Almost everyone in the world has experienced having an oddball or two in their family. That one strange uncle we never speak about until the family reunion. Perhaps even that quiet cousin who collects the bones of dead animals in his garage! Well, videogames are no different to people in this regard. A lot of well-established series have an odd game in the family which breaks away from the norm and tries to be too different.

Since August is such an odd month (having the same amount of days as the previous one). The writers here at RGM decided to celebrate August by speaking about those games in a series that stood out a little bit too much. They may or may not be popular, but they deserve the spotlight sometimes as well. Let us delve into the odd cousins of gaming history!
Now there are a few rules to this month:

1. It must come from an already established series. Thus none of that early installment weirdness that happens when the first game in a series is vastly different from the following games.
2. They must be a considerable departure from the established norm (in order to avoid games that eventually became their own series/spinoff for example Super Mario RPG was the precursor to the Paper Mario Series).
3. It doesn’t necessarily have to be considered a black sheep in the family (but, most of these games will be considered as such).
4. One game per series (this is intended to limit repetition, but to elaborate it means since all Zelda games are the same genre there can only be one, but Mario which has multiple series can have multiple games throughout the month).

Now there could be multiple reasons for the games turning out this way. But, there is an indication that the creator themselves did not understand what made the games popular. As such sometimes they end up taking away everything which made the earlier installments great. Yet, as mentioned earlier these games deserve a little love. During August we will honor those games that made us go “this isn’t the X that I knew”.

Dash The Bomber

Dash The Bomber is a sailor is his 20's with a penchant for goofy, yet deep thoughts. An avid gamer for generations he has played everything from the Atari 2600 to the PC in which he writes his work on. He currently lives in the middle of the ocean and appreciates donations in order to buy goodies from Amazon while deployed (makes his life slightly better). You can help the guy out by donating here: paypal.me/dashthebomber.