By Todd Ciolek

A catchy title is perhaps the least essential part of an arcade game, which sells itself by assaulting young onlookers with flashing, exploding, and vaguely exciting demonstrations until they’ve dumped some allowance into it. So, while the makers of console games were wringing their hands over whether or not kids would want something called Brawl Brothers instead of Rushing Beat Ran, arcade marketers could slap just about anything on that big coin-op cabinet marquee, just as long as it looked fun.

In some cases, they went just a little too far. To see just how far they went, we’re rounding up the ten most bizarre arcade game titles in history and finding out if they live up to their names.

10) Satan of Saturn
SNK (1981)

Satan of Saturn has a somewhat ordinary name, at a glance. But it’s on this list for a reason: that name is a damned lie. This SNK spaceship shooter has no demons, no alien hellbeasts erupting from Martian ruins, no nothing. It’s a basic Galaga-grade game, and it taunts you further by making you sit through a tepid first stage and then telling you “GO TO THE SATURN.”

But there’s no devil there either; just a bunch of boring aliens.. Meanwhile, Midway’s Satan’s Hollow had a genuine Beelzebub floating ominously over the stage and hurling lightning down on us. Satan’s Hollow is remembered. Satan of Saturn is not.

9) Xexex
Konami (1991)

Oh, for the days when an arcade shooter could be named by mashing a keyboard. Xexex is Konami’s take on the revered R-Type series, only with considerably weirder aesthetic choices that start with a fish-like fighter jet and continue through a level of candy-hued alien pustules. In between the stages, you’re introduced to an alien princess named Elaine and the various ways in which the villain tries to torture her.

Despite promoting the Japanese gaming industry’s ongoing issues with women, Xexex was released in the West, but with a name both more mainstream and less memorable: Orius.

8) Appoooh
Sega (1984)

Japanese publishers have a small but proud tradition of naming games after onomatopoeia; Doki Doki Panic, the Arabian-themed game that eventually became Super Mario Bros. 2 by the time it released America, got its title from the way heart palpitations apparently sound in Japan.
Appoooh, however, is something of an oddity, as the title doesn’t seem to correspond to any traditional noise or apply to a wrestling game, unless it’s supposed to be an exulting cry of triumph raised by one sweaty professional gladiator.

Appoooh doesn’t quite capture such heights of glory; it just has squat versions of the finest wrestling icons the mid-’80s had to offer, including “H. Hogen” and “A.Giants.” If Sega had been less afraid of legalities, Appoooh would’ve probably been due for a new name in American arcades.

7) Tumblepop
Data East (1991)

There’s something weirdly suggestive about the title of this vacuuming-based puzzler, although it’s allayed by the game itself. Data East’s answer to Bubble Bobble, Tumblepop stars two kerchief-wearing heroes who use cleaning equipment to suck up enemies and launch them across the stage, letting them tumble until they hit other foes and pop. Tumble. Pop. Certainly this is an innocent, upbeat and disposable little game, free of any innuendo.

Oh. We stand corrected.

6) Hotdog Storm
Marble (1996)

Let’s say you’re an arcade owner in the mid-’90s, and that you have nothing more than a basic mail-order list from which to choose new quarter-eaters. Hey, there’s a game called Hotdog Storm! How wacky and completely not generic! It’ll be the perfect thing to balance out all of those fighting games that kids are going to get sick of eventually!

Surprise! Hotdog Storm is just another routine shooting game; you know, like all of those other shooting games that arcade brats got tired of even before the fighting-game craze of the ’90s started up. There isn’t even a warped, shrieking anime-ish story to go along with it; only the title screen is strange, with a big, toppings-laden hotdog to mystify us all.