Mine has to be Dragon Quest: Rocket Slime, a DS spin off of the Dragon Quest series that sees you playing as a slime operating a tank and rescuing the people from your town. You run around the overworld, collecting items to use as ammunition and saving money to upgrade your tank. The art and music are just as great as you’d expect from the Dragon Quest series. It made fantastic use of the DS’s dual screens. It’s also written for a younger audience, so a lot of it is just really silly and fun! Try it out for sure, I’m so sad there’s no sequel :(
Black and White, it was a god simulator on PC in 2001. You interact with your villagers and the world as a floating hand, casting spells to raise faith in villages or throwing rocks to smite as necessary. You also got a giant pet that you could train to do your bidding.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_%26_White_(video_game)
That was a fun game! Would love to see a remake of it.
All these years later it still haunts me…
In certain circles it is well known, but Baba Is You is one of the most ingenious games for a long while and should be known even wider.
One of the only puzzle games that made me think I’m dumb and give up. It’s fantastic
Among all the love Bioware gets for KotOR and Mass Effect I’m genuinely surprised more people aren’t talking about Jade Empire.
It’s a full fledged classic Bioware RPG set in an interesting world based on Chinese mythology, has some great characters and a fun (if simple) combat system. Voice acting is mostly good too, especially for a 2005 game and it even has John Cleese doing a part!
I loved it when it came out and am stumped as to why it never became a BioWare mainstay. Maybe releasing as an exclusive for the original Xbox just killed it, but if you enjoy this style of RPG I highly recommend checking it out!
Jade empire was legit. i’m really surprised that there haven’t been any other kung fu type rpgs since.
In parallel universe we would have had Jade Empire (series) written by Bioware at their peak with combat by Platinum games.
Or maybe some could make SF6 story mode X Jade Empire.
In parallel universe we would have had Jade Empire (series) written by Bioware at their peak with combat by Platinum games.
I hadn’t even thought about that but you’re right. What a wonderful thought.
It’s also kind of surprising no effort has been done to remaster Jade Empire since that is such a popular cash grab these days. But maybe the brand strength of the IP is just that low?
Armagetron Advanced, which is a 3d multiplayer Tron clone, though you can also face off against bots. Fun as hell with friends and the customization options keeps things interesting.
I loved this game. I remember finding out about double- or triple-binding the turn keys so you could do fancy u-turns and other maneuvers. I always got beat online, but I never came in last
Yeah, that was a game changer, learning about the dbl binds. I picked it up again a few weeks back, and those have been some pretty unproductive weeks
The journeyman project series (1, 2 and 3) had a major impact on my childhood
Crimson Skies for OG Xbox. It’s pirates in planes dogfighting, we need a remake badly.
The prequel that only came out on PC was really good, too. But the Xbox version was better for sure.
American McGee’s Alice and the much later sequel which is my favourite game of all time - Alice: Madness Returns.
The aesthetic, the puzzles, the sound design, the voice acting, the political statements underlying the narrative, Alice’s outfits, the collectibles hidden in obscure places, the different art styles for each world level. I just love it! I mean sure, the combat mechanics are not as complex as some games but they fit nicely into Alice in Wonderland lore and if you up the difficulty settings it can be more challenging.
I’m also really enjoying Inscryption at the moment. A puzzle/card game interweaved with an escape the room horror story.
I cannot believe these games aren’t talked about, madness returns was so dark and good. Loved both these games.
Return of the Obra Dinn is an amazing game that I wish I could play again for the first time. The art style is super unique and the attention to detail in every aspect of the game is incredible.
Highly recommend.
Hard to settle on just one. In no order:
- ChuChu Rocket (Dreamcast): insanely fun and manic couch multiplayer game
- A10 Tank Killer II: Silent Thunder (PC): the soundtrack alone justifies the time to play this aging flight sim
- Virtual On (Arcade): this was ported to Saturn and the port is good, but the giant arcade machine is where it’s really at with dual twin stick cockpits
- Mario Paint (SNES): Really fun non-game from a time when non-games were uncommon on home consoles. I have hundreds of hours into this
- Dungeon Keeper (PC): darkly comedic evil dungeon lord management sim. I will never forgive EA for what they did to Bullfrog and subsequently the DK franchise. There have been many attempted homages and clones but none have captured the magic.
- Super Tennis (SNES): an actually fun tennis game
- Super Play Action Football (SNES): football game with a unique isometric view
- Hank Parker’s Super Black Bass 2 (SNES): super fun fishing sim. I wish there were games like this today that took fishing more seriously and less arcadey.
- Brain Age (DS): a genuine sensation in its heyday and largely forgotten now. Really showed off the potential of the DS
- Cel Damage (GameCube): twisted metal with zany little cel shaded cartoon characters. Never got the respect it deserved and probably never will since they butchered the game’s balance with the HD re-release
DK2 took up far too much of my teenage life
I played Dungeon Keeper like mad back in the day.
It is payday
Any love for the Monkey Island series here?
Incredible Machine, Metal Arms Glitch in the System, Wargroove, Gradius 3.
Thank you for reminding me of The Incredible Machine! I am going to add its two sequels that most people have never heard of, TIM: Contraptions (essentially a HD re-release of the first game in a new engine.) and TIM: Even More e Contraptions (What would now be sold as DLC.)
Holy crap there was an HD re-release? I am not even sure which one I actually played. I think it was just TIM 3.0 from 1995
