Games no-one has heard of...

[macstat]

A lot of us have that game we played as a kid, or possibly are even playing now, that sometimes feels like it might not even be real due to the fact no one else has ever mentioned it. Share your favorite obscure games you played, good/bad, doesnt matter

I'll start and I have a treat for you guys . There was this polish Warcraft clone (not WoW but ye olde rts)  called "Polanie" what basically means "Slavs". It was an interesting game, I would even say it wasnt half bad. But there were some unintentional hilarious things in it. Like economy since only resource you had was cow milk. Or when you cut down trees they could kill you .
Oh if you look at the link it has word "dork" in it, so that basically says it all :>

[skidoosh]

Here's my contribution and still one of the most memorable games I've ever played!

Summoner from the year 2000 on the PS2.

[Sinclair Gregstrum]

Great topic! Plus I've not heard of either of those so a good start (looks like Summoner came out in April 2001 in the UK, at which point I will have been curled up in a fetal position clutching my Dreamcast, so it probably passed me by).

I have fond memories of The Horde on Saturn.



It was a port of a 3DO game that only made it to Sega's console and PC, so is pretty niche! It was an odd hybrid of strategy/town building and action with an isometric viewpoint, and worked in two distinct phases. In the first phase you built up your settlement with buildings, farms etc, and in the second phase you had to defend it from a horde of red gremlin-like monsters who came to try and destroy it. You then got a report at the end showing how well you did at protecting everything - the better you did the more money you earned, which meant you had more to spend in the next building phase.

It was a quirky little game that a friend and I had a lot of fun messing around with back in the day, but I've never heard it mentioned by anyone else at all!

[ratsoalbion]

Thread title breaks Trades Descriptions Act - I have heard of 67% of the above games!

[Suits]

Awesome thread.

One of mine (maybe not heard of but possibly not played) was a Game Boy game called Mystic Quest, not to be confused with the SNES game of the name, same Final Fantasy universe but different story and game.

It was gameplay wise, it was similar to Zelad:Link's Awakening combat but had stronger JPRG elements but without the turn based fighting. You had potions, elixa's, armour, weapons and levelling.

I was young (9 ish I think) when I got this game and ignored it for years due to its complexity and lack of pick up and play-ness of platformers that I was used too. Inevitably I went back to it one day and something clicked and I was away. After I'd finished this, I looked for more RPG's, discovered Z:LA and the rest was history.

Fantastic game and I'd highly recommend anyone giving it a go. Unfortunately I've not seen it in any virtual console or re-release since and the only way I'm aware you can play it, is buy having the cart and having a compatible Nintendo.

If anyone is keen to give it a try, I'd be happy to lend them the facilities to so.

[Flabyo]

Thread title breaks Trades Descriptions Act - I have heard of 67% of the above games!

Sadly not everyone on the forum is quite as old as us

I have a lot of pretty weird stuff in my collection, struggling to think of any that would be out and out unknown though.

[ratsoalbion]

Suits: Game Boy Mystic Quest is actually Seiken Densetsu (subtitled Final Fantasy Gaiden in Japan), i.e the first game in the Secret of Mana trilogy!

[Suits]

Suits: Game Boy Mystic Quest is actually Seiken Densetsu (subtitled Final Fantasy Gaiden in Japan), i.e the first game in the Secret of Mana trilogy!

Cool, thanks for clearing that up for me. I was aware of some sort of tie in, blurred by translation but was hazy on the actual details.

[MagicianArcana]

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person who's played Dark Cloud 2/Dark Chronicle. I've talked to a lot of people who have played and loved the first Dark Cloud game, but when I ask them if they played the sequel, they're response is usually "There was a sequel!?" It must be a coincidence though. When I saw that Dark Cloud 2 was made available for PS4 it was talked about quite a bit on Twitter and it seemed well liked. I consider it a really good example of how to do a sequel.

As for games that are probably more obscure than Dark Cloud, I can think of a few I have on the Dreamcast.

First there was Stupid Invaders which is based on the French animated series Space Goofs. I never even watched that show, but for some reason, when I was a kid, I saw the cover art in a toy store and really wanted it. It was my first point and click adventure. Up until then, I had pretty much only played platformers like Mario and Sonic. So I was very confused and didn't even know how to solve the first puzzle. I let it collect dust for a number of years until I picked it again in highschool. With the knowledge I gained from playing other point and click adventures over the years, I was able to finish it. I did rather enjoy it, but I'm unsure if it's a game I'd feel like playing again.

Then there was Floigan Bros. A cartoony adventure game about two quirky brothers. I got it as a birthday present from my aunt when I was 10 or 11. It's an alright game from what I can remember. I remember finding the secret sound test menu by pressing a combination of buttons while the game is starting up. I wish I could remember what that combination was.

And finally there was Razor Freestyle Scooter. This one I think is more well known than the other two. Think Tony Hawk's Pro Skater but with scooters and a less-polished game engine. I enjoyed playing it a lot as a kid because to 10 year old me, it was just a Tony Hawk game with scooters. But playing it now, I'm not finding it as much fun as I used to haha But I actually still really like the music. I suppose since I grew up with games like Tony Hawk, I have an affinity for that kind of music.

[Flabyo]

I'm now reminded that I own Treasure's extremely weird PS2 game 'Freak Out' (Or 'Stretch Panic' if you're playing the US release).

I suggest you look up that one for yourself though, I'm far too scarred to go pick out a representative YouTube video of it...

Have a screenshot though.



I wish I could say it makes sense in context, but it really doesn't.

[ratsoalbion]

I tried to get into Stretch Panic (the original title was - from memory - 'Hippa Linda' or something similar), but didn't.
Some say a blot on Treasure's copybook, but certainly a curio!

[MagicianArcana]

I got Stretch Panic from a local game store not too long ago. I decided to pick it up because I've heard about how it's one of the strangest games you can find on the PS2. I think I only played up until the end of the first level. Couldn't really get into it, but it was interesting nonetheless.

[ratsoalbion]

The abysmal PAL conversion doesn't help either, the NTSC versions are considerably faster and smoother to play, and the graphics fill the screen instead of being squashed and bordered.

[Flabyo]

One game I was pretty heavily obsessed with in my final year at university (so, around 1997) was a game called Carnage Heart.

The game basically involved you building an army of mecha then using them to take over a map, strategy game style. But the meat of the game was that you had to actually program the brains of your robots using a visual programming language. (Yes, a guy who would go on to be a games coder being into a game about programming... heh...)

Weirdest of all... it was a PlayStation game. And it had an EU release. I think there was a Japan only sequel that was way more complex.



A bit of digging tells me there was a PSP version as well, hmm, might have to go looking for that one day. (I'm rooting through my games collection looking for oddities, one amusing thing is that I think all I own on PSP are turn based tactical RPGs. FFT, Tactics Ogre, Valkyria 2, Jeanne d'Arc... I think I had a problem)

[hazeredmist]

Love the thread!

A game me and my buddy played a lot of was Super Hydlide on the Megadrive. Not sure how unknown it is really, but it was a great little RPG

[dezm0nd]

There are a few games which I have brief yet fond memories of and for the longest time, I couldn't remember the name until Chris O' Regan chimed in and reminded me of this.

[zen_anarchy]

Pretty recent game from Ice-pick Lodge (you know the guys who did Pathologic) that maybe not many people have heard of or played, was the brilliant failure of concept over gameplay The Void.



It's well worth a play especially for people interested in game design or creating distinctive game aesthetics, to see what works and what doesn't work when a team is let completely off the leash to be as creative as they want to be.

Would love to hear an interview with the guys from Ice-pick Lodge someday explaining what influences they had and what was going on behinds the scenes when they where creating both Pathologic and The Void, as at the time they seemed one of the most distinctive studios in the mid 2000s.

[macstat]

Thread title breaks Trades Descriptions Act - I have heard of 67% of the above games!

Your puny act has no power here !

I have another one. Its again polish game. This time its an adventure game "Skaut Kwatermaster". As you can see its influenced by Day of the Tentacle (to put it lightly ). It was very mediocre, but i was young and dumb so i played it I only remember one thing from it. If you use a mole on a bucket you get a mole-drum. Its used to perform rain dance ;D

[Jusifer]

While not so unheard of I feel that this game is often forgotten. Little big adventure and it's sequel are very good games but not without their problems as games often from this era dealing with the controls as it is a 3d game. back then I used to play the second one twinsen's odyssey a lot, but since I was so young I didn't understand much and had to ask my brother for advice. I just mainly drove around the desert with the car and shot everyone I met with it's cool hoodmounted gun. more recently I started playing the first one on my phone when I got the game from a humble bundle. When I saw the game on the bundle I just had to get it.

[dezm0nd]

I used to love LBA. I was terrible at it but as a child, I found it completely absorbing for reasons I can't really comprehend.