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I can't remember the name of the game, but I remember downloading the demo way back when I was on 56K and playing against other people. In it you played as Norse warriors with big axes, shields, swords, and all that kind of stuff. What was unique about it? You could chop off bodyparts of other people. Not only that, but you could pick them up and use them as weapons. Not only that, but if you died you could pick up your head from a previous life and throw it at whoever killed you to piss them off (and do a bit of damage).
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That reminds me of an old PC game I saw from back during the dawn of 3D games, called Die By The Sword. Your guy's blade was actually controlled manually, rather than just hitting a button to make him swing. I think it was playable with either the number pad or a joystick, and you've direct the angle of the swing to chop people up. Kinda gimmicky, but neat.
Silhouette Mirage is based around fighting enemies with two different color attributes. Your character's facing determines which color you are; shooting opposite color enemies kills them, shooting the same color drains their weapon energy. In addition to having to constantly adjust your facing, the color scheme gets put to some fairly unique uses, like throwing blue color enemies into a stew pot to poison a red colored boss who drinks from it.
Treasure later reused the concept in Ikaruga, where your weapon and shield alternate between white and black (they look red and blue to me, but either or). Your shield totally blocks same color shots, which charges a homing laser, but you're often required to use opposite color shots to properly damage enemies, leaving you vulnerable. It's a great twist on what is normally an almost painfully formulaic genre.
I've also got this freeware game on my computer called Pogo Sticker that's a good example of bad quirky game mechanics. You've got this little guy with a rubber ball for legs. You adjust his tilt with the mouse, and click to increase the bounce of his next jump, and try to get him through a level without caving his skull in. While it sounds neat, the game is ultimately made of artificial difficulty; you spend too much time wrestling with the controls to make it into a game of skill.
Jam it back in, in the dark.
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