Saying you played one of the top rated or top selling games on a given system as a kid is nothing too interesting; they tended to be top rated and selling for a reason. What we are here today to discuss is those games that you played because it was, say, the only thing you had, the only thing when visiting grandparents or just something you really latched onto. On a related note then in programming it is noted everybody programs well in their first language and usually spends all their time trying to make a new one behave like that, something similar is noted in games where mechanics of their earliest titles or those they spent time with inform how they feel about things going forward (why else do you think every indie platformer a few years back was a homage to NES Super Mario Brothers? Do you not imagine almost everything will be influenced by Minecraft before long when the 12 year olds of 2010 are now getting their first jobs in the game industry?).

My fondness for Talespin on the NES has been noted a few times before on the site, however as that is a Disney property made by Capcom (who also did most Disney things on the NES and most in turn are held up as outright classics) that does not play here. On the other hand

Stealth ATF for the NES

Not my first "3d" flight sim, Elite arguably being that one, but as the NES was my first console I could exclusively monopolise (the Commodore 64 actually came after for me) and this was one of the handful of games I had for it then it has informed a lot of how I approach flight sims, also now what I recognise as an early case of GPS syndrome as I would often follow the radar more than the screen itself (though real fighter pilots do that I am told).

Turbo Racing for the NES (Al Unser Jr.'s Turbo Racing in the US is something I just learned)

What would today be considered a by the numbers racer made by those paragons of quality, that being Data East, on the NES was equally one of the few NES titles I had. Light stats upgrades (today would be dubbed RPG elements), a little balance the turbo vs straight racing mechanic, some hills in the level, memories of a sore thumb from holding A for so long on the NES pad... barring the NES bit then if you said that I would think you were describing Road Rash, which was a far more influential series for me, but Turbo Racing never the less holds a place in my gaming makeup.

Despite it being several years since playing both of those, maybe decades since I played them an awful lot, I apparently could whistle the theme tunes/in mission tunes too. Can I do that for the last few games I reviewed? No.


What then are one or two of your fondly (or perhaps not so fondly) remembered games that, even on a site like this, you would be lucky to get more than a few people say "oh I remember that"? Why did you end up with them and did they cause you to either expect things in later games or avoid such things in the future?
We are accepting stupidly rare in your region; if basketball was your thing in Europe and you owned one of the 5 imported versions of a game that today litters the shelves of second hand game shops up and down the US then we will allow it. It need not be NES or older; if you only started gaming 5 years ago with a hand me down DS then feel free to share that too.

 

[Deleted member 512337]

 

[Diego788]

I love Raw Danger, it was my first PS2 game (came bundled with the PS2 lol)
it may not be remembered, but I really love it

 

[Pippin666]

Meteos for the Nintendo DS;

Pip'

 

[fvig2001]

Star Ocean The second Story (Enix+Tri Ace,PS1)

I played this game literaly years on my PS1 until my ps1 died never forget this good old days and sometimes i want to go back in time and play it again and again.
yes i know the Star Ocean series have a Fanbase, but in Germany the Game is not well known and the german localised Version is rare and only a very few people from the retrogame scene know this game.
This game is my biggest treasure and hope a Nintendo Switch Version appears in the E Shop.

All I remember about this game was being annoyed that you lose the gun after the first fight.

 

[DarknessPlay3r]

Two of these that never got the recognition they deserved.
The Neverhood:


Full Throttle

 

[tmnr1992]

Thief the Dark Project. Back when I was a kid I had this game on a demo disc. I loved it even though I could only play the training stage and level one. A few years later I got the full game and it was just great. One of my favorite stealth games of all time along with it's sequel Thief the Metal Age. Still haven't played the other 2 Thief games.

Also I would say Mega man 8. While the franchise is hardly underrated I think Mega man 8 has a bit of a mixed reception. It was my first mega man game and I really liked it. Admittedly the voice acting was not the best, but that never bothered me as the game had some fun levels, and the music and visuals where as good as any other mega man game.

 

[regnad]

Goargoyle's Quest on the Gameboy

 

[Taleweaver]

I'm mostly thinking of the time I got my first pc. It ran DOS and windows 3.11, and... Games were pretty gimmicky back then. In school, we bought floppy disks, traded and copied games from each other that seemingly came from nowhere. Some got pretty well known later. Duke nukem 1 and 2 were among them, and epic megagames' pinball and especially 'one must fall' were awesome. The incredible machine was an instant classic that somehow got forgotten (fuck... Even Sierra forgot about their own IP!).
I also remember playing a'home alone 'game that literally had you creating traps and luring the enemies in them. Oh, and raptor was later released on Gog.

But perhaps my favorite game from that time is a fighting flight simulator called retaliation. It was in 3d, dead flying and attacking missions, ground and /or air targets and air dogfights.
... And it somehow all played from a single floppy disk. Never found that game again (not even on Google), but it was quite an achievement for its day.

 

[Roamin64]

Crystalis on the NES.
I have played this game since it came out back in the 80's and always play it till the end whenever I run across it (usually every 2 or 3 years). I first played it on the original NES hardware and have played it on PC and almost every console that has a NES emulator.
It was recently added to the NES online app on the Switch and, of course, I played it till the end on there. I highly recommend everyone to check it out as it has aged well and is good fun.

Nice! I love that game, always have. Did you play on "The end day"? October 1st, 1997

 

[FAST6191]

Might as well do another
Soul of the Samurai/Ronin Blade for the PS1


I only personally got a PS1 later in the PS1 lifetime (had a N64 and PC mostly) but had played loads elsewhere (I had discovered emulation earlier, and I don't think anybody had any legit amiga games, but chipped PS1s was my introduction proper to these sorts of circles).
Anyway this was one of the few games I had for it early on, and had no memory card at first either (called my friend who lived round the corner from the house I was at even to borrow one).

Most wrote this off as a Resident Evil clone, and it kind of was, and was not even as compelling as something like Dino Crisis (by the way anybody mentioning the third effort there in this thread as one of theirs is getting banned) and it took a long while, not least of all because the improved weapons you get over the course of the game quite notably changed the feel of the game, to open up and click for you (I was at my sixth or so playthrough before it really did). When it did though I found it something special here.

Skyroads (DOS)
View attachment 228858

Seeing that in action sort of reminds me of one of my favourite Amiga games

Simulcra


Granted Skyroads seems closer almost to a rhythm game and in that case a DS homebrew classic in AmplituDS
https://www.gamebrew.org/wiki/AmplituDS

I don't think the second biggest kart racer on the N64 after Mario Kart really counts as not so remembered -- there is still news articles mentioning it at the rates of several a week going back through this year. The various Lego offerings, maybe Crash Bandicoot... those might stand a better chance (and were often noted as being excellent games in their own right, unlike most fun kart racers we see today which seem content to be far far far inferior clones of Mario Kart).

Thief the Dark Project. Back when I was a kid I had this game on a demo disc. I loved it even though I could only play the training stage and level one. A few years later I got the full game and it was just great. One of my favorite stealth games of all time along with it's sequel Thief the Metal Age. Still haven't played the other 2 Thief games.

I don't know that Thief counts as a not so remembered game but hey. To follow on from some things there:

The third game suffered console port itis (you might even see it on the shot of my shelves earlier) which was a truly horrible disease at the time. Smaller levels, simplified UI/mechanics, slightly more actiony (though still enough stealth, which itself was a dirty word at the time -- mandatory stealth section and all that). Play it if you will but don't expect too much and definitely a downgrade over 1/Gold and 2 and their various expansion packs.

The fourth/reboot... oh dear. If console port itis during the xbox era was a bad thing then bringing back old franchises during the 360 was potentially worse (we did get some good from it on a few occasions). The Thief game (stylised as Thi4f at one point which says most of what I want to know) probably being one of the worst offenders here, indeed most would suggest you go for the Dishonored franchise instead if you must have your steampunky/medieval stealth game action as that as actually a decent game (the sequel to it... more mixed). It might not look that bad and some of the updates managed to fix one or two things in it but I would no more tell someone to play that and expect them to then want to experience the earlier efforts than I would point someone at modern Final Fantasy and say go back from there.

I am also here to say do check out the various fan games/mods/sequels/reworks of the originals. They are some of the finest mods I have seen in gaming (blow 99% of anything you see on a Bethesda game out of the water) and I don't know why they are not more known.
https://www.thedarkmod.com/main/ is probably the main thing people start with, however if you are after more just straight missions then
https://www.thiefguild.com/
http://www.thief-thecircle.com/

Straight mods are also available and do good things
https://www.moddb.com/mods/thief-gold-hd-texture-mod

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/02/18/modder-superior-best-pc-mods-thief-thief-2/ might also have something/act as a nice enough intro to where things were at early last year.

 

[Julie_Pilgrim]

Bakugan battle brawlers for the ds, fun little game that had some unique ideas

 

[Deleted User]

Probably quite lame compared to everyone else’s , but LEGO Creator was really awesome for me as a kid
That’s... all I’ve got haha
I had the first LEGO Racers too, but I don’t think either of these are very obscure, so.... /shrug
My childhood games were all popular sadly xD

 

[fvig2001]

After Dark (Screensavers) - This application was mostly screensavers but it also had games in it. I liked this app so much that I memorized the pirated serial number for the complete edition of version 3. Sucks that it doesn't work anymore due to use of 16 bit dlls.


After Dark Games - games based around the screensavers. There were some cute games in it.

 

[player594]

Dungeon Master for SNES. Spent too much time on this one.

 

[VampireOniX]

Jill of the Jungle
Xargon
Monster Bash
Strife
Nightmare on Elm Street
Trolls
Dangerous Dave
Covert Action
Phantasmagoria

Some of the lesser known games I was addicted to and still till this day go back and play.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Bubsy on SNES (not Bubsy II though) was that game for me. Mom used to rent it when I was a kid and I have many good memories from playing that game. I still love it nowadays and load it up occasionally, but most people only remember Bubsy for the disaster that was Bubsy 3D, that game pretty much killed the entire series.

 

[altorn]

Goldensun series got me through a lot of things in middle school.
Quest64 got me through a lot of things in university.

 

[Kaein]

Dreamcast Grandia II definitely! It was my first rpg and I'll always remember the charming music, characters and the history, pretty good memories ( and sad too) playing that game, it was a simple life

 

[creffca]

For my first post on this topic I’m going to start with the system that was first most significant in my evolution of gaming, the NES. I would say a kinda unknown game that I played a heck of a lot was The Guardian Legend. If you haven’t seen it, it was really fun and way ahead of its time. I spent a lot of time with this and idk of anyone that really knew of it.

Man I was wondering if someone would mention that game!! I remember it was one of the random games I rented at blockbuster as a child and it blew me away. Now a copy sits proudly in my toy room.

 

[Urbanshadow]

Space Station: Silicon Valley for the N64 was an amazing game with a soundtrack I find myself whistling or humming without having played it for years, definitely an underrated game imho

It's a great game. Sad it locks itself every now and then and requires you to downgrade the system to the jumper pak to actually have a chance to complete the first couple of levels.

For me it would be a 500 in 1 clonic cartridge for the Atari 2600. It had like a bootleg copy of the sneak n peak game I did not even understand or even know to properly play as little but I have fond memories of it. I think I would never find it again...