Obscure Games You May Not Have Heard Of - Episode 6, Oh My God!

Back to the ol’ Puzzle Game Mines, this time with the last of my personal favorites, and yet another weird arcade game. Though the developer is someone you MAY have heard of before!

Atlus is known for a lot of things, but their puzzle games are… not one of them. But for some reason, with no real fanfare, Atlus dropped Oh My God for JAMMA arcade boards in 1993 in Japan only.

I cannot read Japanese, and there’s VERY little information on this game, so I’m not entirely sure what the plot, as it were, is about. God seems to be here, and he wants us to do… something. This screen is weirdly forboding, and then you get into the game, which is cute and filled with screaming goofy orbs.

I like to call this game “Snake meets Columns”. Snolumns. You have a snake of orbs that move out from the top, and you need to organize them in a way so that they clear when 3 of the same color are connected in a straight line, horizontal vertical or diagonal. You have a lot of freedom of movement in the air, and can organize the orbs with no real problems, but you can run into a few issues, where you run out of space to maneuver and then have to drop the blocks where they don’t belong.

Things get unwieldly very quickly. Every few seconds, the ball on the right will climb up the ramp and jump into the… hookah pipe? I dunno, but it’ll add another ball onto your string. Once you clear enough points, as shown near the bottom, you’ll move to the next level and go back to 3 balls to start with. Also, if you get a LOT of extra points over what’s expected in a level, you’ll get a Jump Bonus, which allows you to erase all blocks of a single color between levels, in case things are getting a bit out of hand. Unfortunately, all of the clears that happen because of this do not give you any points, so I try not to use it unless I REALLY need to.

And… that’s about it! As I often say, the best puzzle games are the simple ones, and that’s this to a T. It’s good addicting gameplay, in a really goofy shell. I haven’t mentioned the presentation much yet, but you should watch a gameplay video, because when balls are cleared they scream in increasing pitch as the combo goes through. It is so pleasing, but every time people see it for the first time they go “what the fuck is thiiis”. Also, this is another game where the OST wasn’t found online…. so I took it upon myself to rip the music from this one too. Here ya go.

https://youtu.be/Sd5alz8T2g8

And of course what arcade puzzle game is complete without multiplayer? The multiplayer mode in this is very hectic and fun. I don’t FULLY get how parts of it work yet, there seems to be a way to make your opponent’s chains longer but I dunno how, I just try not to die. Combos will send over trash orbs, which hover in the air for a bit before dropping. This can actualyl really mess you over if you’re trying to maneuver in the air, because you’ll bump against em and have nowhere to go. It’s hectic but loads of fun.

And that’s Oh My God! I’ve been on the lookout for a PCB of this for a while, if you have any ideas where I can find one, please let me know lol. Otherwise, be sure to check it out, it’s an obscure classic!