Obscure Vidya Thread

[№56]

MAN THIS REMINDS ME TO THIS FUCKING VIDEOGAME I USED TO PLAY AS A KID IN WEB BROWSERS, it was about a moon base, was super hard but i managed once to land on the earth, is actually a really small globe but it has collissions for some reason.
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I recognize those screenshots! That's not Moonbase Alpha, that's the older and totally different Moon Base game from maidmarian.com
They also made Sherwood Dungeon and Tankball, both of which totally deserve to be in this thread. I remember spending a lot of time playing all three games in my elementary school's computer lab. Just look at these videos, it doesn't get any more Y2K than this:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PAobEFKwQ4


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rc4MFxM_VtQ


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aQDJQfD1Ps

 

[RisingThumb]

That's not Moonbase Alpha

Also probably deserves to be in this thread, for its sheer comedic value

 

[brentw]

I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THIS IS REAL

THIS IS A DREAM

I never actually played Moonbase Alpha, but I sure spent a lot of time watching hilarious videos of people playing with the TTS.


View: https://youtu.be/Hv6RbEOlqRo



View: https://youtu.be/1B488z1MmaA



View: https://youtu.be/CNPKXfb3rws

 

[Antoine]

I feel obligated to endorse Evergrace everywhere I go. Have you heard of it yet? I feel like it's on the verge of breaking into mass consciousness and becoming a meme any day now.



From Software, one of their first efforts for the PS2. An absolutely beautiful game that was poorly received for its awkward gameplay and generally obtuse nature. But now that the novelty of new has come and receded not just for this game but the entire PS2 and really the whole era, what's left? I think it stands better than virtually all of its peers now. You want gameplay? No problem, big chinese companies have psychologist-calculated abominations to keep you trapped in a perfect hamster-wheel gameplay loop forever. This is an idea I invoke a lot in video games because it's just the intelligent way to look at the history of video games. Gameplay games are the ones which aged and got surpassed. Something which is expressive does not age. Evergrace had parts that were meant to be kind of fun to play, but the experience was not riding on that. What it lives and dies on is how it looks and how it sounds. And on both points it is absolutely beautiful. Unmatched and unsurpassed. Utterly unique and utterly personal. If there is a single PS2 game you are going to go back and take a look at, I don't think you can make a case more compelling than that for Evergrace. It's not an outdated stumbling towards some form which was later perfected. It is entirely complete and justified in the state it's in. Kota Hoshino's music is timeless. The visual direction is timeless. It is a beautiful piece of multimedia. Less of a video game, more of a multimedia art installation on your tv. A concept album with an accompanying 3D world.

Should you actually choose to play it, I recommend a walkthrough and maybe cheats. What little gameplay is there feels like an odd vestigial quirk of the circumstances under which it was made and is best skimmed over as lightly as possible.

Also this game has an extremely dedicated guardian following. Just about everything about it is archived, translated, preserved, repackaged in some more accessible form. Even its novel incarnation was translated. The fact the game has a novel worth of lore speaks interestingly of its character. The actual game you can play is almost devoid of narrative. It was thought out, and then left out. One gets the impression that as this work was being assembled the more conventional elements were allowed to sort of fall to the wayside in favour of its stranger parts, which grew more and more prominent until it feels like they are the experience, and everything which is meant to be primary in a video game is instead accompaniment. Again, a concept album with a virtual world attached.



This game has such beautifully loyal and dedicated disciples. The host of the channel containing these in game OST recordings is the one who translated that novel. And the translation itself is very interesting. Not just for the elaboration upon what the game is, but the nature of it. The translation is a semi-literary compilation of tumblr posts in which the translations were originally hosted piece by piece. The result is extremely eclectic, personal, and multimedia. The pdf contains original drawings, hyperlinks to relevant soundtrack selections on youtube, notes from the author explaining things, giving opinions. We didn't lose out compared to Japan. We got something far more interesting here.

So that's my obscure Multimedia Experience Recommendation/Outline for you. Sorry if I was just meant to post a title and screenshot. I think Evergrace is one of the most beautiful things out there just waiting to be discovered by those who look. This is me attempting to meet someone halfway. Not everyone who could appreciate it does yet, so I have to keep posting.

 

[brentw]

This is an idea I invoke a lot in video games because it's just the intelligent way to look at the history of video games. Gameplay games are the ones which aged and got surpassed. Something which is expressive does not age.

Absolutely disagree.
The gameplay of something like Tetris, Sonic 2, SMB3, or Mario 64, all games which have no real story to tell, is timeless.
Meanwhile a mediocre story told in a game that isn't fun to play is dust in the wind.

No problem, big Chinese companies have psychologist-calculated abominations to keep you trapped in a perfect hamster-wheel gameplay loop forever.

What you're referring to isn't gameplay at all.
They're just repurposing the same tricks casinos have used to prey on gambling addicts for ages.
(In fact, those games often have abysmal, simplistic, no-skill gameplay designed to make it fully accessible to even the slowest, dumbest, most uncoordinated, inebriated losers on the planet.)
It's the addictive gambling loop that keeps the marks playing, not the "gameplay".

---

As for your game:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3XhkhERyco


I do love a weird Japanese game, even when they're unpolished.
While I think you're way off the mark in basically declaring gameplay irrelevant, I certainly recognize there are gems worth experiencing for elements other than their gameplay.
Sounds like this might be one of them. I'm certainly enjoying that wild music.

 

[brentw]

I was struggling to come up with an obscure game to mention, but I finally thought of something.

The game is SPOT, for the Gameboy.
I'm not even sure if you could buy it in stores, I purchased it through the mail.
IIRC It was an offer on 7up packages where you had to send in some 7up UPCs and some money.
(SPOT was also released for the NES and DOS, I'm not familiar with those versions.)

The game itself is very simple, and not really 7up related other than the branding.
It's just a simple vs board game involving two colors of spot, a variation on Reversi.

What makes this game really special, is the theme ... the idle theme. Written by fantastic videogame composer Geoff Follin.
It is hands down the most incredible piece of music I've ever heard on the gameboy. Shit you might not even think is POSSIBLE on the gameboy's simple sound chip. It makes the music in most other games sound like amateur hour. It even makes extensive use of Stereo effects, which would only be experienced by players with headphones, since the gameboy itself only had a single mono speaker.


View: https://youtu.be/YPymVbc2GFI

And the crazy thing about this amazing piece of music is you don't even get to hear it unless you don't make any moves!
It's basically "idle" music that you only get to listen to if you take too long while thinking about your next move and don't touch any buttons.

To think a cheap board game clone with the branding of a soda company would have the most incredible piece of music out of the 1000+ games released on the system, it's just so extraordinarily weird and fascinating to me. And then to even hear it you need to start a game and then not play it. This song was truly a hidden gem.

edit:

Here's a neat vid I just found which also includes the title screen music, which is good but nowhere near the banger that the idle music is.

View: https://youtu.be/wxZUw7k1Q4g?feature=shared

 

[selfKaiHarness]

If you want a free, but hella old mecha game look no further than Ultimate Knight Windom XP, yes this game exists for a long time now. Yes, it's practically underrated and obscure as hell. And yes, it is moddable although the community for this game has long since died out years ago. Have you wanted to play as Longhorm but as a mecha? Now you can. There is a lot of cool things in the game that i'm not going to explain, but give it a try if you love mecha games and wanted to bust OS mechas to death.(again i've haven't tried the game out so yeah.)

 

[Eden]

Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes​

was an iPod tactical role-playing game developed and published by Square Enix worldwide in 2008.

The coolest part was you'd turn your songs into warriors, yo! When your music library turns into these fighters you can nurture and grow, it was just baller.

It was also my first ever tactical rpg and I've been a simp for Fire Emblem games ever since.

 

[赤い男]

Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes​

View attachment 76941
was an iPod tactical role-playing game developed and published by Square Enix worldwide in 2008.

The coolest part was you'd turn your songs into warriors, yo! When your music library turns into these fighters you can nurture and grow, it was just baller.

It was also my first ever tactical rpg and I've been a simp for Fire Emblem games ever since.

Bro i just remember reading an article of this game in a club nintendo magazine back when i was a little kid, is one of those "memory unlocked" moments lmao

 

[Antoine]

Absolutely disagree.
The gameplay of something like Tetris, Sonic 2, SMB3, or Mario 64, all games which have no real story to tell, is timeless.

I agree that Mario64 is timeless. But I disagree that it's as simple as "good gameplay = fun forever". And that if we aren't in it for the "gameplay" then it has to ride on its "story". I believe that there's a divide within video games. Ones which are truly "games", and can sensibly be compared to chess, snakes and ladders, monopoly, whatever, and multimedia, which are more appropriately compared to other things we would consider art. Films, literature, exhibit/installation pieces, etc.

Which is Mario64? I actually think it's both. Yes, it's very light on story, but it's a very intricate and complete aesthetic experience. It's unsurpassed, because Nintendo were trying to do a very particular and complete idea with it. They did so, and then moved onto new things. There is no Super Mario 64: 2. Spiritual or actual (beyond fan-projects). Nintendo consider it done and complete.

Mario64 has "no real story", but it has a real vision. It's still fascinating because it was made by people looking at the possibilities of early 3D virtual worlds with fresh eyes. They wanted to impress in a very pure and practical way. 2D ideas rendered in 3D, and massive expansive spaces which you could physically throw mario into. The purity of its "gameplay" is owed to the desire to do this. Mario64 is not a "gameplay" piece. It's a "3D" piece.

Another point I make repeatedly, each era of 3D I believe, when utilised properly, should be considered its own artform. I would roughly split along Early 3D, Intermediate 3D, and Advanced 3D, roughly tracking with the N64/PS1, PS2/Xbox/Gamecube, and Xbox360/PS3 onwards respectively.

Mario64 is a complete work in a distinct form. You can treat it like Pac Man or something, a "gameplay" piece, but it's doing more than that. It emerged from more than that. It's obviously not seen as that by its creators. I can appreciate Mario64 as a product of vision. I can enjoy it as a gameplay thing I suppose. But on that level I wouldn't really consider anything worth a recommendation. Gameplay in a vacuum is very light stuff. A toy, not art. No humanity to feel behind it, beyond some craft skill.

Meanwhile a mediocre story told in a game that isn't fun to play is dust in the wind.

I would simplify this point to "mediocre things are boring".

What you're referring to isn't gameplay at all.
They're just repurposing the same tricks casinos have used to prey on gambling addicts for ages.
(In fact, those games often have abysmal, simplistic, no-skill gameplay designed to make it fully accessible to even the slowest, dumbest, most uncoordinated, inebriated losers on the planet.)
It's the addictive gambling loop that keeps the marks playing, not the "gameplay".

For this to work I think you'd have to tell me what gameplay is. I can't work backwards from this definition of what it isn't. Maybe this needs its own thread even?

I do love a weird Japanese game, even when they're unpolished.
While I think you're way off the mark in basically declaring gameplay irrelevant, I certainly recognize there are gems worth experiencing for elements other than their gameplay.
Sounds like this might be one of them. I'm certainly enjoying that wild music.

The music does all the heavy lifting for sure. The gameplay, in the rawest sense of stuff you do with the controller is not irrelevant, but the parts that really work with the rest are the simplest parts. The parts that might not be real gameplay. It's at its best when you're walking, looking at things, and doing very basic action stuff.

 

[punishedgnome]

Played a few great retro arcade styled games for Switch recently. All three of these are fantastic:

Annalynn


Aqua Kitty UDX


Murtop


Annalynn is my favourite of the three and does such a good job of capturing 80s style arcade gaming, you'd swear it was a port.

 

[SlowpokeAT]

I want to try Coded Arms, as it was the few examples of a Japanese made FPS game(Light Gun games count sort of I guess) and was made for the 6th gen PSP. Too bad my Vita is now functionally dead and PSP's, seeing how they are rare, are quite expensive to buy in the current market now.

 

[Brapuccino]

I'm guessing that the Neverhood is too well known to count but I'm going to mention it anyway. The music by Terry S. Taylor makes it worth checking out.
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never got around to finishing this game but I'd play the soundtrack on repeat
HAMANA BEEP DO BEW DO BEW OH HAMANA BEEP DO BEW

 

[RIG]

road trip adventure, open world caRPG.
loads of cool jdm cars, game was made for japanese penny racer toys

 

[SomaSpice]

You guys ever play league of piss?

League of Piss | Glorious Trainwrecks

www.glorioustrainwrecks.com

It's a point and click adventure AND a bullet hell! Wow!

 

[【Ｏｂｓｉｄｉａｎ Ｐｉｌｇｒｉｍ】パラダイス・]

M O R E

Iron Lung - just trust me, You gonna love it

Hylics 1 & 2 - weird RPG Maker game, where you use paper cups as ancient artifacts, throw frozen burritos on enemies and lot of other stuff. I HIGHLY recommend it

Dusk - A bit known but still worth mention - it's boomer shooter with a Blood vibe

Tension, Aka Turgor or The Void - very wierd but great game about... well, it's hard to tell what's it about without spoilers, but You collect colours into hearts, You draw sigils with those colours to fight monsters and great Brothers, and to feed naked girls called Sisters. Very surreal and cool

Pathologic - literal masterpiece, grim game about some small town in russia that have to fight great disease. Its from the same studio that made The Void, this game hits Your morality very hard

 

[turntableToothache]

Oni, one of Bungie's lesser known titles, released before Halo Combat Evolved in 2001.

It's a Western attempt at Anime (which was very common back in the 2000s) and I'd say it does a pretty good job at it. The gameplay is fast paced action hand to hand combat, which the game excels at.

View: https://youtu.be/iHGu_gukCFg?si=wVvp9VnY8tqbcIRN

Also, the soundtrack is kickass, go listen to it!

View: https://youtu.be/GbGvEDuErUo?si=58GmpLxgqaEX7RAg

 

[赤い男]

Oni, one of Bungie's lesser known titles, released before Halo Combat Evolved in 2001.

View attachment 80693

It's a Western attempt at Anime (which was very common back in the 2000s) and I'd say it does a pretty good job at it. The gameplay is fast paced action hand to hand combat, which the game excels at.

View: https://youtu.be/iHGu_gukCFg?si=wVvp9VnY8tqbcIRN

Also, the soundtrack is kickass, go listen to it!

View: https://youtu.be/GbGvEDuErUo?si=58GmpLxgqaEX7RAg

With so many video essays i see about oni, it doesn't seem that obscure anymore, i used to own it on the gamecube was quite fun.

In a way reminds me to shogo, with all that "anime" western influences

 

[赤い男]

Not that obscure, but games that are not talked often i kinda enjoyed as a little kid

Painkiller

Iron Storm

25 to life

Rise of Nations.

The original mount and blade (everyone played warband but no one played the original, i only played it because it was the only mount and blade i could play in my mom's really old ass laptop when i was little)

baldur's gate autistic little brother (icewind dale)

Project Reality (I fucking love how you can fight in the malvinas wars), kicking british ass with a trusty fal never gets old.

My favorite hearts of iron (darkest hour)
this game community is like agora, 3 guys talking to eachother in niche forums lol

RACING LAGOON BEST PS1 RACING GAME, EAT YOUR HEART GRAN AUTISMO

Linda Cube is such a weird title but is kino

Kuon is kino horror play it

Siren is also a horror game i enjoyed too

if you haven't played darkseed, are you even considered to be alive?

these are some examples i'll update later on with more

 

[GENOSAD]

t's a Western attempt at Anime (which was very common back in the 2000s)

In a way reminds me to shogo, with all that "anime" western influences

I've always loved Western attempts at imitating anime in the early 2000s/late 90s. We didn't quite understand the artstyle or themes nearly as well as we do now, and there's something very specific about the way it looks that can't be replicated; At this point, we've dissected the anime/manga style well enough to be able to replicate it, but back then any attempt would fall just short enough for us to say "Oh yeah, that's Western."