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Thread of obscure games you don't think anyone else has played

O.DOGG

Member
Here are a couple I've played in my youth.

Moonstone: A Hard Days Knight
An action game with a knight. You choose one out of four knights, which determines your initial location on the map. Your goal is to obtain the moonstone for the Druids. Your movement on the map is limited, and when the day runs out, the other knights and the Dragon take turn. It was pretty fun and extremely violent for its time. I still love this game.
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Iron Blood
A side-scroller with anime-inspired mechs.
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Bureau 13
A point-and-click adventure game.
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S.T.O.R.M.
An underwater side-scroller puzzle game. The gameplay was pretty horrendous but the graphics were rather nice for its time.
storm006.jpg
 

NZNova

Member
DigitalSoul said:
Not sure how obscure this game is, but
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My cousin had this game for his computer and I don't recall either of us ever completing it because I believe we ended up getting stuck( we couldn't get pass some trap, iirc).

Great, great game :)
 

Piano

Banned
GBC_Top_Gear_Pocket_Box_tmb.jpg

gbc-top-gear-pocket-2.jpg


Freaking loved these games as a kid. First one even had a rumble pack! Second one was definitely the better game though.
 

dentoomw

Member
inindo.jpg


Surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet. This game was pure awesome. Me and my friend thought it was pretty 'meh' at first but thats coz we were expecting just another FF wannabe...then we realized it combined ROT3K elements of provincial conquest and we were hooked :D
 

thetrin

Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
mutationnation.jpg


Mutation Nation. To this day, it remains one of my favorite Neo Geo games.
 
Anyone play Terra Phantastica on the SEGA Saturn?

terra-f.jpg


It was a fantastic SRPG with a beautiful oil painting art style and European Dark Fantasy influenced design and one of the earliest SRPGs on the Saturn - unfourtunatly it was kind of lost in the wake of Dragon Force's release, and never received an English translation or port to another system. Despite that the game is still very playable with the help of guides and translations on the net, it's a fantastically challenging SRPG with some unique takes on the genre and huge, epic battles that can sometimes last for hours.
 

mavs

Member
electricpirate said:
Avara

http://img.brothersoft.com/screenshots/softimage/a/avara-102535-2.jpeg[img]

Old mac robot shooter, that was way, way ahead of its time in terms of gameplay, even if it was visually minimalistic, and had really weird netcode. It parsed some kind of drawing format/rtf into levels, with it's own scripting languague. It was one of the first games I remember with an in game tracker for MP games, and the only one on the mac for a long time. Actually, people started to use it to organize warcraft games later on.[/QUOTE]

Ah, mac gaming. My computer wouldn't run Shattered Steel, but I could play Avara! At 15 fps. Maybe less.

[QUOTE=a Master Ninja]Anybody else play the Exile games?
[IMG]http://i41.tinypic.com/2vhyjci.gif

Damn good RPGs. Exile III was the first RPG I ever played, and it blew my mind.
 

ambalek

Member
BGBW said:
I got an Atari ST and a stack of games when I was young, half of which I've never played.
Of the ones I did, this I remember and have never seen mentioned anywhere:
ekopix.png

Surprised Wiki had an article on it.

Probably not as obscure, but I'm curious to see who else has played it:
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Llamatron

I loved Shufflepuck Café, I used to play it a lot with my family when we got our Amiga.

Another fairly obscure C64/Amiga game was Warlock's Quest, which sucked so much it physically hurt me:

warlocks_quest_01.png

warlocks_quest_03.png
 

dgenx

Made an agreement with another GAF member, refused to honor it because he was broke, but then had no problem continuing to buy video games.
shrapnelmagnet said:
I played this on the PC (I think... I remember using a keyboard)... my friend was a lot better at it than I was :( But I remember thinking it was rad.

Gods_MD_cover.jpg


Might not be as obscure as I think, I just have never heard anyone ever make reference to it. Even at a video game company (which, admittedly, doesn't mean that there's more video game knowledge than a forum).


I make reference of this game every nostalgia thread!
 

derFeef

Member
Braindead13.jpg


Played on PC, 1995
It is like Dragons Lair, but a bit more over the top and sometimes really gory. Fritz is hilarious.
 

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
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I played this on the Atari ST over and over and over.

Then i get to my A-level general studies exam and the big % question is a map of the middle east and you had to mark on various locations. WIN!

Mutants_ingame.gif


Mutants - c64 - so so hard, but so good.

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Devil Assault - Dragon 32 shooter fun!
 

Keikaku

Member
I've got two contributions here. I'm sure that other people have played them, but what the heck.

Escape Velocity Nova
You can think of this as an Elite/Privateer clone. Large, open universe where you can go anywhere so long as you have fuel in your tanks and the ability to survive gunfights in sticky situations. You can even take over planets and create an empire of your own. You start in the smallest, most terrible ship, the shuttle, and work your way up from there. It can get terribly addictive.

Flight/Exploration Mode
image-7205_4BA359AD.jpg


Docked/Landed Mode
image-60FA_4BA359AD.jpg


Full Map. It's really, really big, so I won't directly insert it here.
http://xs.to/share-A4B9_4BA359AD.html


Neptune's Pride
New 4X-style game. Think a vastly, simplified Master's of Orion or Civilization. Free-to-play over the internet with other players. A full game will probably take a month or two to complete. I learned about this over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun a short while ago and I am now addicted to it.

RPS Writeup
The guys over at RPS wrote up a full summary of a game of Neptune's Pride that the played a while ago. Interesting read and it gives you a great look at the game and the mechanics.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/03/18/the-complete-pride-and-falls/

Home Page. Play here!
http://np.ironhelmet.com/
 

mavs

Member
Keikaku said:
I've got two contributions here. I'm sure that other people have played them, but what the heck.

Escape Velocity Nova
You can think of this as an Elite/Privateer clone. Large, open universe where you can go anywhere so long as you have fuel in your tanks and the ability to survive gunfights in sticky situations. You can even take over planets and create an empire of your own. You start in the smallest, most terrible ship, the shuttle, and work your way up from there. It can get terribly addictive.

Yeah, I would hope that anyone who has owned a mac since 1995 and likes video games has played the Escape Velocity series. Anyone who didn't missed out on great games.
 
1zel0th.jpg


Being a PC game developed by a relatively unknown German studio, Zanzarah never got the attention it deserved. It's basically a mix of Pokemon and Quake.

Wait, what?

Well, you see, there are two main parts to the game. In the adventure part you roam the landscape, talk to NPCs, collect coins and other objects and build your deck of fairies. Since the main character is a regular teenage girl, she can not do any fighting herself. Instead, she collects fairies and trains them by pitting them against wild fairies and other fairy masters. There are loads of creatures spread across 12 elements, all can level up, gain new abilities and evolve into more advanced forms. In that regard, it's a pretty shameless (but good) Pokemon rip-off.

auyud4.jpg


710234.jpg


fviq6f.jpg


However, once you enter the fight, everything changes. Your current deck is transported into a small battle arena where you duke it out with other fairies from the first-person perspective. This is not your simple run and gun FPS, there's an awful lot of depth to the battle system:

- some elements are strong against others so in battles against multiple enemies you need to constantly switch between different fairies (you can have up to five in your active deck and you can switch between them on the fly);
- each fairy can have two sets of spells, each with one active and one passive spell (armor, for instance). You can switch between sets at will;
- fairies can fly for a limited time, their flight energy recharges when they're on the ground. Some arenas are full of holes and have very little ground so you need to be careful not to plummet to your death;
- each shot can be charged by holding down the mouse button. Charged shot are much stronger, but if you overcharge them, they blow up in your face;
- when you inflict enough damage to the enemy, it will attempt to flee. If you want to capture it, you have to intercept it before it manages to exit the arena.

2hojq04.jpg


Needles to say, the battles can be very intense. There was even an online multiplayer component, but the servers got shut down soon after the launch (direct IP connections still work, though).

All in all, Zanzarah was a brilliant game with some decent production values and it's such a shame that so few people got to play it.

Here's a trailer showcasing both types of gameplay:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuhXN_DvpBU
 

szhred

Member
Mr. Nutz on Game Boy Color

mr._nutz-173612-1.jpeg


Mr.%20Nutz.gif


So i was buying a game, and I only looked at the graphics. It looks good, but the game sucks .

But i still played it a couple of hours.
 

jay

Member
Bootaaay said:
Anyone play Terra Phantastica on the SEGA Saturn?

It was a fantastic SRPG with a beautiful oil painting art style and European Dark Fantasy influenced design and one of the earliest SRPGs on the Saturn - unfourtunatly it was kind of lost in the wake of Dragon Force's release, and never received an English translation or port to another system. Despite that the game is still very playable with the help of guides and translations on the net, it's a fantastically challenging SRPG with some unique takes on the genre and huge, epic battles that can sometimes last for hours.

I have this. I got about as far in it as I did Wachenroder, Riglord Saga 2 and Langrisser V. So roughly thirty minutes. Shining Force 3 is the easiest to play with a translation, these other games are a bit more complicated.
 
shaowebb said:
This is Kirk Cameron's videogame for the Sega Saturn. Upon start-up it asks if you wish to erase all other save games on your saturn just to free up room for more saves of The Horde and it had your cursor already on "YES" so any button mashers just fucked themselves.

I can't believe they allowed that.

Anyway, ISHAR:
625098-ishar___legend_of_the_fortress___front_large.jpg

ishar_-_the_legend_of_the_fortress_9.gif
 
fyzo2b.jpg


Very obscure game for the Atari 2600. It used the Starpath Supercharger add on, which plugged into an ordinary (at the time) cassette player's earphone plug. And the games came out on cassette tapes. It did boost the power of the 2600 graphics quite a bit. I loved those games.

Another one was:

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Aside from the well known and very limited in scope "Adventure," this was pretty much the first rpg I ever played. Certainly the first real console rpg.
 

Bisnic

Really Really Exciting Member!
I've mentioned it a few times in past threads, but it seems i'm the only one who ever played that game since no one ever comments about it. :lol The game is about some cyborg who was once a terran on some distant planet and he has to fight his way through to escape the planet, it was really awesome back in the day, with multiple ways to fight enemies, and one of the first game i saw with CGI cutscenes. Reading all the logs was interesting, knowing a little more about what happened on the people there. And it's from the same developper as System Shock & Wing Commander! The aliasing was pretty bad though.

I'll never forget my first fight in the game : Beating a blue prisoner with his own arm after he lost it to some laser barrier while trying to get his fork back on the other side.

Bioforge%20Front.jpg


bioforge.gif


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Foto+Bioforge.jpg


bioforge1.jpg



This was a very nice package i got back in 1995-1996 :

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Ahhh old friend Mystery of the Java Star on the Acorn Electron. Took approximately a year to load each part off the tape and about 30 mins to play.

SouthernBelle.gif


Southern Belle - Electron. Way to spend a saturday afternoon by driving a train as fast as possible from Victoria to Brighton. In real-time.

Repton2-elk.gif


Repton 2 - Electron. Never completed that sucker, it was way to easy to accidentally miss some Earth and not be able to complete the game. You'd only find that out though 4 hours later...
 

BlueMagic

Member
Lumine said:
I'm sure I'm not the only one here who played these games, but hey:

Slipsteam 5000
r1xzs2.jpg
slip1.png

I played this. I remember having like a Demo version where you could choose between the red ship and the green one. I liked it pretty much a lot.
 

JoeBoy101

Member
Neuromancer said:
The_Dark_Eye_Coverart.png


NAME: The Dark Eye
RELEASE: 1995
DEVELOPER: inSCAPE
SYSTEM: PC/Mac

So, have you played this game? What are some games you've played but you think no one else here has?

Not only did I play this, I bought it twice. Fantastic game, with a benefit of William S. Boroughs doing voices, with his narration of The Masque of the Red Death and his reading of Annabelle Lee being the best. If you are a fan of interactive adventures and/or Poe, I highly recommend picking it up. Yes, even now. The characters are done with puppets in a slightly disturbing, but mature manner, and it ages VERY well.

As for an obscure game of my own:

rouse6.jpg


Battlezone. A very sophisticated attempt at creating a 3rd person strategy game that can be entered into first person in the tanks.

Its Sequel, Battlezone 2, took it even better.

battlez2_screen006.jpg
 
Sealda said:
Regarding how much noise it made in Japan

Super Adventure Island SNES

superadventureisland.jpg
Uh, I hated that game. It felt broken, but perhaps I just sucked at it. I never got further than like 10 minutes of gameplay in. I hated the controls and my character died all the time. Fuck this game, I was so sad that I had used my precious little money on this.
 

jay

Member
Cow Mengde said:
Ok, time to whip out the big guns.

v7w19c.jpg

Considering I just mentioned that I have Langrisser V Der Langrisser isn't much of a big gun :p

At least if you assume the world revolves around me.
 

larvi

Member
r09 said:
Mordor: The Depths of Dejenol, an awesome dungeon-crawling RPG that (sadly) almost no one knows.


Been playing Mordor off and on since 95:

hall.gif


Actually since it's pretty much a windows adaptation of the Plato game Avatar I've been playing since the early 80's. I've also played the sequel Demise, but I prefer Mordor better.
 
jay said:
Considering I just mentioned that I have Langrisser V Der Langrisser isn't much of a big gun :p

At least if you assume the world revolves around me.

I was gonna post the entire series, but it was a pain to images for that and Farland Story, so I just used whatever image I got first on google.
 
Bisnic said:
I've mentioned it a few times in past threads, but it seems i'm the only one who ever played that game since no one ever comments about it. :lol
Nope, you're not alone. I also have fond memories of playing Bioforge. Also, thanks O.DOGG for reminding me of Moonstone. I got it to work with XP a couple of years ago, but I never got around to actually play it. Hopefully I can get it to work with Windows 7 and a gamepad.
 
I am pretty sure I played one of the battlezone games and loved it. Didn't it involve an alternative look at the space race on the moon between the USA and USSR? Oh and as for my contributions:

Dino Land:

f57ea7ae.jpg

54963006.jpg

I haaaaated this game. Of course my little brother lost it so we had to buy it to return to blockbuster. We later found it crammed into the NES. It is a truly terrible game. I still have it, sadly.

Are You Afraid Of The Dark:

3e7e3022.jpg

07c75fe5.jpg


This game, on the other hand, is nuch better than it looks. It is a really dark and creepy adventure game that uses the actual characters from the show. It took me a long time to get the best ending. I loved it as a kid and would really love to play it again.
 
dentoomw said:
inindo.jpg


Surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet. This game was pure awesome. Me and my friend thought it was pretty 'meh' at first but thats coz we were expecting just another FF wannabe...then we realized it combined ROT3K elements of provincial conquest and we were hooked :D

Oh yeah, totally forgot about this. Typical Koei awful graphics, deep gameplay. They don't make games like that anymore.
 

Durante

Member
I must be more of an RTS fan than I thought, I think I played every single one mentioned in this thread. (Yes, that includes King Arthur's World, using the SNES mouse!)

It's probably not too obscure, but I never understood why so few people played this one:
earth2150_1247331069.jpg

It's a 3D RTS with 3 distinct factions, deformable terrain, unit customization, day/night cycles, weather (with gameplay effects!), and a lot more. Most 3D RTS released for years afterwards felt like huge steps back.
 
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