What's your favorite game you never hear anybody talk about?

In certain circles it is well known, but Baba Is You is one of the most ingenious games for a long while and should be known even wider.

Rise of Nations. It's like Civilization but as a real-time strategy game and I really enjoy it. Microsoft actually released an updated edition in 2014 which was good of them but I basically never hear anyone actually talk about it which sucks because it's such a cool game. The single-player Conquer the World campaigns are also cool, and have some elements reminiscent of the classic Risk board game.

There's also Star Trek: Bridge Commander, which is often mentioned in discussions of "what Star Trek games were good?" but not much outside of that context. It strikes a perfect balance between having starship combat that really feels like you're commanding a ship with a lot of mass behind it and actually being fun and easy for an average person to pick up and play (which is where stuff like the X Universe games fall down). There are tons of "space fighter" games out there but I've never really seen anything that captures space capital ship combat as well as Bridge Commander.

Return of the Obra Dinn is an amazing game that I wish I could play again for the first time. The art style is super unique and the attention to detail in every aspect of the game is incredible.

Highly recommend.

American McGee’s Alice and the much later sequel which is my favourite game of all time - Alice: Madness Returns.

The aesthetic, the puzzles, the sound design, the voice acting, the political statements underlying the narrative, Alice’s outfits, the collectibles hidden in obscure places, the different art styles for each world level. I just love it! I mean sure, the combat mechanics are not as complex as some games but they fit nicely into Alice in Wonderland lore and if you up the difficulty settings it can be more challenging.

I’m also really enjoying Inscryption at the moment. A puzzle/card game interweaved with an escape the room horror story.

Among all the love Bioware gets for KotOR and Mass Effect I'm genuinely surprised more people aren't talking about Jade Empire.

It's a full fledged classic Bioware RPG set in an interesting world based on Chinese mythology, has some great characters and a fun (if simple) combat system. Voice acting is mostly good too, especially for a 2005 game and it even has John Cleese doing a part!

I loved it when it came out and am stumped as to why it never became a BioWare mainstay. Maybe releasing as an exclusive for the original Xbox just killed it, but if you enjoy this style of RPG I highly recommend checking it out!

Any love for the Monkey Island series here?

Planetside 2 - someone else already mentioned it here, but it's the only game in it's genre and nothing else really comes close to what it offers (persistent 1v1v1 +300 player battles across infantry, land, air, and sea). It's been kicking for over a decade now and I'm not sure what could replace it if or when it finally kicks it. It's truly singular, and responsible for some of my fondest memories in gaming. It's also free!

My Summer Car. It's probably still #1 for play time on Steam for me. I bought a whole-ass racing wheel setup just for that game.

Black and White, it was a god simulator on PC in 2001. You interact with your villagers and the world as a floating hand, casting spells to raise faith in villages or throwing rocks to smite as necessary. You also got a giant pet that you could train to do your bidding.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_%26_White_(video_game)

Crimson Skies for OG Xbox. It’s pirates in planes dogfighting, we need a remake badly.

One Must Fall 2097, an awesome robot fighting game for DOS, which is quite different from every other fighting game, because in this one you have to select both pilots and the robots, and each pilot and robot have their own specialities and back stories, so it makes for a lot more interesting gameplay compared to other games in this genre.

Mine is definitely Freelancer. The game by Chris Roberts that actually got finished by firing him.

I love that game, the story is engaging and the characters are likeable.

I'm probably just seeing it with nostalgia but I like to play it until this day. I installed it on my Steam Deck and gave it a go. It was awesome.

Legend of Dragoon for PS1. It has the single best timed-input RPG combat system of any game ever. Think Mario RPG but way better.

GUST OF WIND DANCE!

Hard to settle on just one. In no order:

• ChuChu Rocket (Dreamcast): insanely fun and manic couch multiplayer game
• A10 Tank Killer II: Silent Thunder (PC): the soundtrack alone justifies the time to play this aging flight sim
• Virtual On (Arcade): this was ported to Saturn and the port is good, but the giant arcade machine is where it's really at with dual twin stick cockpits
• Mario Paint (SNES): Really fun non-game from a time when non-games were uncommon on home consoles. I have hundreds of hours into this
• Dungeon Keeper (PC): darkly comedic evil dungeon lord management sim. I will never forgive EA for what they did to Bullfrog and subsequently the DK franchise. There have been many attempted homages and clones but none have captured the magic.
• Super Tennis (SNES): an actually fun tennis game
• Super Play Action Football (SNES): football game with a unique isometric view
• Hank Parker's Super Black Bass 2 (SNES): super fun fishing sim. I wish there were games like this today that took fishing more seriously and less arcadey.
• Brain Age (DS): a genuine sensation in its heyday and largely forgotten now. Really showed off the potential of the DS
• Cel Damage (GameCube): twisted metal with zany little cel shaded cartoon characters. Never got the respect it deserved and probably never will since they butchered the game's balance with the HD re-release

CrossCode. It's an SNES-style action RPG with very fun combat, 2D-Zelda-like puzzles, and a genuinely charming well-written story that was made in HTML5 and JavaScript for some reason. It is genuinely my favorite game of all time. I habitually proselyte this game to friends, but check it out for the love of God

Mine would be tunic , It feels like top down old school Zelda but puzzles that will blow your mind when you get the context. If you haven't played tunic before don't watch any review just buy the game and play it.

This is a 10/10 game where I wish to forget about it to play this again.

Golden sun and its sequel on GBA

The legend of dragoon has to be one of my favorite jrpgs and I would love for it to get a remake/remaster. Sadly it seems like Sony doesn't care about it tho so I'm not hopeful

Yoku's Island Express. The idea of a metroidvania where the entire map is a giant pinball board is beyond genius.

I never see anyone talk about Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch but it's one of my favorite games of all time. The Studio Ghibli collab makes it ooze charm.

Mindustry. Played it on and off for years, abosultely love the game. Way too good consider the fact that it's free, and when I picked it up I expected to get a couple of hours of fun out of it. But at this point it has lasted years. And with the occasional update, I think it will last even longer.

Shadowrun for the Genesis, I never hear anyone mention it and it was a great game. I've played it recently and it still holds up. EDIT: I'm adding a Sierra PC game called Shivers, it was kinda like horror Myst. I loved it so much and no one ever mentions like it was never released.

Incredible Machine, Metal Arms Glitch in the System, Wargroove, Gradius 3.

It's not that nobody talks about it, but i think it isn't talked about enough; Control.

Puzzle Pirates was a MMO in the early to mid 00’s. Each task on board the ship had a puzzle mini game associated with it. Sailing was sort of like Dr. Mario, pumping out the bilge was a match 3 game, loading the canons was sort of like Chu-Chu Rocket. The thing I liked about it was that your character’s ability to preform a duty had nothing to do with what gear you had equipped or how many skill points you had in a stat (there were none), it was all about how well you, as a player, could play the particular mini game.

In battle, sailors would generate movement tokens to allow the captain to maneuver the ship, gunners would reload the canons after they’d been fired, carpenters would repair any damage you’ve taken, while the bilge pumpers would keep the ship from foundering. Once you closed in and grappled the enemy ship, everyone would participate in a Super Puzzle Fighter-like sword fighting game; defeat the enemy crew to pillage their hold.

Let's see what I can come up with (and see if I can remember the names correctly!):

• NES: Back in the day, it was probably River City Ransom. Growing up, it was a game my brother and I loved to play... but no one ever knew what we were talking about at the time. Now the Kunio games are a bit more known, and with River City Girls 1/2 they're getting attention, which is great.
• Gameboy: Avenging Spirits. When I was younger, a friend and I loaned each other a bunch of our games. Sadly, he ended up moving away before we managed to swap back, and he got the better end of the deal when it came to the games. However, I did get left with a copy of Avenging Spirits... the game is a bit strange but its very fun and the sprite work is just adorable.
• SNES: Dragon View. It has great sprite work and a very (at the time) cool looking 3D overworld you can stumble around in... Solid gameplay and some RPG elements make it a nice little gem of a game.
• GBA: River City Ransom EX. Same deal as the NES version. I worked at Toys R Us around this time, and I think I'm the only person who purchased this game from the store...
• PS1: Brave Fencer Musashi. Someone else already mentioned Einhander, so I'll go with my other go-to PS1 gem from Squaresoft.
• Saturn: Guardian Heroes. While I bought the console for X-men vs Street Fighter, I go it with a handful of games on the cheap at EB Games: Magic Knight Rayearth, some crappy 2D Dragon Ball Z game, X-men vs Street Fighter (and a 4in1 cart of course!) and Guardian Heroes. Its such a well made beat-em-up that really doesn't get a lot of love because most folks never played any Saturn games.
• PS2: Way of the Samurai. Maybe not super unknown, but definitely a niche game back when it released in the US I think.
• Dreamcast: Cannon Spike. I bought my DC for Capcom games (and SoulCalibur), and this is one of the many gems on that console that never really pops up in discussions. I bought it on the sole merit that Charlie/Nash was in it, but it was wacky and engaging enough to warrant a place in my heart.
• XB360: Tenchu Z. I loved Tenchu back on the PS1/PS2, but this was probably the one that most folks didn't touch... it was a bit weird but a friend and I played the hell out of it on many a weekend back in the day.

Any other console I either didn't own (Genesis, Gamegear, PS3, etc) or just couldn't think of anything that really stood out as a hidden gem (PSP, PSV) or are more current and also don't really have anything that ranks (PS4, PS5).

All of the games in the Tribes series, my personal favorites being Tribes Ascend and Aerial Assault. Tribes had a play style similar to Halo but with a movement more like Unreal along with a touch of 'surfing' over land and some jetpacks. They're all great fun and still fun for me to play today. IIRC, the last game's official online servers are no longer active, but there is a community following for Tribes Ascend that helps keep the game alive and updated, look up TribesLauncherSharp and TAMods for more info if interested. I backed up the disc I have for Tribes Aerial Assault to an ISO and it works great in PCSX2. With 1080p/4K rendering, extra graphics options, wide-screen patches, and controller customization it's way easier to play than originally on composite CRT with a Dualshock.

I really enjoyed Space Station Silicon Valley for the N64. It turns out there was a bug in the original game so you could never complete it 100%. A couple years ago, I purchased an Everdrive (https://krikzz.com/our-products/cartridges/ed64x7.html) so I could patch the ROM and play on original hardware. Pair this with some new wireless controllers and it's the perfect experience.

A really old game called Fat Princess - it was a wonderful multiplayer real time strategy kind of thing, with a beautiful community for quite a few years. Despite the name, it was one of the best games I've ever played!

If you were on there and recognise my screen name, yes it is me!

Heroes of the Storm. It's not getting any updates anymore but as long as the servers are up, I'll still play it.

Planetside 2. Been playing for a decade. One of the best games and only one in its genre of MMOFPS. I don’t know what I will play when it dies. It’s the one and only thing I play and enjoy now. Nothing else is fun.

Starport GE. Amazing little game. Played tons of it. It’s been almost 18 years of it. Played hardcore for atleast a decade before life got in the way and winded down now. My brother manages the account and activity now. Still alive but barely. It’s a game of strategy and alliances and carefully managing a galaxy to control it all. Make friends make enemies. There’s been dozens of people that have come and gone over the years through it. Due to its small player size. We all knew each other very well and were acquainted. You don’t like someone you decide to go to war with them start taking all their colonies. The game has no alliance mechanism or war mechanism. It’s all on you to decide what to make of it.

I know everyone here got many favorite and probably wonderful games but who here has played only 2 games with more than a decade of dedication to each?

Mine is Dark Cloud. It was a PS2 launch title (or near enough to it) that was sort of a PlayStation answer to the Zelda franchise. Along with the original Spyro trilogy, Dark Cloud was by far my most-played game back in the day. It had an absolute banger of a soundtrack and a few pieces of really interesting unique gameplay including an RPG element where the primary progression system was not in your characters, but in upgrading your weapons, and a city-builder where you have to place all the people in each village near or away from various other elements in the village to meet their needs.

I almost never hear anyone talking about Dark Cloud, but extremely randomly one of the like four Twitch streamers I actually watch (all of whom are Age of Empires streamers, because that's basically all I watch these days) happens to play its soundtrack frequently on her stream as background music. So that's been really fun.

FTL: Faster Than Light, a pixel sci fi rouge like where you manage a ship and crew jumping point to point on a mission through space. I keep coming back to it and it's always fun. There's an amazing mod community that I'll just starting to explore as well

I rarely hear people talk about it but whenever I do, it's nothing but love.

Redneck Rampage was silly and fun.

N+ it's such a good game and no one ever knows what I'm talking about.

CrossCode is one of my absolute favorite games, yet I hardly see it talked about in larger circles. It's an action RPG with some zelda-like dungeons and a very fluid and satisfying combat system. Highly recommend it!

Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future on Dreamcast

Golden Sun. They were the best RPG games I've ever played and never get the love they deserve. Don't know why, I've never played a game that struck me like those 2 games did.

The first few Advance Wars games too, Advance Wars and Golden Sun were a huge part of my childhood.

Tomba! It was a really bizarre PS1 game that I was hooked on when I was 9 or 10. You play as pink-haired boy fighting some evil pigs by throwing them into their respective evil pig bags. Trippy as hell.

Full Spectrum Warrior.

A real time, over-the-shoulder, squad management tactical game.

Imagine Brothers In Arms style tactical command and contextual actions from AI squad members, mixed with a modern setting, mixed with pulling the player out of actually doing any shooting and putting them entirely in the role of command, and give it high lethality and a requirement to save all friendly wounded AI squad members (wounded ones have to be carried back to a medical tent).

Really unique couple of games that nobody has iterated on.

Not much nostalgia for Jet Force Gemini, a Rare third person shooter where you adventure through missions, each having secret routes to find using guns/keys you slowly unlock. The game had a bit too much completionist vibe to get to finish it, but was exciting as a kid.

On the 3DS, I also liked Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D. Basically RE’s best arena mode expanded out with perks on a game you could play mobile, and online. I still hope to see more of that type of experience.

Fallen London; a text-based, story-driven ongoing browser game about an alternate-history London that was traded by Queen Victoria in exchange for her husband being spared death and literally carried by a cloud of bats to a massive underground cavern where Hell is just a train journey away.

It's a niche game in a niche genre, but damn I love the writing and setting so much. Sunless Sea is set in the same world, if anyone has played that too!

Alundra. It's basically the PS1's own Zelda title, with a bit of Terranigma DNA mixed in. I played it as a kid and remember being blown away by the plot, and unlike a lot of other games I played back then, this one mostly held up when I replayed it as an adult.

Oh boy. I played General Chaos for the Sega Genesis religiously when I was younger.

MDK. Sure, it was arguably "popular" when it launched, but is largely forgotten in videogame lore. There's not even talks of a remake.

Awesomenauts. The coolest 2D platforming MOBA. The gameplay is super fun and has a surprising amount of depth. Unfortunetly the devs have almost abandoned it and the playerbase is small (still active tho) but it's still one of my favorite games ever.

The Secret World. Not a flawless game, but the world building is awesome

Patapon 1-3 on the psp. It's been so long since I played it but I still say the little beats when I'm doing idle tasks. Pon-pon-pata-pon

Anno? It doesn’t have any mobile ver anymore. We used to download jar files back in nokia days.

The Thief and Tenchu series need more love.

I used to consider Thief/Tenchu/Hitman to be the core stealth games but currently only Hitman is still being made :/

I was surprised that I haven't heard more about Returnal, because it's a really good game. It's difficult sure, but so are lots of popular games. It has great music, really fun gameplay and mechanics, and an interesting story with cool vibes. I thought it would get repetitive after a while due to the death mechanic but in actuality it honestly was addicting to play.

Similarly I don't hear nearly enough about Control despite it being a phenomenal game, but I do at least hear more about Control than Returnal.

Boktai. A trilogy of GBA games about a vampire hunter who uses a solar gun to fry the undead. The cartridge has a UV sensor to detect actual sunlight to charge up the gun. It's such a silly gimmick but it's used really well.

Sadly the third game never got localized, and although a translation patch does exist it's just not the same without the original hardware. There's a fourth game on DS which did get localized, but they rebranded it as Lunar Knights, excised most references to the original trilogy, and even cut a good chunk of content. It also ends on a sequel hook that will never get resolved.

It's sad to me that we'll never see games this experimental ever again.

While we're on the subject of DS classics, here's an even more obscure one: Over the Hedge.

While admittedly it never quite got the time in the oven it deserved, being a release tie-in with the movie and put out alongside all the console versions, this one in particular was something special. It's a third-person over the shoulder perspective stealth game with tank controls, sneaking into the hilariously well-protected homes of humans to steal their junk food. And if that wasn't enough, it had you managing two characters in real-time by swapping back and forth between them, using their varying strengths to defeat the ridiculous laser alarm systems and traps along the way. It's slow paced and relatively simple, and I used to have a blast finding ways to completely break the game because the devs didn't have enough time to iron out all the kinks entirely, but it never quite got the attention it deserves for being such a unique labor of love.

I have to give it massive props for having so much creative heart when a tie-in for a mediocre animated movie has no right to be that good. The developers saw the opportunity to make something that put its source material to good work instead of just another hack-and-slash romp (like the console tie-ins were) or a minigame collection (like the later DS game (???) was) and their dedication to the craft of game development really shines through some of the jank involved in its presentation and sometimes wonky physics. By now, a unique take on a stealth game is nothing all that special, but at the time this was one that really grabbed me.

Furi, A boss rush gamers wet dream. Trims the fat of an action hack/slash game. Simple combat to understand and hard to master. The soundtrack simply slaps too with an electronic symphony backing your carnage as you tear apart the bosses. I highly recommend checking in out as it frequently goes on sale for quite cheap.

Original War. A very unique RTS about American and Russians fighting over a precious resource billions years in the past. It has an interesting story with memorable characters and branching choices. The game still looks decent, especially the between missions cutscenes didn't age badly because of the style of presentation. One thing that's rather hit or miss is voice acting, at least in English. There are two campaigns so you get to see both sides, skirmish mode, map editor and quite a number of mods. Some interesting mechanics like vehicle and building customisation. You can build not only combat vehicles with various weapon systems but also utility vehicles like trucks to haul resources and cranes to help with construction. You can pick propulsion method, tracks/wheels, size and if it's manned or unmanned, and each choice has some upsides and downsides.

The thing that stands out the most is that it's the only rts I can think of where you actually care for the life of your soliders. Due to the setting, there's no way to recruit new people, so losing anyone hurts, and you will be grateful for unmanned vehicles, trained primates and others methods that reduce the risk to your soldiers.

Archon, it's a chess game with monsters instead of typical pieces, and they fight when you take a space. I played it on a Commodore 64.

Guardian Heores for the Sega Saturn. Absolutely loved that game.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective. I played it a decade ago on iOS, loved it, and thought it was never going to see a modern release again.

I'm thrilled to see its recent release on the Switch and PC because it truly deserves a try if you like a good story and time traveling based puzzles.

Ogre Battle 64 is mine. The n64 wasn't exactly known for rpgs but this had so many characters, a ton of depth and an intense story that I wish it was brought up more. This was my intro to a tactical rpgs and I felt like I went right into the deep end.

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw. Made by I think 3 or 4 people. Solid space flight shooter with charm. It's just fun.

"Darkstar one" on Xbox 360. It was the only game that actually ran at 60FPS. when i eventually went to sell it (as i got it on PC) neither of the 2 game stores (GAME and CEX) would buy it off me as it didn't register on their system.

Now one that people probably know about, especially as it has a lot of HD re-releases, but when Okami came out, basically no-one knew it. A real shame, as it was a gem of a game.

Skies of Arcadia. I was a big Final Fantasy fan growing up, especially the original PS era. After looking for similar games, I came across Skies of Arcadia. I never see people discuss this game outside of niche JRPG discussions. This is one of my favorite games of all time, I put it up there with Ocarina of Time, Mario 64, etc. The biggest flaw with the game is the excessive random encounters, which they toned down in the Legends edition for Gamecube.

Micro machines was beautiful. The closest I've got to reliving the pure mayhem was probably Mashed (I think) for Xbox.

Just a heads up there is a GBA and 3DS game in the Slime series, but the 2nd game on DS is the only one that made it to America. No idea if there are fan translations, but might be worth looking into.

I love Rocket Slime! and Keeping with the Dragon Quest Theme...

I love the Dragon Quest Builders games.

To many people sleep on them because they think they are simply Minecraft games with a Dragon Quest skin. And yes, there are a lot of mechanics lifted straight from Minecraft, they have a story mode that is like a typical RPG, and most of the time you are building a living, thriving town to act as your base of opperations as you execute quests and complete the story's campaigns. I especially like the story in DQB2 because of the bromance you form with your partner, and how much it expands on the size and the scale of the first game, though I also like the first one because it's a lot more digestible for short bursts.

The journeyman project series (1, 2 and 3) had a major impact on my childhood

Little big adventure 1 & 2

World in Conflict is mine. One of the best tactical RTSs that existed with stunning visuals. A nuke going off was one thing, but when your team decides to spend their support points at the same time on artillery, carpet bombing, and cluster bombs, it was a sight to behold.

Vectorman for Sega Genesis is one of my favorite games on the console but whenever it's brought up it is almost exclusively known as just another obscure mascot platformer and it's even been declared a knockoff of DKC just because both use pre rendered graphics. The sequel is also good.

People bring up Journey a lot but another game by that same company called Flower. It's a short, simple game that I will never forget, a beautiful masterpiece.

Beetle Adventure Racing for the n64.

Specifically the battle modes. The chaos of a bunch of Volkswagen beetles launching rockets at each other is a core memory for sure.

I know I posted here already, but I had to add one more, and I feel it deserves its own post: Eastward!

Eastward is Zelda-like adventure game set in a post apocalyptic world, and the setting itself is heavily inspired by China, Japan, Korea, and other areas in East Asia, and takes a lot of cues from Mother 3: Earthbound's lost sequel. It's a game with a lot of heart. It has a great sense of humor, but also is incredibly dark in some places, it had me in tears by the end. Sure it's not the easiest story in the world to follow, but I became so invested in the characters, and I kept playing because I just wanted to see if they got through everything alright. And even after playing through it once, I spent most of the year thinking back to moments in the game. Very few games have ever hit me like that. Eastward was definitely something special for me, and I wish it had the same hype behind it as many indie darlings like Undertale have.

And the game is probably one of the most beautiful 2D games I have ever played. There is a lot of detail put into the set pieces, and it makes the worlds feel like they were lived in at one point, which fits the post apocalyptic setting quite well. The dungeons, the towns, even the buildings off to the side tickle the urban explorer inside me.

Invisible, Inc. Klei has created other great games so probably Invisible is not that unknown, but it seems that this game is forgotten both by gamers and developers. The subreddit was dead (when reddit was relevant), nobody streams it, and Klei continued to add content or sequels to other games like Don’t Starve but nothing to Invisible.

Solar Jetman for the NES. A really unique game that was well ahead of it's time, featuring exploration, problem solving, cut-scenes, great music, and multiple planets to explore with different gravities. Your mission is to repair your spacecraft by finding missing parts, and you can use a small craft or leave the vehicle and boost around with a jetpack with your spacesuit.

Armagetron Advanced, which is a 3d multiplayer Tron clone, though you can also face off against bots. Fun as hell with friends and the customization options keeps things interesting.

I don't see anyone talking about CrossCode, but it's such an amazing game. And it's on sale right now!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/368340/CrossCode/

Profound story, excellent sound design, amazing soundtrack, insanely well designed combat system. It's just an incredible game. It has more content, depth, and attention to detail than most AAA games these days.

If you're picking it up, get the DLC as well! It's not just DLC, it's the conclusion of the game's story!

I don't think I've ever heard anyone else talk about Rocket Slime. I've never even played any mainline Dragon Quest game, and Rocket Slime is absolutely one of my favorite DS games of all time. I love everything about that game, from the team building to the way you steal items and enemies on the carts, to the hilarious slimes you gotta save. And boy, fighting other people in your tank was so much fun, although the cannon play was always kinda lackluster. Still, having an NPC man the cannons while you hop in your (incredibly overpowered) golem suit and walk over to the enemy tank, break in, destroy everything. Your NPC is wailing away on the cannons while you're distracting their gunmen, whittling away the tank's health, only for you to break into the heart and smash it to pieces.

I could go on, what a s(ub)lime game. Thanks for uncovering an old memory I had long forgotten, OP.

Snowboard Kids 2 for the N64. One of my top 3 favorite Mario Karts.

Dwarf Fortress, Less now since the steam release

Custom Robo on the GameCube. It's an arena combat game with little digital robots that you fit different parts to. The story and characters were super cheesy, but it was such a great game.

We definitely need a new one on the switch. With all the characters in the latest Smash Bros I was hoping we'd get a Ray model, but nope, just a trophy.

Omori is an Earthbound inspired jrpg that I can never talk about as to not spoil an ounce of this game. I thought about the ending to this game for a week straight after finishing it.

Hogs of War for PS1.

It's probably the first 'Worms 3D' style game.

Recettear

Terranigma - Came out at the end of the SNES era, and was never released in the US. Gameplay wise it's kind of similar to 2D Zelda but with RPG level mechanics, spells, and jump/attacks. Where it really shines is the story though. In that area I think it holds its own against the giants of JRPGs from that era like FFVI and Chrono Trigger.

I really liked Rumble Roses back on PS2

Women's Wrestling with good graphics and interesting features.

Iji, a free indie platformer shooter, almost like a 2D immersive sim about a girl who trying to fight off an alien invasion using alien tech that got implanted on her. It's very cool! And it's free free, not freemium microtransaction nonsense.

Blur, it was so much fun playing couch coop with my friends

Favorite obscure game?
Panther for Commodore 64 - The music is awesome!

Rez for Dreamcast/PS2 - not everyone talks about this game but the audience is a lot larger now than it was back when it came out for the Dreamcast and PS2 now that Rez Infinite is available in almost every current platform including the PSVR2.

I would’ve also said Another World (aka Out of this World) for the PC and SNES. But this game is also not-too-obscure like Rez. There are articles about it & the creation, re-released in almost every platform including the PS Vita, spiritual successors, copycats, and so on.

Phantasy Star Online (PSO). I have thousands of hours in that game across Dreamcast, GameCube and PC over the decades and I'm still not tired of it. It absolutely nailed the loot system and you're always looking to get another rare box drop. BlueBurst on PC still has multiple active and populated servers, but I feel like it doesn't get much discussion in gaming communities in general despite being one of the pioneers of online gaming on consoles.

My favourite games are NoX, Morrowind and Populous the beginning. Only Morrowind is still really talked about, sadly.

Easy Red 2.

WWII fps/tps made by a small team. Did you like BF1942 maps and bots back in the day?

This is the first ‘bot game’ which is actually very good and wwii focused. Others like ravenfield were too spread out, scope wise, or too twee like Brass Brigade.

It’s just had Normandy come out and first person animations tweaked and it’s in a really good place.

Custom maps and soon to have custom assets on the workshop so workshop maps are about to blow up big style!

Would love to see more wwii game fans try it out, even off sale it’s FILTHY cheap. Can highly advise the recent Normandy DLC too, the quality of the maps are leaps and bounds over the base campaigns, Stalingrad is also very good too if you're an eastern front kinda boi.

Gunz: the duel

Its a fast paced 3rd person shooter.

There were a lot of unique glitches you could manipulate for advanced movement. This inadvertently made the skill floor and ceiling very high.

The game was super fast paced and played like nothing I will ever play again.

One Finger Death Punch

Simple, but surprisingly addictive stickman fighting game. Although the title is a lie because you probably need two fingers to play it. I think this was the first game I went for 100% achievements.

Apparently it has a sequel which I didn't know about. Both are on sale for pretty much pocket change now too.

I've never played DQ: Slime. I think I'll make an effort to. For me it's possibly Fallout, the original. To me it seems for a lot of people Fallout starts with 3 and ends with 4 or 76. The original Fallout was a wonderful turn-based tactical RPG.

Starsector. It's been in development for so many years, and they are not on Steam. But man, I love that game.

The Legacy of Kain series. Very much slept on. And to make things worse, instead of making a finale game to wrap the story up, they worked on two different projects in the same IP that did not drive the story forward and ended up being scrapped anyway.

I like the series so much that once upon a time I decided I would start playing through it again if I ever became terminally ill.

Future Cop L.A.P.D.

I've seen like, maybe a singular youtube video essay on it (And I think it was by by a very small channel).

EDIT: Also WASTED: A Post Apocalyptic Pub Crawler.

Kid Icarus.

Star Wars Republic Commando! Every now and then people talk about it, but it is a shame it isn't mentioned more. I actually just replayed it, I'd almost say it holds up today with the remaster mod and the rc patch. There is also a very cool mod called "slightly remastered" which adds stuff like 3rd person scripted animations and scripted kill cams, it makes you feel like a badass! Aside from that, I'm also surprised nobody in the boomer shooter enjoyer crowd talks about Cube 2: Sauerbraten, which is a very fast paced arena shooter. The only server that is consistently active uses one shot rifles that have enough recoil to do trick jumps, very fun to hop on for a few hours

Unicycle for the SNES.

Mmh.. I'd say King of Dragon Pass but the truth is that every half a year I see someone talking about. In niche circles but still. Let me check my Playnite list (only the ones I rated 5/5)...

Ok. At first I thought these ones would qualify: The Lion's Song, one night hot springs, Tacoma, missed messages. But I'm pretty sure I just haven't read in the right places, they are pretty big game in narrative indie circles I think.

Oh, I got it. These are my highly rated games that I don't think I have ever heard (much less read) someone talk about:

• No-One Has To Die: A short scifi puzzle/visual novel.
• The Last Door: An Edgar Allan Poe inspired point-and-click adventure.
• Don't Escape - 4 Days to Survive: A survival & mystery point-and-click adventure.
• Rebuild 2: A management survival game set in a zombie apocalypse. The creator who is called Sarah Northway I think went on to make I Was a Teenage Exocolonist which I haven't played yet.

Now that I think of it, small RPG Maker games would also qualify. I really liked Dhux's Scar back in the day.

By the way, if you want to discover lots of small games that no one knows daily there's YT channels like Wanderbots and Splattercatgaming that dedicate themselves to try certain genres of indies. It really makes cognizant of how many games come out every week.

Rocket Jockey! Although I found a few other fans recently in retro gaming. It's a Sega Soft title where the entire premise is riding around on rockets engines and using cables to yoink and tripline your opponents off their rockets. Once they're on the ground, it's a lot easier to run over them and drag them around the arena. All this fun set to a bitchin' surf rock soundtrack by Dick Dale.

I played the hell out of Dragon Quest rocket slime! Recently I actually got the third one (only releasd in Japan) working on my phone! So far not as good as the second one 😂

I really loved a game called Guns of Icarus (the original one). Fun little airship defense game, where you had to manage fighting air pirates, repairing your ship, and saving your cargo. Extremely simple, basically a tech demo, but the aesthetic, music, and general feel were perfect. Very melancholy world that I still revisit sometimes.

I've got two.

• 999. It's an escape room visual novel from late in the DS's life cycle. I can't talk about it much without spoiling it, but it absolutely blew me away when I played it. I can't recommend it enough if you're a fan of mystery and psychological thrillers. There was a remake released on Steam, and the community is divided on which version is better; I personally strongly recommend it on DS emulator/original hardware, with a spoiler-free guide to the good ending after your first blind playthrough.
• OneShot. It's very much in the vein of Undertale, but the initial release was slightly earlier. It isn't quite as tight with its writing as Undertale, but the story evoked some genuine emotions in a way that games rarely manage. As much hype as the latter got, it surprised me that the former is so obscure.

Anyone remember "War of the Monsters" on the PS2? Such a fun monster mash single-screen multiplayer game.

Slime Mori Mori Dragon Quest 3 is the sequel to rocket slime. It’s a great series and mechanic.

I’m really surprised Viva Piñata has vanished, given the recent surge of chill farming games. It was unique, cool designs, universe, characters. It feels like it disappeared, maybe due to licensing or something.

Maybe more obscure would be something like Graal Online, which was an early MMO, UGC focused top down Zelda game. I played a bit for months. Similar story with Gunbound.

Old school game on the original Xbox called Kung Fu Chaos. My friends and I would play it all the time and laugh at how well they depicted the movie scenes. I really wish it would be brought to game pass so we could replay it.

Warzone 2100. A seminal classic for me, from the year 2000.

I'm going to name a few potentially obscure ones from my 30 years of gaming

• Micro Machines 2 (SNES and Mega Drive) - as far as I am aware, only MM1 had wide release, the rest were PAL only but have modern 60hz and NTSC patches now. Great fun, and you can play as Violet Berlin (for those like me who used to watch Bad Influence!)

• Looney Toons Collector: Martian Alert!! (Game Boy Color) - this one is hard to categorise! Its a top down adventure RPG like Zelda, you start as Bugs and recruit further characters each with their own skills to traverse the world and solve puzzles. For example, Elmer Fudd has a gun, Tweety can fly over gaps, etc. It is actually really fucking good, and holds up better than many GBC games. You can also trade with other people who have the game, and there's a sequel I haven't even played yet!

• Wario Land Virtual Boy - this is without a doubt one of the best platformers ever made, and it's a damn shame it's been forgotten by most. HOWEVER! Emulators exist, and the game runs like a dream in retroarch/mednafen.

A few tips: the virtual boy is a 50hz console, so set your display to that or use gsync otherwise you'll have stuttering. The console is also natively a wide-screen display, which is sweet. Steam Deck is perfect for it, and looks great in black and white. If you have a VR headset, that's a good idea too to get the proper 3D experience, but it's not essential in any way whatsoever.

• Neutopia II (PC Engine/TG16) - a shameless Zelda clone that is actually worth playing as a spiritual successor to Zelda 1. A neat little what if, if Nintendo had expanded on the original rather than Link to the Past. It has an awesome soundtrack, save battery backup (wahooo) and is just great fun. The first is good too, but feels significantly more dated than the sequel

And lastly, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Switch) - I don't care if it's the opposite of unknown,, I'm recommending this one. Culmination of the best trilogy I've ever known in gaming, and by far the best game I've ever played. With the 4k, 60fps and rebalance mods when playing on PC it's simply incredible. Based Monolithsoft.

The soundtrack is mind-blowing, has the best battle themes in the series and you can tell just how much work went into it (main two characters have flutes they use in the story to send dead soldiers to the afterlife - Yasunori Mitsuda then made those flutes for real to be used in the soundtrack). Just, every single thing about the game exudes more love and care than most games I've played and it shows. After so many years of being unable to finish a story due to corporate wankery (xenosaga....), Takahashi finally got to make his masterpiece. And for those who were put off by the anime-ness of Xenoblade 2, 3 is very much reined in, adult and pretty fucking dark. No big anime titties here - it's war, and it's not pleasant. It's more like XB1 - 2 is the outlier, and its happy-go-lucky feeling makes far more sense after seeing what happens in 3.

Loco-Roco for the PSP. As a game developer, I consider this to be the pinnacle of game development. It is completely original, uses only two buttons, super intuitive, yet your drawn into it and want to play for hours. It makes me sad that few have heard of it.

Toy Story on the sega genesis (and snes) is a close second. It is actually a bit of a hot mess, each level is a completely different style of gameplay. But it is super rewarding to fight your way through to the end. And it showcases so many different styles of gameplay.

There was a game on PSX called Team Buddies. It was the absolute best. I have many core childhood memories toes to that game.

Split screen PvP (or PvE, but the computer players were dumb) where you have to run around these different maps collecting boxes to bring back to your base. Depending on how you stack the boxes, you make different things when you smash them open

1x1: pistol 1x2: shotgun 2x1: additional "soldier" 1x4: rocket launcher 2x4: tank

You could have up to 4 soldiers and the aim was to destroy the enemy base by attacking it.

There were these super blocks that would drop and if you got them included in your build it would change what you made. You could get an Uzi, a super solider with flight and lazer vision, a gattling gun or a helicopter.

You could attack other players building pads to sabotage their new builds, attack their base, kill their soldiers... It was amazing, but outsideu friend group, have never seen/heard anything about it.

For me it's gotta be Secret of Evermore for the SNES. Kinda old game but I absolutely loved the gameplay and story when I first played it as a kid. Have been replaying the game many times and it's always a great experience.

Panzer Dragoon Saga for the Saturn is maybe my favorite JRPG, or Grandia 2

The 7th Guest was a revolutionary game and I just love it !stauf_mansion@lemmy.mods4ever.com

Pixel Junk: Eden by Q-Games. Available on PlayStation and PC, it's a platformer of sorts. You play as a little insect, swinging on a silk line and jumping from plant to plant. On the way, you collect pollen which makes new plants sprout and grow. The game was made in collaboration with Bayion - a Japanese designer, artist and DJ, who art directed the visuals and composed all of the music for the game.

Playing Eden feels a bit like Tetris Effect or Rez. You get hypnotized by the visuals and music. Nothing quite like it - I actually bought my first console (PS3) after lifetime of PC gaming in order to play this title (it was exclusive back then).

Also, they just announced Eden 2!!!

Rocket Slime is actually the second game of a trilogy. Its just the only one to get an english translation.

OG Xbox games like Alter Echo and Advent Rising. Those games blew my god damn mind as a kid. Doesn't helpt they were pretty early for the generation and never escaped the console.

Landstalker on Megadrive/Genesis. It's one of my favourite childhood games. I actually want to go play it again now that I'm thinking about it again.

Crusader No Remorse, Crusader No Regret and Civil War Generals 2

N.O.M.A.D. This is such a great DOS game that I invested so much time in back in off and all all through the 90's. Open world, space exploration, trading, combat, different alien races, great humor. Was such a great game that I never heard anyone talking about then or mention now. The game is abandonware now if anyone wants to give it a go.

Alter Ego, a 1986 DOS game that's still one of the best life-sim type games ever made. You start out as a baby and work your way through life by making choices. They can lead to a wide variety of outcomes, including dying tragically as a child, etc... You can play it free online or they've made updated versions.

Gitaroo man, I played it on the psp until my thumbs hurt. Music still slaps.

Nobody ever brings up Strife even when talking about old shooters as it is. Strife is, by far, the best Doom engine game that exists.

Not my favorite but in my top 10 is from the depths. Never seen anyone ever mention it without going out of my way

Power Blade on the NES. You are a Schwarzenegger-in-his-prime-like character in the future fighting the robotic underlings of an AI gone rogue. It has only 7 levels or so, but it has a nice gameplay to it, and the music was composed by Kinuyo Yamashita, who also did the Castlevania music. Needless to say, the soundtrack is top notch.

Starsiege and/or earthsiege 1 and 2

That was one of my favorite games as a kid! I think it was super ahead of it's time too, the mech battling feels really MOBA-esque especially in hindsight.

Way back when "addictinggames.com" was relevant, there was a game called Avalanche. The background music (dreams of above) was an absolute banger that still gets stuck in my head sometimes. Just a simple platformer, but for some reason it stuck with me, and I absolutely need to get on a computer and see if there is a playable version somewhere.

• PS1 : Little Big Adventure (action adventure with the first voice acting I heard in a game)
• DS : ghost trick (it's getting a remake!)
• 3DS : 1001 spikes (tough 2d platformer)
• Modern era : Slay the Spire (best card drafting and rogue lite game).

Comix Zone. It was a beat-em-up on the Sega Genesis with a gorgeous, comic book art style. It wasn't the greatest game, but it had character and it stood out against some of the other fighting games at the time. I'd really love a remake or sequel at some point. Doing it in the style of the Spider-verse movies would be rad.

Mine would be Anarchy Online. Still around, though FC has ran it to the ground and not too obscure, considering it used to be quite big before 2005ish, but almost nobody talks about it in EU and the few times they do is to comment on the dreadful launch.

But I doubt there's a game I've sunk more hours into, playing constantly from release up to 2011 and then on and off until last year. Eventually I figured out it's just nostalgia and it's not worth it anymore, the time, let alone the sub.

Dear rising I would love a reboot of the first one with new mechanics but the same overall crazy feel

I used to play a lot of games on miniclip wayyyy back when flash was a thing, but nitrome games were my favorite:

• Final Ninja series (2 games I think?), 2D platformers where you could swing around and also shoot enemies with ninja stars. had a lot of levels to complete
• Dirk Valentine, 2D platformer, similar to final ninja but with a different theme
• Avalanche, a 2D game where you are a penguin trying to escape the avalanche by sliding and avoiding obstacles. I think this had a lot of levels too

Looks like nitrome has these flash games to download on their website, but they also converted / are converting them to html5 as well. I'm so glad these aren't lost!

Wait, I have to pick one? No way! So:

Loom (PC) It Came From The Desert (Amiga) Wings (Amiga) Amber: Journeys Beyond (PC and the first game to truly scare the shit out of me) I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream (PC)

Off the top of my head :)

A few that are favs for me that no one ever talks about:

Forgotten worlds on Genesis Wild arms on playstation Tokyo extreme racer zero on playstation 2

Rocket Slime was one of my favorite games as a kid! I didn't even find out what Dragon Quest was until like a decade later when 11 came out

I like the DOS game Nuclear War. Funny and quick to complete.

How many people talk about pac man world 2? That game still holds up and it's one of the few gamecube discs that is still in a great condition after all of these years.

Soul Bubbles is a puzzle-action game released for the NDS. You encase the souls of the departed in magic bubbles and blow them around levels to help them to the afterlife, dodging spiky terrain, marauding creatures, and wind currents.

It might have gotten more attention if its production run wasn't so small and it wasn't sold exclusively at Toys 'R Us.

Not so much my favorite game, but just one of absurd obscurity: Special Training ‘99

It was a game I found in school that I lost track of and nobody I asked about it had any notion of what I was talking about. Only just found it again recently.

The FATE series. No, not the anime, the Diablo ripoff computer game with stolen music sold by WildTangent. I was a kid that got by playing only demos, and this game was one I reinstalled over and over again to get those free plays.

It's a pretty simple dungeon crawling game with procedurally generated floors where you have to get to floor 5x and defeat the named boss there so you can reincarnate and start it over again.

I reinstall it every couple of years to play it. It's got hardly any story, quests are generated for the floors you're about to reach, stats are randomly generated. It's just pure gameplay, though a bit repetitive as it can be. I love that it has a similar fish mechanic to Torchlight for your pets.

I remember seeing a nostalgia post on the game on Reddit and the developer of the game series had commented on the post. It was like meeting one of your heroes. Definitely very memorable for me.

The third game supposedly has all the content from the first two, so here's the steam link if anyone's curious.

Backyard baseball, loved that game as a kid.

Back in the day Hidden & Dangerous was a fantastic game. Spent many hours crawling on my stomach sniping. And the multiplayer LAN parties were epic for the sheer fun and hilariousness of the bugs we found. Only my friends at the time have ever heard of it though.

This is an easy one:

Jump Ultimate Stars for DS, it is not only my favorite game for the console, it might as well be my favorite game ever.

To be fair I would not say it is like nobody plays it at all, but certainly it is on the low radar and this game would have been lower on the radar if it wasn't for piracy and because thank God the DS is retrocompatible.

Hotel Dusk 1 and 2 gets a honorable mention as well.

Rune factory 3. It’s not popular anymore, nor do I see it talked about but I still play it from time to time. Sometimes I leave it open just to listen to the music/background and sometimes I fire up youtube and my speaker just to listen to its OST.

Ogre Battle, either March of the Black Queen or Person of Lordly Caliber. It's such a weird cul-de-sac of tactical RPGs. The same company made Tactics Ogre, which then became Final Fantasy Tactics, which in turn inspired a zillion other post-2000 tactics games; and Tactics Ogre got a remake version recently. But the Ogre Battle side of the family just disappeared.

Rocket Slime is awesome!!!! I played this when it came out and I feel like no one has played this game. This game needed a multiplayer aspect or downloadable bosses to extend this game.

Puppeteer for ps3. It was creative and underrated

Meteos for the DS. Never got the Disney sequel but the original was great and probably my most played DS game.

Haha, SimTower for classic MacOS. I've always wanted to put together a clone of it.

May be a little off from what you're asking but one of my favorite games period is Bookworm on the GBA. It was originally a flash game but when it came to GBA you could save your progress. The music was so cute and the sound effects were just awesome. They tried to bring it to the DS without that music and the effects and it just didn't work. Other iterations exist as well, none as cool and enjoyable as the GBA version. I'm stuck emulating until someone rediscovers this neat little game and brings it to switch or steamdeck.

Kenka Bancho. It's a series of japanese games for the PSP, with only the 3rd game being officially translated and released outside Japan as Kenka Bancho Badass Rumble. It's like playing a typical shonen anime set in high school, you're a delinquent who fights everyone from the other schools in order to become the ultimate badass. It's semi open world and you can beat pedestrians and innocent civilians, which reduce your badass meter, because real badasses only fight people who can fight back! And with their bare hands, weapons are for weak pussies! It's over the top and fun as hell. I've only ever met one other person mention that game, and it was an RPG friend of mine, when he bought a PSP for himself.

Something I highly recommend for anyone that enjoyed River City Ransom or similar beat'em ups.

Majesty: the Fantasy Kingdom Sim

A RTS/Sim hybrid in which you play as the king of a cliche fantasy realm with the gimmick that your direct control is limited. You don't have an army and instead have to hire adventurers who are all AI controlled and need to be bribed into doing what you want. The game can be frustrating but it has a ton of charm and there's just nothing out there quite like it.

X-beyond the frontier got me into space games as a kid. Had trading, piracy, fighting, ship building, factory ownership. Great series, and they made more after that. I've never met a single person that has played that game before.

Chrono triggiger

Serious Sam

I miss the savage series. Probably no chance of those coming back though.

Digital Devil Saga on PS2. It's a favorite, easily outshines other SMT games in narrative, character development, and plot twists.

Yet I bring it up at a wedding reception and I'm the weirdo. Pfft.

Space Griffon VF9 -for the PlayStation 1

It was a mech combat on the moon game, with great voice acting that turned into a space horror game very slowly over the course of the storyline until you were scared of every room down every hallway and would hear the screams of the thing hunting you in your dreams.

There used to be a game I found when shareware was still a thing. It was called Harry the Handsome Executive. You basically scoot around on a chair in an office throwing pencils and avoiding traps, it was cute

This is kind of obscure but I used to love this MMO rhythm game called Audition Online, published by Nexon in 2007. It's completely deserted now, hasn't been updated in years, and only runs on Windows OS, but sometimes I'll revisit it and play for hours despite only like 10 people being online lol

I really loved rocket slime as well. There's a spiritual successor called connectank on steam that gives me the same vibes, and has fun co-op!

Just for your information, there are actually two other games related to Rocket Slime. Unfortunately they are JP only. The one that release outside of Japan is the 2nd game. There's a GBA game that came out before it and a sequel to the DS game focused on pirate ships

Might and Magic 6. It was such a weird product of its tech limitations, but they managed to squeeze such a good rpg power curve into it, it's still super fun.