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[Phediuk]

The emphasis here is on obscurity, not quality. This is not necessarily a "hidden gem" thread. The point here is to drag up games that are so obscure, it's difficult to even find information about them on the internet. The kind of game that has no Wikipedia article. The kind of game where you might find 2 screenshots on Google and that's it. The kind of game that may realistically have sold zero copies.

I remember playing a fair bit of Alien Poker for DOS back in the day. It's a regular-ass poker game, but the players are all aliens. I learned how to play poker from this game.

These were the only decent quality images on Google Image Search for it. There isn't a single Youtube video of it. I might have played this game more than any other person on Earth.

That's the kind of game I want for this thread. Ridiculously buried shit that's probably a bit shoddy and amateurish, but god damnit, you played it anyway.

 

[jaypah]

Questron. It was some crazy RPG but I never really got into it beyond occasionally stealing from merchants and getting killed for it.

 

[60EffPeeEss]

I played the hell out of this browser text adventure MMO in school with the rest of my class. Nobody ever seems to know it, though.

It had a strange PvP system where you could kill players when they were logged out at the inn, so you'd hope you were the last person in the class to leave so you could attempt to murder them all in their sleep. However, the game AI would kick in and you'd usually have to fight them normally if your character failed the check to stealth kill them as they slept.

http://www.hiddenworld.com/

 

[Phediuk]

Questron. It was some crazy RPG but I never really got into it beyond occasionally stealing from merchants and getting killed for it.

That's got a whole Wikipedia article on it though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questron

and it was released by SSI, a major publisher.

 

[Hansel?]

Operation Neptune.

Loved my educational games back then.
Seems no one remembers this one, though.

 

[jaypah]

That's got a whole Wikipedia article on it though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questron

and it was released by SSI, a major publisher.

Lmao I just came from reading that. Guess it wasn't obscure at all but fuck me if I've ever met anyone who knew what it was.

 

[darthkarki]

Spectre! My dad actually used to play this, I remember it being quite a lot of fun. You drive a tank around, collect flags, and shoot enemies. Then do the same thing on the next level, etc.

Gameplay video

 

[darthkarki]

Operation Neptune.

Loved my educational games back then.
Seems no one remembers this one, though.

Oh man, Operation Neptune was the best. LOVED that game. Wonder if I ever finished it...

 

[Nightz]

Used to play a trivia game on AOL in the late 90's called Zealot Trivia. It had a pretty huge community until it was shut down in 2001.

It does have a Wikipedia article, but I haven't had much success finding anyone else who used to play it.

 

[Scrawnton]

I remember as a kid playing a Mario themed Yahtzee game but I really can't remember much else about it.

 

[Trogdor1123]

Mantis, was fun too

 

[Boogalogist]

I played this adventure game called "Maupiti Island" back in early 90s (?). It was a murder mystery. I played the heck out of it, but I couldn't even complete 20% of the game (the game shows your game completion % when the game ends)

I still have no idea who the killer was...

 

[Vitacat]

Spectre! My dad actually used to play this, I remember it being quite a lot of fun. You drive a tank around, collect flags, and shoot enemies. Then do the same thing on the next level, etc.

Gameplay video

Spectre is a great Battlezone spinoff. There is also a really good iOS version. One of the reasons I will always own an iPad even though I'm not an Apple fan.

 

[Koozek]

A Math learning game starring an alien named Addy A lot of my friends played it back in the days.

 

[Rymuth]

Never heard or seen anyone mention this.

I credit this game for teaching me the phrase "the mind is a terrible thing to waste"

 

[outunderthestars]

Capture the flag by Carrsoft

I loved the turn by email feature back in the AOL dialup days.

 

[Aaron D.]

For obscure stuff I remember playing Pirate Adventure on the TI-99/4a back in '81 or '82.

It was a text adventure created by one of the genre greats, Scott Adams.

One of the funny quirks about it was that it came on a cassette tape that took forever to load every time you fired the game up.

 

[Mupod]

An adventure game called Robot City based on the book series of the same name. The books weren't written by Asimov but they adhered to the three laws of robotics, positronic brains etc. It wasn't the best-designed adventure game but manipulating the three laws to get what you wanted out of conversations with stodgy robots could be pretty fascinating.

 

[Captain Zyrain]

I lived for Warlords II. My friend and I would take turns on the same PC, making the other person cover their eyes or leave the room so as not to cheat.

Wow it's playable online now!

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Warlords_II_1993

 

[Azar]

Never heard or seen anyone mention this.

I credit this game for teaching me the phrase "the mind is a terrible thing to waste"

Capture the flag by Carrsoft

I loved the turn by email feature back in the AOL dialup days.

Both key games of my childhood. Dr. Brain is quite well known, though. It's a Sierra game!

 

[Morrigan Stark]

My dad was sold this crappy French DOS game for our first PC in the late 80's/early 90's, called "Voyage au Centre de la Terre" ("Journey to the Centre of the Earth", based on Jules Verne's story), made by a company called "Chip".

Some info about it here:

http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=2006

It was laughably bad. Played like shit, looked and sounded like ass, and was not fun at all (especially compared to the console games we played at the time). My brother and I played it a bit just to laugh at how bad it was.

A gameplay video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gid4z9WsaTg
English version here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuY3CR5Dswo

 

[HStallion]

Its not that obscure but I feel like I'm the only one that played that Men in Black PC game that came out in the 90's. It was modeled after Resident Evil tank controls but had platforming sections. It was a NIGHTMARE to play in certain parts and I never did beat certain areas because they wanted you to do platforming with cinematic camera angles and prerendered backgrounds. It was not a good game.

 

[Lyte Edge]

Never heard or seen anyone mention this.

I credit this game for teaching me the phrase "the mind is a terrible thing to waste"

I has this on my Mac way back when.

I see that and raise you Mutant Beach.

 

[koopathecat]

Grannys Garden. Some old puzzle game on the BBC Micro. Remember playing it in Primary School as a kid

 

[Poltergust]

I remember an old adventure game where I had to explore a museum at night, but I needed to be careful or else a patrolling security guard would spot me.

Also, you're on some timer and if you don't finish the game fast enough, the place blows up.

I can't remember the name of this game, though. :<

 

[JeTmAn81]

Some random crappy FPS I saw in a game shop and decided I wanted

 

[EvB]

Never heard or seen anyone mention this.

I credit this game for teaching me the phrase "the mind is a terrible thing to waste"

I had that on some demo disc!

 

[Vandole]

Sierra made an adventure game about the California gold rush called Gold Rush! in the early 90's. It was one of the toughest adventure games they ever made. There was practically no direction for anything, particularly in the last third of the game. They later sold the rights to it to an educational game company and I think they've since remade it for PC and mobile. As tough as it was I still had some fun with it, but I honestly don't see how anyone could have finished it without a hint book.

 

[Psamtik. Death's Demise]

I'm sure it's not that obscure, but I've never heard anyone talk about Ollie's Follies on the Atari 800XL (also released on the C64).

 

[mclem]

For obscure stuff I remember playing Pirate Adventure on the TI-99/4a back in '81 or '82.

It was a text adventure created by one of the genre greats, Scott Adams.

One of the funny quirks about it was that it came on a cassette tape that took forever to load every time you fired the game up.

Scott Adams adventures are all fairly well known. Wasn't Pirate Adventure only #2 after Adventureland?

One of the funny quirks about it was that it came on a cassette tape that took forever to load every time you fired the game up.

... and I'm not sure cassette booting counts as a funny quirk, given I have reams of games on cassette from my Speccy days

 

[Ryde3]

I always thought Leisure Suit Larry was wild when my friends brothers would play it.

 

[Phediuk]

Sierra made an adventure game about the California gold rush called Gold Rush! in the early 90's. It was one of the toughest adventure games they ever made. There was practically no direction for anything, particularly in the last third of the game. They later sold the rights to it to an educational game company and I think they've since remade it for PC and mobile. As tough as it was I still had some fun with it, but I honestly don't see how anyone could have finished it without a hint book.

Sierra is the opposite of obscure though.

 

[PSqueak]

Alley Cat.

Also a game supposedly called DigDug, but it wasn't THE DigDug, mechanics were completely different and you played as a truck.

 

[loganclaws]

Alpha roid for msx?

 

[m@cross]

Does this count?

 

[Pejo]

Put tons and tons of hours into Choplifter on my Commodore 64. It wasn't a great game, but it was pretty much all I had. There was also some sort of text based adventure but I wouldn't even begin to know what it was called. Also a game where I moved what looked like little chess pieces around a map, trying to get out. (may have been the same game even)

 

[Omegasquash]

Both key games of my childhood. Dr. Brain is quite well known, though. It's a Sierra game!

I didn't know Dr. Brain was that well known! The Castle of Dr. Brain was the first PC game I ever owned.

 

[Portugeezer]

I had a lot of random games on my Windows 95... most obscure is probably some open world driving game, car was some sort of long cadillac style of car if I remember correctly. Other than that, I don't remember much. Early 3D computer games were weird.

One name I do remember was Dynamite Joe, but I don't know how obscure that was.

 

[TheCalGee]

The Space Bar. A point and click adventure game where you're a detective questioning a bunch of weirdo aliens in a bar.

I never got very far but I had a ton of fun with it.

 

[DarkTom]

I liked to play a game called "Mange Cailloux" on Amstrad CPC at my cousin's place.

It's an action-oriented puzzle game ; a kind of mix of Adventures of Lolo and Bomberman.

 

[halfbeast]

I remember playing this game a looooot with friends, but can't understand why.

Yuppie's Revenge was one of those economy sims that were sorta popular back then. but it's really just staring at an excel sheet.

 

[Vandole]

Sierra is the opposite of obscure though.

I agree Sierra is not obscure. This game on the otherhand was. I haven't run into too many people who've played it or remember it. It was graphically date by Sierra's standards when it was released and most people didn't give it a second look.

 

[antitrop]

MicroMan on Windows 3.1.

 

[Shadow Broker]

Oregon Trail loaded from a floppy disk.

 

[Sir_Crocodile]

A Math learning game starring an alien named Addy A lot of my friends played it back in the days.

I played a much earlier version of this in the early nineties called ADI. You unlocked games by solving problems. Very fun.

 

[mokeyjoe]

Well I started out on the Dragon 32, so I guess a lot of the games were obscure unless you had a Dragon or a RadioShack Color Computer.

I always liked this two player platformer called Cashman. It had some really interesting level design and gameplay mechanics. Never met anyone else who played it though.

 

[TK-421]

Executive Suite
https://archive.org/details/msdos_Executive_Suite_1982

My Dad brought this home and I was fascinated with it for some reason. Had no concept of the business world, so my choices wouldn't make a lot sense.

 

[creatchee]

Janitor Joe on my IBM PCjr

http://youtu.be/hMuWRzjL2sM

 

[Tizoc]

The wild wild west adventure game
Based on the will smith movie

 

[pikablu]

Star Command Deluxe