Games That Time Forgot - Bishi Bashi Special

Some video games are released to huge acclaim and enormous sales. But other games get released, only to be criminally ignored by the masses. hecklerspray brings you the Games That Time Forgot - a critical reassessment of the video games that should have been huge, but somehow weren’t.

Some games have the ability to immerse you in it’s world. Take GTA San Andreas - you play a character running freely around an entire US state. But let’s be honest, taking control of the west coast of America is a tad time consuming. Sometimes you want hardcore entertainment, distilled into a bulletproof nugget of fun. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you Bishi Bashi Special.

Released onto the Playstation in 2000, Bishi Bashi Special is
at once the best multiplayer game ever released to any format, and - as
far as we know - the only way you can fire hundreds of your uncles from
a cannon onto a tray carried by a giant bronze statue.

There’s no narrative to Bishi Bashi Special whatsoever. It’s just a series of simple multiplayer minigames - think a Playstation version of Banzai.
And that’s the beauty of it. There are no lengthy cut scenes, no need
to carry out any complex missions. The computer chooses who’ll play,
then there’s a loud "Attention!" so everyone can sit up and learn the controls.

Sometimes it’s a case of rhythm, sometimes it’s pressing coloured
buttons, sometimes you just pound the joypad buttons as hard as you can.

So far, so mundane. It’s the nature of the games that takes Bishi Bashi Special to a different level. There’s Shake The Can To Outer Space,
where you smash the joypad buttons as fast as you can, in order to to
zhush a can of fizzy drink so much it takes off and gets stuck in the
moon.

Or a minigame where you play a bride. Naturally though, a bride who
runs down the aisle hurling pies as far into the congregation as she
can.

Even a simple game where you have to climb ladders has an unexpected
twist. When you get to the top, you jump inside a massive golden toilet.

These games are maddeningly addictive. Making a disco dancer bop
away in time to increase the size of his perm becomes a herculean task
of concentration. Pressing a button to catch a fish has never been so
maddeningly tense.

Playing against the computer is OK, but the game takes on a whole
new lease of life when you get your mates round. The game becomes far
more breakneck, and far more serious. It stops being a case of making a
man juggle beans into his mouth any more - it’s life or death.
Fantastically, though, the games are over so quickly that revenge is
always nanoseconds away.

For some inexplicable reason, Bishi Bashi Special never took over the
world. Maybe it was too bizarrely Japanese for most western tastes. But
everyone who ever played it was slightly changed for the better
afterwards.

And now, with the new generation of handhelds out or out soon, something tells hecklerspray that Bishi Bashi might just be making a comeback in one form or another.

Bid on the genius that is Bishi Bashi Special at eBay.co.uk

[story by Stuart Heritage]