Mine has to be Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime, a DS spin off of the Dragon Quest series that sees you playing as a slime operating a tank and rescuing the people from your town. You run around the overworld, collecting items to use as ammunition and saving money to upgrade your tank. The art and music are just as great as you’d expect from the Dragon Quest series. It made fantastic use of the DS’s dual screens. It’s also written for a younger audience, so a lot of it is just really silly and fun! Try it out for sure, I’m so sad there’s no sequel :(
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)
I played the second one ages ago. Nothing more creepy than being a bit of a dick to you people and have a voice whisper your name late at night.
(For those who don’t know: the game would read your username and if it was in the database of soundfiles it would play that whisper at random, but long intervals.)
Noclip did a doc about it recently (https://youtu.be/GtNvEna6bxc). I remember seeing it for the first time at a buddies place growing up, but I didn’t have a strong enough computer to run it. I did though when black and white 2 came out and it was awesome! I feel the only thing comparable to it currently is the Anno series, no spells or anything but just city management and stuff.
MDK. Sure, it was arguably “popular” when it launched, but is largely forgotten in videogame lore. There’s not even talks of a remake.
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.
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.
Whoooooooa, now you’re really taking me back. I only had the Shareware version, so the full version with all the fighters was something I lusted after for ages, but never actually got. Megarace is another one from this era that stands out, though I don’t think it was a particularly great game.
I can still remember every special move and destruction. And how to select Nova outside tournament. Completed the tournament on Heavy Metal, but it’s hard only in the beginning.
There are custom tournaments and a open source remake project https://www.openomf.org/
You know that killer soundtrack right?
One day Kenny Chou was browsing the internet and randomly thought “I wonder if anyone remembers that game I did the music for?” and was surprised to find his OMF2097 music has a huge following.
To celebrate he re-constructed the main theme in modern tools here: https://youtu.be/UvlVaQl7kEk
That’s awesome! Cheers for the link! I loved the theme song so much that I made up random lyrics for it as a kid and used to sing it all the time. People used to ask me what was that song that I was singing and I’d tell them all about the game and rope them into it lol.
Incredible Machine, Metal Arms Glitch in the System, Wargroove, Gradius 3.
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.
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.
N64 “Beetle Adventure Racing” is crazy fun! Race against the clock to improve your time, race the computer, race another player, and best of all are the wild Arena battles - up to 4 players. This was always big fun at family gatherings.
Wii “Godzilla Unleashed” is my favorite solo game. I’d run the sound through my home theater and crank up all the lovely authentic Toho kaiju roars, screeches, howls, and destruction. Controls varied slightly by monster but always felt intuitive. Battling other beasts could get a little glitchy in tight quarters but knock a few buildings out of the way and all’s well. Greatest cathartic stress reliever, ever!
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.
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.
I concur, hell I am so tempted to buy a Datsun 100A irl just because of that game…
If I had a legitimate opportunity to buy one I would seriously consider it
Yoku’s Island Express. The idea of a metroidvania where the entire map is a giant pinball board is beyond genius.
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
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.
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.
