I've got a growing pile of bargain bin crap that I either had brief moments of insanity in buying or which came bundled with collections of games off eBay. You know the sorts of games - derivative stuff you get off discount supermarket shelves, one-euro shops - and I think every country has them. I'm not talking about triple-A titles that have sold poorly. I'm talking about the derivative rubbish rushed together by amateurs in a matter of weeks. And most of it really is shit. Anyone know Call-A-Pizza Dude? SAS Anti-Terror Force? Meteor Blade? I wish I didn't.

Out of sheer boredom I've just given some of my untested ones a try and a couple of them have really pleasantly surprised me. Certainly not GOTY candidates, but good fun for a couple of hours in a way you wouldn't have expected.

One of the games was something ominously titled "Mini Racer", which I picked up out of a morbid curiosity for 50 cents from a one-euro-store. It languished on my shelf for about two years until I decided to give it a crack today. It was...pleasantly surprising. It's a fairly basic affair, no multiplayer, eardrum-crushingly bad music and fairly basic graphics, but there are 10 fairly well-designed tracks with a decent amount of variety, the cars handle well in that Ridge Racer-like arcadey way (and drift quite satisfyingly), and as basic as it is, it's remarkably entertaining.

Another was a fairly basic puzzler called "Trembling Towers": Someone's actually done a Let's Play in German on YouTube of this It's a fairly simple premise - stack up bricks on a platform - but it's remarkably addictive.

Anyone found bargain bin fodder that is better than its reputation would deserve?