Best video game you've never heard of... [Archive]

Jim Preston

08-12-2002, 06:09 PM

I'm a rather hardcore/pathetic retro gamer who is always on the lookout for brilliant little games I may have missed, either on a console, in the arcades or on the desktop. Here are a few I can think of along with a question for PC experts.

RPG:
Wasteland (EA for the PC) - Actually, I'm betting a lot of you heard of this one. I liked this one ever more than bard's tale because it had a ton of monsters and cool skills to level-up in, like knife fighting and toxic immunity.

Sports:
Baseball Stars (SNK for the NES) - The first sports game that I know of that had a create-a-team mode and an economy/salary sim.

Action/Puzzle:
The Immortal (EA for the Genesis) - There must have been 30 ways to die in this game. My favorite was being eaten by baby spiders.

Shooter:
Tyrian (Epic for the PC) - a beautiful top-down shooter with plenty of action and power-ups. It was even networkable so you could play your friends on the sly in the school computer lab.

Bizarro WTF game:
Ninja Golf (Atart for their 7800) - Like peanut butter and chocolate, ninjas and golf are two great tastes that taste great together. Carry that dog leg on the par 5, then kick ass on your way to the green. Tecmo needs to do an update.

Bizarro WTF game #2:
Blue Print (Bally for the arcades) - An incomprehensible puzzle/maze game where your character has to gather pieces of an enormous contraption from nearby houses. Why? Because your wife is being chased across the top of the screen by an anthropomorfic purple bean, that's why.

**Bonus** And now for my question. Hopefully one of you who is more learned in game lore than I am can remember this game. A dos-based, third-person, trippy puzzle sort of game. You controled a ship that was basically two triangles glued together. You were in enormous blue and lavendar rooms with the only thing in there being huge bouncy pads. You had to bounce from one pad to another, and every time you hit on a pad it made a beautiful note. The goal was to escape to the next room and more complicated puzzles. Ring any bells with anyone? I'm dying to check it out again.

Jason McCullough

08-12-2002, 06:24 PM

Ditto on Baseball Stars and Tyrian; my god, BS ate my NES-playing life. I'd add Mission Force: Cyberstorm.

Dave Long

08-12-2002, 06:29 PM

Best Computer Game No One Played - The Reap (http://www.classicgaming.com/shmups/reviews/thereap/thereap.htm). It's an isometric shooter from graphics wizards Housemarque that featured the greatest turnaround of setting imaginable in a shooter. Instead of playing the guy trying to save the world, you're the aliens that have come to earth to turn it into goo! Lots and lots of bodies combined with some of the most incredible shooter gameplay since Viewpoint make it one of the best games I've played on any system. It's impossible to get anymore and was never released in the US. It also doesn't run on Windows XP.

Best Video Game No One Played - This one's tougher... I'll name a few.

McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure on sega Genesis. It's made by Treasure and it's the greatest use of a license I think I've ever seen. Superb gameplay, "I can't believe it's Genesis" graphics, but real easy.

Solar Jetman by Rare for the NES. If you ever played Gravitar, you've got an idea what it's like. The gameplay was well-balanced and it's filled with that Rare style.

Bangai-O - Another Treasure gem on the Dreamcast. What better way to make a fun game than to ask the player to wait til the last possible moment before unleashing the most explosive attack possible. The game thrives on pushing you to the edge and then allowing you to let loose. It's one of those games where the slowdown is just enormous but it enhances the game to dramatic effect.

Finally, Pulstar on the Neo Geo. Irem, creators of R-Type made this game under the name Aicom. It's a true R-Type style game and it kicks major ass. You can almost see your Neo Geo coughing and wheezing under the sheer weight of the sprites it's trying to render. So many bullets and so much graphic power that when you survive a massive barrage, it's clear you're a shooter god. It never appeared on any other console.

--Dave

asspennies

08-12-2002, 06:32 PM

Ah, Wasteland. What a great game that was. It always disappointed me that the visuals weren't quite as good on the PC as those in the ads for the amiga version. Still, I loved this game.

I also loved how you could restart the game with your characters at the same skill levels as when they ended the last game. If you took your characters through the game several times, they could become all-powerful, killing enemies with VISA cards. What a blast.

Wasn't fallout a sequel of sorts to wasteland? I don't know - I never played it.

Jason McCullough

08-12-2002, 07:13 PM

Wasn't fallout a sequel of sorts to wasteland? I don't know - I never played it.

You, sir, have sinned against God and Man. Get thee hence to a software store, to atone.

Kool Moe Dee

08-12-2002, 07:47 PM

Wasn't fallout a sequel of sorts to wasteland? I don't know - I never played it.

Also don't forget the much-maligned Fountain of Dreams (which I actually thought was pretty fun)...

Mike Cathcart

08-12-2002, 08:18 PM

Baseball Stars ruled my world for a long time, even though every six months it would wipe out my save data just as I was closing in on a perfect team of 99s. Didn't matter, I'd start right back up, playing against the Lovely Ladies because they sucked and they brought in the crowds and the money. Woo hoo! Loved that game, thanks for the reminder.

Solar Jetman was also a ton of fun. I can't even remember if I ever actually finished it, though, but I know I did play it a lot. Didn't realize Rare made it.

Bangai-O is still in my Dreamcast. I've got it hooked up to the TV next to my computer so when I need a break from Warcraft or Magic I fire it up.

I guess it's hard to tell what the best games nobody played were back then, mostly because I had no real connection to any gamers who didn't live on my street, but I'll take a stab. Anyone here play Genghis Khan for the NES? My first taste of a strategy game. Two of my friends, who were brothers, and I were addicted to that game for months. We never owned it, but since our parents would let us rent a game a week, we pretty much had it between the three of us for most of a year. Of course, Mr. Khan's appearance in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure ("Bob Genghis Khan"), pretty much solidified it as one of the defining experiences of our lives :).

Ben Sones

08-12-2002, 08:35 PM

Paxton

08-12-2002, 09:17 PM

**Bonus** And now for my question. Hopefully one of you who is more learned in game lore than I am can remember this game. A dos-based, third-person, trippy puzzle sort of game. You controled a ship that was basically two triangles glued together. You were in enormous blue and lavendar rooms with the only thing in there being huge bouncy pads. You had to bounce from one pad to another, and every time you hit on a pad it made a beautiful note. The goal was to escape to the next room and more complicated puzzles. Ring any bells with anyone? I'm dying to check it out again.

yeah I remember it. every room had sort of a different emotion conveyed through the colors and ambient music. I can't recall the name either. I remember it came out a year or so after marble madness, and was vaguely similar. it was true 3d, before the age of texture mapping. solid filled polys - not wireframe. 386 era for sure.

Ben Sones

08-12-2002, 09:36 PM

Almost forgot: best games that nobody has heard of:

Midwinter: a great, sophisticated action/adventure by Mike Singleton, released... oh, god, was it 89 or 90? I misremember.

The Last Express: Possibly the most underappreciated adventure game ever made.

Mechwarrior: Everyone remembers Mechwarrior 2, but it's amazing how few people played the original. In a lot of ways, it was a better game. The metagame was a sort of Starflight-like experience, very open-ended. I wish the current Mechwarrior franchise would go back to that.

Celtic Tales: Balor of the Evil Eye. Really slick strategy game by Koei set in mythic Ireland. I liked it, but most people just give me puzzled looks when I bring it up.

Darklands: well, maybe not so unknown. Most RPG junkies have probably played this (or should have).

More recent games: King of Dragon Pass (for those who think there is nothing new under the sun), the Longest Journey, and Warcraft III. Just kidding about that last one.

Jupiter Jones

08-12-2002, 09:47 PM

1. "Temple Of Apshai Trilogy" EPYX hack and slash for The Atari 800
2. "Triad" for the Atari 800 (kind of like a Tic-Tac-Toe version of Archon)
3. "Phantasie I, II, III" SSI RPG for the Atari ST
4. "Wizard's Crown" SSI RPG for the Atari ST
5. "Demon's Winter" SSI RPG for the Atari ST
6. "Dungeon Master" for the Atari ST
7. "Zolar Mercenary" shoot-em-up for the Atari Lynx.
8. "Food Fight" for the Atari 7800
9. "Anco Kickoff"/"Player Manager" for the Atari ST
10. "Starleague Baseball" for ther Atari 800
11. "Microleague Baseball" for the Atrai ST
12. "Breach" for the Atari ST
13. "Zeliard" platform game from Sierra for PC
14. "Wages Of War" squad-level strategy for the PC
15. "Final Orbit" shoot-em-up for the PC
16. "Lost Dutchman Mine" western adventure/RPG for the Atari ST
17. "Alex Kid" for the Sege Master System
18. "Xenon II" for the Atari ST
19. "Crush Crumble And Chomp" for the Atari 800
20. Chris Crawfords's "Excalibur" for the Atari 800
21. "Raiders Of The Lost Ark" Atari 2600
22. "Zepplin"shoot-em up from Synapse for the Atari 800
23. "Blue Max" shoot-em-up for the Atari 800
24. "Escape From The Mindmaster" Atari 2600+Starpath Supercharger
25. "Gateway to Apshai " for Colecovision
26. "Krush Kill And Destroy" good little RTS for the PC with Aussie humor
27. "Crimson Skies" for the PC
28. "Softporn Adventure" for the Atari 800
29. "Motorcross Madness 2" for the PC
30. "Medal Of Honor" for the PSX
31. "Battlehawks 1942" from Lucasarts for the Atari ST
32. "Beachhead" for the Atari 800
33. "Battletech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception" from Sierra for the PC (played on a modified Atari 1040 ST with a '286 Speed' PC emulator soldered to the motherboard)

xahlt

08-12-2002, 10:10 PM

My short list of Bests You Never Heard Of that occurred to me while I was reading the thread:

Internet multiplayer game:
Xpilot - there weren't many more fun things to do in 1994 than play Xpilot on Blood's Music against 31 other players. Only now with UT2k3's bombing run will there be a mode that seems similar to that (although in a completely different genre)

RPG:
The two classics of Oubliette and Omega that will be consigned to gaming obscurity.

No category weird game:
Rockstar. "Your grannie tells you you'll never survive in the music industry without heroin. " Yeah, grannie knows the score! Game developers need to go back and study that game for the degree of personalization it let you feel with your game persona.

Mark Asher

08-12-2002, 10:41 PM

Missionforce Cyberstorm.
Birthright.
Flying Heroes (A QT3 GOTY!).
Dark Legions.

Jason Cross

08-12-2002, 11:13 PM

How many of you played Battletech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception?

I played it to death on my friend's C64, and nobody ever made a Battletech game quite like it. It was a great combination of RPG elements, world exploration, and tactical light-mech combat.

Another underplayed and underappreciated gem is the Genesis Shadowrun RPG. It was a totally different game than the SNES version, and really amazingly good. Sure didn't sell, though.

Lunch of Kong

08-13-2002, 01:24 AM

I not only played Crescent Hawk's Inception, I played it 3 days straight during a summer vacation because I was trying to capture an Urbanmech.

Jason McCullough

08-13-2002, 04:02 AM

Oh, another couple: Syndicate Wars and Crusader: No Regret.

mtkafka

08-13-2002, 05:07 AM

I'm so damn cool. Why? Because I played Crescent Hawk Inception when I was a kid in junior high and won it over a weekend. Thats how cool I am.

I won Autoduel over a weekend.
I won Wizardry over a week.
I won Wasteland over a week.
I won Ultima 3... well over a couple months... same with Ultima 4.

I never won Midwinter or Elite though.

other games -

Birthright was cool .. some of it reminds me of a fantasy version of Europa Universalis.

Urban Assualt is the best rts/action game that maybe 100 people played.

Darkstone was a better Diablo clone then Diablo before Diablo 2.

Spy vs Spy was the best when played with a friend, it rocked!

and I thought Sentinel Worlds was a great crpg.

etc

Tyjenks

08-13-2002, 06:48 AM

How's about a game called Dragon's Eye. It may have been by Epic as well. I vaguely remember it, but I recall hours of fun. It seems that it was an RPG-like game where you moved around a little board/map type deal and had random encounters. I have it in a box in the attic somewhere.

Does that sound familiar to anyone?

Oh! Oh! and Lords of Conquest. Strategy game where you had to conquer the most provinces.

Both of these were Apple IIe games.

Bub, Andrew

08-13-2002, 06:58 AM

Centurion: Defender of Rome.
Seducing Cleopatra was an optional way to defeat Egypt...

Dave Long

08-13-2002, 07:09 AM

Another video game choice... Last Gladiators: Digital Pinball on the Sega Saturn. It's possibly the best video pinball game ever made for a console or PC. Four tables, an incredible heavy metal soundtrack and super ball physics were combined with a high res display that is just gorgeous.

I've heard of and played just about everything listed above. Let's get some more obscure stuff! These are the best games no one played. Everyone's played Baseball Stars on the NES. A better choice would be Baseball Stars 2 on the Neo Geo. It's the greatest game of arcade baseball ever made and you've probably never played it! Better yet, League Bowling, also for the Geo!

BTW, great choice Jason with Shadowrun on the Genesis. It sold ok at the time, but it's a forgotten gem today. I loved it but unfortunately traded it in at some point back then. I've been shopping around for one recently and the game has reasonable value today. Cyberspace was so cool.

--Dave

Gordon Berg

08-13-2002, 07:50 AM

Oh, another couple: Syndicate Wars and Crusader: No Regret.

??? Never heard of if you're in your early twenties and grew up in the post-3D generation. Even if these kind of games weren't your cup of tea, as a DOS gamer, you'd definitely have heard of these...

Are we talking games we never played, didn't appreciate, or didn't know existed?

Chris

08-13-2002, 08:13 AM

Anyone play Alternate Reality: The Dungeon? For a few months our Atari 800XL was powered on non-stop with myself, my dad and my sister each playing for about 8 hours at a time. It was a first person RPG and a blast at the time. Unfortunately we burned out the floppy drive, but I did beat the game. It was supposed to be an ongoing series, but only the Dungeon and the first game, the City came out as far as I know. The City was pretty plain jane though.

zabuni

08-13-2002, 08:39 AM

**Bonus** And now for my question. Hopefully one of you who is more learned in game lore than I am can remember this game. A dos-based, third-person, trippy puzzle sort of game. You controled a ship that was basically two triangles glued together. You were in enormous blue and lavendar rooms with the only thing in there being huge bouncy pads. You had to bounce from one pad to another, and every time you hit on a pad it made a beautiful note. The goal was to escape to the next room and more complicated puzzles. Ring any bells with anyone? I'm dying to check it out again.

The game you are looking for is call Continuum. With trippy visuals and a variety or ships, it was cool.

Paxton

08-13-2002, 09:46 AM

The game you are looking for is call Continuum. With trippy visuals and a variety or ships, it was cool.

yeah that's it. nice recall!

Anonymous

08-13-2002, 09:56 AM

Tech Romancer. Best Robot Fighter Ever! Sega Dreamcast! Get!

asspennies

08-13-2002, 10:03 AM

Speaking of Robot Fighting Games, whatever happened to One Must Fall: Battlegrounds? The sequel to One Must Fall: 2097 certainly has taken its time in development, and much like Duke Nukem Forever or Team Fortress 2, you never hear a peep about it anymore. Unlike DNF or TF2, it isn't even in the public conciousness.

Erik

08-13-2002, 10:14 AM

Anonymous

08-13-2002, 10:20 AM

Forget OMF, Tech Romancer is the best. Oh man, I am gonna go play it right now!

Tyjenks

08-13-2002, 10:35 AM

In the category Games You've Never Heard Of From The Future, a really addictive budget strategy game called MoonBase Commander ships tomorrow. It's being marketed as a game for little kids and other stupid people, but it's actually a clever turn-based amalgam of Command & Conquer, Artillery Duel, Bust-A-Move, and Space 1999. It's fun!

I played the demo and StrategyPlanet has an MBC website. It is quite fun and there seems to be quite a bit of strategy and options involved. I believe the SRP is $19.99 to boot.

www.strategyplanet.com/mbc

I can see why they need to market to kids, as the game has pretty simple mechanics and graphics, but I am afraid some adults are going to miss out on it because of that fact.

Bernie_Dy

08-13-2002, 10:59 AM

Heh, these nostalgic gaming threads pop up every so often, and they never get old.

I agree on Battletech: Crescent Hawk's Inception. Lots of things to do in that game, and it got better as you played, picking up NPCs and improving your mechs and skills.

Wasteland was great too. Anyone remember a different post-nuclear game called the Boomtown? What about another oldie called Hostage Mission?

We mentioned Roadwar in a different thread, and also the Cinemaware stuff. What about Joe Montana PC Football from SEGA? SSI's Star Command?

Anonymous

08-13-2002, 11:22 AM

Almost forgot: best games that nobody has heard of:

Midwinter: a great, sophisticated action/adventure by Mike Singleton, released... oh, god, was it 89 or 90? I misremember.

1990. Great game with a terrible flaw: You could finish it -extremely- quickly. As I recall: Hang glider, explosives, enemy HQ, and it was over.

Same deal with Carrier Command, another Firebird/Rainbird classic (recently resurrected in Hostile Waters): There wasn't much point in playing once you took out the enemy carrier.

Peter

Anonymous

08-13-2002, 11:24 AM

Anonymous

08-13-2002, 11:31 AM

Wasn't fallout a sequel of sorts to wasteland? I don't know - I never played it.

An homage, more like. Interplay did start work on an unofficial Wasteland sequel called Mean Time, but the game was never completed.

Peter

Dave Long

08-13-2002, 11:31 AM

I never even thought of that Peter! Thanks!

--Dave

Jason McCullough

08-13-2002, 11:56 AM

Anonymous

08-13-2002, 12:50 PM

Allegiance was a great game no one played too.

Bernie_Dy

08-13-2002, 12:50 PM

Almost forgot: best games that nobody has heard of:

Midwinter: a great, sophisticated action/adventure by Mike Singleton, released... oh, god, was it 89 or 90? I misremember.

Yeah...I actually might have my old copy sitting around somewhere. Great concept, would be interesting to see something like that with a modern treatment. There was a sequel called, I think, Flames of Freedom. I didn't play it, but heard it wasn't as good. Interesting trick that Peter mentioned...I didn't play with that knowledge or it might have spoiled the game :)

Lords of Midnight, from Eidos, was made by the same developer and tried to capture that same game concept, but for reasons I don't remember, it never quite pulled it off.

Lee Johnson

08-13-2002, 02:08 PM

It's being marketed as a game for little kids and other stupid people, but it's actually a clever turn-based amalgam of Command & Conquer, Artillery Duel, Bust-A-Move, and Space 1999.
Space: 1999!? What, are there big freaking exploding nuclear waste dumps in it? :D

Paxton

08-13-2002, 02:13 PM

Anyone remember SuperQuest for the apple 2? that was my first diablo clone. damn good one too.

Lee Johnson

08-13-2002, 02:18 PM

Anonymous

08-13-2002, 02:44 PM

There was a sequel called, I think, Flames of Freedom. I didn't play it, but heard it wasn't as good. ... Lords of Midnight, from Eidos, was made by the same developer and tried to capture that same game concept, but for reasons I don't remember, it never quite pulled it off.

Flames didn't have quite the arctic atmosphere of Midwinter--I really felt cold when I was playing that game!--but it was vast and had some nice over-arching strategy elements. (You could chose your mission, and it was time sensitive; you had to get everything done before the enemy fleet turned up.)

A third game, Ashes of Empire, isn't thematically linked to the first two, but uses an enhanced version of the same engine and further explores some of the directions taken in Flames.

I think the original, 8-bit Lords, published by Mindscape in the mid '80s, is a much better game than the 3D version Maelstrom developed for Eidos.

I wonder what Mike Singleton is doing these days? I don't think Maelstrom exists any more. It went on to do Red Ghost for Empire, Ring Cycle (using the Lords engine) for Psygnosis (Europe-only, I think) and possbly another game (maybe for Interactive Magic). But I haven't seen anything bearing his name for a good five years. :(

Peter

Jim Preston

08-13-2002, 05:04 PM

The game you are looking for is call Continuum. With trippy visuals and a variety or ships, it was cool.

That's it! Thanks a ton for helping me out with that! In return for setting me free, I will now grant you three wishes.*

* Due to last wish of the previous winner, none of your wishes can come true.

Aszurom

08-13-2002, 05:24 PM

I'd have to give best top-down corridor shooter ever to...

Alien Breed - by Team17.

I bought the Aliens game for the GBC hoping it would be a remake of that classic... but alas, no. Actually, Alien Breed owes a lot to an old C64 game called "Force 7". Hrm... kinda makes me wonder why "Corridor 7" had a seven in the title... tribute?

I really liked "Magic Carpet" too... hey, anybody remember "Master of the Lamps" on C64?

Robert Sharp

08-13-2002, 05:43 PM

I picked up Shadowrun for the Genesis recently and I don't like it as much as the SNES version, though I have to admit the genesis version is more like the PnP game. But the realtime combat is difficult! I am constantly dying, and I have no idea what the point of the game is (have the same problem with Buck Rogers for the genesis).

For video games, I am a huge fan of Koei's Inindo. It's one of a very few (maybe 3) RPGs that I have played more than once.

Liberty or Death is a lot of fun (another Koei game...hmmm...). It's Koei strategy set in the Revolutionary War (America's).

Tactics Ogre for the PSX is a game a lot of people have heard of but not many have played.

Dungeons and Dragons Collection for the Saturn (import) is a good game as well. It's a collection of the arcade games from the late 80s early 90s.

Might and Magic: Gates to another world for the Genesis is one of the other RPGs I played more than once. Something very addictive about this one.

For those who care about such things, I still own all of the games I have mentioned in this post. Some are more well known than others. Liberty or Death is pretty rare, and not many people seem to know it exists.

Dave Long

08-13-2002, 06:37 PM

All good choices Mr. Sharp. I like your taste in games. Liberty or Death had a very limited run. I remember when it came in at the EB while working there. We had a few Koei fans that were always set for the next big thing from them. I never played Inindo but always wanted to.

Dungeons & Dragons Collection is a crying shame because it never made it out in the US. The arcade game was pretty easy to find so it was mind-boggling that Capcom bagged the US release. Just one more game that could have put Saturn in people's minds that ended up never even getting out of Japan. Genesis Shadowrun is what you make of it. the realtime combat is difficult, but after awhile it becomes second nature. It's well worth sticking with it.

I should add that I own all the games I discussed above except The Reap and Pulstar. A friend owned the Geo cartridge for Pulstar and I played it heavily. The Reap I used to own but lost the disc in my darkest hour of last year when a case with some 60 PC games flew off the top of my car never to be seen again. I've since replaced some of them but not The Reap. Now that I know where to look, it won't be long 'til I get that back again.

--Dave

Bub, Andrew

08-13-2002, 06:54 PM

Has anyone heard of Ali Baba & the 40 Thieves it was sort of an early RPG/Strat thing... I wasted far too many hours on it back when I was 10.

Kool Moe Dee

08-13-2002, 07:38 PM

Has anyone heard of Ali Baba & the 40 Thieves it was sort of an early RPG/Strat thing... I wasted far too many hours on it back when I was 10.

Heard of it? Heh, practically worshipped it (along with Return of Heracles, and Adventure Construction Set)... :D

Jupiter Jones

08-13-2002, 09:42 PM

Has anyone heard of Ali Baba & the 40 Thieves it was sort of an early RPG/Strat thing... I wasted far too many hours on it back when I was 10.

Yes!!! I loved that one too!

mtkafka

08-13-2002, 10:00 PM

Oh a recent title that I think should get some credit for originality in the rts genre, not Kohan ... but Majesty. Now that was a cool somewhat not played much game.

etc

Jaysun

08-13-2002, 10:44 PM

Jagged Alliance 2.

Not that old I guess, but still, I don't think a lot of people played it.

Jessica

08-14-2002, 03:57 AM

Fallout was less a sequel and more a tribute. Ultimately, as much as I loved Wasteland, I loved Fallout even more. If you haven't played it, you really and truly should. It ages well. I replayed it late last year, and had just as much fun as I did the first time around. Fallout 2 also comes highly recommended. Not quite as good as the first in some ways, better in others.

Fallout was supposed to be Wasteland 2, but EA (the publisher of the game) wouldn't release the name to Interplay.

There was talk at EA in 1999 of developing a Wasteland MMOG, but nothing ever came of it.

Jessica

08-14-2002, 04:06 AM

Mechwarrior: Everyone remembers Mechwarrior 2, but it's amazing how few people played the original. In a lot of ways, it was a better game. The metagame was a sort of Starflight-like experience, very open-ended. I wish the current Mechwarrior franchise would go back to that.

Note that the original MechWarrior (developed by Dynamix for Activision) was the game we licensed at GEnie for the online game that eventually became Kesmai's Multiplayer BattleTech. That game ran for 10 years and made some pretty good money.

I still remember the Director of Product Management at GEnie telling me, when I proposed to go after Activision and the Mech license, "That game will never make money. Drop it." If I hadn't ignored him, the game would never have been done. Thank god Activision saw the possibilities right away and jumped in with both feet.

Xaroc

08-14-2002, 06:07 AM

My pick would be Terra Nova. Very underappreciated for what it did. It is basically single player squad based combat on Tribes like terrain back in 1996.

http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?name=Terra+Nova%3A+Strike+Force+Centauri

-- Xaroc

Ben Sones

08-14-2002, 06:14 AM

Actually, I'm glad that Fallout wasn't Wasteland 2, because otherwise we might have missed out on the unique style of the world they created. And I still maintain that game has the best opening of any game, ever.

And Battletech--yeah, THERE'S a franchise that hasn't generated revenue for anyone. Heh.

Oh, yeah--one more adventure gem that you probably never played: Chronomaster. Fantastic game that hit the bargain bins well before its time.

Dave Long

08-14-2002, 07:11 AM

I almost don't want to post this for fear of sell-outs (before I can convince my wife to order) but at Capcom's website (http://www.capcom.com) they've now marked down all the Dreamcast games to $9.95 and some that were previously unavailable have returned to availability including MrAngryFace's favorite, Tech Romancer. Street Fighter III Third Strike is back as well... So if you're lacking some of these in your collection, now's the time to buy.

--Dave

Aleck

08-14-2002, 07:25 AM

How many of you played Battletech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception?
I did, and liked it enough to buy the pencil and paper rulebook to see what was going on underneath the covers. I liked the sequel, Battletech 2: The Crescent Hawk's Revenge, better though. These games were the lineal ancestors of MechCommander.

One of the great things about the Crescent Hawk games (which I ended up playing on a friend's computer because my poor 8086 just wasn't up to snuff) was that they were also a lot more than just the Mechcommander type games. Remember in the beginning of the game when you were wandering around on foot? It was *almost* a role playing experience (albeit a tightly scripted one) combined with tactical mech based combat.

It would be wonderful if someone could take that concept -- role playing combined with tactical mech combat -- and create a game that is a little more true to the original FASA Mechwarrior RPG. Don't get me wrong -- I've purchased all of the Mechwarrior games and expansions (although only the first two games were truly inspired, IMHO), but I'd love to see them get back to the kind of spirit that infused the two Crescent Hawk games.

Bernie_Dy

08-14-2002, 08:15 AM

My pick would be Terra Nova. Very underappreciated for what it did.

Right on. Great game, and unfortunately, also a great business case study in how good games don't always succeed. TN had some awesome missions. I still remember running through an enemy camp, dropping those turrets behind me and hoping my squadmates were keeping up, or being chased by a bunch of baddies and using the jet pack to jump across valleys to haul ass out of a fire fight. It was sad when LGT announced they had to nix any add-ons or sequels.

Chris Floyd

08-14-2002, 08:43 AM

Overlooked and underplayed? How about Bioforge?

deanco

08-14-2002, 10:13 AM

Battlezone, the first.

Kalle

08-14-2002, 10:20 AM

My vote goes to Outcast. I absolutely adored that game. I had just got a brand new computer the month before it's release so I could run it in max resolution and I thought it was gorgeous. The graphics were stunning and the world seemed so alive. The game got worse towards the ending, since the soldiers grew progressively weaker as you advanced through the game and the later worlds felt a bit uninspired, but it sucked up a tremendous amount of my time.

and now for something completely different...

Speaking of Bioforge, I have it lying around somewhere in my room. I bought it two years ago cheap since I had heard it was great.

Unfortunately I ran into the DOS driver juggling thing, which I barely had the patience for when I ran games on my old 486. Having to use a boot disk just so it would recognise my cd player and still not being able to get it to properly recognise my sound card I gave up after an hour or so. Now that I'm running Win XP I can hardly get any DOS game to run properly, so I fear it will be sitting in my cupboard forever.

If anyone is interested I'm willing to give it up cheap to a loving home where DOS games can be properly treated. Send me a message.

Chris Floyd

08-14-2002, 10:25 AM

Outcast was great. And technologically pretty impressive, and I'm not referring to the voxels. They had real reflecting/refracting water, depth of field camera (to make up for the resolution, of course), really nice yet low-poly creatures. I too ran it on a speedy computer, so that does improve your impression of it. Too bad Outcast 2 is dead.

Chris

08-14-2002, 11:15 AM

Chris Floyd

08-14-2002, 11:16 AM

You thinking of Space Hulk, Chris?

Anonymous

08-14-2002, 12:07 PM

Ah, Bioforge, it was great until I realized I saved my game but the only batteries I had were underpowered to fuel the ship at the end. I never did finish it, but had a lot of fun with it. Another game that was overlooked was the squad-based tactical Space Marine game from the Warhammer 40k universe. I can't remember the actual name though. Also the first few LucasFilm games, before they became LucasArts. Rescue on Fractulas and Ballblazer were a blast.

I always thought Bioforge (by Tony Zurovec, who did the Crusader games for Origin and the original design of Loose Cannon) was a much better game than it was reviewed to be. I remember it getting battered at the time for its violence (especially the bit near the beginning where you can beat a guy to death with his own arm). The gold edition and sequel were killed in one of Origin's cutbacks.

EA did two Warhammer 3D squad games under the Space Hulk name and Gremlin in the UK did an isometric game called Space Crusade (though, technically, this used the HeroQuest rules system). Man, what's hapened to the Warhammer line on PC? Nothing since SSI did Rites of War, as I recall.

Yeah, the early Lucasfilm stuff was great. I still remember the shock I felt Rescue when the alien turned up. (I got zapped in much the same way two nights ago by one of the haunts in Thief.) The two other were called Koronis Rift (my favorite) and The Eidolon.

Peter

Lee Johnson

08-14-2002, 01:14 PM

Bernie_Dy

08-14-2002, 03:40 PM

Oh, yeah--one more adventure gem that you probably never played: Chronomaster. Fantastic game that hit the bargain bins well before its time.
Hey, I bought this out of a bargain bin a couple of years or so ago. Should I actually open the package and install it? :shock:

LOL! I did the exactly the same thing.

Chronomaster...that was made by the Dreamforge guys, wasn't it? I always liked their games. They did one a long time ago called Veil of Darkness that I thought was an elegant blend of adventure, action, and RPG. I wasn't too hot on the D&D stuff they did, but might be because I didn't have a chance to play them all the way through. Are these guys still in business?

Jaysun

08-14-2002, 05:18 PM

You thinking of Space Hulk, Chris?

He could also mean "Warhammer 40k: Chaos Gate" or "Warhammer 40k: Rites of War"

Ben Sones

08-14-2002, 09:31 PM

Hey, I bought this out of a bargain bin a couple of years or so ago. Should I actually open the package and install it? :shock:

Yep.

Chris

08-15-2002, 01:50 PM

Yep, it was Space Hulk, thanks. I still have it on floppy disk somewhere. I picked up the Warhammer strategy game collection but never got around to loading the games up. My 8 year old nephew loves strat games so I'll let him give them a try.

Peter,
I also had The Eidolon and Koronis Rift but I never got very far into them. Speaking of the alien in Fractulus, in the old message boards I posted about how I scared the stuffing out of my sister by intentionally waiting for the alien to pop up. She fell out of her chair screaming....just one of those sibling rivalry joys.

I also had Strike Commander but didn't like it that much, I prefered Wings of Glory which came out around the same time. My dad still plays it to this day.