Reply With QuoteDitto on Baseball Stars and Tyrian; my god, BS ate my NES-playing life. I'd add Mission Force: Cyberstorm.
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.
Ditto on Baseball Stars and Tyrian; my god, BS ate my NES-playing life. I'd add Mission Force: Cyberstorm.
Best Computer Game No One Played - The Reap. 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
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.
You, sir, have sinned against God and Man. Get thee hence to a software store, to atone.Originally Posted by asspennies
Also don't forget the much-maligned Fountain of Dreams (which I actually thought was pretty fun)...
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 :).
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.
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.**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.
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.
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)
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.
Missionforce Cyberstorm.
Birthright.
Flying Heroes (A QT3 GOTY!).
Dark Legions.
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.
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.
Oh, another couple: Syndicate Wars and Crusader: No Regret.
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
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.
Centurion: Defender of Rome.
Seducing Cleopatra was an optional way to defeat Egypt...
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
??? 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?
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.
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!The game you are looking for is call Continuum. With trippy visuals and a variety or ships, it was cool.
Tech Romancer. Best Robot Fighter Ever! Sega Dreamcast! Get!
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.
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!
Forget OMF, Tech Romancer is the best. Oh man, I am gonna go play it right now!
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.
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?
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