Favorite Obscure Non-Indie Games

[Abscissa]

Yet another "Favorite _____" thread ;).

I think this might be interesting. What, if any, are your favorite games that are not indie, but still obscure, unpopular, or just plain odd-ball?

My list:
- Rez (PS2)
- Stretch Panic (PS2): More of a tech-demo than a full-fledged game, but pretty interesting game from Treasure.
- Mad Maestro (PS2): Music-based game centering around orchestra conducting.
- Katamari Damacy (PS2)
- Antigrav (PS2)
- Frequency (PS2)
- Silpheed (PS2): Remake of a SegaCD space-shooter.
- Battle Engine Aquila (XBox)
- Sin and Punishment / Tsumi to Batsu (N64): Japan-only shooter from Treasure similar-ish to Cabal and Space Harrier.
- Sonic CD (Sega CD): Best Sonic game aside from Sonic 2.
- Lunar: The Silver Star (Sega CD): Menu-based RPG. I haven't played the Playstation remake.
- Willy Beamish (Sega CD): Adventure game based on an obsessive gamer.
- Mercs (Genesis/Arcade): Action-shooter.
- Dynamite Headdy (Genesis): Another treasure from Treasure.
- Contra: Hard Corps (Genesis): The only Contra game that could possibly be considered 'obscure' (Aside from Contra Force).
- Uniracers (SNES): Unicycles race and do tricks (no joke!).
- Out of this World (SNES)
- Startropics (NES): Action-RPG.
- Battletoads (NES): Excellent Action-Adventure from Rare.
- Captain Skyhawk (NES)
- Dragon Spirit (NES/TurboGraphics16): Overhead shooter with a dragon instead of a space ship.
- Super GloveBall (NES): 3D Breakout designed with the Power Glove in mind.
- Moonbase Commander (Win95+): Very well done turn-based strategy.
- Lode Runner: The Legend Returns (Win3.1+): Sierra/Dynamix's Lode Runner remake.
- Worms series (Many platforms): 'Lemmings' meets 'Artillery'. The original (for DOS) is really obscure.
- Lemmings Chronicles (DOS): The third in the series. The job system works differently, making the solutions to puzzles work differently.
- Space Chase (DOS): Side-scrolling EGA platformer.
- God of Thunder (DOS): Similar to Zelda.
- Heaven and Earth (DOS): A puzzle game. Lots of IQ-test-ish stuff.
- 2400AD (Apple II): An RPG I was never very good at but played anyway ;)

[impossible]

I assume freeware, flash and opensource games are still indie, and therefore not eligible.

- Snatcher (Sega CD) (just started playing it a few days ago and man, it's awesome).
- Princess Maker 2 (PC).
- True Love (PC).
- Sega Marine Fishing (DC).
- Parappa the Rappa (PS).
- Metal Warriors (SNES).
- Soul Blazer (SNES).

Home of the Underdogs is a great site :).

[cliffski]

giants on PC, great fun.

[Midnight Synergy]

- I second Moonbase Commander. Loved that game.

Has anyone seen info on Wanda and the Giant (i think that's the name)... what an interesting looking game. It's a platformer on which you have to scale a variety of gigantic walking machines/monsters. Don't think it's out yet.

[Dan MacDonald]

Rock'n'Roll Racing by Silicone'n'synapse..er.. Blizzard :)

Enfo's Team Survival mod for Warcraft3

EDIT:
I saw syndicate pop up down below, wow.. that was one awesome game. Chalk me up for syndicate as well.

[Rebrehc's Industries]

I second Lode Runner and add Lode Runner 3D.

[lakibuk]

Space Station Silicon Valley (N64).
One of the most original action-puzzle games i played. It even has humor which is rarely found in video games.

[BantamCityGames]

I used to play a game called Fantasy Empires based on a D&D world if I remember correctly. It was a turn-based strategy game and I would have played it for years but it didn't limit the game speed so it ran really really fast on anything above a 486.

[Cartman]

Populous(PC)
Lemmings(Amiga)
Syndicate(PC)
XCom(PC)
Powerstone(Dreamcast)
Leisure Suite Larry(PC)

[lakibuk]

@Cartman: Good games but wouldn't call these obscure or unpopular.

[Cartman]

Good point. I should spend more time reading the title. :)

[milieu]

Four Crystals of Travere, aka Legend.
Sentinel Worlds.
D-Generation.
Neuromancer.
Jagged Alliance - hey, the first one was pretty obscure. ;)
Nightmare on Elm Street.
Darklands.
Sundog.

[Abscissa]

- I second Moonbase Commander. Loved that game.

Has anyone seen info on Wanda and the Giant (i think that's the name)... what an interesting looking game. It's a platformer on which you have to scale a variety of gigantic walking machines/monsters. Don't think it's out yet.
Holy crap, another person that's actually heard of Moonbase Commander! :D

Yea, I've heard of Wanda and the Giant. That's supposed to be a sort of sequel or follow-up to Ico. (Ico was good too). Looks interesting.

[exepotes]

- definitely "Sentinel", and its remakes: "Sentinel Returns" and "Sentry".
- Out of Order, a nice freeware Graphic Adventure.

[PoV]

I swear we just had a thread just like this, but meh. Mine from the last thread, plus a few more.

7th Cross - Dreamcast - Very unique game about evolution, but an awful as all hell game to play off the bat. You essentially start the game as a fish, and need to figure out you need to eat some plants to grow up. Then when you get to a certain size, you can begin to fight other sea life, and get on land. Eventually you gain enough points to begin researching possible evolutions of arms, legs, body, head, but it's by using this seemingly random interface of colors. Much further in the game, it actually gets cool as you get sets of parts that unlock special abilities when combined, get magic, and you fight crazy anime mecha like biological monsters and stuff.

Katamari Damacy - PS2 - Awesomeness. Play it for the first time in a surround sound setup, with a big TV or projector and the volume cranked. If there was anything to make someone question everything you ever thought was a unique or fun game, it's that.

Cookie and Cream - PS2 - Unique 3d platformer of sorts. Each analog stick controls a character, but the game stinks.

Umi Hara Kawa Se - SNES or PS1 - Sweet 2D platformer with a rope that hooks on to things and bends around everything. Ok, this description is hardly doing it justice, but it's damn cool.

Stretch Panic - PS2 - Another unique one where you grab on to vertices and hurt enemies like you would by stretching an elastic band (and releasing). Very unique, but a dry game.

Gobliiins - PC - Funky adventure'ish game on the PC with 3 crazy goblin dudes that do different things to solve a puzzle. Yeah, it's like the lost vikings of adventure games.

Neuromancer - C64 - Yeah, was already mentioned, but it's still the coolest cyberpunk game I've played, not to mention being based on 'the' book. It plays like an adventure game, until you start hacking the internet and fighting ICE programs in cyberspace. It's probably not a very good game at all, but it's a totally different take on a cyberpunk game that it feels extremely fresh and original.

System Shock 2 - PC - The only game I'll admit scared me (once), and the only shooter I can say I actually cared about each and every bullet in my ammo reserve. Classic.

Frankie goes to Hollywood - C64 - The most bizarre game ever, before Katamari that is. You run around, sort of implicitly doing a sort of detective work. You discover stuff, and I guess the point of the game is to become more human and possibly solve a murder... or give a cat it's milk... I havn't figured out yet. It sports a number of funky minigames you play to gain more humanity, and the stuff in the world tends to get all reshuffled every time it begins. Classic C64 SID soundtrack too.

Cliffhanger - C64 - Crazy game where you aparently do movie stunts. The movie your doing stunts for is a sort of loony toons meets a western, so it's all crazy desert cave formations and stuff, and big heavy things and explosives. The game is equally horrible in it's own right, but it quite unique.

Disgaea - PS2 - It's the tactical RPG that restored interest in RPG's for me (at least tactical ones). It's also the only game I can think of that's actually funny, in an anime sort of way. Well voiced, and I love the art style. Like a tame Invader Zim. If you asked me what my favorite recent game would be, I'd hit you with this and Katamari, so haha... you get 2 instead of 1.

Animal Crossing - Gamecube - Is it a game? The world will never know.

Pikmin - Gamecube - This is the game it took me to regard Miyamoto as a designer to respect.

Super Monkey Ball - Gamecube - Amusement Vision does it right.

Ribbit King - PS2 or Gamecube - Frolf, Golf with frogs. You team up with you pal a picknick basket to whack frogs like there's no tomorrow. Sure, it gets old fast, but it's crazy.

Magic Pengel - PS2 - Pokemon like game, but you draw 3D mosters. If you've ever seen the funky 3D modeler Teddy, this is the game that uses it.

Tony Hawk - Everything - Sure, Activision's milking the franchise for everything it's got, but it singlehandedly reinvented (or invented depending on your opinion of snowboarding games) the extreme sports genre. I'll take Tony over pretty much any 3D platformer any day.

Okage: Shadow King - PS2 - Ok, I like for the art and the horrible dialog. It's unique for probably all the wrong reasons.

Shadowrun - SNES - If you've played it, you know why. The other side of cyberpunk.

[Badman]

/me rubs his hands together...

ICO (SCEJ, PS2) - I've got lots of friends who don't "get" this game. To me, playing through Ico is like playing through one of those surreal fairy tales I used to read as a child. It's an inredibly evocative experience, and the fact that the gameplay is solid only makes things better.

Beyond Good & Evil (UbiSoft, GameCube) - This game was horribly mistitled (what the HELL is it with French companies naming their games after essays by Nietzsche?) and even more horribly marketed. It's basically an action-adventure game solidly in the Zelda camp, but with a very unusual setting, a great heroine (who doesn't have big breasts), and an interesting plot. Wish this game had sold enough to justify a sequel, because the ending was left wide open...

Katamari Damacy (Namco, PS2) - Including this game is debatable, EVERYBODY in game development knows about this game now, and it has been commercially successful at this point. Still, I mean...I love this game. It's a fantastic game. For one thing, it's really relaxing (once you know how to play it well) so it's great to come home after a long day coding and roll a whole Japanese village up into a ball.

Grandia II (Game Arts, DreamCast) - THE best RPG the DreamCast ever had, with THE best combat system I've ever seen for a console RPG. If you want to play this game, do NOT buy the PS2 or PC versions; they are both buggy as hell! Plop down $30 for a used DreamCast; you'll be glad you did.

Jet Set Radio (Sega, Dreamcast) - Until Tony Hawk 3 came out, this was my skating game of choice. It's a very different game from Hawk, you don't have to balance your grinds and tricking is dirt-simple. The fun comes from the objectives you have to complete and seeing how many tricks you can do in one combo. Plus it's got a fantastic graphical style and controls really well (except for one minor annoyance, but it wasn't bad enough to keep me from beating the game twice).

System Shock 2 (Irrational, PC) - This game came out and died an unworthy death. For one thing, it was just built on the wrong engine - the Thief engine was over three years old when this game was made, and its editor ran in DOS, for crying out loud. Thus, the game is graphically limited, with most in-game characters having "dolphin feet". If it had been built on the Unreal engine like Deus Ex, I have no doubt it could have shared in Deus Ex' success, because I don't know a single person who liked Deus Ex who didn't also like System Shock 2.

Freedom Force (Irrational, PC) - Continuing their streak of creating fantastic games that just do not hit it big in the marketplace, Irrational released this, the very first REALLY GOOD superhero game. It's actually an RTS/RPG hybrid, it plays really well and has a nice, comic-bookish graphical style. And the second one is due out soon!

Golden Sun (Camelot Co., Game Boy Advance) - Very nice RPG for the the GBA that very few people have heard of. It's quite pretty, has a great combat system and has a couple very interesting twists (one of the characters who joins your party can read people's minds!)

Hmmm...may have more later, we'll see.

[Badman]

Tony Hawk - Everything - Sure, Activision's milking the franchise for everything it's got, but it singlehandedly reinvented (or invented depending on your opinion of snowboarding games) the extreme sports genre. I'll take Tony over pretty much any 3D platformer any day.

Okage: Shadow King - PS2 - Ok, I like for the art and the horrible dialog. It's unique for probably all the wrong reasons.


For the record, the GBA versions of Tony Hawk 3 and 4 are surprisingly good - they capture the feel of the big versions really well. I was impressed.

And I played Okage: Shadow King. It was...well, it was ew. There's a reason it didn't make my list :)

[Abscissa]

I can't believe I forgot these ones:
Shogo (Win): Anime-styled FPS. Awesome :). I was so dissapointed that the mission-pack was cancelled.

Sin (Win): Quake 2-engne FPS released around the time of Half-Life 1. I actually liked it better than HL (Despite the notoriously buggy initial release). Although the main bad guy, Elexis Sinclair, was nothing short of obnoxious.

Strife (DOS): RPG-ish FPS built on the Doom engine. I loved it.

Daikatana (Win): I'm fairly certain I'm the only person in the world that didn't hate it. ;)

Rise of the Triad (DOS): FPS from Apogee based on taking the Wolf3D engine as far as it could possibly go. I had soooo much fun with this game.

Boppin' (DOS): Puzzle game from Apogee.

Clyde's Adventure and Clyde's Revenge (DOS): Side-scrolling platformer with no enemies, oddly enough. But suprisingly fun :)

Any DOS side-scroller from Apogee

I've played Beyond Good and Evil, but I really have mixed feelings about it. There's a lot about it that was incredibly good (And I did really enjoy playing through, twice), but a number of things kept bothering me:

- It falls into the all-too-common trap of placing way too much emphasis on long-winded, self-absorbed, unskippable cutscenes (It's a game, not a movie, damnit!!).
- The controls were a tad unresponsive.
- Parts of the final boss were poorly designed and ended up far more frustrating than fun (First time I ever threw a controller!).
- Once you go to the final mission, you realize too late that it's impossible to go back and finish the side-quests, unless you just happened to have an extra game save just before the mission.
- Way too short. I don't normally mind short games, but this one was just screaming "epic".
- The whole (short) game is given away right from the beginning. As soon as you beat the first mission, you're told what the next three missions are, you beat those, and then you're done. No major setbacks are encountered, and it all goes pretty much exactly as planned. What kind of of plot is that? A very anti-climatic one.
- Camera problems.
- A few framerate hiccups even on the XBox version.

I agree that the name and marketing were pretty bad. That reminds me though: The line "Safe in its shell, the precious pearl is the slave of the currents.", does anyone know if that is from Nietzsche or is it just from the game itself?

[Abscissa]

For the record, the GBA versions of Tony Hawk 3 and 4 are surprisingly good - they capture the feel of the big versions really well. I was impressed.
Really? I should try them, I was very unimpressed with the GBA version of THPS 2. Did they improve the controls?

[Badman]

Oooh, yes, that last boss was a buttpain. Hmmm...I guess you're right that there was no shocking plot twist or change-up in the plot (except for the revelation about Jade's origin at the end). Guess I just didn't notice :)

And I kind of had a feeling that once I got out in space I wouldn't be coming back; that didn't really bother me. And yes, it would have been better longer, but then I say that about almost every game except Doom 3 - the only game I've ever seen that would have been better SHORTER.

[Badman]

Really? I should try them, I was very unimpressed with the GBA version of THPS 2. Did they improve the controls?

Hmmm...well, I didn't play 2, but it was done by the same dev house (Vicarious Visions) and used the same engine, so...if you didn't like 2 you probably won't like the others either. I thought the controls were maybe a little sluggish compared to the console versions, but it wasn't that bad, and most of my THPS3 skills carried right over; I was doing 100,000+ point combos within minutes.

[Reactor]

Daikatana (Win): I'm fairly certain I'm the only person in the world that didn't hate it.

I actually enjoyed it as well :) Shogo rocked too.

[Diragor]

Most of mine have already been mentioned, but here are the ones I like that are underrated, obscure or otherwise not as popular as I think they should be:

SiN
Shogo
No One Lives Forever
Giants: Citizen Kabuto (multiplayer is a blast, too)
Sam and Max Hit The Road (I think that's the full title)

[Winterwolf]

Lode Runner again.

[3dben]

The versions im referring to are either Amiga, C64 or Colecovision (in that order).

- Jumpman
- Jumpman Jr.
- B.C.'s Quest for Tires I & II
- Venture
- Zepplin
- Leander
- Archon I & II
- Captain Blood
- The Killing Game Show
- Shadow of the Beast I-III

...Thats enough for now I imagine.

-=ben

[Chris Evans]

Dynamite Heady (Genesis) - Excellent platformer. It's a shame it didn't get more attention back in the day.

Seaman (Dreamcast) - The Dreamcast introduced a lot of quirky and unique games and Seaman pretty much exemplified this. I was hooked on this game for several weeks and the voice of Leonard Nimoy was great.

NiGHTS (Saturn) - It's a shame Sega never made a sequel to this game. I still play the rare Christmas disc every once in awhile.

Panzer Dragoon Saga (Saturn) - This is a very hard to find game. But if you do manage to find it, you'll be treated to one of the best RPGs in the 32bit generation.

Animal Crossing (Gamecube) - This game has really nice charm to it. My whole family plays it.

Daytona 2/Super GT (Arcade) - Two excellent racers that happened to come out just as the arcade industry in the US was falling to pieces.

Zoop (Snes) - I think this is the name of the game. It was a cool unicycle game for the Snes before Donkey Kong Country came out.

[Abscissa]

Dynamite Heady (Genesis) - Excellent platformer. It's a shame it didn't get more attention back in the day.Yup, Treasure is king :)

NiGHTS (Saturn) - It's a shame Sega never made a sequel to this game. I still play the rare Christmas disc every once in awhile.Hmm, as much as I've tried this game (not the Christmas disc), I've never quite been able to really get into it. It's one of those things that I really *want* to like, but haven't succeeded yet.

Animal Crossing (Gamecube) - This game has really nice charm to it. My whole family plays it.I always thought they should make a dentistry-themed version of that, just so they could call it "Animal Flossing" :D

Daytona 2/Super GT (Arcade) - Two excellent racers that happened to come out just as the arcade industry in the US was falling to pieces.God I miss arcades soooo much... :(. Always just assumed they'd be around forever. Kinda breaks my heart...

Zoop (Snes) - I think this is the name of the game. It was a cool unicycle game for the Snes before Donkey Kong Country came out.
Zoop was one of those fast-pased puzzle games involving shapes/colors(sorta like columns or klax). I think the unicycle game you're thinking about is Uniracers. I had a lot of fun with it too.