Great games no one played

[Dew]

Lately I've been bored and I've been going through a lot of Xbox games and there sure is a lot of them that were great games, just not many people have heard of them. I thought it'd be interesting to compare and discuss obscure games that weren't very popular but are still great games.

Here's a few that come to mind for me.

Beyond Good & Evil - Think Zelda with stealth...kinda. This game is pretty much synonymous with this topic.

Psychonauts - A little cheesy but very creative. Plays great, funny dialog as well. Where is the milk man?

Stubbs The Zombie In Rebel Without A Pulse - Hilarious game made with the Halo engine. Amazing soundtrack too, basically it's newer artists covering 50's songs.

[APE]

Hybrid Heaven and Body Harvest for the N64.

[Veggita2099]

Gold Rush for the PC. ITs a very old (like 1988ish) adventure game made very similar to the old kings quest and space quest games. I remember getting a lot of hours out of the game. Thing is if you try to download the cracked abandonware version it won't work. There is certain events that take place on a timer and newer PC's for some reason can't seem to work with it.

[melancholy]

The Neverhood. It's depressing how very few people have actually heard of this wonderful, wonderful game.

[Egotistical EvilN]

Shogo:Mobile Armor Division

Giant robot, loads of enemies, powerful weapons, great level design. Classic FPS with robots.

[melancholy]

Shogo:Mobile Armor Division

Giant robot, loads of enemies, powerful weapons, great level design. Classic FPS with robots.

Man, I got that game bundled with Septera's Core. I hated it. Perhaps if I would have played it back in it's prime, I might have appreciated it more, but trying it two years ago had me uninstalling it after about an hour.

[lackofsense]

vice: project doom for the NES
I thought it was a great game that played well.

[linlinlol]

Gold Rush for the PC. ITs a very old (like 1988ish) adventure game made very similar to the old kings quest and space quest games. I remember getting a lot of hours out of the game. Thing is if you try to download the cracked abandonware version it won't work. There is certain events that take place on a timer and newer PC's for some reason can't seem to work with it.

dosbox

Shogo:Mobile Armor Division

Giant robot, loads of enemies, powerful weapons, great level design. Classic FPS with robots.

otaku scum shouldnt make games

anyway, i'd say

THE SPEED RUMBLER from CAPCOM

[Code-Red]

Shogo:Mobile Armor Division

Giant robot, loads of enemies, powerful weapons, great level design. Classic FPS with robots.

No, Shogo sucked. Sucked hard.

The Neverhood. It's depressing how very few people have actually heard of this wonderful, wonderful game.

Yea man, Neverhood was awesome. One of the first claymation games for PC (that monkey game came afterwords...)




I nominate Halloween Harry.

[not just souLLy now]

It's fairly well known but how Life Force: Salamander isn't at the top of every NES game top 10 list astounds me

[DaMadFiddler]

Lately I've been bored and I've been going through a lot of Xbox games and there sure is a lot of them that were great games, just not many people have heard of them. I thought it'd be interesting to compare and discuss obscure games that weren't very popular but are still great games.

Here's a few that come to mind for me.

Beyond Good & Evil - Think Zelda with stealth...kinda. This game is pretty much synonymous with this topic.

Psychonauts - A little cheesy but very creative. Plays great, funny dialog as well. Where is the milk man?

Whenever there's an article or a feature or a commentary piece on this topic, these two games always make an appearance. I have both; BG&E was incredible, and Psychonauts was fun, but I think it gets a little more credit than it's due.

The Neverhood. It's depressing how very few people have actually heard of this wonderful, wonderful game.

I actually used to have that game, but I didn't get very far. I first found out about it on a demo disc that also contained a Myst-alike, starring a character who can never die, but whose memory and body are an absolute mess as a result of all the suicide attempts.

Here are mine:

Ninja Five-O - GBA
It was an obscure GBA release, which borrows heavily from games like Shinobi and Ninja Gaiden. Felt like a really good late NES / early SNES game.

Gex - Saturn, PlayStation, 3DO
The more common 2nd and 3rd installments felt like "me too" 3D mascot platformers, but the oft-overlooked original (2D) game was a lot of fun with great art direction and good design. I used to have it for Saturn, and I'll definitely buy this if it gets released on the Playstation Store.

Kingdom Crusade - Gameboy
An obscure action/strategy game for GBA. It felt like a cross between chess, Risk, and Golden Axe, and I spent a lot of time playing it. I always wanted to play it against someone else, but I never found anyone else who'd heard of it, much less owned a copy...by the time I was done, I could best the computer in any scenario at any level.

Space Channel 5 - Dreamcast, PS2, GBA
I'm sure most of the people *here* have played this game, but hardly anyone else has. It was a retail flop. I just finished playing through the PS2 "Special Edition" (which includes both games).

Scurge: Hive - DS
This game is like a cross between Metroid and Boktai/Lunar Knights. Imagine Super Metroid with an isometric view, and you pretty much get the idea.

Raptor: Call of the Shadows - PC
Actually, this one was probably popular enough that it doesn't belong here...it was one of the later titles of the Apogee shareware era, so a lot of people at least had the demo. This is the game that really got me hooked on vertical shooters, though, and it's still one of the best.

Sqrxz - PC, GBC, calculators
Again, this one did achieve some popularity--but only amongst certain circles. The game was an obscure PC puzzle-platformer, which was adapted to Texas Instruments graphing calculators in the late 1990s as a free release, with a level editor. The coder who created the TI version then created a (freely downloadable) Gameboy Color version, to test his technique for breaking the GBC's color barrier.

Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy - GameCube, PS2, Xbox
This game gets a bum rap, but it was a really fun Zelda-style game from the middle of the last console generation. It had beautiful art direction, a decent story, good game design, and everything about it just felt very polished. This was one of the titles (along with the versions of Monkey Ball and Sonic they did for GBA) that made me believe THQ could actually be a quality game company.

[Ex-Cyber]

Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy - GameCube, PS2, Xbox
This game gets a bum rap, but it was a really fun Zelda-style game from the middle of the last console generation. It had beautiful art direction, a decent story, good game design, and everything about it just felt very polished. This was one of the titles (along with the versions of Monkey Ball and Sonic they did for GBA) that made me believe THQ could actually be a quality game company.

To add to the weirdness, the development studio behind that game (Eurocom Entertainment Software) has done mostly ports and movie/TV license games. That combined with a publisher like THQ would seem like the perfect recipe for a worthless game.

edit: the GBA Sonic games were apparently developed by Dimps, the company behind the Rumble Fish series on Atomiswave and tons of anime license games on various platforms, which also seems to employ a bunch of ex-SNK people. Aside from the Sammy connection, that's pretty weird.

[melancholy]

Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy - GameCube, PS2, Xbox
This game gets a bum rap, but it was a really fun Zelda-style game from the middle of the last console generation. It had beautiful art direction, a decent story, good game design, and everything about it just felt very polished. This was one of the titles (along with the versions of Monkey Ball and Sonic they did for GBA) that made me believe THQ could actually be a quality game company.

...really? I used to see that game laying on store shelves all the time, but would always pass it by because it looked like it would be terrible.

[RMD]

Internal Sector

[melancholy]

It's kinda hard making this list, since many of the overlooked games I can think of are not so overlooked to most of you (ICO, Indigo Prophecy, and Phoenix Wright were the first things to come to mind). At any rate, here are a few more I sure most of you have heard of, but probably haven't played:

Robot Alchemic Drive - This game definitely shows its age nowadays, but back in its prime, it was amazing controlling a 100 foot tall mech and tromping through a city, leveling buildings and fighting huge monsters. The sense of scale in the game is immense. It's too bad the story and voice acting sucked so bad.

Dragon Warrior VII - Sure, everyone knows how DQ8 is one of the best, if not the best, RPG on the PS2. But how many of you have actually played this PSX classic? The graphics are horribly dated, the battle system is archaic, and the sound is simplistic. But what it lacks in presentation, it makes up in story and heart. Each island you save is a new story in itself, every island finished is like finishing a mini-RPG. And a few of the island have better stories than some full length RPG's I've played. Solid proof that graphics don't make the game.

Ape Escape 2 - The first Ape Escape felt like a technical demo for the Dual Shock. Ape Escape 2, however, takes the established Dual Shock system and improves on it in every way, creating an amazing and hilarious platform game. I had more fun with this game than some of the bigger name platformers (namely Jak 2 & 3, and all the Ratchet and Clanks).

Atelier Iris - A very traditional RPG. It didn't have a stellar story, but the lighthearted characters improved the story in every way. Definitely worth playing through.

Puzzle Quest - What a bizarre game. Half Bejeweled, half RPG, this game takes two completely unrelated genres and combines them so seamlessly that it totally took me by surprise how addictive this game can become. Even a person like me that typically hates puzzle games became instantly enthralled in this game.

Klonoa - Doesn't matter which one. From the action-oriented console versions to the puzzle-oriented handheld versions, all of them are fantastic. It never ceases to amaze me how this incredible series can be this consistently good from game to game, yet continues to be overlooked by the public. Even the freakin' volleyball spinoff was excellent.

[Lartrak]

I'd like to second Vice: Project Doom. Very solid NES game, probably the best "discovery" game I've made on the NES in the past 4 or 5 years.

[Covar]

don't know how much this one counts, but Blast Corps the n64

i would love a sequel to this.

[MulletMan13]

don't know how much this one counts, but Blast Corps the n64

i would love a sequel to this.

Yesssssssss!

[not just souLLy now]

don't know how much this one counts, but Blast Corps the n64

i would love a sequel to this.

Yesssssssss!

truth

[sixteen-bit]

Psychonauts, eh?