Crazy game: Remembering Ozzy Osbourne's mysterious lost video games

He's the Prince of Darkness famous for biting the heads off bats, becoming an unlikely reality TV star and setting the foundations for a genre that would become known as heavy metal.

But what Ozzy Osbourne is less well-known for is the video games he inspired or even starred in - including some semi-mythical lost titles.

The Black Sabbath star died yesterday, aged 76, after a remarkable life which saw him rise from ordinary beginnings in Birmingham, England, to become an international rockstar.

There have been plenty of tributes paid to his remarkable musical career since Ozzy passed away.

However, his flirtations with the dark side of rock'n'roll were not as successful than his foray into the world of video games, so have been largely forgotten.

To pay tribute to this huge and much-loved talent, we've produced a brief history of all the video games that were inspired by the legendary frontman.

All aboard the crazy games...

Osbourne's most famous video game appearance was in Double Fine's 2009 game Brütal Legend, in which he plays a character called The Guardian of Metal. As you can see in the video above, it's basically Ozzy being Ozzy.

He also starred in a World of Warcraft commercial and occupied prominent places on the playlists of many prominent video game industry titans.

After Ozzy broke on through to the other side, John Romero, the legendary designer of Doom, said: "So much of DOOM’s soul is down to heavy metal, and without Ozzy and Sabbath, I am not sure it would have been the same. Certainly, I would not have been the same. Metal gave a voice to a whole generation of kids that didn’t fit in for one reason or another. It still does. RIP Ozzy."

However, dig deeper and you can find games that featured the man himself in starring roles, rather than a backup singer.

The 2002 title Savage Skies is a flight simulator that was originally slated to to be called Ozzy’s Black Skies and feature the man himself flying about on a huge dragon. In this original version, each of the game’s three playable factions was to be led by a different Ozzy-inspired character.

But by late 2001, the partnership was quietly scrapped. High licensing costs, confusion around the game’s identity and difficulty attracting a publisher contributed to the split. Developers also cited the impact of the September 11 attacks, saying a game centred on fantastical air combat felt poorly timed in the aftermath.

"Suddenly, music that described skies as black and ominous seemed tasteless and ill-advised, as did an aggressive aviation-based video game," Ultimate Classic Rock reported.

The video below allegedly shows footage from this game, although we've been unable to verify it (which appears to be something we're running theme and trying to find out more about the history of Ozzy's computer games).

Ozzy and a mysterious CD-ROM

On Reddit, there has been speculation about a mysterious CD-ROM that was supposedly included with a best-of compilation called The Ozman Cometh released in 1997.

We found a record of the game on the music site Discogs, which lists details of almost every physical musical release since time immemorial.

The CD-ROM offers an "enhanced experience" made up of four options: online, music video, screenkiller, smash.

Those involve visiting Ozzy's website, watching a music video, installing a screensaver (presumably for Windows 95) and, well, bashing up skeletons.

"Your cursor becomes a mallet of destruction. Click on the bones as they rise from the ground and smash them," Discogs explained.

We can't find any footage or screenshots from this game, apart from a few reminiscences on Reddit - where some commenters didn't even believe it ever even existed.

"I think I vaguely remember around 1998, Ozzy's website at the time had some kind of a Flash or Java game on with that little cartoon mini Ozzy that was something to do with throwing crosses at bats or catching bats or something," one person wrote.

Another person with an apparent aversion to punctuation also wrote: "It’s a really weird game for old computers if I remember right you are digging graves or something I had it back when I was 13 thought I struck gold a Ozzy game haha."

Additionally, Ozzy was the star of an 8-bit online game called The Legend of Ozzy. As far as we understand, this features a bat with Ozzy's head navigating a two-dimensional universe, collecting blood droplets and dodging bad guys such as wolves or evil eyes.

Sadly, the Legend of Ozzy has now been deleted from the internet.

Ozzy also starred in Guitar Hero, telling ABC News: "I had to put on this black suit with all these little ping-pong ball-like things all over me, motion capture. I had to dance around like I’m on stage when one of my songs are on... The image of me, I wish I had the energy it has. The graphics are really, really good."

Please contact us if you know anything about any other mysterious Ozzy Osbourne games.