Unsurprisingly, it’s a Weird Japanese Thing. The game is based on a Japanese game show called “Ucchan Nanchan’s Challengers of Fire: 1,000,000 Yen If You Can Do This.” For some twisted reason this was just condensed to “Irritating Stick.” The game show worked sort of like the board game Operation, where you had a metal stick and had to maneuver it through a maze with metal edges. The edges are charged with electricity and if you touch them it shocks you.

The premise of the show was also translated to a Neo Geo arcade game, Irritating Maze. This game is unique in that it is the only (to my knowledge) Neo Geo MVS game that used a custom cabinet that included a track ball instead of a joystick.

Why in the nine circles of hell this game ever got localized and exported to the West is beyond me, however. Practically no one in the West was ever exposed to the original game show and as such they’d be clueless about this game. The title doesn’t help, either.