Lost and forgotten (except by us)

[DeepOcean]

When I played this? I don't fuck remember anymore, it was on my early teens I guess but I didn't forget this game. It is a JRPG like game where you could have other two characters on your party, each one with their own abilities. It was kinda actiony as you controled the sword attacks and aimed spells by using the mouse on a clunky system. You explored multiple islands and each island had its unique theme with great 2d graphics for the time. It was a very simple but enjoyable JRPG/action game with some nice atmospheric music and sound design.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Obsidian is pretty good.

Arcatera: The Dark Brotherhood

An mix of RPG and adventure game, if you played Quest for Glory you will be right at home. Like Quest for Glory 5 game has great looking prerendered backgrounds only unlike that game Arcateras characters are pretty poorly made, appearance wise they are acceptable but movement is horrible. At start you choose one of four characters each one with its own starting plot (cant really recall the plot), later you can find and recruit other characters, the game is pretty non linear so you can explore city and surroundings at will. Combat is horrible, pretty much consist of clicking on enemy and then praying to God you win. One thing I really liked was narration you get while finishing some plot points which I found pretty nice. I didnt finish the game since it always crashed on one point, but until that I did enjoyed the game despite many faults.

Wow, I gotta try this one.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Not that obscure, but I want to mention Celtic Tales since this game can always use more love

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/367/Celtic+Tales+-+Balor+of+the+Evil+Eye.html



Definitely one of the strategy games I spent most of my time on and that impressed me the most when I was little (I was really better at strategy games back then than I am now). The rune-based spell system was great and you could also recruit heroes who have multiple stats so I guess that makes it an RPG, too!

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Nobody on the Codex ever talks about Natuk any more. They should!

http://www.proudft.com/smf_forum/index.php?topic=4.0

Natuk, by Tom Proudfoot who I'm sure posted here at one point, is a tactical turn-based RPG where you control a team of orcs, goblins and that sort of horrible creature on a quest to overthrow your old King and take his place.

Natuk is a traditional CRPG. It features turn-based combat, an overhead view, and a straightforward plot. It is in combat where Natuk truly shines... there has never been a CRPG with such detailed and satisfying turn-based combat.

You have as much time as you want to consider each move. Blows can be aimed at locations such as necks and arms to find weaknesses in your opponents' armor. Superior swordplay can disarm an opponent, or you can simply pound on his armor to beat him into exhausted unconsciousness.

Assassins can sneak behind enemy formations to strike from behind... shamans and witchdoctors can cast spells ranging from the easy and weak to such powerful spells as comet strike, banish, chain lightning, and death ball. Meanwhile, the enemy comes closer, with one goal... your death.

As you defeat your opponents, experience points are gained which can be spent on any of the thirty-eight skills. Each of the five character classes can improve any of the skills, but some are better at some skills than others. With time, however, even a stupid half-troll warrior may be able to stutter out a few spells.

From the beginning of the game, your goal is clear. Molvosh must die. But how to succeed, which dungeons to plunder, and when to strike are decisions you must make. And if you should succeed, you can try again on a higher difficulty level or with a different party composition. And many of the items you find in Natuk are randomly generated, unique from game to game.

Natuk features thirty-three dungeon areas and over 150 different monsters. There are over 160 different spells and hundreds of thousands of different types of items, both magical and mundane.

Unfortunately, the download version is shareware and you still have to order the full game on CD because it is still 1995. Still, it's worth playing the shareware version alone.

 

[:Flash:]

Obsidian is pretty good.

Arcatera: The Dark Brotherhood

An mix of RPG and adventure game, if you played Quest for Glory you will be right at home. Like Quest for Glory 5 game has great looking prerendered backgrounds only unlike that game Arcateras characters are pretty poorly made, appearance wise they are acceptable but movement is horrible. At start you choose one of four characters each one with its own starting plot (cant really recall the plot), later you can find and recruit other characters, the game is pretty non linear so you can explore city and surroundings at will. Combat is horrible, pretty much consist of clicking on enemy and then praying to God you win. One thing I really liked was narration you get while finishing some plot points which I found pretty nice. I didnt finish the game since it always crashed on one point, but until that I did enjoyed the game despite many faults.

Wow, I gotta try this one.

I'm surprised you haven't heard about it before. V_K has talked about it several times, and I did once. This game is so full of good ideas and yet so bad, it really makes you sad.


Anyway, back to topic: Powerslide
A post apocalyptic racing game. There were lots of these, but Powerslide is still unsurpassed to this day. It is really hard to describe, but everything in this game is perfect. The AI, with which you sometimes have fights for a position for several laps, the physics, the course design. And if something went wrong you knew exactly where you had made the mistake, and how you could avoid this mistake in the next lap.
We had a small community that met for multiplayer games and had a fastest lap competition going on 10 years after the game's release. And the game had the fastest laps of the developers, it took years until some of us could beat the developer times. I think we never did on one course. It was kind of the Grand Prix Legends of post-apocalyptic racers. Everyone used analog controls, because otherwise you couldn't stand a chance.
The developer (ratbag games) developed some other (licensed) racing games that mostly were for consoles only and then were bought out and closed during the development of the sequel we had all been waiting for (Powerslide:Slipstream).

 

[e-mailio estevez]

Chronomaster (1995)

A somewhat forgotten adventure game, co-written and designed by one of my favorite writers, Roger Zelazny, so I just had to check it out.

I thought Lord of Light was a really cool book, so I think I'm going to give this a spin sometime.

 

[toro]

MDK (1997) was awesome for a third-person shooter.



Bonus: MDK2 was developed by Bioware.

 

[toro]

The City of Lost Children (1997) - was a revolutionary third-person adventure inspired by the Jean Pierre Jeunet's movie.

The game was panned by critics but nevertheless it has something special.

 

[toro]

Evil Islands: Curse of the Lost Soul (2000) - probably the first real 3d rpg (at least one year before Neverwinter Nights).

The story is silly (made by russians), stealth approach is feasible however the combat/spells and crafting system are exceptional.

For example: swords properties depend on the ore used during crafting (and there at least 5 types of ore).

Also the game was hard before DeS reinvented the wheel. It is overlooked by the Codex but I strongly recommend it to anyone.

 

[grudgebringer]

http://www.mobygames.com/game/total-mayhem

This game was pretty cool back in the days. It also has some stunning CG animations. As I remember, mostly your packed squad go on a several missions and blow things up.

Somewhat similar to Crusader, but with squad combat and mouse controls.

These developers also made Revenant in 1999.

 

[Raapys]

Iron Seed

Spoiler

You pick your ship and crew, then sail out into ze great unknown. Your crew is essentially uploaded consciousnesses, which makes them rather crazy. You don't interact with them as such, though keeping them sane becomes part of your job.

You'll spend the first part of the game just visiting and mapping various solar systems, harvesting them for resources and artifacts. The game has a great construction system where everything can be broken down to its basic elements, or constructed up to advanced components. You'll use these to make fuel, armor, shields and weapons for your ship, probes for exploring planets as well as automated mining robots that you can leave on planets and come back later to gather what they've dug up. Artifacts can be studied to gain access to advanced technology.

Combat is real time. Kinda tactical; you have to manage your shield levels, generators, weapons, etc. It's rather abstract though, somewhat weird. Not the game's strongest suit, but it works okay once you've figured out how to control it.

You will eventually encounter various other species. You can communicate with these using a keyword system. You can also trade, though this is fairly useless in my experience. As you progress, you will learn more about the sekret of teh iron seed. I've played the game many times but never actually finished it, so I can't say how the story ends.

Anyway, a fun albeit repetitive game with excellent atmosphere. One of the original developers even started making patches for it again, which among other things made parts of the interface less frustrating. Recommended for people who enjoy exploring the great(but mostly same'ish) unknowns while building up power and slowly learning more about what's going on. Kinda like a more strategic, tactical and complex version of Star Control, set in a much darker world. No planetary landings though, and no safe havens. Game's pace is rather slow.

 

[warpig]

I enjoyed playing Star Control 2 more, but Iron Seed's atmosphere was more to my liking, and that awesome music (Andrew Sega <3). Sucks that this genre of space exploration/combat/adventure is not too popular. Here's another not very well known SC2/Starflight-like game:

Nomad

When I look at it now, it's kind of shitty, a poor imitation of SC2 with an unoriginal setting, boring repetitive missions and (really)crappy combat. But I really liked this game when I was a kid. The idea of a large universe that the player gets to explore, discovering new species of aliens, hunting for artifacts and blowing stuff up appealed to me despite the overall crappyness. A lot of aliens here are furries, I think I was very lucky that this game didn't fuck with my brain and I didn't grow up to be a furfag.

 

[ghostdog]

Well since space exploration adventures have been mentioined, I just have to bring up Captain Blood , once again. One of the most obscure, imaginative and frustrating games ever.

You fire up the game and the first thing you hear is that unbelievably awesome Jean Michel Jarre music. After that you enter the game and probably the first thing you do is press the big button on your cockpit and destroy your home planet. And get scarred for life and probably start using LSD or something . After that you can start traveling around, landing on planets and talking to aliens, only you can't understand a thing they're saying and you don't have a clue what you're doing. Then of course you'll have to read the manual and learn that you're a programmer who has been sucked into his computer and entered another dimension. You also learn that you've been cloned 9 times and that in order to return home you need to kill all your clones. So basically you must travel around the galaxy, talk to aliens and learn the wereabouts of your clones. Oh and in order actually understand what the aliens are saying, you must decipher each alien language using some obscure symbol system. Good luck with that.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Crime Cities
Before Techland put kwans in shame, by doing good western themed game and level scaled zombie hunt-craft-fest with Fist of the North Star mod, they did few cool games, like any dev studio that wanted to be on surface for longer in post-apocalyptic-soviet Potatolande.
It's like Aquanox but not in water, instead - it's placed in far future on 3 planets, all are megacities with buildings with kilometers long height. Every new city is harsher than previous one. Last one is total Texas with long sentences and worst freaks behind the bars.

I have absolutely no idea if it's still playable these days, not to mention compatibility with modern OSes. I've reached 3rd planet, made 2? missions and then Windows98 fucked up itsef again because he can't do anything else.
FFS this W98 and his need to be formated every fukin' month....

Evil Islands: Curse of the Lost Soul (2000) - probably the first real 3d rpg (at least one year before Neverwinter Nights).

The story is silly (made by russians), stealth approach is feasible however the combat/spells and crafting system are exceptional.

For example: swords properties depend on the ore used during crafting (and there at least 5 types of ore).
Also the game was hard before DeS reinvented the wheel. It is overlooked by the Codex but I strongly recommend it to anyone.

I played and finished if year or two ago. I become even harder in last chapter, then boss battle turn into cakewalk, plus plot twist at the end.

 

[undecaf]

These are probably not as "lost and forgotten" than some other titles, but awesome adventure games from the days of yore that I'd still want to replay some day, and certainly not hot topics anywhere:

Dreamweb:


It Came From the Desert:

 

[Astral Rag]

Crime Cities

I like the look of that game it reminds me of G-Police, Mars Maniacs/ Speed Haste and The Fifth Element.

Anyway, back to topic: Powerslide

A fine game indeed. I like the setting, the semi open world maps, the vehicle design and the wacky but not retarded humour (the characters, the awesome prizes...). The controls did take some getting used to, I always used a keyboard.

There is a cheat that allows players to drive on walls and leaving a race to scale mountains and skyscrapers was really quite something.

The game looked absolutely amazing at the time of release and (parts of) the soundtrack were great, I still have some of the game's audio tracks in my mountain-bike music folder.

Powerslide works on Win 7 x64.

Spoiler

Redline

The mix of vehicular combat and FPS gameplay was very enjoyable back in the day but Redline hasn't exactly aged well. I replayed some missions last year and found both the driving and FPS gameplay to be pretty mediocre.

The Steam version of the game ran fine on my computer.

Dark Earth

Innocent Until Caught 1 & 2

:massive brofist:

Don't expect Dark Earth on Gog any time soon, it only works on (emulated) Windows 95/ 98 machines.

Interstate '76

MDK

Great games but not exactly obscure.

 

[Raapys]

Alien Legacy

Spoiler

A very atmospheric and unique '4x' game, definitely one of my favorites in terms of story-focused strategy games.

As Earth is beset by an alien force, humans launch cryogenic seed ships to other parts of the galaxy to avoid extinction. You, as captain of the seed ship UNS Calypso, arrive in the Beta Caeli system as the game begins. The recon unit sent ahead to establish the first colony is missing, thus beginning your journey to discover their fate and in the process uncover the mysterious of the Beta Caeli solar system.

It's difficult to place the game. It has your classical strategic elements; you create colonies consisting of a few buildings, harvest ore which in turn can be converted to electricity(making up two of the four resources, the last two being life support and manpower), and research technologies to improve your colony facilities and create better ships.

What makes it different from most pure strategy titles, beyond the implementation of the strategy mechanics themselves, is the focus on exploration and C&C. You'll investigate planets, moons and asteroids in an attempt to discover the fate of your recon team as well as to gain resources and new technologies. These discoveries, or just the progress of time, will trigger some fixed events in the game, which usually present you with a couple of ways in which to proceed. Played carefully, the consequences of these events can be minimized and are easily dealt with, but their presence is none the less a delight in a strategy title.

Eventually you will have to do at least a tiny bit of fighting, which is a very disappointing affair consisting of sending ships to a planet and waiting while the red blips representing the enemy disappear.

Overall, a unique take on 4x games. The most similar game I've found is Reunion, which is an interesting game in its own right. AL has some problems though, like the micromanaging nature of the game(don't bother with more than 2-3 colonies or you'll curse yourself for it), the pretty much non-existent combat mechanics and the somewhat grindy nature of the exploration aspect.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

That reminds me, there was a sci-fi space exploration game in the early 90s that I vaguely recall, something about mantis-like aliens attacking humanity or something.

The only thing I remember was the intro where a newscaster was reporting on war when she's ripped apart from the inside by one of the alien critters.

Anyone remember the title of this?

 

[Astral Rag]

Woodruff And The Schnibble Of Azimuth (aka The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble)

Probably my favourite Coktel Vision title, this studio is better known for the great Gobliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiins series.
Woodruff is a challenging point-and-click adventure game that takes place in a surreal dystopian society. The game's humour, the art (Pierre Gilhodes) and the voice acting are all excellent.

Woodruff And The Schnibble Of Azimuth is compatible with ScummVM so there's really no reason not to play this gem, unless you don't want to risk losing your job of course.


Ecstatica

Unique action-adventure with AitD style controls, superb animations, original "ellipsoid visuals" and fairly large open maps. It's also a surprisingly violent game. The sequel is also quite good, this one has SVGA graphics!


Nocturne

Another action-adventure with AitD style controls and ditto camera angles. This very good looking (those lightning effects and shadows) atmospheric game is set in the 20s. It has a cheesy storyline, cheesy voice acting, pretty varied locations and enemies and it's a very bloody affair. What more could you possibly want from life?


Rollcage 1 and 2

Fun over-the-top (pun intended) arcade racers with great graphics, cool power-ups, impressive physics and good music. One of the original developers started working on the games again some time ago, he has already released some updates but sadly it looks like it won't be possible to remove the 30fps cap (thanks PSX!)

You can still play both games online.

 

[warpig]

French devs in the 90's had a knack for "atmospheric" games.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Lords of Magic (1997)

Not completely forgotten (it's on GoG), but pretty obscure, I think.

HoMM-like TBS on the world map, RTwP in combat. There's only one map (not even that big) that's spherical, if you start going west, you'll come back from the east eventually. There's a map editor, but it's pretty pointless.
You play as one of the 7 faiths fighting against the big bad god of death, but you can conquer everyone else too if you want. After beating the game you can play as death to conquer everyone. You choose a lord (mage/warrior/thief), that represents you in the game as a units, if you die (which is very easy) it's game over, unless you got another faith to be your vassal, then you can continue as their lord. At first you can't even buy units, you wander around your land and do stuff until you liberate your great temple.

The good: they included A LOT of stuff, you can trade with other faiths (with a complex system of attitudes and tones of parley), there are spies, stealing resources, taking and interrogating prisoners, spells research that depends on the level of your wizards, mercenaries, training units before buying them, fame and followers system, spells and curses that persist after combat, changing terrain with spells on the world map... also one of the main resources is ale.

The bad: most of it is either poorly implemented or inferior to just getting some resources and xp and conquering everybody. Also the game is buggy as hell (often in interesting ways, I once was given control of enemy units after a battle). AI sometimes goes completely retarded for no good reason, but it's all so poorly balanced and content-rich that it's still fun just for exploring random high-level neutral dungeons and seeing what you can do.
The soundtrack is great too.

Evil Islands: Curse of the Lost Soul (2000) - probably the first real 3d rpg (at least one year before Neverwinter Nights).
stealth approach is feasible however the combat/spells and crafting system are exceptional.

More like mandatory, especially on hard most enemies annihilate you in normal combat. Crafting was really great though. The graphics were pretty amazing for the time too.

 

[warpig]

Ecstatica
Unique action-adventure with AitD style controls, superb animations, original "ellipsoid" visuals and fairly large open maps. It's also a surprisingly violent game. The sequel is also quite good, this one has SVGA graphics!

That was a sweet AiTD clone, the violence and depravity was awesome.

I wonder how much glorious butthurt would this game cause if it came out today. Probably a lot.

 

[:Flash:]

Star Quest 1: In the 27th Century

Spoiler

A space game from 1995. This was a shareware game that had seamless change between space and planetary surfaces. The only other game that was capapble of doing that back then was Frontier, but Star Quest is a pure action space shooter. Considering that even ten years later space games made by large studios were not capable of doing what this game made mainly by a single guy with some help, it was really impressive. The game is not as polished as other space shooters were, and has no real story to speak of, but I still enjoyed it very much.
Missions are very varied, from racing missions that work like the training missions of X-Wing (only that you race against other pilots) to the standard space convoy missions. There were also "adventure missions" that had their own changing storyline. One of them had you being shot down on a planet. Then you had to deliver pizza with a delivery truck (yes, there was a vehicular driving model in there only for this tiny part of this single mission) in order to earn enough money to be able to repair your ship. And all of this happened completely seamlessly with a mission starting out somewhere in space.

I had been hoping for the announced sequel Star Quest II: United Galaxies for about 15 years, when this guy launched a kickstarter out of the blue that was doomed from the start. He even emailed me because I had contact with him more than 10 years ago, and asked me to spread the word about his kickstarter. My topic on the Codex received 0 replies.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Not that obscure, but I want to mention Celtic Tales since this game can always use more love

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/367/Celtic+Tales+-+Balor+of+the+Evil+Eye.html



Definitely one of the strategy games I spent most of my time on and that impressed me the most when I was little (I was really better at strategy games back then than I am now). The rune-based spell system was great and you could also recruit heroes who have multiple stats so I guess that makes it an RPG, too!

Oh yeah, I played it for countless times now, from release to this day. Each year I'll try new playthrough, not always beat the game at the end of it, but nonetheless it hasn't lost even a bit of its charm. Game has unique atmosphere, very nice music and graphics, and pretty interesting magic system - I remember trying to guess all those rune spells as a kid (without Internet it was tougher), fun times.

Speaking of KOEI games, I can nominate Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons. It's a great naval adventure game with turn-based naval combat, multiple playable characters, each with it's own unique storyline. It kinda sorta reminds of Pirates!, of course, but has tons on unique mechanics and quirks which distinguish it quite nicely.

 

[Great Deceiver]