Mr. Bones

A skeleton rising from the grave, a guitar instead of a weapon and a malevolent sorcerer awakening an army of the undead — Mr. Bones is one of the strangest and boldest titles ever released on the Saturn. This game resists simple pigeonholing and offers a blend of genres that, even after all these years, stands out from ordinary production.

In gameplay terms it's an action adventure that constantly changes its face. At one moment you're jumping and fighting your way through the environment as in a platformer, at another you're solving puzzles, and in some passages you even play guitar in a rhythm sequence where your feel for tempo is what counts. This genre diversity is at once the game's greatest strength and its greatest risk — you never know what will spring up on you in the next level.

Mr. Bones came out under the SEGA brand for the Saturn console in the mid-nineties, and behind it stood the idea of combining gameplay with a distinctive musical and visual style. The game boasted a bluesy, guitar-driven musical accompaniment and a distinctive graphic approach that made it feel like a creative excursion beyond established conventions. In an era when people were searching for everything the new hardware could enable, it was a title full of experimentation.

The Saturn was a platform famous for producing a number of creatively bold games that had no equal elsewhere, and Mr. Bones fits into this group like few other titles. Its straddling of genres makes it a game players remember above all for its uniqueness and its courage to try the unexpected.

Culturally, Mr. Bones became one of those titles remembered as an eccentric curiosity of the Saturn — a game that proves the nineties were an era when publishers weren't afraid to venture even into very unconventional ideas.

Why play: For genuine genre originality and a style that makes Mr. Bones one of the most distinctive curiosities of the Saturn era.