ToeJam & Earl

ToeJam & Earl is one of the strangest and most original games of the entire Mega Drive era. Created by Greg Johnson and Mark Voorsanger and released in autumn 1991, it stars two alien rappers from the planet Funkotron — three-legged red ToeJam and big orange Earl — who have crashed their spaceship into Earth and must gather its scattered pieces to get home.

It looks like an action game, but it plays like nothing else of its time. The designers openly borrowed from the old dungeon crawler Rogue: the world's levels are randomly generated, so no two games look alike, and you ride an elevator from one layer to the next. The key mechanic is presents — wrapped packages with unknown contents that are only identified once opened. One might hold rocket skates, spring shoes or a rain of tomatoes; another hides bad luck that puts you to sleep or summons a storm cloud. The enemies are not monsters but caricatures of Earthlings: a mad dentist, runaway shopping carts, mothers with strollers, a bogeyman under a sheet.

The game is at its best with two players. The co-op design is clever: while you stay together you share one screen, the moment you split up the display divides in two, and it merges again when you reunite. All of it is set to a genuine funk soundtrack, almost unheard of in a console game back then.

To be fair, the pace is slow and the aimless wandering across floating islands is not for everyone — the game does not want you to rush, it wants you to amble, listen to the bass and let it surprise you. Initial sales were weak; the cult status came later, by word of mouth.

If you want to see a game that resembles nothing before or since, this is it. You can play it at oldgame.cz straight in your browser, no installation required.