Good games you love

[AndrewTS 0]

Discovered a budget game that is shockingly good? A lost old classic that never got much props?

Post it here.

 

I'll kick things off (an obvious one at first):

 

Shantae (GBC)

(cover art: http://www.vgmuseum.com/scans/gbc/gbcscans12/shantae.jpg)

 

I've mentioned this title many times in the past--and it got some props in the recent Handheld Heroes 1up article.

It's an excellent platformer with tons of RPG elements, great level design, stunning visuals (while on GBC, it looks as good or better than many similar GBA/SNES titles).

 

It's quite a bit like Zelda 2 without the overworld, instead giving you a "loop" world (you can always get where you're going by traveling either left or right, although warps become available over time).

 

A sequel for GBA was in development, but it hasn't been heard from in over a year and sadly may have been cancelled.

 

Silent Bomber (PS1)

 

Strikes against the game that led to its unknown status:

 

The rather poor cover art:

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B0000...02.MZZZZZZZ.jpg

 

Generic CGIish anime look. *yawn*

 

A title that is also rather generic, and depending on how you hear it, flatulant.

 

Plus, it was published by Bandai, who has quite the rep for horrible titles. It was developed, oddly, by the folks responsible for the less-obscure Tron-Bonne-ish Tail Concerto, who would later bring us the .hack games.

 

Anyway, while the visuals are fine (the perspective is much like Loaded, so your main character doesn't need a lot of detail on him anyway), the gameplay is what makes it worthy. By tapping a button, you can lay a bomb. By holding the button, you get an aiming reticle that lets you toss your bomb ahead of you and either attach to an enemy, or lay it a short distance away. Rapid taps after laying the first bomb will lay multiple ones; you can increase the capacity of the bombs you lay further into the game.

 

After laying the number of bombs you want, or running out of bombs, you can hit the detonator to blow them up. Although you can only lay a set number of bombs at once, you have an infinite supply of them. You also have limiited subweapons that can only be laid instead of directed--such as napalm burst, a gravity burst (that sucks enemies into a tiny black hole), and so on.

 

There's some limited platforming, but mostly you'll need to bomb, stay alive, and weave your way through enemy shots (much like Cannon Spike).

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

Return Fire for PS1.

 

It's capture the flag with hummers, tanks, choppers, and APCs.

[Special K 0]

The music is great in that game. Ride of the Valkyries, and In the Hall of the Mountain King.

 

I'll post some in a bit.

[Youth N Asia 0]

Wonderboy in Monsterland for the Sega Master System...STILL my favorite game ever

[Masked Man of Mystery 0]

I've recently found a SNES version of a game I saw once on an arcade machine called Relief Pitcher. It's pretty neat, and the pitching mechanic is much like the MVP system. I'm also a fan of NBA Give 'n Go. Also, Growlanser Generations(which is 2 and 3) is pretty neat in it's old schoolness.

[Anya 0]

Rogue Trip. After Singletrac developed Twisted Metal 1 and 2 they left Sony and the rights to TM were given to 989 who put out TM games so bad it nearly killed the franchise. Singletrac released this as a true successor and it was the only car combat game that could come close to TM2. It's basically TM but with tourists you can pick up around the levels. You take them to spots on the map to earn money you can spend on powerups and health. It's like Crazy Taxi before there was a Crazy Taxi.

[Masked Man of Mystery 0]

Rogue Trip. After Singletrac developed Twisted Metal 1 and 2 they left Sony and the rights to TM were given to 989 who put out TM games so bad it nearly killed the franchise. Singletrac released this as a true successor and it was the only car combat game that could come close to TM2. It's basically TM but with tourists you can pick up around the levels. You take them to spots on the map to earn money you can spend on powerups and health. It's like Crazy Taxi before there was a Crazy Taxi.

That never struck me as an unknown game, but that's because I had a magazine that hyped the heck out of it and had a strategy guide for it

[Anya 0]

Well it got hype leading up to it's release but I don't think many remember it now so I think it'd count as a lost classic.

 

Singletrac also did another car combat game....underwater in subs. It was Critical Depth and is even more forgotten. It sucks...

[AndrewTS 0]

I'm also a fan of NBA Give 'n Go.

 

That game has an odd history.

 

It's based on a Konami arcade B-Ball title called Run n' Gun (which was unlicensed).

 

There was a 3DO title that was a virtual clone called Slam n' Jam.

 

Shortly after, Konami released NBA Give 'n Go on SNES.

 

Konami decided to be a wet blanket, and released their 32-bit follow ups to Give 'n Go as "NBA In the Zone."

 

Just about all of them are decent to good, though: tight arcade-style gameplay and an excellent game perspective.

 

Since the GBA NBA Jam sucked, Konami should make, like, "NBA Jive 'n Drive" for it.

 

EDIT: Damn, I think the GBA NBA Jam 2002 is the only basketball game on the system.

[Anya 0]

The thing I remember most about Run & Gun(2 in particular) was the obnoxious demo for the arcade version. Every 5 seconds the annoucer would scream "Run and gun 2! UGH!!!!". It was next to the Tekken machine so you'd hear it constantly. It's been like 5 years and I still hate it. It doesn't sound that bad but I cannot put into words how annoying it really was.

[Masked Man of Mystery 0]

I'm also a fan of NBA Give 'n Go.

 

That game has an odd history.

 

It's based on a Konami arcade B-Ball title called Run n' Gun (which was unlicensed).

 

There was a 3DO title that was a virtual clone called Slam n' Jam.

 

Shortly after, Konami released NBA Give 'n Go on SNES.

 

Konami decided to be a wet blanket, and released their 32-bit follow ups to Give 'n Go as "NBA In the Zone."

 

Just about all of them are decent to good, though: tight arcade-style gameplay and an excellent game perspective.

 

Since the GBA NBA Jam sucked, Konami should make, like, "NBA Jive 'n Drive" for it.

 

EDIT: Damn, I think the GBA NBA Jam 2002 is the only basketball game on the system.

Cool, I never knew all that. It's also a game that benefits from emulation, because it didn't have battery backup for some reason, but you can use save states to make up for that(at this point though, I'm not bothering to screw with the roster). It also didn't have Shaq for some reason, he seemed to be like Jordan for a while and not appear in video games for some reason around '96

[AndrewTS 0]

Contractual obligations prevented it.

 

EA had Shaq locked up--hence his crappy fighter and appearances in the NBA Live series.

 

MJ's separate license agreements meant he *could* be used in video games if the company wanted to fork out a buttload to Nike or whoever. It's not that clear, though--EA somehow was able to get MJ to star in a crappy platformer but he wasn't in their B-Ball games until NBA Live 2000.

[Masked Man of Mystery 0]

Contractual obligations prevented it.

 

EA had Shaq locked up--hence his crappy fighter and appearances in the NBA Live series.

 

MJ's separate license agreements meant he *could* be used in video games if the company wanted to fork out a buttload to Nike or whoever. It's not that clear, though--EA somehow was able to get MJ to star in a crappy platformer but he wasn't in their B-Ball games until NBA Live 2000.

The MJ game wasn't bad, it was just hard and kinda cheap. It had a unique gimmick in the basketball as a weapon and I think it was well integrated

[EricMM 0]

Critical Depth had a cool story, but everything after 2 until Black was just a sad reminder of what it could have been.

[Guest InuYasha]

Some good ones I've played are for the N64. Three that I can think of right off the top of my head are Mischief Makers, Shadowgate 64: Trial of the Four Towers, and Winback.

 

Mischief Makers was Yoshi's Story before it even came out. It was a solid 2D platformer with integrated 3D backgrounds. Also, a unique twist to the game made you want to play it again and again. In order to see the entire ending of the game, you had to get all the gold gems. Some of them were hard to find, and in some of the boss fights, you only got them by getting a "perfect" on the boss fight.

 

Shadowgate 64 was the first true RPG for the N64, and in a unique twist again, it was a First Person Perspective, too. I rented it a lot, but I never bought it; I could never find it on sale anywhere.

 

Winback was good, because it was a Third Person Shooter, and it used an engine similar to the one that got Resi 4 so much acclaim. It also had puzzles and exploration, too. It sold so well compared to it's maufacture price, that it's maker, Koei, re-released it on the PS2, with better graphics and full FMV scenes with vioce dialogue.

[CanadianGuitarist 0]

Mendel Palace for NES.

 

Nagano Olympics for N64.

[razazteca 0]

http://www.vgmuseum.com/images/snes01/01/tetrisfighter.html Dossun! Ganseki Battle

 

Super Bomberman Panic Bomber World

 

Tetris Butou Gaiden http://www.vgmuseum.com/images/snes01/01/t...ttlegaiden.html

[The Man in Blak 0]

It always seemed to get decent play around here whenever it was brought up, but I still don't think Shadowrun for the Sega Genesis gets enough recognition from the mainstream media. There's a lot of GTA3 in that game; not necessarily the car-jacking or random violence, but the free-flowing mission structure that allowed you to do a lot of different things within the game that were outside of the main storyline. On top of that, it had the minigame to kill all minigames with the Matrix. Just a great little game.

[LivingLegendGaryColeman 0]

To throw in a more recent game, I really liked the Haunted Mansion game when it first came out. I couldn't stop playing it til I beat it, which is usually pretty rare for me... I just never sit down a beat a game. I have it on the PS2, but since then, with the exception of the SvR series, I pretty much only play my Xbox. I saw the Xbox version (along with PS2 and GC) in the discount bin recently and thought about getting it and doing it all over again.

[Special K 0]

Warsong aka Langrisser I for the Genesis. A strategy RPG that is easily as complex, and IMO quite a bit better than Shining Force or Fire Emblem. This game was hard as hell, missions often took an hour. If you lost a character, they were gone FOREVER, and you didn't have backups like in most games. I ALMOST beat the game without losing a character. Stupid, weak, Lance.

 

Jumping Flash A very early PS game, a combination FPS and 3D platformer, it was one of the first games to give me an impressive sense of a huge, wide open arena. Vibrant simple graphics, it still plays OK.

 

Suikoden II and Valkyrie Profile It's pretty hard to call any RPG released stateside unknown, but while the merits of these games are well-documented, most have never played them because of their scarcity. That's a shame, since they easily rank in my top 10 RPGs of all time. I hear Suikoden II is now fetching upwards of $100. Ugh.

 

Bangai-O! For the DC, an excellent shooter by Treasure. The controls are simple, it's like a side-scrolling Smash TV, with a sense of a gravity well. You have two weapons ('pilots') that you can switch on the fly, reflecting lasers and homing missiles. The number of bullets onscreen is insane, and it's when things seem lost, that you're most dangerous. You have a special attack (which you'll be using very often) that works as follows, the greater the number and proximity of enemy bullets after you, the greater the number of missiles/lasers you shoot.

[Youth N Asia 0]

I got $80 on Ebay for my used Suikoden II, great game.

 

Inindo, Way of the Ninja for the SNES. LOVED IT. Never met anyone else who's even played it.

[Special K 0]

I Have! You could run crazy fast in that game. My friend was actually the one who was obsessed with it. It was fun, but goddamn confusing.

[Youth N Asia 0]

Once you got how the game worked down it was fun. Convicing warlords to go to war with another, playing both sides, firebombing the castles...awesome

[AndrewTS 0]

Jumping Flash A very early PS game, a combination FPS and 3D platformer, it was one of the first games to give me an impressive sense of a huge, wide open arena. Vibrant simple graphics, it still plays OK.

 

Excellent taste, SK. I remember when I got my original Playstation, and I played the JF! demo a lot. I eventually purchased both JF!1 and JF!2--and I even played the original last week.

 

It seems likely Retro Studios (of Metroid Prime fame) dug the game, because the MP games have a similar feel. JF! was basically the first game to do jumping in a First Person perspective right.

 

I had Robbit as an MSN avatar recently, as well.

 

Shadowrun being mentioned reminded me that I've been looking for that game forever--and I just lucked out and found it on half.com for 10 bucks + shipping.

 

Shadowgate 64 was the first true RPG for the N64, and in a unique twist again, it was a First Person Perspective, too. I rented it a lot, but I never bought it; I could never find it on sale anywhere.

 

http://search.half.ebay.com/shadowgate-64_W0QQ

 

I also often see it at EB/Gamestop for $4.99. However, many reviews I've seen remark that the original Shadowgate (an NES game) is better.

 

Suikoden II isn't obscure (the Suikodens are outrageously overrated, even in they are good. How outrageous is it that you can't buy a used copy for less than 40 bucks at the usual places?!).

 

Valkyrie Profile is fairly obscure--I've never seen the game at a retail location, ever.

[ChrisMWaters 0]

I don't know how unknown it is around here, but...

 

"The Neverhood". For me, a great fun point and click game. Plus how can you go wrong with an almost all-clay looking world.

[AndrewTS 0]

I don't know how unknown it is around here, but...

 

"The Neverhood". For me, a great fun point and click game. Plus how can you go wrong with an almost all-clay looking world.

 

Chris: I'm sure you could write like a dozen columns on excellent Adventure games, since I know you're a huge fan of the genre.

 

Another Neverhood project--Skullmonkeys, is also heralded as an unsung classic. I had it but never quite got the fascination, though.

[ChrisMWaters 0]

I don't know how unknown it is around here, but...

 

"The Neverhood". For me, a great fun point and click game. Plus how can you go wrong with an almost all-clay looking world.

 

Chris: I'm sure you could write like a dozen columns on excellent Adventure games, since I know you're a huge fan of the genre.

Eh, not really.

 

If we're just counting the point and click adventure games...the only ones I've played are the Monkey Island Quadlogy and The Neverhood. ...I have Grim Fandango but I haven't gotten around to playing it yet.

[Youth N Asia 0]

It's not unknown, but since it was mentioned, Shadowrun for the SNES is one of my all time favorite

[Special K 0]

^That game's boss. Some of the puzzles are ridiculous without a walkthrough, though. (The ice puzzle in particular, by which I mean actual h2o ice, not ICE)

[SpikeFayeJettEdBebop 0]

i know people have heard of it, but im so fucking in love with Shenmue, I just needed to put it up. My heart yearns for Shenmue 3......