Game at Your Own Risk #1: Lester the Unlikely (SNES)
Here at Quarter Disorder, there’s love for games of all different types: the latest release, the old school, the first-person shooter, survival horror, the Nintendo classics, eighty-hour RPG adventures, the quarter munchers. All sorts of games are in heavy rotation. There’s no discrimination here. I even play games that are not rated 9s and 10s or five stars across the board. Shocking, I know.
Game at Your Own Risk is a new addition to Quarter Disorder. I’ll play forgotten titles, games that flew under the radar, maybe didn’t get the best review scores, even those rumored, even vilified as terrible games, and see if the talk holds true. It’s up to you if you want to play them for yourself or not after reading my impressions.
The point? Learning some video game history, having some good laughs, and to lift your spirits, knowing no matter how much your life sucks, at least you didn’t work on one of these games.
These games may or may not be completed based on various factors, like broken gameplay, or if my patience runs dry and I actually physically break the game itself.
Eventually these posts will be expanded and accompanied by a personally made video as well, showing gameplay footage along with some commentary. However, right now I’m broke as a joke and can’t afford that fancy technology.
So on to our first game! I’m excited.
Lester the Unlikely
System: Super Nintendo
Developer: Visual ConceptsPublisher: DTMC
Year: 1994
If you never heard of Lester the Unlikely, it’s for good reason. It’s ridiculous.
History
First, a little back story. I’m going to assume that DTMC, the publisher, went out of business or got bought out, considering their last published game was on the Super Nintendo.
According to Lester’s credits, the company was based in Redwood City, California. I can’t find any information about the company online. I called their number in the Lester manual and the number is no longer in service.
One of the producers for DTMC, Matt Householder, worked for Blizzard North on various Diablo games.
I’ve never heard of the developer before either, even though I should have.They’re responsible for the 2K Sports games.According to IGN, Visual Concepts was an integral part of Sega’s sports titles for the Dreamcast and other systems. Sega sold Visual Concepts Entertainment to Take-Two in 2005.
Visual Concepts also made such retro games like Clay Fighter 1, Madden ’95, WeaponLord, and Taz-Mania.
At the time, Lester was apparently pushing the limits of video games. Lester’s manual says:
Lester the Unlikely was actually animated using a process known as rotoscoping. This means a real person was filmed and then painstakingly animated and touched up one frame at a time. There are over 250 frames of Lester animations. That’s about twice the number of an average game.
They should have diverted those resources into making a playable game. In the end credits, Eric Browning is the person responsible for the rotoscoping of Lester. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a real picture of him.
Story
The premise of Lester the Unlikely is that Lester is a huge nerd who finds himself in a crazy situation. Lester is one of the most unique and worst characters in game history, all at the same time.
In the intro, Lester is walking on a boat dock while reading the latest comic book. He hopes to buy all 52 different covers of the issue, because that will show the “guys” how “cool” he is.
For some bizarre reason, Lester thinks it’s a good idea to:
1. Hang out at a boat dock on his free time.
2. Bring valuable comic outside of house. Even crazier, around water.
and
3. Take naps at said boat dock, on a shipping crate clearly attached to boat.
Lester actually falls asleep on the crate, and it’s taken aboard the ship. Why would anyone just take a nap on a boat dock? The boat is then hijacked by pirates and the boat sinks. After the hijacking, Lester escapes the boat and swims to an island. He needs to get home, but has no way to get back.
The attempt at “humor” in Lester is awful, if you couldn’t tell already.
Once he arrives on the island, his only concern is that his comic book is now soggy and wet. The fact that he’s stranded on an island is not his first concern. No, it’s that his comic book, which probably cost him three bucks, is ruined.
Later on Lester meets Tikka, the daughter of the island’s leader. Tikka is in a bikini, and it’s a surprise that Lester’s great “personality” didn’t kick in. Hector, the leader, was kidnapped by pirates. To finally get off the island, Lester needs to rescue Hector.
Quarter Disorder 
One Response to “Game at Your Own Risk #1: Lester the Unlikely (SNES)”
Note to self; never ebay this game.