Lesser known games that got overshadowed Remember-All

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In the spirit of this week's podcast email from Brendan about games that were "lesser known" than their competitors of similar style or genre, what are some great overlooked or under-appreciated titles that just never got their day in the sun?

Here are a few suggestions I could think of:

The Best Zelda: LTTP Game without Zelda in the title: Alundra, on the original Playstation, was an amazing LTTP-inspired Action RPG that had an amazing story, great play style, and excellent 16-bit Pixel style. The sequel, Alundra 2, was a new story that tried to make the shift to 3D to compete against another Zelda title, Ocarina of Time, but it never lived up to it's competition.

IMAGE(https://lparchive.org/Alundra/Update%2002/28-SLES_011.35_25082010_164824_0455.png)

The best 2D Final Fantasy Game Not Made By Square-Enix:: Lunar: The Silver Star and Lunar 2: Eternal Blue were unknown for many reasons, not the least of which was that they made their US debuts on the Sega CD. With FMV anime intros and cutscenes, a soundtrack that took advantage of it's CD-storage medium, an amazingly told (if absolutely tropey) story, solid game mechanics and a huge interesting world, it was everything a 16-bit RPG fan could want. If only it was called Final Fantasy: Lunar instead.

IMAGE(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/A7gxSHsGbco/maxresdefault.jpg)

The best 3D Final Fantasy Game Not Made By Square/Enix: Wild Arms, another Playstation title, was actually released in the US before FFVII and was the first 3D RPG that I remember playing. I still have the intro song in my iPod playlist. Set in a dystopian wild west world, it was unique in it's approach to RPGs which leaned primarily on Sci-Fi or Fantasy themes (although it does stray into both at times). Of course it got steamrolled by the FFVII Juggernaut, but on it's own it was an excellent title that established a lot of the design for 3D RPG combat that we see today.

Tagging for when I have more time because I have arguments about whether Lunar or Wild Arms were over-shadowed or deserved better (and boy howdy do I loves me some Wild Arms).

Alz wrote:

Here are a few suggestions I could think of:

The Best Zelda: LTTP Game without Zelda in the title: Alundra, on the original Playstation, was an amazing LTTP-inspired Action RPG that had an amazing story, great play style, and excellent 16-bit Pixel style. The sequel, Alundra 2, was a new story that tried to make the shift to 3D to compete against another Zelda title, Ocarina of Time, but it never lived up to it's competition.

IMAGE(https://lparchive.org/Alundra/Update%2002/28-SLES_011.35_25082010_164824_0455.png)

The best 2D Final Fantasy Game Not Made By Square-Enix:: Lunar: The Silver Star and Lunar 2: Eternal Blue were unknown for many reasons, not the least of which was that they made their US debuts on the Sega CD. With FMV anime intros and cutscenes, a soundtrack that took advantage of it's CD-storage medium, an amazingly told (if absolutely tropey) story, solid game mechanics and a huge interesting world, it was everything a 16-bit RPG fan could want. If only it was called Final Fantasy: Lunar instead.

IMAGE(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/A7gxSHsGbco/maxresdefault.jpg)

The best 3D Final Fantasy Game Not Made By Square/Enix: Wild Arms, another Playstation title, was actually released in the US before FFVII and was the first 3D RPG that I remember playing. I still have the intro song in my iPod playlist. Set in a dystopian wild west world, it was unique in it's approach to RPGs which leaned primarily on Sci-Fi or Fantasy themes (although it does stray into both at times). Of course it got steamrolled by the FFVII Juggernaut, but on it's own it was an excellent title that established a lot of the design for 3D RPG combat that we see today.

Wow, you just nailed the best games of my early teens that shaped my love of gaming.

SallyNasty wrote:

Wow, you just nailed the best games of my early teens that shaped my love of gaming.

Yuuuup--pretty much not much more to say from my end. I can't think of any games that were underappreciated or lesser known at the time they were released. I'll have to come back to this after thinking on it a little bit.

Also tagging, I'll need to give it some thought.

Landstalker (Genesis)
Phantom Dust (Xbox)
Blade Runner (PC)
Shadowrun (SNES)
Flashback (Genesis)

I'm not sure how lesser known the Lunar games actually were but my adoration of them may be coloring my memory. I miss Working Designs.

Not a lesser known game, but it certainly suffered from bad timing. Icewind Dale arrived on the same day in 2000 as Diablo 2 and was quickly overshadowed by it. I always felt that if they'd timed it maybe a month apart IWD would have sold quite a bit better.

Sacrifice (PC) ; was not marketed very well and did not sell very well. It was a really fun take on strategy games though, I'm still hopeful someone someday does a modern take on it.

Is Crystalis overshadowed or forgotten? I don't remember it getting any coverage in Nintendo Power but it is a fantastic Zelda-sequel game that still holds up 100%. Just played it through from start to finish order recently.

Ahead of it's time, The Tone Rebellion was greatly under-appreciated.

Gorgeous Graphics, fantastic Music and atmosphere.

And I think the multiplayer must have been awesome - but I have never been able to set one up.

Here's a quick video on The Tone Rebellion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l93e...

Made by the (in)famous The Logic Factory, who also created the best atmospheric 4x Space Game of all time "Ascendancy". Shame they never released 'Seeker' (which they were developing) and/or Ascendancy II

krev82 wrote:

Sacrifice (PC) ; was not marketed very well and did not sell very well. It was a really fun take on strategy games though, I'm still hopeful someone someday does a modern take on it.

I'm not sure it was even possible for Sacrifice to be overshadowed in the way it was defined in the OP, there really wasn't anything like it, not at the time and not even today, I don't think. But it was definitely overlooked and even though it became somewhat of a cult classic it sold way less than deserved, like you said. I loved that game and even got a couple if friends into it - even the multiplayer was great fun, while not exactly perfectly balanced. And the campaign was quite unique in the way it branched is paths and tied your abilities to the gods you chose to serve - a modern take on the gameplay of Sacrifice would also be something I'd like to see, now that you've mentioned it.

Peoj Snamreh wrote:

Ahead of it's time, The Tone Rebellion was greatly under-appreciated.

Gorgeous Graphics, fantastic Music and atmosphere.

And I think the multiplayer must have been awesome - but I have never been able to set one up.

Here's a quick video on The Tone Rebellion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l93e...

Made by the (in)famous The Logic Factory, who also created the best atmospheric 4x Space Game of all time "Ascendancy". Shame they never released 'Seeker' (which they were developing) and/or Ascendancy II

Tone Rebellion looks interesting. I've always been intrigued by The Logic Factory, they had some cool ideas. When Ascendancy came out I was busy with school and couldn't play many games, but to me it always had an enticing air of mystery about it. Shame the sequel never panned out.

Alz wrote:

The Best Zelda: LTTP Game without Zelda in the title: Alundra, on the original Playstation, was an amazing LTTP-inspired Action RPG that had an amazing story, great play style, and excellent 16-bit Pixel style. The sequel, Alundra 2, was a new story that tried to make the shift to 3D to compete against another Zelda title, Ocarina of Time, but it never lived up to it's competition.

And then there's the best 3D Zelda not made by Nintendo, Brave Fencer Musashi!

IMAGE(http://img2.game-oldies.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/snaps/sony-playstation/brave-fencer-musashi-ntsc-u-slus-00726.png?itok=AhPk6Qa0)

It came out shortly before Ocarina of Time and implemented some very similar ideas, such as a day/night cycle. BFM actually went a lot further than OoT when it came to the night cycle, as it had hours for shops, lots of things only available at particular times, etc.

Features of Brave Fencer Musashi:
- Awesome soundtrack
- Musashi absorbs enemy powers Kirby-style to fight and solve puzzles
- Most of the characters have food pun themed names
- You can buy collectible in-game action figures of all the major characters and enemies, and there's a little animation of taking them out of their packaging and playing with them
- Zombie bowling
- Searching the world to rescue castle staff. My favorite are the musicians you rescue that each add their instrument to the castle music.
- Hilariously bad voice acting!

Oh man, Crystalis and Brave Fencer Musashi! Two more games that are downright classics.

Here's a few more that I thought of:

Best Metroidvania Not called Metroid or Castlevania: Goonies II has so many things going for it: the movie franchise tie-in; a quasi-3d mode; the soundtrack; a solid first game released in arcades. But for whatever reason, when we think back to big, sprawling explorathons, it's frequently left out of the conversation. And because of it's licensed baggage, it's unlikely to ever see a remake or remaster.

IMAGE(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xFAqTFYwWfc/maxresdefault.jpg)

Best 4X Game Stripped to it's Bare Essentials: Overlord, also called Supremacy in some parts of the world, had a very simple premise: You and an alien adversary start on opposite sides of a galactic map. Between you are planets with resources to harvest and territory to fight over. Now: kill each other. It takes the exploration, development, and tactical elements of the best 4X games, and turns it into a frenetic death march. But don't worry, there's plenty of minutia and fiddly bits to keep you occupied. I really wish this game design would be ported to a mobile game at some point.

IMAGE(https://www.retrogamer.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Supremacy-Your-Will-Be-Done-616x385.png)

Best Puzzle Game Without a Mario or Tetris Tie in: I discovered Klax in an arcade between Rampart and a pinball machine, and I was immediately hooked. It even starts off with a cheery message: "It is The '90s, and there is time for Klax" The premise is so simple - catch the colored tiles that flip down a 3-d conveyor belt, arrange them by color. The mechanics are more forgiving than Tetris - you're allowed to throw tiles back if they don't come in a convenient order, and you can even let some fall off into the void if you're in a pinch. It always felt challenging, but never made you feel like you were being overwhelmed.

IMAGE(https://segadoes.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/klax-japan001.jpg)

Darkstone had great potential as a 3D Diablo clone (just before Diablo 2) and was left to rot. (well I guess apparently not since it has been ported to Android OS...
IMAGE(https://lh5.ggpht.com/wAae1Nhb2XnDQZ_GpRPiROi0WQVolkc_IWU8Neuy8NE-Fp_zMJPLq6aLaIklh0muerCH=h900-rw)

Alz wrote:

Great stuff

Ok, now you're hitting the absolute gems of MY gaming youth. I remember all 3 of these and 2 of them were definitely classics I spent a long time with. Man. Overlord. I loved the concept of that game so much. Generating ridiculously large galaxies and imagining how long it would take to play it before resetting it to the smallest setting.

How about this crazy game?

IMAGE(http://www.xblafans.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/10/Ecco.png)

Ecco the Dolphin is a side-scrolling game for the Sega Genesis. It looks like a peaceful, brightly colored game where you play a dolphin adventuring through the ocean. And it is -- for about five minutes. Then you have to venture into the depths of the ocean and find out that it's both brutally difficult and packed with creepy visuals like this deadly octopus...

IMAGE(http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20061101/vc02.jpg)

You have to move very slowly to get past these things and it's super stressful because you have a very limited oxygen meter.

As you play further on into the game the plot begins to unfold and it turns out to be completely insane. You end up traveling to Atlantis to discover the origins of dolphins or something, and you find out that all the dolphins were stolen from earth by aliens who intend to grind them up and eat them.

Imagine my surprise when I used a level skip code to see what the ending was and I found this:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/v158spa.png)

This level is called Welcome to the Machine and it features a totally unforgiving forced scrolling level filled with deadly xenomorphs, capped off by this bizarre boss fight. Did I mention that the sound Ecco makes when injured is completely horrifying?

In conclusion, Ecco the Dolphin was a great game for terrifying a dolphin-loving fourth grader.

Alz wrote:

Best 4X Game Stripped to it's Bare Essentials: Overlord, also called Supremacy in some parts of the world, had a very simple premise: You and an alien adversary start on opposite sides of a galactic map. Between you are planets with resources to harvest and territory to fight over. Now: kill each other. It takes the exploration, development, and tactical elements of the best 4X games, and turns it into a frenetic death march. But don't worry, there's plenty of minutia and fiddly bits to keep you occupied. I really wish this game design would be ported to a mobile game at some point.

Played a ton of this on C64. I need to check out the PC version. Always remember being jealous of IBM users while reading the manual.

How about some more recent forgotten games?

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/GxFwOsvl.jpg)

Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom. It's budget launch price, Muppet-like character designs, and some admitted lack of polish kept Majin from ever being more than a minor cult hit on the 360 and PS3. It's a fun and charming Zelda-like game built around cooperating with a giant, cuddly monster.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/kJU3iQYl.jpg)

Vanquish. Platinum Games has built a solid reputation as a developer of character action games, most notably Bayonetta and its sequel. Unfortunately, this has meant that their other release from around the same time has been largely forgotten. Vanquish is a kinetic, over-the-top third-person shooter designed by Shinji Mikami, the creator of Resident Evil.

It was the wrong game at the wrong time. The gaming press at the time largely contented itself with framing Vanquish as a "Japanese Gears of War" and was subsequently disappointed by its lack of multiplayer options while mocking its eccentricities and unexpected ideas. It is anything but a Gears of War clone.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/GjOocV0l.jpg)

Prince of Persia. From the vantage point of 2017, the 2008 reboot of Prince of Persia launched to a swirl of bad press and negativity for reasons that seem both expected and bizarre. Complaints about the Nolan North-voiced lead not sounding "Persian enough" and a surprisingly downbeat literary ending ran side-by-side with the now-curious complaint that the game wouldn't allow the player to die.

Rather than saddle the player with game over screens and checkpoint reloads, Prince of Persia plays a brief clip where the player's companion, Elika, saves their character from the brink of death. Today, this seems like a player-friendly approach to error and failure that minimizes how much players have to replay and how many death animations they have to sit through. At the time, it was greeted as an affront to gaming itself that catered to [shudder] casuals.

The gatekeepers of gaming's hallowed challenges moved on to telling people to "git gud" at another game two years later, and publisher Ubisoft ditched their new Prince of Persia in favor of yet another in the line of increasingly mediocre Sands of Time sequels. When that failed to take off, the franchise was effectively killed off to free up more studios to crank out more sequels to Assassin's Creed.

The ending to that PoP game still makes me angry due to the Prince deciding to completely undo everything that Elika (and, for that matter, ME) had achieved and sacrificed for just because he fancied her a bit despite her explicitly asking him NOT to save her. *

The game itself up to that point was fun though.

*note I never played the ACTUAL ending to the game since it was paid for DLC and never came to the PC...so...there's that, too.

* * * *

Anyway...here's one that I try to remind people exists just because the premise is so utterly bonkers it's almost worth playing for that alone (but it's also a pretty good portal-like puzzle game too, except with magnets instead of portals)

So yeah. Portal meets (legit) Cthulhu Mythos. Right down to the Deep Ones, Dark Young and Big C himself making an appearance.

pyxistyx wrote:

The ending to that PoP game still makes me angry due to the Prince deciding to completely undo everything that Elika (and, for that matter, ME) had achieved and sacrificed for just because he fancied her a bit despite her explicitly asking him NOT to save her. *

The game itself up to that point was fun though.

*note I never played the ACTUAL ending to the game since it was paid for DLC and never came to the PC...so...there's that, too.

See? I never played the DLC, either (which was less an ending than it was a bridge to a sequel that never happened), but it's funny to me that games like Shadow of the Colossus are lauded for their dark endings that question the player's actions, while Prince of Persia still pisses people off.

Before your Bands Rock and your Heroes Guitar, there was Frequency and it's successor, Amplitude. Same gameplay, but with a good old controller instead of silly plastic instruments.

For a more modern, spiritual successor, see Thumper

ClockworkHouse wrote:

See? I never played the DLC, either (which was less an ending than it was a bridge to a sequel that never happened), but it's funny to me that games like Shadow of the Colossus are lauded for their dark endings that question the player's actions, while Prince of Persia still pisses people off.

If it helps, I loathe Shadow of the Colossus's story just as much

Anyone remember Welltris? I LOVED this game.

(Wow. 1989)

The more I think about this thread the more conflicted I am. All I am sure are great games I could go out and add to the backlog but they all probably come with a side of broken heart. Chances are they will leave me wanting more that will never be. If anyone needs me I think I'll go cry in the corner.

Dragon View, an RPG with the cities/dungeons/combat as a sidescrolling brawler, but with a 3D world for first-person exploration. On the SNES!

IMAGE(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hp84_6Ljxgk/hqdefault.jpg)

You people are typing faster than I can keep up!

And Clock is three-for-three and I agree with each of her picks!

Of course, the only thing that still comes to mind for me is Dragon's Dogma, which might be too recent to really argue as fulfilling the requirements necessary to be lesser known and overlooked.

Danjo Olivaw wrote:

Dragon View, an RPG with the cities/dungeons/combat as a sidescrolling brawler, but with a 3D world for first-person exploration. On the SNES!

IMAGE(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hp84_6Ljxgk/hqdefault.jpg)

Hmm, that game reminds me of Drakkhen. Oh wait, they made a sequel to perhaps one of the worst games ever made?

Anachronox is probably the one that stands out for me. Though at this point it's more of a cult classic than a real sleeper

IMAGE(https://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/8/81005/2327440-anox_2012_09_06_03_26_02_11.png)

Sort of a weird half-cyberpunk half-fantasy half-it's own thing. It was an RPG with an aspect of the Bioware companion system. Way, way ahead of its time in a lot of ways.

kazooka wrote:

Anachronox is probably the one that stands out for me. Though at this point it's more of a cult classic than a real sleeper

IMAGE(https://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/8/81005/2327440-anox_2012_09_06_03_26_02_11.png)

Sort of a weird half-cyberpunk half-fantasy half-it's own thing. It was an RPG with an aspect of the Bioware companion system. Way, way ahead of its time in a lot of ways.

One of my favorite games of all time, that I didn't actually get to finish. Releasing a buggy, broken mess and then closing down the company will do that to a game.

(RIP Ion Storm)

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