Homebrew Hidden Gems Missing from Racketboy's "Hidden gems"

[kaisersozeh]

I'm a big fan of Hidden Gems - but it only covers some American consoles, and only the US releases, withsome notable Japanese exceptions.
Only the American sports games!!!
What's Missing?
What console games games were exclusive to your region, or language, and absolutely rocked?
What bit of obscure piece of homebrew, for some 8 bit machine, really sucks you in?
What ZXspectrum, AtariST, Tandy Color game would you tell the world about?

Let me make some noteable mentions...
On the British "Acorn BBC", now available thanks to a recent wiimpathy port of beebem, you find
- Elite - 3D trade/shooter - world's first open universe and pc iterations still being made
- Thrust - addidictive, responsive gameplay

Fans of the ZX spectrum will know Manic Minor - but it is a seminal take on the platformer format filled with wit and humour. Ahem

The Commodore64 port of the arcade game, "Commando" stole half my childhood.

The wii port of achtung wii curve is arguable the best multiplayer homebrew ever made.
There is a really cool bit of wii homebrew, Asprin - a simple game and the collision detection is off, but i just love it.
That is originally homebrew for the TI calculator, but the wii doesn't have an emulator for that.

What is good out there in emulatorland?

 

[Maeson]

I couldn't talk about calculators or old computers, as I didn't put much time into them, but I've spent a few years writing down lists of "decent to great" games for old systems because, simply put, each one can have a mind blowing amount of stuff worth to try.

For example, here's one about NES / Master System / MSX 1 & 2:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/173xR160AIkBYFchRC2Ok1q0ApevBmTFPOQEE9JOQJDo/edit?usp=sharing

I've long lost the ability to know what is "hidden" and what's more common knowledge any more because of doing these, lol. But for example, for the NES / Famicom, Mitsume Ga Tooru is one I've never heard about until I discovered it by pure luck, and it turns out to be one fine action platformer game, with solid gameplay, great visuals and even better music.

Air Fortress is a simple but fun game about infiltrating bases and escaping before they explode. Starts quite simple but it gets very evil quick, and the sense of anxiety that it conveys while trying to get out a fortress is still quite cool for such an old game, and it's a game that I never seen been talked about much.

Over Horizon is a cool Shoot'em Up that has the great feature of letting you customize your options, those little power-up-ships you can get in most games of the genre. You can change not only their statistics, but also their positions relative to you and switch between two positions.

Another Shoot'em Up that pretty much nobody talks about; although I see it is mentioned in Racketboy's web and I too find it to be really, really neat is Solar Jetman - Hunt for the Golden Warship. It is an exploration-based Shmup and your ship controls a bit like in Asteroids. You explore different planets and their underground cavern systems in search for treasures, a variety of items and fuel to warp to another planets. Each planet has different statistics or features like varying gravity that make things progressively harder. As you play you discover upgrades that give your pods new abilities, and you can sell your treasures to get a whole set of tools of different types for different actions. You can get back to your base to change your equipment and recharge your fuel, so management is important. The planets get bigger and bigger, and also more dangerous. Exploring can be quite intense when you enter unknown territory and have to be prepared for anything which is when the game really clicked with me (there's a map and a radar upgrade, but if I'm honest, I rather skip at least the second because I really like the feeling of mystery).

For NES standards, it is a very deep and long game, and since I discovered it I seriously think it is one of the best offerings on the NES. Un/Fortunately, it is best played through emulation so you can customize the controls for a more comfortable experience (more specifically, changing Select to one of the R/L Triggers in a modern controller).

NES has such a gigantic library that I still find things to be surprised about, imagine when you look a whole bunch of old systems!
As far as Homebrew NES games, I remember liking Lan Master (puzzle game where you connect computers) and Alter Ego.

 

[kaisersozeh]

I didn't want to clutter the thread, but those are some great resources and comments, thanks man - will be checking them out

I couldn't talk about calculators or old computers, as I didn't put much time into them, but I've spent a few years writing down lists of "decent to great" games for old systems because, simply put, each one can have a mind blowing amount of stuff worth to try.

For example, here's one about NES / Master System / MSX 1 & 2:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/173xR160AIkBYFchRC2Ok1q0ApevBmTFPOQEE9JOQJDo/edit?usp=sharing

I've long lost the ability to know what is "hidden" and what's more common knowledge any more because of doing these, lol. But for example, for the NES / Famicom, Mitsume Ga Tooru is one I've never heard about until I discovered it by pure luck, and it turns out to be one fine action platformer game, with solid gameplay, great visuals and even better music.

Air Fortress is a simple but fun game about infiltrating bases and escaping before they explode. Starts quite simple but it gets very evil quick, and the sense of anxiety that it conveys while trying to get out a fortress is still quite cool for such an old game, and it's a game that I never seen been talked about much.

Over Horizon is a cool Shoot'em Up that has the great feature of letting you customize your options, those little power-up-ships you can get in most games of the genre. You can change not only their statistics, but also their positions relative to you and switch between two positions.

Another Shoot'em Up that pretty much nobody talks about; although I see it is mentioned in Racketboy's web and I too find it to be really, really neat is Solar Jetman - Hunt for the Golden Warship. It is an exploration-based Shmup and your ship controls a bit like in Asteroids. You explore different planets and their underground cavern systems in search for treasures, a variety of items and fuel to warp to another planets. Each planet has different statistics or features like varying gravity that make things progressively harder. As you play you discover upgrades that give your pods new abilities, and you can sell your treasures to get a whole set of tools of different types for different actions. You can get back to your base to change your equipment and recharge your fuel, so management is important. The planets get bigger and bigger, and also more dangerous. Exploring can be quite intense when you enter unknown territory and have to be prepared for anything which is when the game really clicked with me (there's a map and a radar upgrade, but if I'm honest, I rather skip at least the second because I really like the feeling of mystery).

For NES standards, it is a very deep and long game, and since I discovered it I seriously think it is one of the best offerings on the NES. Un/Fortunately, it is best played through emulation so you can customize the controls for a more comfortable experience (more specifically, changing Select to one of the R/L Triggers in a modern controller).

NES has such a gigantic library that I still find things to be surprised about, imagine when you look a whole bunch of old systems!
As far as Homebrew NES games, I remember liking Lan Master (puzzle game where you connect computers) and Alter Ego.

 

[Maeson]

Eh, I don't think many people will comment here so probably it won't get too cluttered, lol.

Here I leave another, this is for the three most well known systems of the 4th gen, SNES, SMD and PC-Engine:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15w_jieCT-ZAP1JXTI64AQSj89k5__5oFV8mLq5fLkO0/edit?usp=sharing

There's a boatload of games for each system, specially SNES. The other two contain games from their CD peripherals too, because they add quite a bit of content, even if the Sega CD had a bad reputation thanks to western developers flooding the market with FMV games... Games like Popful Mail (Best version of the game by far) and Lords of Thunder, which is both in PCE-CD and Sega CD with the same music compositions, but different renditions, pretty cool to compare.

As far as "Hidden Gems", PC-E is one system that is often overlooked, and funny enough, it was the first console to use CDs, and developers did a much better use of them than on Sega CD as it has little to no FMV shovelware. From it, Coryoon - Child of Dragon is one of my favourites. A Cute'em Up, as they call it, very colourful and with enough content with extra modes and passwords for special effects, and even has battery save so high scores mean something for once.