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There’s not much that compares to the disappointment I experience when I attempt to have a conversation about a great game I’m playing and get nothing but blank stares in return. Too often I find myself with an amazing little gem of a game that no one in creation has heard of. Why? Searching the Internet shows that nearly every game news site simply has no information about them at all. No hype, no previews. If I’m lucky, there’s a name and an inaccurate release date.
This got me wondering. How many amazing games have been lost to obscurity simply because no one bothered to care or get the word out? Too many. With that in mind, I felt the need to share some of the gems I own that the world has never heard of. These games deserve far more than the dismissive, innacurate information pages about them.
First is the hilarious Mystery Dungeon-style strategy RPG by my favorite company. Atlus’ Zettai Hero Project: Unlosing Ranger vs Darkdeath Evilman is a satirical superhero story by the same team that created Disgaea. The entire story revolves around the epic final boss battle between Absolute Victory Unlosing Ranger and Demon General Darkdeath Evilman, the fate of the world and the superbaby resting on it. Only Unlosing Ranger slept in, is running late…and is hit by a car, killing him. In his dying breath, he passes the mantle of Unlosing Ranger on to you, Innocent Bystander and the weakest main character in history. Every chapter of training your hero ends with another attempt at beating Darkdeath Evilman which inevitably fails. As the game progresses, the battle sequence for this final fight shifts from the original old school 8-bit RPG up to flashy, fully animated sprites.
Second is…well, another Atlus game, actually. Despite coverage on some of the larger sites, somehow Cladun: This is an RPG has been missed or overlooked by most gamers. A throwback to classic 8-bit action RPGs, Cladun offers both short dungeon runs and hours of exploration. It also lets players create their own custom characters and equip them via a unique skill system. In a fun twist, there are 2 entirely seperate sound tracks you can set to play in the background: the basic music or the 8-bit versions of the same tracks.
Third up is Dark Spire, yet anothe Atlus game. Seems to be a trend here. This game is an excercise in patience and masochism, but a must-have for hard core traditional RPG fans. In this first person dungeon crawler, animation is nonexistent, your 4 character created team doesn’t even have portraits and learning to use your stats is a trial and error experiment. You start the game extrememly weak, have as little as 4hp, almost every chest holds horrifying traps, spells are necessary to even see the map of the dungeon, and reviving dead party members is bank breakingly expensive. Dark Spire is a minimalist but exhilirating game full of unpredictability. It offers a truly free-form experience with not much story and little direction. It even offers both the default gorgeous art style and an alternate black and white wireframe text box style for that true retro experience.
This is just a sampling of the games that have been massively overlooked. While there are many more I could go into, I’ll leave it at this for now. Hopefully, some people will find a great game among these that they never would have otherwise.
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LOL, admit it, you just want Altus to be more popular, that’s all!
Seriously though, there are plenty of excellent games with much higher production values, which went more or less unnoticed. Psychonauts is one. It is quite possibly one of the 20 best games ever made, and yet very few people have heard of it, much less played it.
Agree with you there on Psychonauts.
I would include Anachronox, a beautiful, funny, soulful, fascinating game from the ill-fated team that made the notorious flop Daikatana.
Then there’s the haunting Dark Eye, in which you experience several Edgar Allen Poe stories, both from the victim and the perpetrator’s point of view.
There’s Gladius (XBox), a woefully overlooked strat rpg in which you built a stable of gladiator-style fighters.
Also, two fabulous hybrids: Outcast, a voxel-based 3D action adventure and Omikron: The Nomad Soul.
I’ve played Omikron back in the day. Not for long, because someone let me borrow their copy and I had to give it back, but I remember being pretty impressed with it.
There are just so many gems out there that just never caught on…One I hold dear is the old title Dostile Waters:Antaeus Rising. A wonderful combination of third-person action and RTS, it was easily one of the better-realized and, most importantly, FUN games to come along in a while.
Sadly, it had no multiplaye4r (with the game’s basic premise, it really could have had a fun multiplayetr), and this got ignored by just about everyone. Suprisingly, the game still works on Windows 7 in compatability mode – without copy-protection (the protection scheme used breaks on anythign higher than Win98, and the game works just fine without it).
Besides, Tom Baker was the narrator of the story – it doesn’t get better than that!
@Alaric – Wait until you see the Blog post I just finished putting a cap on this afternoon. Psychonauts plays a large part. Weird how this Internet works, some days.
BTW I believe Omikron was created by Quantic Dream – who went on to make Indigo Prophecy and Heavy Rain. Those guys were ahead of their time… although it’s good to see them still plugging away and revolutionizing this art & entertainment form today.
Valkyria Chronicles for the PS3 was sort of a disappointment when it was released (it wasn’t even in the Top 100 list for the month of November 2008). But it was a great game that had to compete with titles such as: Gears of War 2, Call of Duty: World at War for that month.
Good call on Gladius, I remember picking that up in the bargain bin, playing it for six weeks straight, and wondering why I’d never heard of it before. Mount and Blade used to be my favorite lost cause on this front, but then Steam picked it up, along with it’s sequel, and marketed them aggressively and now it’s starting to be a little more visible. I expect that digital distribution networks like steam and impulse will go a long way toward fixing this because it solves the two main problems underinvested games face – marketing and distribution. Or maybe that’s just what I’d like to believe.
Mount and Blade is a good one. Definitely getting more notice now, which is nice. I’m waiting for the third one that’s set to come out. I just hope the addition of gunpowder doesn’t make the system unbalanced.
As most people know I love the Mount and Blade series. I guess being there from the start I can sort of feel like I am part of it.. well I was sort of. during beta lol..
Anyways great article. I think they way they spit games out for the DS that there are a lot of games that go under the radar. I have a huge collection of DS games and most of those most people just would have never heard of – some great and some bad titles. But it is amazing what you can buy in the bargain bin! My PSP has a large library but i never upgraded because I like hard copies of my game (old fashion). There are a lot of classic over looked game for that too!
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