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[The Albatross]

A game I don't see mentioned often is 8-bit Little Nemo: The Dreammaster. It was a side scrolling platformer of sorts for NES based on "Adventures in Slumberland," which I had never heard of as a kid, but for some reason we owned this game. It was a fairly challenging game despite the childlike art, and the levels were all pretty bizarre. The main boss was terrifying. Overall, very memorable with a good sound track if I remember correctly.

Edit, well, I guess not as terrifying as my memory serves...

 

[Tain]

Does that cart have an extra chip on it?

That looks amazing for a Genesis game. Looks like something that the SNES could not do without a chip.

Nope, no chip.

The Genesis could do plenty of things the SNES couldn't, though, and vice-versa.

 

[Secret Character]

I'm gonna go with Atomic Runner (or Chelnov, if you're talking about the arcade version.)

This game is basically a really good running shooter, but it feels like the precursor to Gunstar Heroes in a lot of ways because of the way weapon interactions happen. The game is fast, difficult, and has really high replayability.

 

[cireza]

Does that cart have an extra chip on it?

That looks amazing for a Genesis game.

Only Genesis game to have a chip is Virtua Racing.

Genesis has a lot more raw CPU power than the SNES (without enhancement chip). Which enables stuff like that.

 

[Tain]

I'm gonna go with Atomic Runner (or Chelnov, if you're talking about the arcade version.)

This game is basically a really good running shooter, but it feels like the precursor to Gunstar Heroes in a lot of ways because of the way weapon interactions happen. The game is fast, difficult, and has really high replayability.

chelnov buds.

Worth mentioning that the home version is pretty clearly a better game than the arcade original. It's essentially a remake, and it's way better-looking and surprisingly more challenging.

 

[Head.spawn]

 

[Gai Murakumo]

Cybernator/Assault Suits Valken. I do not know if it is underrated but it is an amazing 16bit game.

 

[Pinky]

A game I don't see mentioned often is 8-bit Little Nemo: The Dreammaster. It was a side scrolling platformer of sorts for NES based on "Adventures in Slumberland," which I had never heard of as a kid, but for some reason we owned this game. It was a fairly challenging game despite the childlike art, and the levels were all pretty bizarre. The main boss was terrifying. Overall, very memorable with a good sound track if I remember correctly.

Edit, well, I guess not as terrifying as my memory serves...

Such a good game. I would love to see Capcom give Nemo the remaster treatment like they did with DuckTales. Little Nemo: The Dream ReMaster.

Also, I'll throw in Totally Rad for NES. Used to rent this game all the time when I was a kid. Pretty good game with some impressive visuals and bosses.

 

[PetrCobra]

Bloodshot (Battle Frenzy)

A really good FPS for the Mega Drive/Genesis. A technical wonder on the console - almost the whole screen was reserved for the game window, there were physics-based weapons, even a split screen multiplayer. Many interesting game systems in there, like the key system (colored keys opened doors with the same colors, but there were also white keys which were special), bonus system where killing three enemies without getting hit gave you a bonus item (usually an extra weapon, but it could also be a white key). One of the few downsides of this game was no visible weapon on screen, which made aiming a bit tricky.

There was another FPS on the console, Zero Tolerance, which is well known among Mega Drive fans, unlike Bloodshot. But it was inferior in almost every aspect. Sure, there was a weapon visible on screen, if you shot an enemy close to a wall with a shotgun, you could see his blood on the wall, and you could jump in this game (which was pointless). However, the game window was really small, the weapons few and uninteresting, with uninspired level design and boring gameplay. In comparison, Bloodshot is so much better. I wish more retro gamers gave it a chance.

 

[Zippedpinhead]

A game I don't see mentioned often is 8-bit Little Nemo: The Dreammaster. It was a side scrolling platformer of sorts for NES based on "Adventures in Slumberland," which I had never heard of as a kid, but for some reason we owned this game. It was a fairly challenging game despite the childlike art, and the levels were all pretty bizarre. The main boss was terrifying. Overall, very memorable with a good sound track if I remember correctly.

Edit, well, I guess not as terrifying as my memory serves...

You know that this was a movie tie-in right? Maybe you are just remembering the Villian of the movie, who is pretty terrifying. Game hits all the major areas of th movie, really ties in the weapon of the movie (like where you get it in game is roughly where memo acquires it in the movie). Overall really impressed on it as a whole when looking back.

This and illusion of Gaia get my vote. Love these games so much

 

[OttoSporteman]

Black Thorne

Yo! Noid

 

[Social]

I always had a soft spot for Sky Blazer on the SNES, I don't see it being mentioned a lot.

Krusty's super fun house on the SNES was also really fun

 

[hobozero]

Black Thorne

How do you mention Blackthorne and not show off the badass no-look shotgun kills??

 

[CircusOfClouds]

Has anyone played the Jackie Chan game for the NES? It is so good and still so fun to play

 

[@MUWANdo]

I honestly don't know the answer, but could this game have been possibly developed by Treasure? It looks absolutely like how a Treasure game on Mega Drive should look.

But it's too western themed to be treasure's I guess .

It is a Treasure game

i remember some of those devs going to treasure ?

Adventures of Batman & Robin has nothing to do with Treasure whatsoever, it was made by a studio called Clockwork Tortoise that spun off from Malibu Interactive and the people who worked there were a mix of US and UK developers. They made the Genesis and Sega-CD Batman & Robin games and were working on a cancelled X-Men game for Genesis ("X-Women", actually) before they split up.

Batman & Robin is very pretty and controls well but I don't think it's very fun--the levels are way too long and repetitive and require a lot of dull memorisation.

 

[Selane]

fire n ice the best puzzle game on the nes imo holds up super well

Fire n Ice is still one of my favorite puzzle games of all time, I'm glad to see someone else mention it. And as for other games I never see mentioned, some of my most memorable local co-op with a friend as a kid was in Metal Warriors for SNES, what an awesome game.

 

[oneida]

Uncharted Waters New Horizons

Open World RPG on SNES and Genesis.

Yes, you heard right. You can play as 6 different characters each with their own story line. This is much more well done than Seiken Densetsu 3 where there's just 1 story line with minor character alterations. It's open world so you can pretty much do whatever you want. If you want to beat the game, you have to earn fame and complete tasks relevant to your character.

You can be an adventurer and explore the world, and make discoveries. There are 98 discoveries in the game, but only 50 randomly appear in the game. So you'll never know what you'll find.

You can be a pirate, and fight naval battle, or duel 1 v 1 against ship captains.

You can be a trader, and make a fortune trading from port to port. Things like taxes, economy, and buy and sell rates are factored into it.

Then there is strategy in how to outfit your ships to suit your needs, recruiting mates to help you out, managing your food and water supply, and tons more. So much depth in this game.

this sounds incredible

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

Paladin's Quest is a really good, rather weird RPG that Enix released on the SNES that rarely gets brought up.

Strange pastel graphics, a no-MP magic system where magic use increases your stats, lots of mercenaries to recruit, interesting dungeon design... the translation is so-so, but otherwise, it's a great game.

 

[Qasiel]

Dynamite Headdy (Mega Drive/Genesis). I know it's not an unknown game, but for me is one of the best arcade/shooter/platform games from the 90s.

Dammit, I love this game.

 

[theundeadwonder]

Game is mostly mentioned for its soundtrack by Tim and Geoff Follin (it's pretty damn great), but the game itself is pretty fun too.

You're a goofy, brightly coloured executioner looking fellow who's looking for his flags (of his image) that have been taken down all around the island. That's it. You go around hoisting them back up and beat up everybody that gets in your way.
You can attack enemies by throwing your limbs. Throw all four too fast and you're bouncing around on your torso. Sometimes you temporarily need to lose one of your limbs to activate a switch, making it harder to spam attacks. There's also a bunch of wacky, but strong temporary powerups to find, from flamethrowers to boxing gloves (with a bit of Rocky's theme snuck into the music).

In the first part of the game you're going from start to end in rather small levels, but once you return to the main land you have to find and take out these big blue fleas in every stage before you can hoist your flags. Altho these stages are bigger, it's not really one of those "where the fuck do I go" kind of games. An arrow points you towards the remaining fleas every so often in case you have no clue. There's also plenty of secret areas and warp zones to find if you search in every nook and cranny.

Game can get pretty hard at times (especially that first boss), but there's an easy mode that skips most of the bosses and makes every stage a whole lot easier. Easy mode stops the game before you can enter the final world and face the final boss though.

Sadly the game has never been rereleased on VC or any other platform as far as I know, so legit SNES is pretty much the only way to play it.

Holy shit....I loved this game so much when I was a kid! One of the more obscure games I remember owning.

 

[capitalCORN]

 

[Raptomex]

Hyper Zone for SNES. Utilizes Mode 7. Played this to death as a kid. I suck at it now. The music wasn't too bad either.

 

[Chrono321]

EVO: The Search for Eden. I swear no one ever talks about this game.

Sidescrolling platformer/RPG played across millions of years, jumping through different eras, and evolving into different creatures with different attributes as you go. It's got some properly weird alternate history stuff in there, lots of "bad endings" show you what would have happened to the world if you had failed, and it's really fun to evolve the different parts of your body to see all the different combinations.

It's on the SNES.

Liked this one very much!!!
Became a biology teacher afterwards...

 

[hobozero]

Was this obscure?

 

[tomwhite2004]

kick master fuck swords im going to kick every mother fucker in this fantasy land

Kick master also has the distinction of having Shinobu Yagawa (Battle Garegga, Recca, Armed Police Batrider, Ibara etc etc) as one on the main programmers.

To be honest I don't think there are any real underappreciated titles left from the era, everything here has been discussed at length and gone over many times on enthusiast forums for the past decade or more really.

 

[Aeroglyphics]

 

[cireza]

Is Beyond Oasis an underrated game ?

In France, the game was called La Légende de Thor, and it was very impressive back then and had great reviews.
I love this game, and particularly its sequel.

The game had some nice coverage in magazines.

 

[thechristoph]

Man, these awesome 16 bit game threads always make me sad. The industry euthanized this style of games when it still had at least ten more good years in it. Somewhere there is an alternate universe where people saw the first generation of polygon systems, said "This needs more time in the oven", and we got another generation of 2D sprite games hitting their peak.

 

[Plague Doctor]

I loved this game something fierce.

 

[gundalf]

Game is mostly mentioned for its soundtrack by Tim and Geoff Follin (it's pretty damn great), but the game itself is pretty fun too.

You're a goofy, brightly coloured executioner looking fellow who's looking for his flags (of his image) that have been taken down all around the island. That's it. You go around hoisting them back up and beat up everybody that gets in your way.
You can attack enemies by throwing your limbs. Throw all four too fast and you're bouncing around on your torso. Sometimes you temporarily need to lose one of your limbs to activate a switch, making it harder to spam attacks. There's also a bunch of wacky, but strong temporary powerups to find, from flamethrowers to boxing gloves (with a bit of Rocky's theme snuck into the music).

In the first part of the game you're going from start to end in rather small levels, but once you return to the main land you have to find and take out these big blue fleas in every stage before you can hoist your flags. Altho these stages are bigger, it's not really one of those "where the fuck do I go" kind of games. An arrow points you towards the remaining fleas every so often in case you have no clue. There's also plenty of secret areas and warp zones to find if you search in every nook and cranny.

Game can get pretty hard at times (especially that first boss), but there's an easy mode that skips most of the bosses and makes every stage a whole lot easier. Easy mode stops the game before you can enter the final world and face the final boss though.

Sadly the game has never been rereleased on VC or any other platform as far as I know, so legit SNES is pretty much the only way to play it.

I loved this game and was even hyped for it when I was reading previews. I also still listen to it's OST on a regular basis which is truly criminally underrated!

 

[haystax]

SOLD!

kick master fuck swords im going to kick every mother fucker in this fantasy land

kicking this lady

kicking this fucking octopus

all this shits gonna get kicked

 

[Peltz]

Goddam this thread. Now I've got to go on ebay and search for these games. Thanks a lot OP.

 

[Fou-Lu]

I wouldn't call it underrated so much as no one has played it, but Terranigma is one of the best RPGs of the era and perhaps all time.

 

[jluedtke]

Bloody Wolf for the TurboGrafx-16 doesn't get nearly enough love.

 

[Plinko]

A game I don't see mentioned often is 8-bit Little Nemo: The Dreammaster. It was a side scrolling platformer of sorts for NES based on "Adventures in Slumberland," which I had never heard of as a kid, but for some reason we owned this game. It was a fairly challenging game despite the childlike art, and the levels were all pretty bizarre. The main boss was terrifying. Overall, very memorable with a good sound track if I remember correctly.

Edit, well, I guess not as terrifying as my memory serves...

I mentioned it on the first page! Great, great game.

 

[Wozman23]

Kid Chameleon

A multitude of masks all give unique abilities, and Mark Cerny was a programmer on it.

 

[petran79]

this sounds incredible

I had the MS-DOS version that was inferior but had more westernised graphics

 

[ElectricBlanketFire]

Air Fortress for NES, a combination side-scrolling shooter and action adventure game.

Features some very creepy music.

 

[mdzapeer]

Ultimate Air Combat for the NES a game truly ahead of its time, comparable to the Strike games which came later and even surpassing them in certain aspects.

2 different gameplay styles and mission based structure with upgrades, 3 different planes also acting as lives.

Ultimate Air Combat gameplay

 

[InsaneTiger]

 

[LukeSkywater]

For me personally, these are my favorite Sega Genesis games...and no one really talks about them that much.

Starflight
Shadowrun
Zombies Ate My Neighbors
Power Monger
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Buck Rogers: Countdown To Doomsday

 

[PtM]

Goddam this thread. Now I've got to go on ebay and search for these games. Thanks a lot OP.

Gargoyle's Quests are on VC up to N3DS. I got the second one on a Halloween sale, hint hint.

Landstalker and Beyond Oasis are on Wii VC, Cybernator maybe even on WiiU. Anyway, the U has a Wii mode.

 

[Pinky]

Another good one:

 

[Phediuk]

i remember some of those devs going to treasure ?

lol, what? Clockwork Tortoise was a British studio made up of a bunch of Amiga demosceners. Had nothing to do with Treasure at all.

 

[Tain]

my favorite Treasure game is Boogerman

 

[Tonyx]

Legendary Axe

Agree. I discovered this game just a few months ago and loved it so much!

Brutally punishing, but once you learned the game it was more a matter of strategy (and memory) than of timings. Diverse environments (not fond of the last stage, though, way too long), fun bosses, and even an hint of story. Truly a great game.

 

[Phediuk]

Does that cart have an extra chip on it?

That looks amazing for a Genesis game. Looks like something that the SNES could not do without a chip.

No, just a plain Genesis.

The only Genesis game with an expansion chip is Virtua Racing.

 

[vixlar]

*Sorry if no pics or gifs...

Basewars - NESI think this game was from Ultra. It was baseball with robots!!!! But the rules were great. When you got an out for occupying the base or touching the runner while you have the ball, you got on a fight. If the fielder wins, is an out, if the runner wins, is a safe. Ypu can buy weapons and armor to your players. It even has voices!!! (Not so commmon on NES)

Rockin Cats - NES You use a cat to save his girlfriend... but it is actually a TV show, and the stage selection screen is TV set and you select a channel. Ypu cna earn different upgrades for your cat. The weapon is an extendable fist (sorry, I don't know the name for this in English). You can punch with it, but if you hold B, you can use it to catch things and throw it to enemies. It can also be used to hang on lamps to get to new areas.

Soccer Shootout - SNES In the World Cup 94 fever there were many Football (Soccer) games. International Superstar Soccer would be the most famous... But my friends and me would rather play this gem from Capcom. In the field side advertisings you could even read Megaman or Street Fighter, lol. It was very basic... but incredibly fun!!! One little thing this game had, is that when you were in defense, you moved a group of players instead of only one. 4 player matches was the most fun we ever had.

Wrath of Black Manta - NESOne of my favorites on NES. You are a ninja that must save the new apprentice of your former sensei from a gang of kidnappers... trough all the world... I think there were 5 countries. You can learn new powers when you finnish a stage. You can interrogate enemies and learn some secrets. The final boss must be defeated using your powers in the correct order... weird. I loved this game, and was one of the only few I could finnish on the NES era.

 

[Phediuk]

my favorite Treasure game is Boogerman

No, clearly the best Treasure game is Toejam & Earl.

 

[primasaurus]

General Chaos. Some of the most fun co-op and local MP I had back in the day. Not sure it still holds up though...

^Loved that game

My Pick:
D&D Warriors of the Eternal Sun