Great videogames you're pretty sure no one's ever heard of

Yeah you should. I think they are like thirty bucks at gamestop. And I used to b**** about the GC rpg selection, but then I finally got around to playing them, and imo, BKO, Fire Emblem, Paper Mario, and Tales of Symphonia > most of the PS2s rpg library. Those games, Prime, and RE4 pretty much make up my GC library and I'm definitely happy I got to experience them.

In fact, the sequels to those games may get me to end up buying a wii in the future.

 

Definitely played this, not too sure about the others off the top of my head.

I spent a lot of time with this game...in fact, I haven't really played a game in this genre (not sure what the technical name for this genre is?) in a long time. I really enjoy the whole space exploration, research, diplomacy, planet colonization, space-combat....thing.

 

snatcher b*tches.

one of hideo kojima early creations.

 

Kid Chameleon on the Genesis.

 

It's turn-based, to begin with, where AoE is real-time. That means you can play it while you watch a game on TV or even walk away from it if you have stuff to do. That alone makes me happy about it. I get pretty busy at home and work.

You also have 'heroes' who can cast spells or lend their skills to their troops. For example, if your hero has Offense as a skill, your troops do more damage. If he has Tactics, you can order your troops before battle for maximum strategy. Heroes also all have a 'special' talent, that can range from specializing in a specific type of unit that gives them bonuses in speed, health, etc, to earning extra gold or resources. Your heroes level up, as well, and can chose different skills. You can also equip your heroes with armor and other items that will boost your army's speed, defense, etc, or allow you to fly over barriers on the map.

There are different town types that have different levels of troops. Some towns have more ranged (missle) fighters, some have tougher foot, etc. They're fairly balanced, although people will argue that this town is the best or that is the best. It's all up to the player, IMO, to maximize his resources. Each town has seven troop types that it can produce if you upgrade to that point. You can also upgrade each troop type once to produce a tougher 'upgraded' unit, I.E- archer>marksman.

The magic system was pretty awesome too. There were four schools of magic- fire, water, earth, air. You could even specialize in one school, and if you got that skill to expert, your spells, like slow, had a 'mass' effect- you could slow the entire opposing army (unless the units were immune to the magic for some reason or another). There were five different levels of magic spells, and you could only get certain spells at specific town types.

AoE was a great game, but it couldn't hold a candle to HOMM3 in depth. It was just revolutonary at the time because it was one of, if not the, first real-time strategy games.

All of that is just the tip of the iceberg.

I could play any of them and have lots of fun. I liked the Castle towns the best because you could train up Archangels, who were the most badass regular units in the game, and each stack of Archangels could resurrect a fallen stack of units once per battle. The down side of this town was that you can only build up to a level 4 mage guild, which allows your hero to only learn up to lv 4 spells unless he conqured a different town type or got an artifact that allowed him to cast lv 5 spells. I wasn't a big fan of the dark artwork in the Dungeon, Necropolipse or Inferno towns. Tower is a great town for it's magical spells- you get the Library which gives you extra spells, but it's 7th level units were super expensive, even though they had missle attacks which probably made that town the best to defend with.

In the expansions you got the Conflux which was all elemental type units. I really liked this town because you could build a school of magic where you could buy all four magic skills, which pretty much made any hero uber.

As far as artifacts go, I really liked the super-artifacts that you had to assemble out of other artifacts. They did things like cast expert prayer on your troops before battle or cast a bunch of bad spells on your enemies before battle.

You can get it on Amazon.com's marketplace for $9 +shipping. Looks like the Ubisoft version because they have a picture of Tarnum, who was only in Heroes Chronicles.

Of course, it's also out 'there' on the internets if you know where to look.

Man I love this game.

 

The NES has lots of great, obscure games

XEXYZ
Kick Master
Shatterhand
Snake, Rattle, and Roll (one of Rare's early games)
Street Fighter 2010 (made by Capcom, the hero's name is Ken, but is NOTHING like Street Figher)
Shadow of the Ninja
Jackal
Lifeforce
Metal Storm
Section Z
T&C Surf Design
Kabuki - Quantum Fighter
Puzznic
Kid Niki

 

I tried very hard to like Ascendancy and Galactic Civilizations II, but they are not very good games compared to Master of Orion I and II. I just couldn't get into those games.

 

they had this game at the 7-11, next to dig dug.

 

By the way, you can probably find a lot of old, awesome PC games at Home of the Underdogs. Their server is super slow, but they have 1000s of downloads, complete with rankings, screenshots, etc.

 

NES:
Guardian Legend
Mystery Quest
Milon Secret Castle
Rampage
Super Dodgeball
StarTropics 2
Wizards and Warriors 2
WorldCup

Genesis:
Landstaker
Clay Fighter
Mutant League Football/Hockey
Pirates Gold
Road Rash 2
Sunset Riders
Wonderboy in Monster World

SNES:
Looney Tunes Basketball
Nolan Ryan's Baseball
Prince of Persia
Sunset Riders


Landstalker is probably my favorite game on the older systems. It's kind of like a Zelda/Link game. Run around...hack n slash...treasure...upgraded swords...decent storyline.

 

America's Army - PC

 

Armored Core and its sequels (PS, PS2, and PC)

It's pretty much like Gran Turismo with Robots and war machines completing military missions, instead of cars. about creating any robot you want to......literally, you could choose from 12 to 200 different heads, any colors or designs you can think of, pretty much every weapon known to man (even the ones you see science fiction movies), floating devices, booster charges, and etc.





Gunstar Heroes (Sega)

Very fun arcade-like game, sort of like a faster pace Mega Man with two players.




Robocop Vs. Terminator (Sega)

You really didn't hear much about it, when it first came out...it was only one commercial I saw for it.









Ace Combat 3 , 4, X(PS, PSP, PS2)

FIghter Jet version of Gran Turismo.









Wrath of the Black Manta (NES)

When I bring this up, everyone is like what are you talking about....I thought this game was popular. It was also one of the rare Japanese imports that was better in states....the original Japanese version was terrible...but the one in America was ......unexplainable.......

http://emu-russia.km.ru/gdb/nes/Baseball_Simulator_1.000_1.png

Baseball Simulator 1.001 (NES )

This game actually beat Tecmo to punch, as far as creating your own players. Not only could you create your own players....you could alter attributes of created and original players. Very innovative for home video game system...this was about 88 or 89. It looked just as good as Tengen's RBI Baseball (which had real MLB players).

 

I rented this game so many times.. I never got tired of it.

 

R-Type




I know that this game was fairly big back in the day, but lots of folks under the age of 25 have probably never heard of it. Best side-scrolling shooter ever.

 

Speaking of side scrollers, Thunder Force III is probably my all-time favorite on the Genesis. Action is fantastic, and I loved the soundtrack.

 

Here's another one from wayyyy back:



Impossible Mission for the Commodore 64. I can still hear the 'falling' scream.

And the Goonies game for the C-64 was awesome too. It had -the best- graphics and gameplay:

 

Good thread. I'm going to try out Armored Core and Heroes of Might & Magic 3.

 

UFO Defense was rated the #1 game of all time by IGN

 

man there was this sidescoller flying game, like R-Type but it these little planes with like boxing gloves. They would pick up power ups and use different weapons. And the bosses were like Watermelonds and an Octopuss. Anyone know what I'm talking about? I cant remember the name of it.