutely tearing it up on the dance pad.
Naturally, everyone wanted a slice of the pie, including Nintendo. This is how we got Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix for the GameCube.
At a glance, it’s just DDR with both Mario song remixes and sometracks from Konami’s back catalog. However, this game actually has an entire single-player campaign, complete with mini-games and boss battles.
It’s all DDR in the broad scale, but with some admittedly nifty Mario-themed twists thrown in to differentiate it.
8Mega Man Soccer
Rock Was Always Good At Kicking
Mega Man Soccer
Mega Manhas always been a very dexterous chap. He’s good with his hands, of course, but based on all the sliding and kicking he does, he definitely never skips leg day.
When Dr. Wily’s Robot Masters attack a soccer field, he immediately rushes to the leg-centric rescue in Mega Man Soccer.
This is mostly a traditional soccer game, with two teams of eight kicking and sliding around the pitch. The big wrinkle is that every character has a special ability, such as Cut Man turning the ball into scissors or Fire Man setting it ablaze.
Every time you defeat one of the Robot Masters’ teams, they’ll join your team as you battle up to Dr. Wily’s castle.
7Metal Gear Acid
War Has Changed… Into Cards
Metal Gear Acid
Playing aMetal Geargame well requires a degree of strategy and planning. If you run into an open area with guns blazing, you’ll get your butt kicked. If you’re already into strategy, you might as well go the extra mile intocard games.
Metal Gear Acid is a bizarre hybrid of the Metal Gear series and a collectible card game. “Acid,” incidentally, stands for “Active Command Intelligence Duel.”
Prior to a mission, you build a deck of cards, including weapons and character abilities. In the field, Snake’s movements are controlled by the cards you play.
You need to strategize your movement, placement, and card costs. If you play powerful cards too often, you’ll be stuck out in the open on cooldown when an enemy walks by.
6Persona 4: Dancing All Night
Dancing Literally Saves Lives
Persona 4: Dancing All Night
Despite having serial murders as a central theme,Persona 4is a relatively upbeat game about the joys of youth and friendship. Though, saving the world with the power of dance is perhaps a bit too joyful.
Persona 4: Dancing All Night is a rhythm game wherein you tap buttons in time with the franchise’s admittedly excellent soundtrack.
That in itself is fine, andactually quite fun. The strange part is that there’s an entire, fully-voiced story mode, and a lengthy one at that.
The story even goes out of its way to contrive a reason why the Investigation Team can’t just go hog-wild with their Personas to battle Shadows: because one’s true feelings can only be expressed through dance. Of course.
5Sonic’s Schoolhouse
Way Past Literate
Sonic the Hedgehoghas often been portrayed as an “act first, think later” kind of guy. Apparently, though, he takes proper schooling very seriously, enough so to have his own schoolhouse.
Sonic’s Schoolhouse is an edutainment game released for PCs in 1996. It was originally a generic game called Answer Hunt, but it was retooled into a Sonic product with Sega’s blessing.
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No matter which era of Sonic you adore, these are the best titles from all across the Hedgehog’s long life.
As you’d expect from a game for literal children, it’s very simple: you pick a subject, find questions on the blackboards, and pick up the answers bouncing around.
Fun fact: this game features the first instance of Sonic speaking in English in a game, though it was after the Sonic cartoons aired in 1993.
4Silent Hill: Book Of Memories
Silent Hill By Way Of Diablo
Silent Hill: Book of Memories
TheSilent Hillseries does its best work when it’s subtle: these games are supposed to be quiet and claustrophobic to really drill in the town’s oppressive nature. Sometimes, though, the premise of subtlety goes out the window.
One such instance is Silent Hill: Book of Memories, which is less a Silent Hill game and more a Diablo game wearing Silent Hill’s discarded skin.
The premise is that, with the titular Book of Memories, the protagonist can make changes to their personal history. To do this, they have to enter a nightmare world full of traps and monsters.
It’s a full RPG system, complete with classes, usable weapons, and stats. The game also has an alignment system, with actions in the dungeons affecting the ending.
3Pokemon Conquest
Nobunaga’s Ambipom
Pokemon Conquest
While not as popular here in the west, the Nobunaga’s Ambition series is a well-loved and long-running series of strategy RPGs in Japan.
Apparently, it’s got so much street cred, it was able to get acoveted spinoffcrossover withPokemonin the form of Pokemon Conquest.
In this game, you assemble a feudal army to take on the world, with your soldiers armed with Pokemon.
By pairing your warriors with their ideal Pokemon partners, you’ll maximize their capabilities and help them evolve.
Gameplay is turn and grid-based, with each Pokemon able to use one move to attack enemies. Your warriors, meanwhile, have special abilities that can help allies or hinder foes.
2Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE
Fire Emblem Plus SMT Equals Idols?
Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore
The Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei franchises are somewhat diametrically opposed – high fantasy with its own mythos versus contemporary settings drawing from real-life myth and folklore.
Apparently, though, the mid-point between these franchises is the Japanese idol industry, at least based onTokyo Mirage Sessions #FE.
This RPG is technically a spinoff of both Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei, drawing from both franchises’ for things like gameplay and characters.
The overall result is wholly original, though, telling a contemporary fantasy story set against a backdrop of modern-day Shibuya and the idol and entertainment industries. It makes more sense if you play it. Kind of.
1Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir
Immersive Handheld Horror
Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir
One of the cooler features of the 3DS was its 3D AR camera, which could use overlaid graphics for gameplay applications. While the console came bundled with some cool AR software, though, not many proper games utilized it.
One game that took a crack at the concept was Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir, a spinoff of theFatal Frameseries.
In a rather clever design decision, the game turns your 3DS into the infamous Camera Obscura, having you manually take pictures of ghosts menacing you in your room.
With the help of an AR-tagged booklet, you’d explore haunted houses, solve puzzles, and generally get a faceful of spooky screaming specters.
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These ten titles all come with a pedigree, but they dared to be different, and transformed their franchises in the process.
