Sexy Parodius is a bit sketchy, yes. But, it’s easily the most-fun shmup I’ve ever played. The music is fantastic, too. I’ve managed to 1cc the game, but I’ve never beaten the bonus stage which is just so ridiculously difficult, I question whether it’s even possible without a very specific strategy or something.
Unfortunately, the best version is the arcade one, and MAME doesn’t do the best job with it. Still playable, though.
Removed by mod
Legend of Kage for NES was an awesome minimalistic beautiful game and I’ve never met anyone else who thinks so
Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits Such a good game with some unique gameplay as far as tbs and rpgs go
xracer - A WipeOut clone (would love some development on this)
https://packages.debian.org/sid/xracer
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Sauerbraten FPS (1990s fps distilled)
Guild Wars 1
I don’t know if it was nostalgia, or the story, or the gameplay… But, man, I miss that game.
GW1 had a great campaign that felt good to progress though. It had some grindy stuff at the end for players that wanted to keep playing past the missions but it wasn’t required. Unlike GW2 that just feels like boring grind all throughout.
I’ll throw out one from my youth that I think would be really good to see updated:
Sentinel Worlds I: Future Magic. It was a very early space RPG which was way ahead of it’s time. Something like the recent Heat Signature kinda reminds me of it, though it lacks the scope and depth of combat.The game was particularly notable for a musical score that simulated multiple instruments by swapping between them faster than the human ear could differentiate.
Why… I understand the reasoning for visual feedback, but audio?
I actually didn’t know that about the game, I just linked to the articled to provide details. Given the time the game was written, I suspect it was to make the music a bit more complicated. Game “Music” at the time could leave something to be desired. I played a lot of games with just a PC Speaker, which means that all of the sounds were mostly just different beeps. However, we also didn’t know any better at the time and just enjoyed it for what it was.
Alley Cat for sure
Alley Cat actually got a second chance! Look up “Alley Cat: ReMeow”
Happy to see some fellow Alley Cat fans around!
Cue the tune in my head. Thank you, it’s so lovely. 😍
Not forgotten or obscure but… Assassin’s creed 3. Yeah the main character sucks but I love the missions and map. Also has just the right amount of pirate like missions (in 4 is too much). I don’t understand why people loved 4 so much the story of that game sucks lol and the villains are so forgettable.
4 had a lot of issues, bad story, trailing missions and a lot of pacing problems. But it’s the best pirate game ever made. And the ship combat was great
Like I said, too much piracy, you’re not even an assassin’s anymore… Also funny how there’s so much praise online for that game yet NOBODY mentioned the villains. They’re so forgettable. In the other games, even the bad ones I can remember a face or names, 3 had some of the best actually. 4 is just a blank space.
The main character is pale in comparison to Ezio, but I don’t see how he suck.
He gets bitch talked the whole game and he lost at the end anyways lol… Doesn’t make for a very enjoyable character. I really like how physically blunt and badass is though.
Sigma Star Saga for the GBA. Really creative mashup of an RPG and a side-scrolling shooter, with a cool weapon-configuration system thrown in. Definitely suffered a bit from platform limitations, but there’s absolutely more that could have been done with the core concept.
Shockingly good writing, too.
My whole family loved these games.
Later, I realized Amy Hennig worked on these at Crystal Dynamics before leaving for Naughty Dog where she worked on the Uncharted Series.
Soul Reaver seriously needs a reboot. Soul Reaver kept getting mentioned a while back when Square Enix sold off Cristal Dynamics to pay for NFT scams, but no mutterings of a reboot/remake.
This halogened a while ago: https://www.ign.com/articles/new-legacy-of-kain-looks-likely-as-embracer-receives-strong-fan-response
I remember some years ago receiving an email with a form asking many questions about Legacy of Kain/Soul Reaver, seemingly a market research thing.
Embracer
Welp, there goes all my hope
I remember that, and participated as well. IIRC, the response they got was significantly larger than their most optimistic predictions, so they are aware that there is big interest. Hopefully it lands somewhere that will actually complete the project.
If there is one game out there that I think deserves a second chance, it is definitely Alpha Protocol. This game came out in 2010 and was created by Obsidian Entertainment, the makers behind Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. This was the first-of-its-kind ‘espionage RPG’ with a truly, wholly unique dialogue system that has truly never been replicated since. Unlike mainstream RPGs of the time, you pick from several different ‘tones’ to speak in, in which gives the game hundreds of outcomes and dozens of endings. For example, according to Raycevick in a recent video, love interest can snipe you after a boss fight, poorly-treated damzels can attack you in the dead of night, contracts you’re hired to kill can be baited into their demise through dialogue, and a whole host of other things.
The problem is that Alpha Protocol was lambasted by critics due to its incredibly buggy launch state and unpolished graphics. It never met the sales requirements that SEGA was expecting from it, and so, a few years ago, the game was pulled from all storefronts, never to be played again - until now. That’s right. Thanks to the legends over at GOG for their incredible work, Alpha Protocol is back on sale, complete with achievements, localization, modern compatibility, and cloud saves. All without any form of DRM. But, the bugs in the game are still present to this day even in the GOG version, and so you might end up finding some humorous bugs and glitches.
Source: Making a Game Last Forever
An old PS1 fighting game called Unholy War. It had a lot of really unique mechanics I haven’t seen since.
F-ZERO. Truly a devastating loss. 99 is cool, but there’s no guarantee we’ll ever see a completely new title ever again. There was no other series with the same level of snappy controls, character design, music and challenge. It really is in a league of its own.
Rock Manager. It was very limited in scope and quite short, but it was a really fun game with tons of potential.
I’ve been unsuccessfully looking for games like it that are as good as it could have been or even as good as it was for over 20 years now.
