Oh No!
Developer: Tycoon
Release Date: 2000
Platforms: PlayStation
If you’re looking for quirky PS1 games, it’s hard to beat Oh No!. It’s a game about creepy looking kids and their equally creepy family getting into all sorts of raunchy hijinks over the course of a day. Crude sexual humor is the norm and the music changes genres at a moment’s notice and is infectiously energetic. Just as weird is Oh No!’s development as it’s a collaboration between Tycoon (makers of The Ring: Terror’s Realm), publisher Asmik Ace Entertainment, and the Tokyo Broadcasting System. It’s unclear how exactly this came to be, but it even features Shiro Suzuki, one of the network’s most famous anchors and a fan of gaming himself, as the game’s narrator who delivers absurd lines as straightly as possible.
As for playing Oh No!, it’s most similar to Pepsiman but with twists of its own. You’re tasked with running and jumping through obstacle-ridden city streets, but Oh No! makes you control up to four characters in unison. When you press jump, they all jump, and you have the ability to swap between horizontal and vertical formations at will. Not only do you need to make sure no one gets left behind, you’ll also need to keep your constantly draining health meter at bay by grabbing burgers scattered about. Bumping into things is no good, but even worse is eating fish burgers, which are deviously placed everywhere. At the end of each level, you get to do one of two dancing minigames for bonus points which both involve pressing buttons as quickly as possible.
Oh No! does a great job of throwing all sorts of hazards at you across its ten levels, making you run through places like a festival, a beach that leads to a ski resort, and a school, though it can annoy at times with its reliance on instant kill tricks. It’s a doable game with reasonable checkpoints, though, and you get a variety of modes to try out, too. Ono Mode makes you play four levels as a group of girls with a different story and Crazy Mode grants you invincibility and a rolling attack, so it’s a victory lap for making it through everything else. Love Love Mode has two players hold hands through two levels to test their bond and Funky Battle Mode lets players fight each other as they run amok. Oh No! is emblematic of the creativity found on the PS1 and anyone interested in exploring the console should take the time to indulge in its absurdity.
