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00:00Hey there, welcome to Jacksonville.
00:03Welcome to Mojo Plays and today we're touching those risky titles that just wouldn't have had a chance in 2026.
00:09Whether quality control has gotten better, whether they'd be too edgy for today's standards or some other unrelated reason,
00:15these are the 20 PS1 games that would never get made today. Let's go.
00:20Before we continue, we publish content all week long, so be sure to subscribe and ring the bell to get
00:26notified of our latest videos.
00:28Whose idea was this LSD Dream Emulator?
00:39Trying to explain LSD Dream Emulator is already half the problem.
00:43There are no proper goals, no enemies to defeat, and barely any rules beyond walking around a bizarre dreamscape until
00:49something strange happens.
00:50The whole project grew from a dream journal kept by Hiroku Nishikawa, which explains why it feels like somebody left
00:56a PlayStation running inside their subconscious.
00:58Faces appear, scenery changes without warning, and logic politely leaves the room.
01:03Experimental games today still exist, but getting something with this name on the PSN front page would not be easy.
01:17Stereotypes, hogs of war.
01:21Prepare to greet your ancestors.
01:25National stereotypes are basically the fuel-powering hogs of war.
01:29Each army is built around broad jokes about the country it represents,
01:32with British officers, American rednecks, Russian communists, and the Japanese sushi swine all pushed into cartoon territory.
01:41Rick Mayall voices much of the cast and gives the whole thing enormous personality,
01:44but some accents and gags have aged about as gracefully as warm milk.
01:49The turn-based peak warfare could absolutely work today,
01:52and according to me and my mates this past weekend it 100% does,
01:55but the dialogue is where alarms start ringing.
01:58A remake could keep the exploding bacon, but several voice sessions would need slight tweaking.
02:12Product placement is Tacky, Pepsi Man.
02:25Most games contain advertising somewhere.
02:28Pepsi Man skips that boring middle step and makes the advertisement the protagonist.
02:32Pepsi's Japanese superhero mascot races through the streets,
02:36collecting cans, delivering soft drink to thirsty civilians,
02:39and even fleeing from a gigantic Pepsi can.
02:41Between stages, live-action scenes show a man drinking,
02:44you guessed it, more Pepsi.
02:46It was a Japan-only release that basically charged players for an interactive commercial.
02:52Branded games still happen constantly,
02:54but a full console game built entirely around convincing you to drink one specific cola
02:58would be a much harder sell today.
03:05Nintendo loves to sue Tiering Saga.
03:13Nintendo has never been especially relaxed when something looks too familiar,
03:18and Tiering Saga tested exactly where that line was.
03:21Fire Emblem creator Shozo Kaga left Nintendo and helped create another tactical RPG
03:27that naturally carried some very familiar DNA.
03:30Nintendo responded with multiple legal action against publisher Enterbrain.
03:34The company failed to prove copyright infringement,
03:36although damages were still awarded over other issues.
03:39The dispute became an important example of how close a spiritual successor
03:43could get to its inspiration.
03:45Today, most publishers would probably ask their lawyers roughly 9,000 questions
03:48before announcing anything that's obviously related.
03:58Punching dogs and grandmas, Courier Crisis.
04:09Delivering parcels should be harmless.
04:11Courier Crisis somehow turns it into a citywide public safety emergency.
04:15Your bicycle messenger can smash into pedestrians,
04:18attack police, run over grandmothers,
04:20and yes, kick dogs while racing between deliveries.
04:23There's even a pedestrian counter,
04:25because apparently someone felt your reign of terror needed statistics.
04:28The violence is cartoony rather than graphic,
04:31but the casual cruelty is wonderfully specific to the late 90s.
04:34Modern games can obviously be far more violent,
04:37yet turning random civilians and animals into throwaway comedy
04:40would attract immediate attention.
04:42The dog kicking alone would generate several apology posts,
04:45particularly from a game that was marketed as a kids game,
04:48rated E for everyone.
05:05You could cancel Duke Nukem Land of the Babes using only its title.
05:10Duke starts in a strip club before ending up in a future
05:13where aliens have killed the men,
05:14enslaved the women,
05:15and left humanity depending on a sunglasses-wearing slab of testosterone.
05:19The surviving women even form the unified babe resistance,
05:24because subtlety was apparently outlawed before development began.
05:27Modernizing this would require far more than deleting a few dodgy jokes.
05:31The plot, characterization, dialogue, and premise
05:34would all need rebuilding,
05:35and at that point just make something else.
05:40Another licensing nightmare, MTV Celebrity Deathmatch.
05:48MTV Celebrity Deathmatch already had a great video game idea.
05:51Famous people beating each other senseless in claymation fights.
05:55Unfortunately, the PlayStation game arrived without the show's most important ingredient,
05:58the claymation.
05:59A limited budget left it looking cheaper than the TV series,
06:03while the celebrity roster was hardly the endless parade of famous faces fans might have expected.
06:08Making this now would be an even bigger headache.
06:11Every likeness means contracts, approvals,
06:13and several phone calls from publicists.
06:16Today, the legal department would need its own legal department.
06:26No one is asking for this.
06:27Star Wars Masters of Terrace Cassie.
06:33A Star Wars fighting game sounds like free money.
06:36Luke vs. Vader? Great.
06:39Chewbacca throwing hands with a stormtrooper? Absolutely.
06:42Somehow, Star Wars Masters of Terrace Cassie
06:44took the easy pitch and produced a clunky fighter that almost nobody remembers fondly.
06:49Characters punch, kick, and swing weapons through awkward 3D battles,
06:53but the combat never had the polish needed to compete with the era's fighting games.
06:57Disney can print money with Star Wars already,
06:59so resurrecting this experiment feels unnecessary in 2026.
07:07What is Kiss? What is Pinball?
07:09Kiss. Pinball.
07:18I don't even need to tell you why this would not be made today,
07:21because for the majority, I'd have to first explain who Kiss was.
07:25Gene Simmons has rarely encountered a licensing opportunity he disliked,
07:29which helps explain Kiss Pinball.
07:31Unfortunately, combining the band with digital pinball
07:33somehow managed to satisfy almost nobody.
07:36Kiss fans got a game with little excitement surrounding the actual band,
07:40while pinball fans received a flat substitute
07:42for something that works better with a table,
07:44flushing lights, and loud mechanical noises.
07:47Video pinball can absolutely work,
07:49but this one never justified the license.
08:00Mario Kart dominates Rascal Racers.
08:12By the time Rascal Racers arrived,
08:14kart racing already had enormous names blocking the road.
08:17Mario Kart owned the genre,
08:19Crash Team Racing had made a strong PlayStation alternative,
08:22and this imitator turned up with cute animals and little else.
08:26Tracks lacked variety,
08:27the controls were awkward,
08:28and somehow a racing game struggled to deliver much sensation of speed.
08:31That is a difficult trio to recover from.
08:34Cheap clones still exist today, of course,
08:36but console shelves are less forgiving when competition is this established.
08:40If you're challenging Mario,
08:42try for a platformer.
08:43You aren't ready for karts.
08:51Don't call Margot Robbie Barbie Explorer.
08:59Long before Margot Robbie turned Barbie into a box office monster,
09:03Barbie Explorer was busy turning her into a discount mixture of better PlayStation games.
09:07The adventure borrows familiar ideas from platformers and exploration titles,
09:11but never gives them personality or polish to stand alone.
09:14Thankfully, there are only four levels,
09:16which starts to feel less like missing content and more like an act of mercy.
09:20A modern Barbie game could succeed,
09:22the brand is bigger than ever,
09:24but this particular approach,
09:25copy a few mechanics,
09:27apply pink paint,
09:27ship it,
09:28would get slammed before review copies were even sent out.
09:37Syringes and kids don't mix,
09:39Galerians.
09:48Most survival horror heroes search for herbs,
09:51ammunition,
09:52keys.
09:53Rion from Galerians spends a lot of time searching for injectable drugs.
09:57He relies on chemicals,
09:58such as Nalkin,
10:00Red,
10:00and Delmatour,
10:01to fuel his psychic abilities,
10:03with overuse triggering a dangerous state called shorting,
10:06which is really,
10:08really close to overdosing.
10:09Mechanically,
10:10it is a clever risk and reward system.
10:12Marketing it today would be the nightmare of nightmares.
10:15Try putting out teenage hero repeatedly injects himself to maintain his powers onto a presentation slide,
10:20and watch the room become quiet.
10:22Australia,
10:23for instance,
10:23is really weird about drugs and butt stuff,
10:26strangely.
10:26One out of two would be enough to stop us from seeing it in 2026,
10:29and two out of two would have probably stopped everyone from seeing it back in 1999.
10:40Wu Cares Wu-Tang Shaolin Style
10:51Somebody in the late 90s looked at Wu-Tang Clan,
10:54and decided what they really needed was their own ultra-violent video game.
10:58Thus, Wu-Tang Shaolin Style exists.
11:00Members of the group battle with weapons, brutal finishing, moves, and four-player chaos,
11:05all running on technology originally developed for the cancelled thrill kill.
11:08The nastier fatalities were even locked behind a code printed in the manual,
11:12effectively making parents guardians of the Wu-Tang murder password.
11:16Celebrity games still happen, and fighting games remain huge.
11:20Mixing musicians, license likenesses, dismemberment and fatalities today, however,
11:25sounds like an insurance company's least favorite email.
11:37Racist Interpretation Akuji the Heartless
11:47Dark fantasy is not the problem with Akuji the Heartless.
11:51Its treatment of voodoo is.
11:53The game takes an Afro-Caribbean religion,
11:55and filters it through a pop culture collection of skull snakes, blood, sinister drums, and magic.
12:00Akuji is a priest whose heart is ripped out before he journeys through the underworld.
12:05The result has an atmosphere,
12:07but little concern for accurately representing the beliefs inspiring it.
12:10A modern developer could absolutely build a game around voodoo mythology,
12:14they would just need to read at least one book first,
12:17not just base it off Pirates of the Caribbean.
12:25Disney PR Nightmare Toy Story 2 Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue
12:34Even Toy Story managed to cause controversy on the PS1.
12:38Toy Story 2 Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue
12:40is mostly an innocent 3D platformer following Buzz as he helps rescue Woody.
12:44If it got re-released in 2026,
12:47it would definitely have one thing completely cut.
12:49The gunslinger enemies designed with sombreros,
12:52oversized mustaches, and obvious Mexican stereotypes.
12:54Mestizo activists protested outside Activision's headquarters,
12:59and later copies replaced those characters with generic cowboys.
13:02The originals were never fully recalled,
13:04so uncensored versions still exist.
13:07Today, Disney would catch something like this much earlier.
13:16Too Many Eyes on Development Bubsy 3D
13:25Imagine trying to challenge Super Mario 64
13:27with a platformer where moving the character feels like an argument.
13:31That was the mountain Bubsy 3D chose to climb.
13:34Bubsy's jump into 3D brought awkward controls,
13:37a camera that seemed surprised by its own job,
13:39and enough forced one-liners to test the strongest human spirit.
13:43The game has since become famous because of how badly the experiment went.
13:47Development is far more visible today,
13:50with focus testing, previews, and endless internal feedback.
13:53It's hard to imagine a publisher seeing an early build like this
13:56and not instantly axing it
13:58and dispersing the resources to other projects.
14:06Too Weird for Sony, Incredible Crisis.
14:17A family trying to reach grandma's birthday should not involve this much danger.
14:22Incredible Crisis throws its unlucky cast through one disaster after another,
14:26turning the journey home into a collection of minigames.
14:29One minute you're handling an ordinary problem,
14:31the next everything has become a Japanese game show
14:34directed by someone who's not slept for a week.
14:35It's chaotic, it's silly, and it's committed to being really, really weird.
14:40That experimentation gave early PlayStation games enormous personality,
14:43but standalone party-style collections are a tougher pitch now,
14:47unless a brand is attached.
14:57Experimentation, Buster Groove.
15:11Before Rhythm Games settled into familiar formulas,
15:14developers were willing to try strange combinations.
15:17Buster Groove mixes dancing,
15:19timed button presses,
15:20and competitive attacks
15:21into something resembling a dance-off
15:23with fighting game sabotage.
15:25Hit the rhythm correctly,
15:26and your character pulls off flashy moves.
15:28Use a jammer,
15:29and you can interrupt your opponent's performance.
15:31It was bright, odd,
15:33and suited to an era,
15:34and publishers were still discovering
15:35what rhythm games could be.
15:37Today, the idea feels more like a minigame
15:39inside a party package.
15:41We can't even get a modern sequel.
15:43You think publishers would take a swing
15:44without any reputation?
15:46No.
15:54Just not that shocking,
15:56Carmageddon.
16:03Once upon a time,
16:05Carmageddon was terrifying politicians
16:07because running people over
16:09was part of the game.
16:10Players could win through racing,
16:12wrecking opponents,
16:13or causing enough vehicular chaos,
16:14which led to bans and censorships
16:16in many countries.
16:17Some versions replaced pedestrians
16:19with zombies or robots
16:21just to get the thing onto shelves.
16:22Australia allowed it through uncut
16:24with an MA15 plus rating.
16:26The funny part is that modern games
16:27have gone so much further.
16:29This makes Carmageddon
16:31barely feel shocking anymore.
16:32It's problem today
16:33might be convincing anyone
16:35the concept is deep enough,
16:37and it's simply not.
16:44Too corny for 2026,
16:46Hooters Road Trip.
16:47Hey there,
16:49welcome to Jacksonville.
16:51There are racing games
16:52built around motorsport,
16:54open worlds,
16:55competition.
16:56Hooters Road Trip
16:57is built around reaching
16:57a Hooters restaurant
16:58so you can eventually hang out
17:00with Hooters girls.
17:01That's the reward.
17:02Who's to say what's better?
17:04The original marketing
17:05proudly advertised
17:05attractive staff,
17:0716 cars,
17:08and footage tied
17:08to the restaurant chain,
17:10creating something
17:10halfway between an arcade racer
17:12and an interactive
17:13promotional calendar.
17:14Hooters still exists.
17:16There is nothing legally
17:17impossible about reviving
17:18the concept.
17:18The difficult part
17:19would be convincing
17:20a modern publisher
17:21to fund it.
17:30Did you enjoy this video?
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