Topic: Obscure Games

i meant the $1 indie games. stuff like super meat boy and the game whose name i can't think of with the boy in the woods are amazing.

limbo!

Hey, there are some good games in the $1 range. I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1N IT!!!1, Breath of Death VII, a few more that I'm forgetting.

Fallen Frontier (upcoming) is a 2D side-scrolling run-and-gun made by Moonshot, who are some ex-developers from Bungie, the guys who made the Halo games. Looks like they get really bored of the FPS grindstone so they broke from Bungie and formed their own studio to make more interesting games.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noxpYW2XN9Y
[youtube:noxpYW2XN9Y]

And some sillier ones which you could play right now (if you really wanted to):

Z-Type (Browser) is Typing of the Dead/Slam Dunk Typing mixed with a SHMUP. Sweet!

Lose/Lose (Mac) is a SHMUP where each enemy is a file on your computer. When you kill an enemy, it deletes the file. Warning, do not actually play this game! It may even remove critical operating system files. A video is included in the link.

Where do you find this stuff?! I must know! Z-Type was great, btw.

not really a game, but the gameboy had a title called workboy suite which had a few things on it, including a clock and a basic program for typing notes and stuff.
and it also had a keyboard included.

The Space Bar (Windows 95? 98?)

A wonderful adventure game with a great sense of humor, you're a detective tracking a criminal who has kidnapped your partner. The location is a bar in space, and the culprit is a shape shifter. Your method of investigation is to go into the memories of those you interrogate and re-live them to search for clues.


Meeting and collecting facts on each character was ridiculous fun. Each was completely different from the others. You entered and lived the lives of a worker drone-like bug living in a colony where all thoughts are broadcast over loudspeakers, a gang member on the run from the cops, an irritable head in a jar and the endearing galoot upon which he depends to move about, a restless teenage girl plant who rebelliously invites a photographer over to take pictures of her, and many others. It was ridiculously entertaining.

The problem was the difficulty - often puzzles were not just hard but impossible to strategize through, you only clues being your experiences from your last playthroughs. If you didn't do things in the right order, an order based on guesswork or on reading online strategy guides, you could fail by not possessing the right clues. And there's a time limit, though you're not aware of it until it's too late, a fact that really hurts its exploratory nature.

A great game, but a very tough one. It's easy to love and easy to hate. Find a copy if you can, it's worth it, but save a lot.

Two of my favorite, free obscure games created by Pixel, the man behind Cave Story:
Ikachan is a great, charming little underwater platformer that's getting a DSiWare port in not too long, and
Guxt is a super stylish, incredibly difficult yet incredibly fun old school shooter.

Psychic Force 2 (PSX/Dreamcast) is a unique 2D fighter which takes place on a plane, meaning you can move both horizontally and vertically. The game is highly tactical since maneuvering, distance and counter-strategies count for almost everything in high level play. Plus the characters are all unique and storyline is intriguing. The characters' powers range from manipulating elements like lightning and fire, to singing (deadly soundwaves!), to manipulating the force of gravity, to Shinto magic, to stopping time (final boss aaarghfklsdhjl).

I recommend the PSX version since it has the Psy-Expand mode which is an RPG-lite mode that allows your characters to power up and learn new moves. And the PSX version has an anime opening video which is so 90s nostalgic and awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvXa-peQQhQ
[youtube:XvXa-peQQhQ]

@Mickeymac I found those a while ago and I can't remember how I came across them. I've bookmarked/played quite a lot of obscure and indie games though.

Chulip. The point of that game is to kiss EVERYONE for practice. It is weird as all hell.

And Gotcha Force! I don't know why, but not many people seem to know about that brilliant game...It's by far the most fun game on the Gamecube, IMO. I want a sequel so bad...or, at the very least, an inclusion of G-Red in a vs Capcom game, ANYTHING to prove that Capcom remembers its existence...

Phantom Crash for the original Xbox. It was one of their first Mech games, good music, nice style, etc. Sadly, one of the titles you cannot play on the 360. I miss it. I don't know what else to say about it, but it definitely was an obscure title. They did eventually release a sequel for it on PS2 called SLAI, but that was also obscure.
[youtube:Nc_Lt-BPdGw]

@KingBuilder

I almost bought the Battle of Olympus cart despite not owning an NES. It looks incredible. And yeah, Metal Morph looks like it would get boring fast.

@Gamesake

I was wondering if someone would bring that up, haha.

@JusticeColde

That looks so weird!o_O Thanks for sharing.

@Pandalicious

VVVVVV is incredible, one of my fave PC games. And Puzzle Agent looks good though I haven't played it yet (bought it while back in one of those indie packages). I should give Don't Look Back a try later.

@Malnin

I heard of that game. I was planning to pick it up at some point. Atlus published it, right?

@Polygon_Man

First off, hurray you graduated to the next generation! Second of all, about ABAHB, I can handle the slow pace and weird controls, but please explain how was its level design boring, if you can?

Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation 2 - The Super Robot Wars series is pretty popular in Japan, but pretty obscure in the west, mostly because most of the series was never released outside of Japan, due to a tangled web of license issues. I'm gonna focus on the second game released in the US, of the Original Generation line.

Original Generation 2 is about...I don't even know to be quite honest. The dialogue sequences take so long I couldn't make it through a single one before the overwhelming urge to hit the skip-scene button took over. The story also seemed pretty confusing anyways, and the series has never been known for it's quality writing.

The gameplay is where this game shines. You take turns moving units along a square grid, noting the range of attacks (unfortunately, I've yet to find anything that conveniently tells you the weapon range without having to select said unit and go through their list of weapons), terrain effects, and engaging the enemy. When you engage the enemy, you have the option of watching a brilliantly overdone animation featuring your super deformed giant mech using whatever weapon you've chosen to attack the enemy, with the character spointing dialogue just before or during the attack. Of course, you can always turn them off when you're sick of the animations, most likely once you've played the same map for the umpteenth time. And believe me, you'll be replaying missions a lot, since this game is bloody hard, especially if you go for the Battle Masteries, which are bonus objectives which affect the difficulty. However, take that lightly - I'm not particularly good at SRPGs, though I am best at the SRW series and I do put the most effort into them.

This game has a lot of replay value, with over 40 missions, which can take over an hour to complete, especially if you leave animations on. Not to mention the Battle Masteries and branching paths.

The only thing I don't like about this game, besides the difficulty and story, is the fact that the mechs are super deformed. To me, it ruins the otherwise great mech designs. The is a problem that plagues the whole series - only one game in the main series has used full-sized mechs to my knowledge (and it looked great!), and I don't understand why that is.

As you can probably tell, I love this game. It's an exquisite SRPG that I highly recommend to fans of Super Robot anime and/or strategy games. It's not the deepest of it's kind, but it's definitely an entertaining one none the less, with brilliant graphics (for a GBA game), a complex story, and loads of replay value. It's among my favorite games in the genre.

Note to self: Never write a full review again in this thread ever, especially not at the wee hours of the night. It's just not a good idea.

What do people think of Drill Dozer? Personally, I think it's a very fun and unique game. I'm about halfway through it, and so far the level design has been enjoyable, the art style has been interesting, and the music has been great. I love the gameplay, too. Anybody else played this game?

I so wanted to play Gotcha Force when I read about it in Nintendo Power. Not sure why I never got around to getting it.

@Mickeymac Thanks for the response; makes my time feel worth it.

Don't Look Back is only a couple of minutes, try it on a weekend.

When you're bored, go play Puzzle Agent. The story is very engrossing and creepy.

@Mickeymac: There's just really nothing interesting about it. I feel like I'm playing the same level over and over again with very, very slight variations. There's a few exceptions but they didn't do it for me.

Don't look back was immensely fun. I think I saw a lets-play of it/played a bit before, but I just played it from start to finish and it took my breath away. Thanks for that. The ending was very clever.

@Polygon_Man

Thanks for the reply. That does sound like it would get tiring. I'll still probably get it, but I'll lower it's priority and my expectations.

@HolyMackerel I get a Killzone vibe from that, I'm not sure why.

@Mickeymac A Boy and His Blob is pretty slow-paced, quite boring and the controls? I dunno, I just couldn't get used to them.

I'll add some obscure games when I can think of some.

Max and the Magic Marker! Very obscure imo, and rather challenging too. It's on Wiiware. Check it out!

Has anyone played Fragile Dreams? I want to get it, but I'm try to save money for upcoming games. Is the combat a big issue? Also, how do you progress in the game? (From a gameplay standpoint, specifically. I get the story.)

I remember thinking of getting Super Robot Taisen on the GBA. There are a bunch of other games I never got for it either. I would like to include one here that got good reviews, but I never heard a thing about it besides that:

It is another turn-based strategy game on the GBA. It looked quite good, but I can't really comment on it much since I have never played it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yggdra_Union