Forgotten games

When you think of forgotten games, what games come to mind? I often think of Square RPGs from the late 90’s / early 2000s like Xenogears, Vagrant Story, Parasite Eve. Great IPs that make you wonder why they aren’t around anymore. How about you, GD?

Psi Ops the mindgate conspiracy

Shadows of the Damned

Billy hatcher and the giant egg

Custom Robo

Rise of Nations

Those are some of the ones off the top of my head that I really liked, that if I bring them up to other people they have no idea what I'm talking about

@sargentd: Billy Hatcher had a following in this very forum when it was brand new. We disagreed with the GS review.

Oh my cawd, that was twenty years ago. 👀

Anyways, my answer is also a GameCube only title, P.N.03

Oh and Summoner (PS2)

It’s aged terribly but I loved it.

Alpha Protocol. Take a generous pour of Die Hard, add two splashes of Jason Bourne, give it a shake and pour into a glass of Mass Effect-style action-RPG gameplay. Float some James Bond bitters on top for espionage vibes.

Great game, released broken so overlooked at the time. Might have been the last game Obsidian developed before they dropped off the radar for a while.

Depends what you mean, because forgotten by the publisher? sure. By those who play games in general I have to disagree.

Some of the games mentioned are very known even from people who haven't played them. They just don't sell five million copies. Even so that's not forgotten. Quite a few of the above are commonly mentioned by fans and even with campaigns for the remake/ rerelease treatment, due to not being forgotten.

Battle Axe is the game that came to mind. It's a fun top down shooter in the spirit of Smash TV, The Chaos Engine & Nex Machina (two of these are also forgotten); released and didn't even get enough attention to spark any reviews from creditable sources, let alone gather sales outside KickStarter Backers. Rough. Solid retro call-back.

I know why it is forgotten, top down shooters are simply a bottom of the barrel niche genre that very few buying modern systems care to glance at twice, and that's no stab to those who don't care for them, it's just how it is. Top down shooters are usually only loved by those who played them in the arcades and love fast twitchy gameplay.

Housemarque figured this out with Returnal, and because they made a drastic change to design and perspective it's looked at with reverence. If it was top down? no one would care for Returnal.

Speaking of, did you play Rise of Legends?

XGRA. I remember back in college talking to a guy about how much I loved F-Zero GX, and he said Extreme G was his preference. I asked him his take on XGRA because I hadn't played it by then, and he told me Extreme G 3 was the most recent game in the series. That's how forgotten that game is. Even some fans of the series didn't know it happened. It's a shame too, because despite some bouts of slowdown, it's probably the best game in the series. But I think it came out months before Akklaim folded.

I know I bring this game up a lot, but Heavy Metal: Geomatrix. Do you remember Spawn: In the Demon's hand? No? Well this was a spiritual successor to that, with a smaller budget, based on an even more niche franchise, released within weeks of the Dreamcast being pulled off life-support. And you know what, the lack of ambition lead to a better game. Smaller levels and the switch to one-on-one gameplay fixed the wonkey camera problems Spawn had. Heavy Metal was almost as much fun as Power Stone. You can quote me on that.

Red Orchestra: Heroes of stalingrad.

People are still playing it online, while games like the new CODs have their servers empty.

Man, who deactivated their account right after posting?

@judaspete: I believe she was upset about a lack of moderation in the forums, regarding trans gender topics. One might still find her swan song in Ask the mods.

City of Heroes

Maybe it's more that they were never really known, but a lot of good NES games seemingly fell through the cracks.

Battle of Olympus - Always thought this was a way cooler Zelda II than actual Zelda II lol. The story, setting, gameplay, music, one of those NES games that had a great sense of mystery and discovery.

Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight - Loaded name. Probably duped many people, buying into something that it wasn't. But damn if it isn't one of the best action platformers on the NES. Tough as nails of course, but I played the hell out of that game.

Wrath of the Black Manta - Ninjas are cool. Ok weird game, probably deserves to be lost to time lol. But it had some nice variety and I thought it was really cool how many skills you could obtain. One of the boss sprites in particular impressed me for a NES game.

Some random kung fu game that I hope you guys can remember for me - Not the generic titled Kung Fu game lol. Vaguely remember the game having two modes of play. Side scrolling missions you'd play on the way to the competition. Then some over the top 1v1 tournament battles ending each stage. Side scrolling stages were your standard early NES stuff. But the tournament battles were actually kind of impressive. Highs, mids, lows, low profiles, throws, specials. Remember some ridiculous full screen spin kick special at least. I always remember it as Ninja Scroll, but I know for sure that's not it.

@ConanTheStoner: lol Afro Samurai?

Bulletstorm is a gem.

I'd say many good NES era games are forgotten/unknown.

😂

Nah, was a mid/late 80s NES game. I swear sometimes it seems like I just dreamt it up.

I've forgotten the names of so many NES games, but not the ones I've played so thoroughly as that one.

@ConanTheStoner: that’s what happens when you’re a digital gamer lol jk

@SolidGame_basic:

😂

But I had a physical copy of the game!

See, now if the NES had the option for digital, I'd have various ways of tracking down the games name on my account.

Jokes aside, might just scroll through a list of all US released NES games. See if anything jogs my memory.

@ConanTheStoner: lol you can try the National video game museum lol https://nvmusa.org/

@SolidGame_basic:

Actually just found it on a Wiki NES list! "The Secret Scroll", this must be why I kept thinking Ninja Scroll.

Surprisingly, exactly as I remember. Super basic side scroller levels, but pretty interesting 1v1 stuff by lowly NES standards lol.

@ConanTheStoner: nice, you gonna hunt down a copy?

@SolidGame_basic:

lol nah. Ironically it's been sitting in a rom dump on my PC all along, just didn't know the name.

But it's not one I really care to play, more of a nostalgia deal. I was like 7 when I played this game.

@ConanTheStoner: oh, if you play it, the nostalgia will disappear, better to delete it

@SolidGame_basic: xenogears while epic was a disappointment because part way through they have this random long cut scene then a time skip to cover cut content. It threw me off and after that point I was not happy with it.

There was a zelda like rpg on 8bit nes called Crystalis. It was pretty epic & theres never been a follow up, reboot, sequel. They need to do one for this.