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.
Yoku’s Island Express. Before playing it, I didn’t like pinball or search-action games (metroidvanias). I ended up loving it. I still don’t really enjoy pinball on its own, but I now have a deep love for search-action.
It’s definitely the best pinball-metroidvania postal service simulator available.
Don’t know quite how underrated/forgotten this is, but I wanna see a remake of Vib-Ribbon. That, or have an open source clone of it made by someone who actually knows how to properly program (not me), if it already doesn’t exist.
Technically there is a successor to Vib-Ribbon but it’s iPhone only if I recall? “Russian Dancing Men”.
It’s not underrated or forgotten, but LOTR two towers.
Ogre Battle. I’d love to play a game like that again. I think Unicorn Overlord took some inspiration from it so I’m excited to check that out.
The original Way of the Samurai. It was really cool and unique little game. The sequels never really followed through on the best parts of the first one though unfortunately.
I want an ogre battle with advance wars theming
I’d love for there to just be more short games with branching narratives like WotS. Short games that are built to be replayed really spark something off in my brain lol.
I’m surprised with auto battler games having a moment that we haven’t gotten any Ogre Battle inspired indies - just Unicorn Overlord. Still haven’t played it, but it’s on my to-do list.
i want another midnight club
Battleborne - I found it enjoyable but because it was superficially similar to Overwatch it absolutely bombed.
Burning Rangers from sonic team on the Sega Saturn. Such a unique concept.
Flying dragon for the N64
Apparently it’s very rare but I have a cartridge of it
The music from it was awesome very 1990s
I don’t even remember the name but the game where you run around a weird post apocalyptic world dueling with decks of cards. I would love a modern remake.
Edit: Phantom Dust!
Oh, that game looks amazing to play PvP. You can get it for free on the microsoft store, too.
I never beat it but I played it a bunch. Didn’t get to try PVP though.
Ark the lad twilight of the spirits. One of my favorite classics!
I want a modern Road Rash or Destruction Derby.
Road Redemption was a Road Rash-esque attempt some years ago. I remember the performance was kinda shitty, but the game was mostly fine.
Kolibri for the Sega 32x addon for the Genesis/Megadrive. Most of the reviewers that weren’t down with the game either complained about the difficulty or lack of story/making sense, but it was a beautiful game for the time that took the space shooter concept and made it into a game that was somehow chill while also being difficult enough to sometimes momentarily make you want to rage quit. If you enjoy games like the Raiden series, you’ll enjoy this.
Shout to Knuckles Chaotix (the most unique take on Sonic gameplay of the classic 2D era) and also Shadow Squadron (very Star Fox-esque), which are also slept on because 32x.
Exclusive to the Genesis/Megadrive, it’s a crying shame that the Vectorman games never received a third iteration and have seemingly disappeared into the grey goo of IP purgatory. Vectorman and Vectorman 2 were amazing for the time: they were arguably the best 2D platformers of the era, graphically beautiful, oozing with charm, and with an amazing soundtrack to go along with it all. It’s crazy that the developers were able to squeeze the performance they did out of the hardware and playing emulated versions of it now still doesn’t compare to how it feels and looks playing it on the original hardware with a CRT and a nice sound system (but you should still check it out absent that setup).
On PC, also from the 90s, Descent was truly groundbreaking and unique. It’s an FPS that said “what if you were playing as a space ship and had six degrees of freedom to move about?” It was also the first truly 3D FPS game.
Descent did get 2 sequels and also a spinoff, Descent: Freespace and later Freespace 2. F2 has seen a HUGE amount of mods, partly due to the engine going open source back in 2002
Freespace 3 could be awesome, what with Elite seeing a rebirth.
Very cool, I’ll check that out. Thanks!
Darkstar One. And it is just now getting rereleased, so it doesn’t count.
So instead, I’ll pick The Legend of Dragoon on PSX. Such a fun RPG that really needs revisited.
The original Unreal. For me it was a perfect combination of beautiful graphics (back in the days of course) and a soundtrack which complemented and elevated the atmosphere of that game. And the gunplay was nice, with a collection of somewhat unconventional weapons. A relic from a time where developers were not afraid to experiment a bit.
The crazy variety of weapons and their interactions was great. Almost everything was dangerous in the right situation.
Blob gun? Charge it up! Blue laser thing? Shoot the ball form and shoot that for a huge boom! Double pistols? Max DPS in the game with no bullet curve!
The best maps too for CTF. Yeah, I loved that game, especially for in person LAN parties.
Unreal only had a single Automag though, so either you are thinking of Unreal Tournament or you played on a modded server. Some servers did have dual automags (I’ve still got a mod and mutator lying around to get them in single player as well) and dual Automags (Enforcer in Unreal Tournament) did indeed dish out major punishment.