Games

Kid Icarus.

Alter Ego, a 1986 DOS game that's still one of the best life-sim type games ever made. You start out as a baby and work your way through life by making choices. They can lead to a wide variety of outcomes, including dying tragically as a child, etc... You can play it free online or they've made updated versions.

Phantasy Star Online (PSO). I have thousands of hours in that game across Dreamcast, GameCube and PC over the decades and I'm still not tired of it. It absolutely nailed the loot system and you're always looking to get another rare box drop. BlueBurst on PC still has multiple active and populated servers, but I feel like it doesn't get much discussion in gaming communities in general despite being one of the pioneers of online gaming on consoles.

Panzer Dragoon Saga for the Saturn is maybe my favorite JRPG, or Grandia 2

The 7th Guest was a revolutionary game and I just love it [email protected]

For me it's gotta be Secret of Evermore for the SNES. Kinda old game but I absolutely loved the gameplay and story when I first played it as a kid. Have been replaying the game many times and it's always a great experience.

Starsiege and/or earthsiege 1 and 2

Kinetica! It's a ps2 racing game where you dance to gain boost! It's fact paced action with amazing music, and awesome character designs. Also, it's SantaMonicaStudios first PlayStation title. 😁

All of my other favorite games are pretty popular tbh. Monster Hunter, Nier, Hades, Elden Ring, Hi-Fi Rush.

I'm going to name a few potentially obscure ones from my 30 years of gaming

• Micro Machines 2 (SNES and Mega Drive) - as far as I am aware, only MM1 had wide release, the rest were PAL only but have modern 60hz and NTSC patches now. Great fun, and you can play as Violet Berlin (for those like me who used to watch Bad Influence!)

• Looney Toons Collector: Martian Alert!! (Game Boy Color) - this one is hard to categorise! Its a top down adventure RPG like Zelda, you start as Bugs and recruit further characters each with their own skills to traverse the world and solve puzzles. For example, Elmer Fudd has a gun, Tweety can fly over gaps, etc. It is actually really fucking good, and holds up better than many GBC games. You can also trade with other people who have the game, and there's a sequel I haven't even played yet!

• Wario Land Virtual Boy - this is without a doubt one of the best platformers ever made, and it's a damn shame it's been forgotten by most. HOWEVER! Emulators exist, and the game runs like a dream in retroarch/mednafen.

A few tips: the virtual boy is a 50hz console, so set your display to that or use gsync otherwise you'll have stuttering. The console is also natively a wide-screen display, which is sweet. Steam Deck is perfect for it, and looks great in black and white. If you have a VR headset, that's a good idea too to get the proper 3D experience, but it's not essential in any way whatsoever.

• Neutopia II (PC Engine/TG16) - a shameless Zelda clone that is actually worth playing as a spiritual successor to Zelda 1. A neat little what if, if Nintendo had expanded on the original rather than Link to the Past. It has an awesome soundtrack, save battery backup (wahooo) and is just great fun. The first is good too, but feels significantly more dated than the sequel

And lastly, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Switch) - I don't care if it's the opposite of unknown,, I'm recommending this one. Culmination of the best trilogy I've ever known in gaming, and by far the best game I've ever played. With the 4k, 60fps and rebalance mods when playing on PC it's simply incredible. Based Monolithsoft.

The soundtrack is mind-blowing, has the best battle themes in the series and you can tell just how much work went into it (main two characters have flutes they use in the story to send dead soldiers to the afterlife - Yasunori Mitsuda then made those flutes for real to be used in the soundtrack). Just, every single thing about the game exudes more love and care than most games I've played and it shows. After so many years of being unable to finish a story due to corporate wankery (xenosaga....), Takahashi finally got to make his masterpiece. And for those who were put off by the anime-ness of Xenoblade 2, 3 is very much reined in, adult and pretty fucking dark. No big anime titties here - it's war, and it's not pleasant. It's more like XB1 - 2 is the outlier, and its happy-go-lucky feeling makes far more sense after seeing what happens in 3.

Majesty: the Fantasy Kingdom Sim

A RTS/Sim hybrid in which you play as the king of a cliche fantasy realm with the gimmick that your direct control is limited. You don't have an army and instead have to hire adventurers who are all AI controlled and need to be bribed into doing what you want. The game can be frustrating but it has a ton of charm and there's just nothing out there quite like it.

N.O.M.A.D. This is such a great DOS game that I invested so much time in back in off and all all through the 90's. Open world, space exploration, trading, combat, different alien races, great humor. Was such a great game that I never heard anyone talking about then or mention now. The game is abandonware now if anyone wants to give it a go.

I've got two.

• 999. It's an escape room visual novel from late in the DS's life cycle. I can't talk about it much without spoiling it, but it absolutely blew me away when I played it. I can't recommend it enough if you're a fan of mystery and psychological thrillers. There was a remake released on Steam, and the community is divided on which version is better; I personally strongly recommend it on DS emulator/original hardware, with a spoiler-free guide to the good ending after your first blind playthrough.
• OneShot. It's very much in the vein of Undertale, but the initial release was slightly earlier. It isn't quite as tight with its writing as Undertale, but the story evoked some genuine emotions in a way that games rarely manage. As much hype as the latter got, it surprised me that the former is so obscure.

There was a game on PSX called Team Buddies. It was the absolute best. I have many core childhood memories toes to that game.

Split screen PvP (or PvE, but the computer players were dumb) where you have to run around these different maps collecting boxes to bring back to your base. Depending on how you stack the boxes, you make different things when you smash them open

1x1: pistol 1x2: shotgun 2x1: additional "soldier" 1x4: rocket launcher 2x4: tank

You could have up to 4 soldiers and the aim was to destroy the enemy base by attacking it.

There were these super blocks that would drop and if you got them included in your build it would change what you made. You could get an Uzi, a super solider with flight and lazer vision, a gattling gun or a helicopter.

You could attack other players building pads to sabotage their new builds, attack their base, kill their soldiers... It was amazing, but outsideu friend group, have never seen/heard anything about it.

Gitaroo man, I played it on the psp until my thumbs hurt. Music still slaps.

Pixel Junk: Eden by Q-Games. Available on PlayStation and PC, it's a platformer of sorts. You play as a little insect, swinging on a silk line and jumping from plant to plant. On the way, you collect pollen which makes new plants sprout and grow. The game was made in collaboration with Bayion - a Japanese designer, artist and DJ, who art directed the visuals and composed all of the music for the game.

Playing Eden feels a bit like Tetris Effect or Rez. You get hypnotized by the visuals and music. Nothing quite like it - I actually bought my first console (PS3) after lifetime of PC gaming in order to play this title (it was exclusive back then).

Also, they just announced Eden 2!!!

Crusader No Remorse, Crusader No Regret and Civil War Generals 2

Warzone 2100. A seminal classic for me, from the year 2000.

Rocket Slime is actually the second game of a trilogy. Its just the only one to get an english translation.

I played the hell out of Dragon Quest rocket slime! Recently I actually got the third one (only releasd in Japan) working on my phone! So far not as good as the second one 😂

Anyone remember "War of the Monsters" on the PS2? Such a fun monster mash single-screen multiplayer game.

Outer Wilds, really wonderful sci-fi puzzle-ish game

Rocket Jockey! Although I found a few other fans recently in retro gaming. It's a Sega Soft title where the entire premise is riding around on rockets engines and using cables to yoink and tripline your opponents off their rockets. Once they're on the ground, it's a lot easier to run over them and drag them around the arena. All this fun set to a bitchin' surf rock soundtrack by Dick Dale.

Future cop LAPD on PS1.

It was 2 player co op and you just went round in these mechs that could transform into cars and shot the baddies, blew things up etc. It was just very entertaining.

Gladius and Phantom Dust on OG Xbox. Total bangers.

Landstalker on Megadrive/Genesis. It's one of my favourite childhood games. I actually want to go play it again now that I'm thinking about it again.

OG Xbox games like Alter Echo and Advent Rising. Those games blew my god damn mind as a kid. Doesn't helpt they were pretty early for the generation and never escaped the console.

Soul Bubbles is a puzzle-action game released for the NDS. You encase the souls of the departed in magic bubbles and blow them around levels to help them to the afterlife, dodging spiky terrain, marauding creatures, and wind currents.

It might have gotten more attention if its production run wasn't so small and it wasn't sold exclusively at Toys 'R Us.