G-Police was underrated.

err.... Carmageddon!!

Grand Prix Circuit, Starcontrol, Dune 2, Ultima 7/8

Eradicator was rather impressive for the time it came out. All kinds of weird weapons, graphics as good as duke (used the build engine I believe) and different characters to play.

Was surprised that just disappeared.

Blood
Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold

Neuromancer. From ~1985. Best hacking game ever.

Star Wars Episode 1 Racer

Great game, but it's not something nobody has heard of. The Chrono Trigger soundtrack alone sold more copies than any other game soundtrack before it (although it might have been surpassed since then).

Ah, I usually hear about Final Fantasy and other rpgs. If asking about CT, only a few people know what i'm talking about.

Ach, and I also nearly forgot to mention one of the RPGs that really has one of, if not, the best storyline I've ever seen in any form of media : Planescape: Torment

Words cannot describe how incredibly awesome that game is. RPG-wise, it's a very fascinating game. I'd say that combat takes up a very, VERY small proportion of the game. Less than 10%. Most of the game is taken up in discovering the identity of the Nameless One, and simply put, the way that the plot twists and turns are just amazing. Just when you think that you have most things figured out, a new thing is introduced. And hell, I was afraid of some silly revelations at the end, because I really couldn't see how they could properly end the storyline because I still had quite a few questions left... until they made a single, simple revelation at the very last moment which just brilliantly tied every last loose end together.

It's an amazing experience of a game. I'd definately recommend everyone to check this one out. The Planescape universe might sound absurd, but it just comes to life in the game. The characters are a fascinating, different lot and definately not your usual party. The story flows incredibly well with plot twists abound, and the pace is quite good.

Blizzard games have a really good atmosphere i'm looking for in games, especially the earlier snes blizzard games. One of these is called Blackthorne, its a prince of persia syle puzzle 2d game. Its really good but underrated game for snes :/

ZZT - A 1991 DOS game that, until recently, was available for download from Epic Megagames' website, along with it's less popular sequal SuperZZT, and some add-on games. You can probably find downloads scattered across the web.

It's most powerful feature is a level editor which you can use to make your own games.

Initially programmed as a text-editor before the author put a walking smiley fact in it, it uses ASCII graphics, and a simple but powerful scripting engine. With this scripting engine so many different things have been done with ZZT it's not funny. There are simple top-down racing engines, simple 3d engines, side view platforming engines... and the scripting is even used for more simple things such as creating an in-depth game with the default top-down engine.


Took this when i was testing Virtual PC.

It can play the full range of PC Speaker sounds. :p And it'll run on any computer today, which rocks. Seriously, stick it on your 66mhz laptop, along with some tools for ZZT such as the Super Toolkit (STK) I think it's called. It'll entertain you forever as you make TEH PERFECT GAEM.

MegaZeux (DOS) - Inspired heavily by ZZT, I consider it an unofficial sequal. It's scripting language is more powerful, and it has the ability for the game creator to change the EGA palette and ASCII character set dynamically.

This game was also released as freeware, and the source code is also available. There are several modifications, but the last official release was 2.51g. Any later version numbers are third-party mods of the source.

It's only weakness is that it is not compatible with Windows NT, and DosBox does not run it 100% correctly. Also some laptops (at least older ones) might have a problem with the custom ASCII character sets.


Might not run under NT, but runs perfectly under Virtual PC.


Another screenshot.

All screenshots are from the original authors' included levels/games and do not reflect the potential unleashed in third-party games. <3.

Last time I checked you could get all 3 games from [url]www.dosgames.com[/url] under Game Creation Systems.

Finally, guess where I got my name. :p

I loved this game. Sadly I've only ever seen one copy in my life, and it wasn't mine.

edit: I really need to check Amazon more. I am definately buying that.

Yeah, ZZT most definitely is awesome. It entertained me for a long time many years ago.

Crystalis was a mighty good game.

Betrayal at Krondor is free/abandonware now.

Requiem: Avenging Angel ... felt a tad on the short side but i'm not entirely sure... first person shooter plus angelic powers... some of the powers are very similar to our favorite force powers but some are just

like "to salt" instant kill for all non boss enemies... however it can be tricky to aim it


and it's also fun to posess one of the larger heavily armed enemies and use them to go rambo on a large group of enemies before you go in yourself

there's also a few funny elements like how all the enemies sound like a strangled cat when they die

and absolutely requires a patch to run on any machine with DX8 or higher installed because it doesn't properly detect the DX version on anything higher than 7 so that also means the demo won't work unless you have an old system with DX7 on it

Anyone mention Earthbound yet for SNES?

Freespace 2 (besides being an great game) might very well have the single most unique licence of any game ever. It actually states in the EULA that you can feel free to share your copy with your "friends".

Now the question is, who here wants to be my friend?

Mafia. Incredible story, graphics, gameplay. Long. Epic. Some general similarities to GTA (free reign of a huge city, cars, guns) but way deeper.

Tangentially, I finally went looking for Planescape online and ended up buying it at GoGamer for $3. They have a Fallout 1/2 bundle for the same price, too. How awesome is that? It's some gimmicky time limited offer, though.

+1

and it's only $10

YAY!!!!!!!!!!! one of my favourite!!!!

But do you remember Earthbound for NES???

N64:

Perfect Dark

my favourite Shooter on the Nintendo 64...

thread's title says "nobody's really heard of" perfect dark isn't one of those "hidden gems" like most of the stuff we've been posting

"Loom." It's at least an early 90's DOS game. From what I remember, you are this young apprentice who was learning how to work this magic loom before you were thrown into some sort of adventure....bah! I can't remember jack about it, but maybe somebody else does?

I have a copy of it and the ezpansion. Got them for $10 or so a couple of years back.

What was Chip's Challange again? I vaguely remember the name. Crap, now it's gonna bug me all day.

And Jezball Pwns.

Septerra Core

i have that! came with Shogo..
don't see alot for Suikoden, so thats one

Oh, I forgot about Normality.

Yes. Loom is awesome! It's an old lec adventure game with absolutely gorgeous graphics. Instead of the classic inventory management system in eg Monkey Island [god those games rule too], you, as Bobbin Threadbare, scion of the Weaver's Guild, have a magical distaff divided into a scale of notes. As you go through the game you learn new 'weaves' which are performed by playing a series of notes, for instance to dye or bleach cloth [comes in handy in the game believe it or not], or eventually the powerful straw to gold weave. And of course almost every weave can be played backwards for the reverse, sometimes for rather interesting effects. There is even an expert play mode where the distaff notes aren't actually shown and you have to learn the weaves literally by ear.

There was supposed to be a sequel for it entitled Forge, however to my never-dying bitterness, it was cancelled. However, it does crop up in Curse of Monkey Island, when LeChuck is ranting about how you can never defeat him and that there will be a sequel or something, to which Guybrush responds "Does the name Bobbin Threadbare mean anything to you?", LeChuck replies in the negative, to which Guybrush says something like "Well, there you go."

Best played via http://scummvm.sf.net/


I don't recall if anyone's mentioned it, but Beneath a Steel Sky is outstanding as well [i think it's available now from the ScummVM site], the game while being exceptional cyberpunk gameage/story is also incredibly clever and very droll.


Lionheart [Legacy of the Crusader?] is an interesting game as well. Though i think it had a very short production run and very low playerbase. It's released by black isle i think it was, in the same vein as the Fallout games. It's like a renaissance-era rpg that crossed planes with a magical fantasy plane during the Crusades, leading the Christians and Muslims to ally against the invading goblins and such. It's pretty entertaining to play for a while, it uses the same stat and feat and such system as Fallout but with much customization.

Unfortunately it suffers from their decision to move away from FO's sequential combat to real-time combat, while keeping the player's hp's and such fairly low still, so instead of having time to plan and conserve ammo and focus on one or two at a time you often wind up quickly dead within a swarm of goblins or such. Morevoer, while you meet really interesting people who join your group and such, their ai is not always the brightest, very often leading them to commit suicide-by-horde or something similar [Cervantes was particularly bad with this i recall].

Which isn't to say it's without its utterly priceless moments. For instance one of my all-time favourite sequences in any game is when you meet a Goblin Seer, who rhapsodizes about the dreamy eyes of a nearby woodsman.
"Err, so. Do you want me to introduce you, maybe put in a good word?"
"No-- i just want his eyes, will you bring them to me?"


This totally makes me want to go play Loom again actually.

Loom sounds absolutely ridiculous, but whatever turns your crank. I don't know if this qualifies but I found "Goblins Quest 3" to be quite an excellent old PC game, I'd love to get a hold of a copy of it, but all I can find are corrupt German warez

Hah! Funny Freespace story.

My dad had his office building remodelled, and I was there pretty much every weekend for two months. One day, I found a whiteboard in an out of the way place, and started doodling and writing. I erased, then wrote "Kilrathi" and then was called away and forgot about it.

Three months later, I wandered back over and this entire conversation had been written on the board.

*arrow to Kilrathi* "Evil cats from that awesome game with a pretty good sequal."
*different color* "Pretty good? WTH are you talking about? Freespace 2 *****!"
"It was pretty good. I haven't played in soo long... I don't even know if I have my copy anymore."
"Ah, that's ok. Still got mine. We should play sometime, maybe during lunch next week?"
"Sure thing."

It was awesome.

Chips Challenge was a puzzle based overhead view of a little boy named Chip looking for all the computer chips in each level. Certain terrain was unwalkable, and other terrain was slippery. There were maps where you had to aim yourself and hit a 'bumper' of sorts and slide around the map to get all the chips, and get to the end. A very great game, and more games would take heed to do puzzles similarly.

JediKirby

If your a World War II fanatic like me then one game that gets overlooked alot is the Combat Mission series.

Some people claim its too complicated but apparently they either didn't try to learn the game or are just idiots (its not complicated it just uses a different control scheme). Its actually a very simple game in its core.

http://www.battlefront.com/

The demos are nice with the original game offering the best missions demo wise (however as far as the full product goes, i would say teh 2nd one Barbarrosa to Berlin is the best).

Yeah, this game is absolutely godly. I've only managed to get four people together to play it once, but it's just soooooo fun.

However, my vote for unheard of goes to a game for PS2 called "Road Trip Adventure". It's set in some crazy world populated by cars, and it starts off with the President [remember, a car] deciding he's had enough of running it, and is going to let the person who wins the World Cup and can beat him in a race become the next President. Guess what the object of the game is?

Anyway, you have to upgrade your car [well, yourself], complete all the qualifying races, get yourself some team-mates. There's also loads of mini-quests to go on. Totally addictive. You can get new bodies for yourself and get sponsorship (basically, get money for driving around with a sign on), and loads of stuff. Another part of the game is to found a new city and convince people to move there. Very little of the game is spent actually racing.

And then there's MP mode, whereby you can take your memory card around to a friends house and race against his team-mates. You can even sell parts across different games, but because you get to specify the currency of your game, there's also an exchange rate depending on how far through the game you are, so if you're just starting out, buying the best engine off someone is going to cost much more than someone who's much further into the game.

Also worth a mention is the soccer mode - 3-a-side football with cars. Most interesting.

Full of little details that just add up to a fun experience, if not particularly deep or meaningful.

Uplink.

what more needs to be said?

N64 - Blast Corps.

J-Bomb = win

I'm one of the few people I know who know what Mischief Makers is for the 64. Out of those few people, I'm the only one who loves it!

If you have a PS2 there is absolutely no reason not to buy Katamary Damacy. It's hella fun and only $20.

Operation Flashpoint. Not only does this game drive me nuts, I love it for how refereshing of a tactical army game it is.


Soldner wasn't bad, more like OFP on crack.

Yeah.

Story = 0, but fun.