Incredible Crisis Is One of the Most Absurd PlayStation Games Ever
But is it worth playing in the year 2026?
Developer: Polygon Magic
Publisher: Tokuma Shoten (JP), Titus Software (NA)
Release: JP June 24, 1999, NA November 6, 2000
Platform(s): PlayStation
The late '90s PlayStation library was full of bizarre games, but Incredible Crisis stands out because it wraps all that weirdness around something surprisingly relatable: a family just trying to get home for grandma's birthday.
More on that later.
Developed by Polygon Magic and designed by Kenichi Nishi, this minigame collection dropped in Japan in 1999 and made its way to the US in November 2000. It arrived just two weeks after the PlayStation 2 launched.
I'd known about it for years but never picked it up until I thought my wife might enjoy it too. She did, mostly. It's a frustrating game at times, but it's the kind of silliness the PS1 and PS2 era did so well, and I miss that.
What Even Is Incredible Crisis?
The setup is beautifully simple.
You follow the Tanamatsuri family across a single day. It’s grandma’s 80th birthday, and all she wants is for everyone to come home early.
Author’s note: Relatable so far.
There’s a problem. Each family member’s day spirals into complete chaos, and just surviving long enough to make it to the party is what makes Incredible Crisis… incredible.
Author’s note: Still relatable?
Father gets caught up in a workplace dance routine before a runaway globe sends his afternoon sideways. Mother ends up as an accidental accomplice in a bank robbery, then somehow finds herself piloting a military jet. The kids get shrunk to insect size and have to escape an antlion pit.
Author’s note: ???
Every time you think it can't get weirder, it does.
The whole thing is split into four sections, one per family member, and each section strings together a handful of minigames connected by short cutscenes. It’s basically a story-driven minigame collection, and the story is doing most of the heavy lifting.
The Minigames Are Hit and Miss
The scenarios are way more entertaining than the gameplay, which is a problem when the whole game is minigames. Too many of them boil down to pressing X in time with a meter or following directional prompts, and those mechanics come up more often than they should.
There are standouts, though.
The opening dance routine feels totally natural on a console that gave us PaRappa the Rapper and Bust a Groove, and it's a strong first impression. Mama's jet fighter sequence plays like a stripped-down Zaxxon, dodging hangar doors from a behind-the-back perspective.
And the bit where she takes on a giant teddy bear in an aerial dogfight feels like it fell out of Star Fox 64's All-Range Mode. Okay, perhaps a slight exaggeration, but it’s a fun sequence. Then there's a grocery-weighing puzzle that's basically the boulder swap from Raiders of the Lost Ark, which is such a specific reference that you can't help but respect it.
But for every creative moment, there’s another minigame that just asks you to mash a button or wiggle the analogue stick. The stress meter that runs through every challenge adds some tension, but it’s not enough to make the repetitive ones feel fresh.
One thing that absolutely delivers is the music. The entire soundtrack was performed by the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, and it’s an inspired choice. Their instrumental ska tracks bring this infectious energy to every scenario.
Stressful moments feel exciting rather than frustrating, and the lighter scenes get an extra layer of charm from the bouncy horn sections.
It’s the kind of soundtrack you’d happily listen to outside of the game, which is more than you can say for most minigame collections. With the exception of Point Blank, but then I do have an odd taste in music while I’m doing house work.
Playing It With Someone Else
Incredible Crisis isn’t technically a multiplayer game, but passing the controller back and forth works surprisingly well. The minigames are short enough that you’re constantly swapping, and half the fun is watching the other person react to whatever absurdity the game throws at them next.
My wife and I spent a lot of the runtime just laughing at the cutscenes and groaning at the more tedious button-mashing sections. It’s a two-hour game at most, which honestly turns out to be the perfect length.
Any longer and the repetition would wear thin. As it stands, it’s just the right amount of time to enjoy the ride without the weaker minigames overstaying their welcome.
Incredible Crisis belongs to a very specific moment in gaming history. The late ‘90s and early 2000s were packed with quirky Japanese games that somehow made it to western shelves. The PlayStation’s popularity and relatively accessible development tools meant smaller studios could afford to take creative risks.
Not all of those risks paid off commercially, and a lot of those studios eventually closed or moved to mobile development, but the games they left behind have a personality you don’t see much of anymore.
Kenichi Nishi’s career is a good example of that creative spirit. Before Incredible Crisis, he worked at Square on Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG. He founded Love-de-Lic, where the team made Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, a game that deconstructed the RPG genre years before that became fashionable.
After that, he started Skip Ltd. and worked with Nintendo on the Chibi-Robo series. The guy’s resume reads like a tour of the most interesting corners of Japanese game development.
What a legacy.
Is It Worth Playing Today?
If you go into Incredible Crisis expecting a polished minigame collection, you’ll be disappointed. The gameplay is too simple and too repetitive for that. But if you treat it as a short, bizarre interactive comedy that you can share with someone on the sofa, it’s a genuinely good time.
The scenarios are mostly inventive, the soundtrack is fantastic, and it wraps up before it runs out of steam. But what sticks with you is the family at the centre of it all. After the most absurd day imaginable, the stereotypical Tanamatsuris still make it home to celebrate grandma's birthday.
It's silly and over the top, but there's a warmth underneath it.
We've all had those days where nothing goes right and all you want is to be around the people who matter. Incredible Crisis takes that feeling and cranks it up to eleven, but the core of it is something anyone can relate to.
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Incredible Crisis is one of those games I could have easily purchased during its heyday, but I passed it up because I thought it would be too nonsensical for me.
Which is kinda dumb, considering that I was a big fan of PaRappa the Rapper and Um Jammer Lammy.
Incredible Crisis has always remained as one of my favorite PSX games due to its wackiness. It love to see gameplay that leans into the unserious nature of the world.