Obscure Games

Discussion in 'Games' started by SparklySheep, Jan 22, 2016.

  1. SparklySheep

    SparklySheep Void-Bound Voyager

    Discuss any obscure games that you've found or know about. I absolutely love obscure games, even if they are absolutely horrible because they usually do something unique or do something interesting. Now, an obscure game doesn't have to be old or an Indie title, just something that's either been pushed to the wayside or never got a lot of attention. This doesn't mean "underrated" games, though. Usually with an obscure game it's obscure for a reason. Could be a bad launch, weird controls, no one payed attention to it, or it was just plain weird. I'd love to hear what you guys have, I've got a ton of this stuff and I'm actively looking out for more like it.

    To start things off I present: Jump Raven

    This is a game where you hunt down endangered species in a hover car while shooting neo nazis in a 90's cyberpunk future. You get a choice of different co-pilots (Of course you always want to pick Dogstar) and a wide array of weapons. It's pure, distilled, 90's cyberpunk ridiculousness in it's best form.
     
    Last edited: Jan 22, 2016
  2. Jonesy

    Jonesy Sarif's Attack Kangaroo Forum Moderator

    Harbinger.



    I never finished it, sadly. But I really must track down a copy and have another crack at it someday. When I did have it, I spent a lot of time with it.

    Basically, it takes place on this massive slave vessel called the Harbinger. It's controlled by one species, but has numerous others inhabiting it (both as slaves or criminals). You played a sort of mercenary, I think, with three choices of species to play as. I forget the ins and out of the plot, but remember most of the levels. You were gradually going to more and more places, fighting enemies and collecting gear to sell or use. At one point, you kill the captain and go planetside. That's the point I never got passed, since you were Zerg-rushed by insectoid enemies when you did.
     
  3. Barl0we

    Barl0we Phantasmal Quasar

    I don't know if this is so much obscure as just old, but here we go: Normality!



    This is a 3D adventure game from way back when. I remember it as being pretty subversive. I'm fairly sure it's the first game (or piece of media) I enjoyed that featured a bleak, nearly post-apocalyptic future.
     
  4. MitKit

    MitKit Phantasmal Quasar

    Be prepared, this game is old, weird, hard, and unpopular. The game is Blinx, it is also one of my favorite games!

    Here's the intro:
     
    MS_NorthEastern and STCW262 like this.
  5. Geeknerd1337

    Geeknerd1337 Void-Bound Voyager

    Buddhism: The Videogame
     
  6. Kashmir

    Kashmir Giant Laser Beams

    Erik the Unready. It was a DOS based rpg (sort of) game from way back when. Don't even know if it would play on today's computers, but it was one the the funniest games I've played.
     
  7. STCW262

    STCW262 Heliosphere

    Yager. It is an FPS/Flight Sim that takes place in a sci-fi setting. It is notable for it's soundtrack, being really obscure, and having memorable dialogue. The gameplay itself is also quite good, as it involves using two separate flight modes and the usage of secondary fire which barely resembles the primary fire, such as having the Machine Gun's secondary fire use a back-firing turret that shoots missiles and chasing aircraft down.
    Overall, if felt like a pretty good case of a very good game that wasn't popular because it launched quite late.
     
  8. LazerRay

    LazerRay Cosmic Narwhal

    Look up Mr. Robot, its a combination puzzle/platformer and turn-based RPG, with lots of movie and TV references through out the game (related to it's time of development), and the gameplay is not too hard while still being enjoyable.
     
  9. ComatosePhoenix

    ComatosePhoenix Phantasmal Quasar

    Most of my collection is bargain bin junk I have amassed from years of refusing to pay full release price on anything.

    Zoids Legacy: A very bad rpg covered up by a fairly enjoyable combat system. The translation is completely borked and upgrading any of your zoids even slightly throws the difficulty curve into the gutter. however one of the developers knew there stuff and set up several bonus scenarios that are very well balanced and entertaining rpg puzzles.
     
    origamania likes this.
  10. krawky398

    krawky398 Ketchup Robot

    Dunno how many games I know really hit the obscure mark, but I'll give it a try.

    So, do the Ys games count? A long-running series of fantastic and challenging action RPGs with amazing soundtracks that started on the PC-88 in 1987 that's still going pretty well today, with a fair few games being available on Steam, so I recommend giving them a look!

    If not that, there's Doraemon 3: Nobita to Toki no Hogyoku (Nobita and the Jewel of Time), for the Super Famicom. Obviously, it's a Japan only game, based off the popular Doraemon franchise. I got to play this during a game exchange wherein we paired up people and we all gave each other a game to play. And this one left a pretty good impression on me that I really like it to this day. It's a platformer action game with some RPG-like elements in collecting money to buy equips to power up your attacks, defense, and speed, as well as finding health upgrades. You also get five different characters to play as, all with different attacks and abilities. It's pretty fun! (although you might need a walkthrough because of the whole Japanese thing)
     
  11. Connorses

    Connorses Big Damn Hero

    I was gonna do Gish, since it's an indie physics-game where you're literally a ball of tar, but that's on Steam for $10 now so it doesn't quite fit the bill. At least, not as well as...

    Silmar! The tough-as-nails procedurally generated dungeon crawler. The friend who introduced me to it tells me he had played it on-and-off for over a year before he beat the "Demo Version" which lets you get halfway through the game. I actually like some of it's mechanics a lot, particularly the way it is turn-based, but not locked to an ortho grid. A little heads-up: This one is Java-based; it still runs in newer versions of Java, but with the rather serious glitch of making the menu buttons unreadable, so if you know how to force it to use an older Java, more power to you. http://www.dunjax.com/silmar/
     
  12. Vith

    Vith Cosmic Narwhal

  13. Zerukoba

    Zerukoba Pangalactic Porcupine

    To my knowledge no one know about http://dan-ball.jp/en/ or at the very least never talk about it. A Japanese/Chinese dev (forgot which) been updating the site on every Friday with maybe an exception of one day per year and the games are completely free. They used to be java games but due to Chrome trying to push java out they are now HTML5 with an option of switching back to java if you wish. The games are in English so you can understand them completely fine. Stick Ranger imo would be the best game of all of them but of course it is up to debate as the site was originally known for just the Powder Game.

    The games are decent, more so being free and with updates still coming in even to this day but I wouldn't give up a good game on Steam for any of them. The main reason I am posting it though is because it does something interesting. The site have a community as you can share uploads from the powder game, some of them being complex Rube Goldberg machines (complex machine made to do a simple task), others being pixel art that take up the whole screen and the rest are often challenges. Stick Ranger while a single player game can allow you to upload your team to fight other uploaded teams. The website will keep tracks of your wins and you can set yourself a goal of a perfect ranking team.

    I used to spend my younger years on that site, in a way I guess how kids nowadays ate up anything Minecraft I did the same just with that site. Make it very hard to complain about kids wasting their time with their choice of entertainment.

    Edit: http://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/bit/ 100bit deserve it own spotlight though. You get 100 pixels per day which you can use to turn a white pixel black or vice versa. You must draw while other people can draw around you using the same screen. Over the years the games had produce interesting full screen images. Do check out the history of it below of the game itself if you are a fan of art.

    Few example: [​IMG] Note this took a large group of players to agree on to be able to make.
     
    Last edited: May 1, 2016
    ComatosePhoenix likes this.
  14. Mister Pixel

    Mister Pixel Big Damn Hero

    It has to be Planescape: Torment. I played that game a long while ago, and even though it's pretty old I still enjoyed it. Some of the original developers have released a spiritual successor to this game on Steam called Torment: Tides of Numenera, which I recently reviewed.

     
  15. Vilespring

    Vilespring Subatomic Cosmonaut

    I loved Red Alert 2 and the Yuri's Revenge expansion, a Command an Conquer title by Westwood. An RTS game that was fun, ungodly fast paced, and (decently) balanced. Yes, decently... *glares at prism tank*
    [​IMG]
    ^^ The imbalanced jerk himself. (well, 3 of them. They're only a problem when there's about 20 of them)

    It's an oldie but a goodie, just like Battlefield 1942.
     
    Jonesy likes this.
  16. Lukea153

    Lukea153 Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    Here's a really old gem that is not well known for the NES era.

    If Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and a arcade space shooter had a baby this would be it.
    The game features a somewhat obscure story-line along with open map exploration elements like LoZ and backtracking simmer-ally to Metroid. In certain areas you play as a fighter and shoot your way through enemies in an arcade style shooter. The music is okay, could be better, and the intro shooter colors are too bland. Overall a decent game though neglected in popularity by bigger titles.
     
  17. crazyroosterman

    crazyroosterman Hey, You!

    heres something even though i haven't actualy played it out of my followed data base http://store.steampowered.com/app/374620 a game about being in a hospital diagnosing people....yea i know not the most exiting sounding of concepts and probably one of the reasons it practicly nothing among other things like the hundreds of other games that get put on to steam daily and the difficulty of marketing as a small team but it looks intresting and its been on my wish list for a while but the games looks fantastic and something I really want to play some time in the future.
     
    asimplesean likes this.
  18. Skelozard1

    Skelozard1 Phantasmal Quasar

    [​IMG]
    Is it there anybody who can tell where this is from?
     
  19. Jonesy

    Jonesy Sarif's Attack Kangaroo Forum Moderator

    Is it LSD: Dream Emulator, by any chance?
     
  20. Skelozard1

    Skelozard1 Phantasmal Quasar

    Yes it is :p
     

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