Not sure if its been stated, if so sorry. Earth and Beyond Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler My best friend and I played the hell out of this game when it came out. It was awesome. After playing Everquest for wayyy too long, the sci-fi setting was a welcome refreshment. The graphics were great too, so that helped. Best for me was there were ways to be rewarded for doing things that weren't combat. If you just wanted to fly around and find new stuff, hey, go ahead, have some some explorer experience. If you want to become awesome at making stuff and flying it all over the galaxy, go ahead. Or, if you want to blow up space pirates, take some lasers. Granted it wasn't perfect. But I loved that game so much. YES. It really captured the whole sense of space exploration. I mean, I've played plenty of space games that involved travelling around the galaxy, like the fairly recent X3, but Earth and Beyond was the one that really stood out with tons of amazing and memorable sights and just inspired a general sense of awe. I remember the first time going through the Saturn jumpgate, leaving the solar system for the first time, and ending up in the Alpha Centauri system, staring at planet Zweihander. I must have just sat there for a good minute or two, thinking to myself, "Holy FUCK, I am actually looking at an alien planet." I think it really helped that you could not only descend into a planet's atmosphere, but you got out of your ship when you were docked, so it helped add to the immersion that you actually were exploring places and not just empty regions with pretty skyboxes. I wish i could have played this game. I have high hopes for Jumpgate: Evolution to fill this gap. I've tried EVE and it was just too slow and boring for me. I appreciate its depth though. It recently got a reprint in bargain-bin packaging. There are like ten copies at my local Target. Shouldn't be hard to find. That doesn't make any sense. Why would they reprint a MMO with no servers? Unless they like..rebooted it for the hell of it or something. In which case, wooo sign me the hell up. Yeah, servers have been down for years, I can't imagine there was a reprint. There is some sort of resurrection/emulation project going, but i think they haven't updated in a while. Hrmm, I could have sworn that was the game I saw on the shelves, but you're right that it doesn't make much sense; I forgot about the whole MMO part. I'll have to look again after work.

Strife. It was way ahead of its time, it's remembered (and mentioned) by few people, and it's just...amazing. Or, it was. I haven't played it in well over a decade so all I have now are cherished memories. I'm afraid to play it again. Anyone else remember Strife?

Might have been posted already, might not. But damn if I didn't play the hell out of this one. Spoiler: show spoiler hide spoiler Blasting the shit out of everything with Charlie, Cammy, Arthur, Mega Man and R.R. Hood was hella fun.

Someone said just one word, but this game deserves some more. This game had some really well done cartoon-style graphics, and they managed to convey the mood very well throughout the game. The combat was very fun, mostly the melee combat. The Guns weren't very well utilized, and there were instances where you needed a gun, but didn't have one/have the right one. Oh, but the hand to hand combat made up for it. You could round house kick a guy in the face to spin him around, then jump on his shoulders, beat the back of his head, then flip back to piledrive him into the ground. It was so visceral and awesome. I want to play it again. Bring it to me, Gog.com! This games combat system was incredibly deep. My first time through, I didn't think so. But it is, you can counter everything, disarm, block everything, and every enemy is weak to a particular style of move. It's just not easy. If you keep repeating the same move over and over they start countering it, and this gets remembered from opponent to opponent. You have to mix it up. I was the one who originally posted it, but it does need to be said that Oni is one of the most frustrating games I have ever played, with some real fucking terrible/boring levels. I just loved the combat too much to quit, and the anime apocalyptic stylings. It seems like the kind of game where you could do a sequel and fix like two things (level design, guns) and it would be the most fucking amazing 3rd person action game of all time.

great thread that brought back a lot of memories. as soon as i saw the title, the first game that popped into my head was... i remember staying up for HOURS with a friend trying to unlock everything. I hope Sega releases it on a Classics anthology or something soon.

I was the one who originally posted it, but it does need to be said that Oni is one of the most frustrating games I have ever played, with some real fucking terrible/boring levels. I just loved the combat too much to quit, and the anime apocalyptic stylings. It seems like the kind of game where you could do a sequel and fix like two things (level design, guns) and it would be the most fucking amazing 3rd person action game of all time. One moment in my first playthrough stood out for me: I ran at approaching soldiers, dodged their plasma fire, got into hand to hand range and grabbed the front one. As I was doing this someone came from behind me that I had missed. They fired, hitting the guy I was throwing as I flipped him backwards, then I flung him into the dude who had come up from behind and they both died. It was a game that, if you managed it right, allowed you to be an action hero. Too bad so much of it was so goddamn boring though.

I remember hearing about the making of Oni, and how Bungie hired an actual architect to design the levels, to make them like real office buildings and shit. Thing was, since he was a Real Architect, the guy made the levels in CAD instead of Max like Bungie's modelers were familiar with. With levels designed and his job done, the guy left. A little later on, Bungie realized they needed more levels since what they had was too short. However, the levels were again made in CAD which they didn't know how to use, so in order to make the levels longer they literally Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V's the level pieces they had to pad them out, which lead to the incredibly bland and repetitive level layouts. But yeah, it had a fantastic combat system that I'd love to see revisited.

I remember hearing about the making of Oni, and how Bungie hired an actual architect to design the levels, to make them like real office buildings and shit. Thing was, since he was a Real Architect, the guy made the levels in CAD instead of Max like Bungie's modelers were familiar with. With levels designed and his job done, the guy left. A little later on, Bungie realized they needed more levels since what they had was too short. However, the levels were again made in CAD which they didn't know how to use, so in order to make the levels longer they literally Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V's the level pieces they had to pad them out, which lead to the incredibly bland and repetitive level layouts. But yeah, it had a fantastic combat system that I'd love to see revisited. I'm pretty sure this is how they made the Library.

Search says nobody mentioned it, so I'm bringing up Ascendency, a fuck-hyphen-awesome 4X space game in the vein of Master of Orion, though if I had to draw a parallel to it I'd say the Space Empire games are the closest thing to what it's got. Quite noteworthy in that it's one of the few games of this kind where humans are explicitly blacklisted - completily alien cast of races, many of them quite memorable due to special abilities or defining characteristics or because they're just fucking awesome. Massive technophile-orgasm-inducing tech tree with all sorts of neat entries and branches (literily - much of Ascendency's visuals use a faux 3D representation system, so you could spin the tree around and see how it branches out as you progress). Very customization-oriented in that you could fit colonies and ships with exactly as many pieces of equipment or installations of a particular type as you wished instead of the whole pyramid-like process you have with MoO. Quite fast as well compared to most games - the game uses a day-scale system for actions, but getting from one point to another could take a good while depending on how many starlanes you had to pass through, each of which usually took several days/weeks to traverse. The only really weak points were that 1.0 AI was rather stunted (fixed later, but the damage to the game's rep was done) and combat is rather strange compared to more contemporary 4X space games, using a shot-a-day-a-gun system for combat (though also giving the player lots and lots of neat goodies in addition to standard ship equipment to screw around) plus a few oddities like not being able to plot long-range courses (then again, the game was quite conservitive on how many ships you could muster at one time, so dealing with massive fleets was rarely a problem). Loved the game to no end, want to do a mod for Space Empires 5 for it someday, and can only hope that the devs are in fact doing something with the IP as Wikipedia cock-teases.

I remember hearing about the making of Oni, and how Bungie hired an actual architect to design the levels, to make them like real office buildings and shit. Thing was, since he was a Real Architect, the guy made the levels in CAD instead of Max like Bungie's modelers were familiar with. With levels designed and his job done, the guy left. A little later on, Bungie realized they needed more levels since what they had was too short. However, the levels were again made in CAD which they didn't know how to use, so in order to make the levels longer they literally Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V's the level pieces they had to pad them out, which lead to the incredibly bland and repetitive level layouts. But yeah, it had a fantastic combat system that I'd love to see revisited. No way, for real? That explains the rather logical layouts of most buildings. I just remember the levels not being F.E.A.R. -esque mazes.

Other entries may have had less bugs, but for me this nailed the whole finance-pick your own missions-have your own private mech bay aspect that I played it constantly.

I could rave for hours about it, yet everyone I've talked to about it either hasn't played it or didn't consider it anything special. It had great atmosphere, some pretty hilarious dialogue, really fun sense of progression and a few fun puzzles to boot. Easily one of my favorite games of all time.

Someone said just one word, but this game deserves some more. This game had some really well done cartoon-style graphics, and they managed to convey the mood very well throughout the game. The combat was very fun, mostly the melee combat. The Guns weren't very well utilized, and there were instances where you needed a gun, but didn't have one/have the right one. Oh, but the hand to hand combat made up for it. You could round house kick a guy in the face to spin him around, then jump on his shoulders, beat the back of his head, then flip back to piledrive him into the ground. It was so visceral and awesome. I want to play it again. Bring it to me, Gog.com! This games combat system was incredibly deep. My first time through, I didn't think so. But it is, you can counter everything, disarm, block everything, and every enemy is weak to a particular style of move. It's just not easy. If you keep repeating the same move over and over they start countering it, and this gets remembered from opponent to opponent. You have to mix it up. I was the one who originally posted it, but it does need to be said that Oni is one of the most frustrating games I have ever played, with some real fucking terrible/boring levels. I just loved the combat too much to quit, and the anime apocalyptic stylings. It seems like the kind of game where you could do a sequel and fix like two things (level design, guns) and it would be the most fucking amazing 3rd person action game of all time. In short, absolutely amazing combat system, crappy everything else. It was an awesome feeling when you got yourself into a brawl with three other dudes and came away completely unscathed. I don't think they could really do a sequel now though, at least not in the faux anime style that the original game had. There are too many actual anime styled third-person action games now for that to not seem like a cheap imitation. But if they opted for a different but still stylistic approach, and above all fixed the problems with the level design and storyline, then it would be an incredible game.

I could rave for hours about it, yet everyone I've talked to about it either hasn't played it or didn't consider it anything special. It had great atmosphere, some pretty hilarious dialogue, really fun sense of progression and a few fun puzzles to boot. Easily one of my favorite games of all time. Agreed. This game is GREAT!

Other entries may have had less bugs, but for me this nailed the whole finance-pick your own missions-have your own private mech bay aspect that I played it constantly. I loved these games. I've moved on to other mech combat games, but you never forget your first love. I wish someone would bring Mechwarrior back, and in an awesome way.

I shall contribute. Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. 2, while people may have figured this 3rd person game was a load of shit. It wasn't, it had fairly fun combat mixed with the odd Heavy Metal story, while you had guns the main source of fun was the sword combat. I have not played it in a few years, but it was a good fun game to play through. Sanity: Aiken's Artifact: I got this for 5 dollars new from Best Buy years ago. Ice T voices the main character and it has a CCG like system where you find cards that are your psychic powers that have several main 'trees' that I believe you could mix and match. The multiplayer I never got to try, but you could apparently trade powers with other people as well. Never finished it, but the game was fun overall. I don't really know if this one belongs in here, but Rune deserves a nod. It was another fun 3rd person action game with swords. You could also use your dead enemies heads as a blunt weapon if you so desired, the multiplayer was fun if already dead by the time I finally picked up the game years later. Other mentions would be Project: Overkill for the playstation, Alien Front Online for the DC, along with Outtrigger, Spawn: In the Demon's Hand(Many a hours wasted on this with friends), possibly Zombie Revenge, and Tech Romancer.

So, uh, I checked out my supposed cache of E&B at Target. It was a bunch of copies of Freelancer. Close, but not quite the same thing.

So, uh, I checked out my supposed cache of E&B at Target. It was a bunch of copies of Freelancer. Close, but not quite the same thing. Well, Freelancer is good. I think people have made mods that can make playing the multiplayer of that feel EnBish.

Someone posted a huge ass picture of Wing Commander III a couple of pages back... And although it's one of may most beloved games ever, it was far from underrated. It sold millions of copies and got many great reviews. I love it very much, anyway.

E.V.O. on the SNES. It was a marvelously fun platformer on the SNES. If you like classic gaming, check this out. Air Fortress for the NES was the first non-mega-man game I fell in love with. Air Fortress, in particular, could use an awesome modern-day treatment. Y'hear that HAL Labs?! GET TO IT!

Just remembered one since I picked it up again for $4 at the local Gamestop. One of my faves from last gen. Insane weapons, great dialog and characters...it's what you'd imagine a Monty Python-made third-person shooter to be like. How about a gun that fires sharks?

Castlevania 64, and I don't care who knows it. Legacy of Darkness even more so.

Oh and does this count? I don't know how well this did, but this was the only Megaman game I ever truly enjoyed, but never hear about. I also never played the sequel because I never owned a Playstation. Win. This game is fucking awesome. At first I thought the sequel was better, but after replaying both, I learned that I was wrong. Megaman Legends on N64 is awesome. And very underrated as well. I've talked to many people saying they didn't like the game at all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2Mice5c6sg

E.V.O. on the SNES. It was a marvelously fun platformer on the SNES. If you like classic gaming, check this out. This was one of my favorite games on the SNES. I bought Spore thinking it'd be a new EVO, but it didn't even come close.