Sega has released an almost indescribably bizarre game for WiiWare in Japan today called Pole’s Big Adventure. It’s a parody of 8-bit games — as you play through the game’s stages, all kinds of ridiculous things happen, with a comedian cracking jokes about it all.
For example, in the first level, you’re tasked with collecting apples. But sometimes the apples will hurt you. Sometimes people have eaten parts of them already. And once, as shown to the right, they’re rotten.
Okay, I know this doesn’t actually sound funny, but I laughed a lot while I played it. You have to be there to hear the comedian’s reactions to all the stupid things that happen as you play through the game. It takes on all the standard 80’s platformer tropes, like boss fights, power-ups, etc.
And it got a “B” rating in Japan, roughly equivalent to our T, for sexual jokes and violence. Why the former?
Well, there’s this one running gag about finding mushrooms in the game. The first time you find one, you grow larger, but you grow stupidly large and then die. The second time, you turn into a realistic version of yourself. The third time, in a beach level, you switch from wearing board shorts to your normal clothes. And the fourth time…
…
only a certain part of your body gets larger.
Oh, Japan.
*Pole’s Big Adventure *costs 500 Wii Points and takes less than an hour to finish, although you can play it through again with more difficult enemies. Mostly it’s about the jokes, not about challenging you. But the main goal is to find all of the humorous stupid things like the above, which are added to a movie gallery as you play through.
Top image: Sega, lower image: Wired.com