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Overlooked classics
Davoid
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Some games get looked over. Some are fantastic, but relatively unknown. Let's talk about some of our favourites.
Games list and appraisal of obscurity courtesy of Xenogears of Bore and Co:
Clash at Demonhead
NES - 1990 - Vic Tokai
Play as Billy Bang as he attempts to rescue Professor Plumb from the evil Governors of Demonhead Mountain in this platformer. It featured an open ended map which you could tackle in any way you saw fit by choosing "routes" through it, finding treasure and bosses and plot points throughout. The plot would change depending on the order you took the routes in.
You could also buy special suits that would change the gameplay. Rather take an underwater route than go through the overworld of the level? Buy an aqua suit and swim through. Pick up a super suit for lava environments. Or, if you don't want to bother with the jumping and platforming, pick up a jetpack and fly through the whole thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvYPsa1Pbrs
Magic of Scheherazade
NES - 1989 - Culture Brain
An arabian themed RPG which incorporated both turn based combat sections and Zelda style adventuring sections, a long with strange events, such as timed Solar Eclipses.
A strange plot, innovative gameplay, and old school RPG sensibilities make this one a sleeper hit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-yPTkSA9xk
Honourable mentions:
Shantae - GBC
Crystalis - NES
Solstice - NES
Anyone have any favourites they feel should have more recognition?
Games list and appraisal of obscurity courtesy of Xenogears of Bore and Co:
Xenogears of Bore wrote: »I guess it's time to finally sift through this thread and say what is actually overlooked, what is borderline, and what is absolutely not overlooked. Going to leave out the discussion on what is really classic and what is not.
Absolutely Overlooked Classic:
Clash at Demonhead
Magic of Scheherazade
Shantae
Ranger X
The Neverhood
General Chaos (Bonus points considering its one of the few games from that era I've never fucking heard about.)
Xyanide
Body Harvest (Proto GTA III!)
Metal Wolf Chaos
Obscure:The Aftermath
Chase the Express
Covert Ops: Nuclear Dawn
Metal Storm
Metal Combat:Falcon's Revenge
Aerogauge
Urban Chaos
Dead Ball Zone
Trip World
Deception: Let's just go with the entire series here, a real champion of obscurity despite having what, 4 games on two consoles?
Loony Tunes B-Ball-A real accomplishment being an obscure game from one of the world's biggest licenses. It's good too!
Xexyz
Clockwork Knight
Project Nomads
Outcast
Miracle Warriors
Omikron
Metal Warriors
Rocket Jockey
Starflight
Strife
Stay Tooned (Was this a movie based game? I remember a movie with a similar name being quite good)
Conquest: Frontier Wars
Alien Legacy
Future Cop:LAPD No one on the executive committe knew the game from the screenshot, so we added it in!
Cel Damage
Mines of Titan
Big Sky Trooper: I didn't know about this one at all!
Twisted Tales of Spike McFang
Gender Wars
Gene Wars
Dominus
StarTopia
Rescue on Fractalus!
Haven:Call of the King
Cyborg Justice
Constructor
King Arthur's World-Very close one. Being a mouse game made it fairly infamous though.
Zellard
Netstorm
Machines
Xenocide
Hover Blade
Twinsen's Odyssey
M.A.X
A-10 Cuba
Tsugunai
Culdcept Saga
Flower
Baseball Simulator 1.000 I swore I was the only person who knew about this!
Claymates-Possibly the least famous of the 16 bit Clay games.
Elemental Gearbolt
Unison:Rebels of Rhythm and Dance
RIPPER
Downhill Domination
Ninja Baseball Batman
D/Generation
Corportation
Killing Time
Brutal Sports Football
The Legacy : Realm of Terror (a non Strat game by Micropose auto puts it in this category, we didn't even look it up.)
Metal Marines
Liberation: Captive 2
Edward Randy
Sango?
Moonbase Commander
Maken Shao: Demon Sword
Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri: Sounds like a Stephen Colbert novel
Cocoron A game so overlooked that the only reliable information on it comes from Something Awful... (Not my words but very true)
Dark Colony
Megamania
Blood
Powerstrike
THE SUMMONING
Borderline:
Solstice- Is actually fairly famous
Tomba- Just too many people know about it. I'd argue at one point it was but word of mouth really revived this one.
Faxanadu- Well known hard as balls NES game. Semi obscured by time like most NES rpg/action games that aren't FF, DQ, Mother, or Zelda.
Sword of Vermillion-Kinda been around the block a lot lately. Before the various retro releases I would have put this in the top box, but now people at least know about it.
Darklands-Pretty well talked about for a fairly obscure game. A real tough one.
Rock and Roll Racing-Console Blizzard game, but semi well known for being one of the first games with multiple sources of licensed music.
Winback-Known in some circles as the inspiration of RE4's control scheme.
Landstalker
Heavy Gear II-Lesser known sequel to a very well known game.
Survival Kids-Aka the original Lost in Blue. This game is jusst obscure enough (unlike its well known sequels) to squeek in a BL.
Great Greed
Avenging Spirit
Wendy: Every Witch Way
Blaster Master Boy
World Heroes 2 Jet
Sagaia
Solar Striker
Metal Walker
Dragon Heart
The rest of the Mystical Ninja series besides the first game! Hell you could make a case for the import only being Overlooked, but the thread is trending toward western releases. MWC was a special case of a game made for the west that was never released here.
Rise of the Dragon:
Shatterhand-A surprising amount of people know about this game, also Power Blade and it's sequel.
Hybrid Heaven-Would be top tier except that Nintendo Power covered the shit out of this game being arguably the only good N64 RPG besides OB 64.
Stellar 7- Quite the cult following.
Advent Rising-Million dollar prize offering excludes this one.
Buck Rodgers- Countdown to Doomsday
Ascendancy-Also pretty famous in a pretty small genre.
Warsong- People know about it being the only game of its type in the US on the Genesis. Fans of the genre know it's sequels pretty well too!
Langrisser 2- Panty Shot!
Armed and Dangerous
Kiss: Psycho Circus
Dark Reign:The Future of War
Unnatural Selection: Doomed to non obscurity because of a very famous mod.
Relentless
Future Shock: Well loved by very vocal fans
Stuntmant: Ignition: Famously difficult game.
Sacrifice-Really close to being not overlooked.
Ninja Five-O: Infamously hard to find classic
Astro Boy: Famously quality.
Hunter
Cool Spot: A surprising number of people know about this game.
Clock Tower: Borderline Not really overlooked.
Street Fighter 2010: Despite the AVGN piece at the beginning of the year and the words Street+Fighter in the title. Yes that's supposed to be Ken.
Soul Blazer: Spared from Not Really Overlooked because it is totally overshadowed in the collective conscious of the other two trilogy games.
Zoda's Revenge: I guess. It's such a late NES release that some people might not no about it. Maybe.
Popful Mail: Has a huge cult following
Growlanser II: Surprisingly well known
Rocket Ranger: See above
Return Fire: Possibly the 3DO's most famous title
Crusader:No Remorse
Citizen Kabuto!
7th Saga- Overlooked with a twinge of a fan base due to its extreme and unfair difficulty in places.
Not Really Overlooked:
Crystalis-Well known NES game, had a GBC remake/reimagining.
Wily Beamish-Would be overlooked if you came from America. The rabid devotion of people of a certain age from another English speaking country squarely puts the game here.
Solar Jetman- Well known evil as shit NES game. Advertised to hell and back too!
Mischief Makers-Underground Classic that's just too well known.
Fear Effect-Seriously well known game.
Imperium Galactica II-Pretty well known game in a fairly small genre.
Die Hard Trilogy-No.
The Lost World-See above.
Fatal Frame II-They just made another sequel
The Last Blade-C'mon now.
Snowboard Kids 2- Won't deny the classic part
LOOM- Almost as famous as DOOM, well not that famous, but still, very well known game!
Out of this World-Same.
Flashback
Eternal Darkness- REALLY?
Heretic- REALLY? Maybe if you said one of the expansions or something...
Kid Dracula
Legend of the Mystical Ninja- See borderline for some MN love.
ToeJam and Earl in Panic on Planet Funkotron
Herzong Zwei- Historic game.
Kid Niki-Is famous!
Bill Lambeer's Combat Basketball-Is INFAMOUS!
Shadows of the Empire-Come on here!
Bushido Blade-Very famous for its realism, two player system link FPS mode, and being bad ass.
Nightmare Creatures-Insane amount of buzz when this came out.
Starseige-Really???
Dragon Warrior
Blast Corps-There are so few Rare games that no one knows about. Try harder!
Primal Rage- The game that quite possibly capped off the 16 bit generation of fighters not well known? It really is!
Battletanx: Hella famous.
Army Men: ANY OF THEM. This used to be the top franchise whore. 2-4 games a year.
Mark of Kri- Pretty much loses out like most first party titles. There are a ton of early PSX sony published puzzlers and other quirky games that would fit, but not this or anything else done by Sony or Nintendo in the last two generations.
Abaddox-Tons of exposure back in the day
Toki
Jazz Jackrabbit-Famous Sonic clone.
Vagrant Story
Einhander
Rocket Knight Adventures
Power Stone 2
Kid Chameleon
The Lost Vikings- Six well known games, one post. A record for this thread!
NOLF 1 &2-Are very famous
Evil Genius
Jurassic Park
Star Tropics- Pretty much any Nintendo game is going to fall here, I'm afraid. The two super scope mecha games are an exception and not the rule.
Drakengard- Is infamous.
Fade to Black
Wizards and Warriors- Oh no you didn't! Even had a part of a cartoon show devoted to it!
Myth-Bungie
EVO-Is too awesome to be overlooked
Revolution X- Is infamous.
Moonwalker
G.I Joe- Was that fate of Atlantis? Anyways, good game. Not overlooked.
Little Kings Story- Poor selling and great doesn't really equal overlooked in the sense we seem to be talking about.
Vectorman- Too well known and they used to advertise the shit out of it.
MotoRacer
Adventures of Bayou Billy- Is famous as shit.
Wizardry Nine- Nope. Not putting anything with nine (actually because of the east west split a hell of a lot more) titles in anything remotely related to obscure. Great game though.
Jackal-Is famous and awesome.
Guardian Heroes- Expensive does not equal overlooked.
Beyond the Beyond- Camelot game without Mario/Golden Sun/or Shining in the title. Yet somehow, still well known.
Blade Runner- FAMOUS
Beetle Adventure Racing- Famous and well loved!
HEXEN- SEE HERETIC
Killer Instinct Gold- C-c-c-c-c-c-combo breaker.
River City Ransom-No way in hell is this overlooked
Rise of the Triad-Very famous
Descent-Even more famous.
Karnov-Was famous!
Battle of Olympus-Same!
I painstakingly took the name of every game (if I could find the name) emailed them two my two gaming buddies and formed The EXECUTIVE COMMITEE. We had three criteria for a game being overlooked:
One: We googled the game title and looked at the first few results. If the pages were jumping we did a bit of sales/review research to see if it was just a small vocal fanbase. If the pages were dead (or in one case, the game wasn't on the first page of google searching) we probably called it an overlooked title. Million sellers were automatically put into not overlooked, as are any award winning games unless the award was for being an overlooked classic.
Two: Gamefaqs Boards-Empty boards were instantly given pre approved overlooked status. Games with giant but locked threads on multiple pages were out of overlooked status, but still qualified for the running of borderline. Games with more than one page of active threads were automatically put in the not overlooked category.
Three: Committee vote. If none or only one of us had heard of it and the research panned out (not award winning/million selling) it was placed in the overlooked category. Two votes were discussed, but usually borderline. Three votes automatically disqualified overlooked and basically (two exceptions actually) guaranteed not overlooked.
Page Nine was the worst page for non overlooked games. By far.
Clash at Demonhead
NES - 1990 - Vic Tokai
Play as Billy Bang as he attempts to rescue Professor Plumb from the evil Governors of Demonhead Mountain in this platformer. It featured an open ended map which you could tackle in any way you saw fit by choosing "routes" through it, finding treasure and bosses and plot points throughout. The plot would change depending on the order you took the routes in.
You could also buy special suits that would change the gameplay. Rather take an underwater route than go through the overworld of the level? Buy an aqua suit and swim through. Pick up a super suit for lava environments. Or, if you don't want to bother with the jumping and platforming, pick up a jetpack and fly through the whole thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvYPsa1Pbrs
Magic of Scheherazade
NES - 1989 - Culture Brain
An arabian themed RPG which incorporated both turn based combat sections and Zelda style adventuring sections, a long with strange events, such as timed Solar Eclipses.
A strange plot, innovative gameplay, and old school RPG sensibilities make this one a sleeper hit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-yPTkSA9xk
Honourable mentions:
Shantae - GBC
Crystalis - NES
Solstice - NES
Anyone have any favourites they feel should have more recognition?
Davoid on
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Posts
Let me tell you about a game called Tomba! (Tombi! for you weird-ass PAL region folk)
Imagine a wonderfully-controlling 2D Mario/Metroid mash-up (with the ability to move into the foreground/background) with RPG-style quests and character growth systems, topped off with a very charming art style and beautiful animated videos
Now imagine that no one buys the game, but they make a sequel anyways, which ends up bankrupting the company. Then imagine that the game cannot play on the system's ultra-popular successor, the PlayStation 2 (not sure about PlayStation 3).
It's pretty, it's fun, and it's hard, but no one knows what it is.
It had you run around levels, blowing up objectives, and you can combine with your rover to make a faster form that has auto aim.
Just an example known as the "Weasel Chase", this game uses claymation, everything is made of clay, it's awesome... Epic. I cannot explain in words.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aDh_O3FQWY
Let's Play S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl - Vanilla
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Fuck yeah man, Ranger X is some good times. I never owned a Genesis but a buddy of mine had one and we'd stay up late playing it.
Also, Faxanadu is one of my favorite NES games. Side-scrolling action-RPG with pretty good graphics for the time and really awesome music. It had a fucking awful password system (upper and lower case letters, AND numbers?) but besides that it was great.
Oh man, I was thinking the other day how much this game kicked ass (Tomba 2 ruled, too), and someone should really put it on the PSN.
Steam: pazython
It might not run
Anyone here have Tomba! and a PS3?
Something I always mention is Vice: Project Doom for the NES. Ninja Gaiden + Spy Hunter + Gotcha!
XBL - Foreverender | 3DS FC - 1418 6696 1012 | Steam ID | LoL
Oh yes. This was the best with 4 players, each player controlling 2 dudes. It was glorious, glorious pandemonium.
Wikipedia Link
I don't know if its considered overlooked but its the greatest fucking adventure game of all time.
Fuck, I might just go try to play it right now.
Wiki link
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
General Chaos is great fun, and here, have a real image
I have two suggestions, both with metal in the title.
Metal Storm: Pretty much the first game to really use gravity well on the NES. It's an incredible experience.
Metal Clash: The best lightgun game ever made.
Hey guys there's this game
Called Katamari Damacy
You roll shit up in a ball! It's so crazy and Japanese
And it's only $20
Well, to be fair to KD, it did start this way!
This game right here,
Sometimes I think I'm the only person who's ever played it.
I think it would help if you could spell the title in something other than magic space alphabet.
"Oh, you want the triangles game. Okay, got one of those in the back."
One of the best P&C adventures ever made for the NES. :^:
Nintendo Network ID - Brainiac_8
PSN - Brainiac_8
Steam - http://steamcommunity.com/id/BRAINIAC8/
Add me!
Hello, I'm looking for a copy of Xyaninc
Part shooter, part gravity-based puzzle game. Each of the 12+ planets had varying levels of gravity that affect the inertia of your ship. Each stage had a number heavy cargo drops (collectibles, fuel, etc.) that you had to locate, hook onto with a tow cable and drag them back to your shuttle.
The game was very difficult, but SO much fun. Unfortunately, it was a commercial flop in the US (although it was pretty popular in Europe).
In fact, I was just reminiscing about Solar Jetman when PixelJunk Shooter! was released - that game made me wish for a Solar Jetman remake like no other.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaTJAw0QDH0
I remember when I was younger, I used to get Solar Jetman and Dash Galaxy mixed up for some reason. I would put one in thinking it was the other.
Problem was, Solar Jetman was awesome, and Dash Galaxy was pretty crappy.
Nintendo Network ID - Brainiac_8
PSN - Brainiac_8
Steam - http://steamcommunity.com/id/BRAINIAC8/
Add me!
I think it's Xyanide
I actually played the PSP version of that. It seemed like a basic on rails shooter, except that enemies would sneak behind you every so often. It's also hard as hell
Anyways Solar Jetman would be one of those games that really wasn't that overlooked, well, it's borderline at the least.
aaand here's a second. MM is awesome though, so carry on!
Aww man, I just bought it from a little game shop. They had a bunch of NES stuff, so I grabbed random games that I had never seen/heard of before just to see what they were like.
Oh well
XBL - Foreverender | 3DS FC - 1418 6696 1012 | Steam ID | LoL
The PSP version is mediocre at best. The Xbox one is almost a completely different game.
It's on-rails, but enemies spawn around the ship, which shoots at 360 degrees around it.
I wouldn't be too hard on yourself about it. If you can beat it (I did) give yourself a huge pat on the back for suffering through the whole thing. :P
It is a rather unique addition to anyones NES collection. If I'm being honest, If I ever find it again, I would probably buy it just for my collection, not so much to play though. :P
Nintendo Network ID - Brainiac_8
PSN - Brainiac_8
Steam - http://steamcommunity.com/id/BRAINIAC8/
Add me!
Proto GTA III, the pre Rockstars final Nintendo game before going on to change their name and develop that game.
Yesssssss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y13Ffjqwamk
Fun RPG, had alot of different elements to the gameplay
The "Town View" utilises the typical overhead angle found in most RPGs.
The "Battle View" is a tilted overhead view where the player takes full control of the character in real-time combat. The player can use weapons and magic.
The "Dungeon View" is in the first person perspective.
The "Boss View" puts the player up against a boss from a sideways viewpoint.
Claymation freaks the fuck out of me
But have you played them all on weed?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFCbiZHMYEs&NR=1