Sexy Parodius is a bit sketchy, yes. But, it's easily the most-fun shmup I've ever played. The music is fantastic, too. I've managed to 1cc the game, but I've never beaten the bonus stage which is just so ridiculously difficult, I question whether it's even possible without a very specific strategy or something.
Unfortunately, the best version is the arcade one, and MAME doesn't do the best job with it. Still playable, though.
It was one of the first PC games I played as a kid. Incredibly simple mechanics: you are a marble and you roll and try to reach the finish line (sometimes you need collectibles first). But the level design was top notch. Perfect blend of challenging and rewarding.
Retro/Grade is a rhythm/shooter mashup where you travel backwards through time and un-fire a bunch of lasers to un-kill a bunch of ships. It was designed for a guitar hero controller if I recall? I found the visuals nauseating and the music lackluster but that premise is gold and deserves another chance.
Also PLEASE play the music backwards??? It's a game about going back in time, c'monnnnn.
Ark the lad twilight of the spirits. One of my favorite classics!
Underrated:
- Scarlet Nexus
- Wii U Gameland
- Colobot
Deserves a Second Chance:
- Atomega (Died because ubisoft didn't update it)
- Biomutant, Lots and lots of dialogue but I actually liked it
Kolibri for the Sega 32x addon for the Genesis/Megadrive. Most of the reviewers that weren't down with the game either complained about the difficulty or lack of story/making sense, but it was a beautiful game for the time that took the space shooter concept and made it into a game that was somehow chill while also being difficult enough to sometimes momentarily make you want to rage quit. If you enjoy games like the Raiden series, you'll enjoy this.
Shout to Knuckles Chaotix (the most unique take on Sonic gameplay of the classic 2D era) and also Shadow Squadron (very Star Fox-esque), which are also slept on because 32x.
Exclusive to the Genesis/Megadrive, it's a crying shame that the Vectorman games never received a third iteration and have seemingly disappeared into the grey goo of IP purgatory. Vectorman and Vectorman 2 were amazing for the time: they were arguably the best 2D platformers of the era, graphically beautiful, oozing with charm, and with an amazing soundtrack to go along with it all. It's crazy that the developers were able to squeeze the performance they did out of the hardware and playing emulated versions of it now still doesn't compare to how it feels and looks playing it on the original hardware with a CRT and a nice sound system (but you should still check it out absent that setup).
On PC, also from the 90s, Descent was truly groundbreaking and unique. It's an FPS that said "what if you were playing as a space ship and had six degrees of freedom to move about?" It was also the first truly 3D FPS game.
Anachronox. Ion Storm at it's best. Engaging plot and characters, humor well ahead of its time for a game script, and party members and environments that I've still never seen many games match to this day. I don't know why it didn't become huge, I think the rpg crowd back then was still pretty married to sword and sandal conventions. If you like old games, I can't recommend it enough.
Unreal Tournament, the one that was abandoned in favor of Fortnite (eugh). Like sure it would never be a big hit like Fortnite, Arena Shooters are out of fashion after all, but Epic didn't even give it a chance for starters, they basically just rushed it out the door with a skeleton crew, no budget whatsoever and were begging for community members to do free work on the game for them. In retrospect the game was doomed to fail from day one.
It's not really forgotten, but Wing Commander has been abandoned, and a proper modern rebuild of it would be fantastic.
Also, I want a new Deer Avenger.
I don't know if it's forgotten, but it's forgotten to me. There was this ant game where you had a colony of ants that would go collect food, or attack other colonies. There was this very pixelated top-down map view where you could see the brightly colored food disappear pixel by pixel as they ate.
I can't figure out what the game was but I loved it.
My whole family loved these games.
Later, I realized Amy Hennig worked on these at Crystal Dynamics before leaving for Naughty Dog where she worked on the Uncharted Series.
If there is one game out there that I think deserves a second chance, it is definitely Alpha Protocol. This game came out in 2010 and was created by Obsidian Entertainment, the makers behind Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. This was the first-of-its-kind 'espionage RPG' with a truly, wholly unique dialogue system that has truly never been replicated since. Unlike mainstream RPGs of the time, you pick from several different 'tones' to speak in, in which gives the game hundreds of outcomes and dozens of endings. For example, according to Raycevick in a recent video, love interest can snipe you after a boss fight, poorly-treated damzels can attack you in the dead of night, contracts you're hired to kill can be baited into their demise through dialogue, and a whole host of other things.
The problem is that Alpha Protocol was lambasted by critics due to its incredibly buggy launch state and unpolished graphics. It never met the sales requirements that SEGA was expecting from it, and so, a few years ago, the game was pulled from all storefronts, never to be played again - until now. That's right. Thanks to the legends over at GOG for their incredible work, Alpha Protocol is back on sale, complete with achievements, localization, modern compatibility, and cloud saves. All without any form of DRM. But, the bugs in the game are still present to this day even in the GOG version, and so you might end up finding some humorous bugs and glitches.
Source: Making a Game Last Forever
Operation Wolf.
Defender of the crown.
Gauntlet (and sequels).
The Settlers.
Syndicate.
Fury of the Furies.
Cooking Mama.
Tongue of the Fatman.
Turrican 1 and 2.
Zool.
Snow Bros. Nick and Tom.
Double Dragon.
Golden Axe.
Rick Dangerous.
Blake Stone.
Antix.
Screamer.
Soldat.
Speedball 2. Brutale Delux.
Lemmings.
Sid Myers Pirates!
Battle chess.
Shadow of the Beast.
Altered Beast.
Agony.
Strider (arcade)
Death Rally.
Stunt Car Racer (msdos)
Can add more soon
MechCommander 1 and 2
Spore and Impossible Creatures
Kind of similar but these games are conceptually genius. How tightly Creativity and Strategic Interest are packed together is hardly seen ever again.
And animals are always a good idea. Even horrible games like Pokémon survive just because we like funny little friends.
Age of empires 3. The civilizations are packed full of unique units, cards and mechanics compared to previous games. The card deck mechanics and treasures speed up the early game and allow for a lot more flexibility and adaptivess. The game looks beautiful the 2005 version kind of runs like shit but the definitive version has made a lot of balance and performance improvements.
Anddddd shooting formations of infantry with cannons is fun as.
Star Wars: X-wing vs TIE Fighter
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_X-Wing_vs._TIE_Fighter
Destruction Derby 2 was loads of fun. I was going to say something like Choplifter, but I saw some video the other day that seems a perfect fit.
Not underrated, but I would love to have a next-gen SOCOM, and wouldn't say no to another Wipeout.
But hey, who doesnt need 43 new JRPGs?
F-ZERO. Truly a devastating loss. 99 is cool, but there's no guarantee we'll ever see a completely new title ever again. There was no other series with the same level of snappy controls, character design, music and challenge. It really is in a league of its own.
The original Unreal. For me it was a perfect combination of beautiful graphics (back in the days of course) and a soundtrack which complemented and elevated the atmosphere of that game. And the gunplay was nice, with a collection of somewhat unconventional weapons. A relic from a time where developers were not afraid to experiment a bit.
Hunter: The Reckoning on the original Xbox.
Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner
Oni by Bungie West. Ran circles around the Tomb Raider franchise. If it did not get caught up between Bungie West selling off to Microsoft, and an IP mess between Microsoft-owned Bungie, Take-Two and Rockstar, this would have been one of the greatest titles ever. Oni community and mod scene is still alive, 20 years later.
Oni was the basis for Halo and GTA's open world system. And its release had to be rushed without multiplayer and a few bosses and levels. Still one of the greatest titles that can be played. Aced the third person hybrid gun-handheld combat system. There is no cyberpunk game of this level made to this date, and there are very few to begin with.
Blast Corp 64
Not forgotten or obscure but... Assassin's creed 3. Yeah the main character sucks but I love the missions and map. Also has just the right amount of pirate like missions (in 4 is too much). I don't understand why people loved 4 so much the story of that game sucks lol and the villains are so forgettable.
Blur
Drakan series needs reboot. I played Drakan; Ancient gates. That game was so much fun. The seamless transition from fighting on a dragon to fighting on your feet. The next level spell casting where you had to trace out the symbol to cast. The lore felt really deep like there was a lot of secrets they never fleshed out and ever since I’ve had an itch that never got scratched.
Sigma Star Saga for the GBA. Really creative mashup of an RPG and a side-scrolling shooter, with a cool weapon-configuration system thrown in. Definitely suffered a bit from platform limitations, but there's absolutely more that could have been done with the core concept.
Shockingly good writing, too.
Absolver. It was the precursor to Sifu, but with slightly slower and more methodical combat (more like a Soulslike, almost).
The coolest part of it is, as you play and fight players and NPCs, your character will slowly learn and unlock the moves that are used against them, which you can then put into your moveset and chain together with other moves to create your own style. If you don't want to do that, you can join a player-run school, and be given the fighting style of that school's master, which your character will learn as they use it.
The story mode is pretty short. It's mainly about PvP (although, before development stopped, it DID get a free DLC with a co-op dungeon run that's worth killing a couple of hours on). Of course, a PvP-focused game with nobody playing it isn't exactly the most entertaining thing to spend your time on, so- outside of a small collection of diehards- it pretty much stays a ghost town.
It had heart, it had ambition, and it had creativity. My friends and I were really hoping the success of Sifu would mean people might start going back and maybe breathing a little life into it, but that didn't happen. We hoped maybe they'd announce a second one, but that hasn't happened yet, either. It'll probably just be another Sifu. That one was a proven success, so it makes more sense.
The servers are still up for now. No idea how much longer it'll be supported. But, if you've got friends you can play it with, it might be worth looking into and seeing for yourself what the game offered, and what could've been.
It's not underrated or forgotten, but LOTR two towers.
Ogre Battle. I'd love to play a game like that again. I think Unicorn Overlord took some inspiration from it so I'm excited to check that out.
The original Way of the Samurai. It was really cool and unique little game. The sequels never really followed through on the best parts of the first one though unfortunately.
Giants: Citizen Kabuto
kenshi is the post-apocalyptic life/ant sim that I never knew I wanted. There is no story other than what is in your head, and that's beautiful.
Lugaru and Overgrowth.
theres a great little pvp wargame sim from the sega genesis era called 'Herzog Zwei'
it was perfect in its simplicity. deserves a reboot.
xracer - A WipeOut clone (would love some development on this)
https://packages.debian.org/sid/xracer
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Sauerbraten FPS (1990s fps distilled)
An old PS1 fighting game called Unholy War. It had a lot of really unique mechanics I haven't seen since.
Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits Such a good game with some unique gameplay as far as tbs and rpgs go
I wish Toonstruck would get its remaster and sequel.
I don't even remember the name but the game where you run around a weird post apocalyptic world dueling with decks of cards. I would love a modern remake.
Edit: Phantom Dust!
I waited to see if anyone mentioned it, but, POD. A old 1997 racing game from Microsoft built by Ubisoft. You can get the gold edition on GoG for rather cheap but I would absolutely love to see a remaster or remake. Unfortunately I would rather it not be made by Ubisoft as I don’t want to be forced into a separate account login setup from Ubisoft.
Below the Root for C64.
Kingdom Under Fire. Still one of my all time favorite army battler games
Burning Rangers from sonic team on the Sega Saturn. Such a unique concept.
Seibu Kaihatsu's Dynamite Duke (1989), a pretty novel hybrid Cabal-like/Beat-'em-up with a lot of love put into it. The arcade version's got a pretty slick art direction, the environmental destruction vfx rock, and the animation's pretty slick. The whole thing's got that passion project charm to it. Unfortunately, Cabal clones were only really in vogue in that late '80s/early '90s space, and the beat 'em up gameplay isn't fleshed out or consistently applied enough to be satisfying in a post-Final Fight, post-Streets of Rage world. I'd like to see something like it, but there's no way to bring Duke into the world of modern game design practices without drastic reformulation at a minimum.
Notably, Seibu had really high hopes for Duke, being a passion project and a intended magnum opus. Unfortunately, lukewarm reception brought in poor returns, the company slipped into dire straits, and they were forced to make something simpler and lower stakes as a hail mary. That title - a simple, Toaplan-esque shooter nobody had any real faith in - turned out to be Raiden, which would become a darling in arcades, pushing 17,000 units solds worldwide in the first year after release, and becoming the fifth highest grosser on the Japanese market in 1991. (Beating out some offerings from much bigger players like Konami)
Valve's Artifact Classic card game. I actually found the basic formula to be really fun.
I think this game died for two reasons:
A) The game was review bombed for its monetization (IMO a lot of this was the non-target audience trying it and leaving a bad review)
B) Valve said following the review bombing that they were going to make major changes. This resulted in a lot of Artifact fans (IMO) leaving the game because ... why invested and learn a game that's going to undergo major changes.
So Valve worked on Artifact Foundry (and never finished it) ... before eventually everyone at Valve gave up and released both Artifact Classic and Artifact Foundry for free. The original Artifact Classic is still a great time with a friend and all cards are now totally free so you can build whatever decks you want.
It's basically a AAA studio card game, with cross platform support, released in complete, for free ... because of some poor decision making. Some things may be unbalanced but if you're playing with friends anyways ... just have a friendly agreement to not use the cards that cause problems in your decks. It also could bounce back into active development if it starts to acquire a player base again (because Valve).
Rock Manager. It was very limited in scope and quite short, but it was a really fun game with tons of potential.
I've been unsuccessfully looking for games like it that are as good as it could have been or even as good as it was for over 20 years now.
I was gonna say I was still waiting for a seaman 2, but apparently it existed in Japan. Still, with AI bullshit being all the rage I could see it make a comeback.
Mega Man Legends. Fuck you, Capcom, for killing the blue boy.
A new Command and Conquer Generals. It was a big departure from the classical C&C formula of stuff being built on the UI on the right and more like every other RTS, but it was fun nonetheless. Zero Hour bringing the specialized generals was also a nice idea.
Dunno if it counts as a game, but something like MTV Music Generator on PS1 and PS2 would be awesome, especially with the ease of sharing stuff around nowadays.
There are many Star Wars games that deserve a second chance, but I think Republic Commando could really use the sequels "Imperial Commando" and "Rebel Commando" first. I'd personally love a sequel to Jedi Academy
With all the "boomer shooters" making a comeback, Heretic and Hexen could receive their respective 3rd installments.
Lastly, Virtual On Cyber Troopers. Something that plays like the very first game of 1995, that'd be 😗👌. I think that game is what paved the way for the many Gundam games that play a lot like it - On PC, you can get a taste of that gameplay with Bootfighter Windom XP
Darkstar One. And it is just now getting rereleased, so it doesn't count.
So instead, I'll pick The Legend of Dragoon on PSX. Such a fun RPG that really needs revisited.
Magic carpet 2, the Netherworlds is one I played a ton and think of from time to time. I wonder what I modern remake would be like.
It's the first game I remember playing with deformable terrain.
Legend of Kage for NES was an awesome minimalistic beautiful game and I’ve never met anyone else who thinks so
Uplink
I'd love a new, bigger Darwinia game, loved that back in the day.
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare
It's a shame that it doesn't seem to have that many players anymore. It's a lot like other multi-class shooter games like Overwatch and Paladins, but about three times more crazy and weird, and I had a ton of fun playing it as a teen.
I've heard Garden Warfare 2 is pretty good too though, so I'll consider buying it at some point (when I have money).
Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain. Quite a learning curve, but I loved the different ways you can win (conquest, trade, black ops) and how much you could customize your ships or pick unique races with tolerances for different planets.
Operation: Inner Space
Flying dragon for the N64
Apparently it's very rare but I have a cartridge of it
The music from it was awesome very 1990s
Test Drive Eve of Destruction from the original Xbox and PS2. More recently, Code masters' OnRush.
Dark Savior. I don't think I have ever seen anyone mention this game ever (without googling for it).
Sacrifice. I am so sad it didn't have a bigger impact than it did. What an amazing game.
I'll throw out one from my youth that I think would be really good to see updated:
Sentinel Worlds I: Future Magic. It was a very early space RPG which was way ahead of it's time. Something like the recent Heat Signature kinda reminds me of it, though it lacks the scope and depth of combat.Solar Jetman.
Dragon Valor for Psx.
Circuit's Edge and Ranger X !
A playstation 1 game called Nightmare Creatures.
Pokémon Puzzle League! Building up all the chains felt amazing! It’s a feeling I’ve tried to recreate it other similar games but haven’t found one with such a great implementation.
Blinx the time swipper, haven't seen any other game trying to play with time like that.
Oh, and crimson skies.
Sacrifice
Ngage Bounce Boing Voyage. I played it a couple of times but never finished it. It was great for the time and hardware.
