[General Discussion] Obscure games from your childhood.

The thread is just like the title implies. What are some obscure games from your childhood you're sure very few other people if not no one else has heard of. What are those little largely undiscovered gems that captured you as a child, maybe cause they were the only thing available at the time, or maybe cause you were really easily entertained as a child, or maybe cause they were just all around good.

They can be console games, they can be internet games, they can be old mac games (which i grew up on) or anything else that might've been a part of your childhood.

When i was a kid, my parents had a kibosh on video games in the house until i was about 12. That's when they started to give me more freedoms. The only thing i had to play was a Mac that was so old i can't even remember the model number or anything. Let's just say it was about 5 years before the iMac came out.

Malestrom was one such mac game. Developed by Amborsia, a very underrated company, that puts out quality lower budget games, usually for mac. This game was a remake of the classic asteroids game. I could play this game for ever. It was crazy how such a simple game could be so addictive with increasing levels of dificulty, and new little things thrown in like bonus items, or the ability to move around should you so chose, or even alien spaceships joining the mix and shooting back at you.

Marathon: The game that made Bungie into was it is now. Without this game there would be no Halo. I had a demo of it on my computer, and i would play through it constantly. It was my very first shooter.

The Elroy Series. Man this was something great back in the day. They were a series of flash games made by Headbone Interactive in 1995. I bought Elroy's Costume Closet, which was a dressup game. You put characters into different constumes and watch them put on plays depending on the costumes they were wearing. Kinda straight forward, but always a great time killer.

Question. There was an Elroy game that i could never find. It was called "Elroy Hits the Pavement". A mystery game. I had a demo of it, but could never, and still can't find it. If anyone has it, or knows where i could find, that would be very much appreciated. I would love to see that game at it's fullest.

I'm sure there are so many more. As a video game deprived child gamer i found all kinds of crazy stuff everywhere i looked. So what's your list look like.

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A couple of old mac 128 games I remember playing were:

Make Millions - This was a game about running a company called Alicoo (I think that's the spelling) and trying to compete against the computer opponent Humongus (once again, I think that's the spelling) over various factories that contributed to making and selling guitars. You'd have to buy shares of the company in order to become a stakeholder, and at that point you would manage their production. Pretty interesting game, and I sorta wish I could find it and play it on an emulator since I knew nothing of how to play it at the time, and I'd like to see if I could actually beat the big evil corporation in the game.

Transylvania - As the name implies, this was a game where you were playing in a first person perspective and exploring dracula's castle, and surronding area. I can't remember what the ultimate objective of the game was because I always got stuck trying to beat a sly little gnome or something. Another game I wish I could go back to to see if I'd actually be able to complete it.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Incredible Crisis is my choice... I got it when I was in 6th grade or so... After lending it to a friend, he lost it. Since then, I've been trying to look for it, but no luck. I'll probably get it on eBay or something in the near future. >_<

Spanky's Quest is another. My parents bought it for me on the SNES when I was in Elementary. The game is basically about this little money who was supposed to go on a picnic, but was ambushed by an evil witch who turned his fruit into monsters that would attack him. The general point of the game was to collect keys and defeat the boss with little balloons that would get bigger as they bounced on your head... If you ever have the chance to download the ROM, try it. It's actually pretty fun.

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Wow, I actually remember both Maelstrom and Transylvania. I still occasionally make reference to the room in Transylvania filled with "hundred of penguins feverishly baking cherry pies".

There's a ton of old games from the Commodore 64 that I want to go back and beat sometime, just out of stubbornness. 6 year old me wasn't really equipped to handle those old hardcore RPGs, but I ought to be able to make a showing of it now.

There's an old "humerous" text adventure game from the C64 called The Pawn (which wasn't actually that funny), that I keep meaning to go back and play now that I have some idea how the puzzles work. I got stuck at one part where a guru on the hill wants the secret to enlightenment or something. I'm pretty sure now that he means the "five leafed plant" found elsewhere in the game, but I didn't quite make that connection when I was younger.

The game that really took up all my time, though, was Legacy of the Ancients. You're some random peasant-turned-hero on a quest to destroy ye olde MacGuffin. This gets complicated by you having no idea HOW to destroy the evil leather scroll (made from human flesh?), and that bandits ambush you and steal the scroll shortly after you begin. This was back in the day when you got no in-game guidance whatsoever, but the exploration was still pretty fun.

I tried picking up the Phantasie games again too, another typical fantasy series, but in retrospect those games are kinda boring. It's probably just my emulator accurately simulating the load times; I had totally forgotten about these games taking five minutes to load from the floppy. Hooray for technology!

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The Guardian Legend for NES. One of my all-time faves. It's a top-down shooter AND an overhead adventure rolled into one. And shockingly, both aspects are flawlessly executed, with tons of different weapons, powerups, and a cool leveling system. It's one of my favorite games ever.

I was speaking idiomatically.

There's a couple of Danish developed games, which I will fail to mention, but one game, which isn't that obscure, I remember is The Incredible Machine. Smashing game, and I used hours letting bowling balls drop on cats!

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Ahaha. I was thinking about The Incredible Machine series just the other day. The Incredible Toon machine was awesome <3 Some local store used to rent out computer games. They had this on a number of diskettes (not even CD version. Fucking lol). I installed and absolutely loved it.

But old favorite games? Ugh. I played soooo many NES games... Legacy of the Wizard (Leg Wizar as I called it for some reason) and Clash at Demon Head were always fucking ace.

Most amazing jew boots

For me, it has to be the old Apogee platformers. I can't remember the name of this one... it was one where you played this kid trying to find his dog who'd been abducted by somebody, and he was given a slingshot and a bottomless rocket filled with rocks. There was also this other one... Cosmo, I think it was. You were an alien (with suction cups for hands) on his way to Disney World for his birthday when their ship was attacked and his parents abducted.

There's also Commander Keen 1-5 (although they're hardly obscure).

Oh my god, I just remembered... Time Bandit. It was an OOOOOLD top-down EGA game. Hell, I can't even remember the plot or ANYTHING about it. All I can remember really is that levels included Hotel California and the Enterprise among them.

Christ, old games are really cheesy.

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Speaking of older computer games... Heretic, Doom, and Crystal Caverns were awesome games. Any Heretic or Hexen fans? =3 God those were so freaking awesome. A true RPG FPS (Hexen). They just don't do it like that anymore... =(

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Originally Posted by Gechmir

Speaking of older computer games... Heretic, Doom, and Crystal Caverns were awesome games. Any Heretic or Hexen fans? =3 God those were so freaking awesome. A true RPG FPS (Hexen). They just don't do it like that anymore... =(

Crystal Caverns!!! I used to spend hours playing that game. I have Doom, heretic and Hexen. Anyone remember Blake Stone? That was an interesting game. It was pretty easy to find the secrets.

How ya doing, buddy?

If you liked Crystal Caverns, Secret Agent (I think that was the name) is worth a look. Very similar gameplay (same creators and main-character appearances), but you're kind of a 007 dupe =o Awesome game though~

I'm sure a number of folks here might remember Rise of the fuckin' Triad.

DOG MODE~

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Who here remembers Swiv? Damn sweet overhead schmup helicopter-tank co-op FTW!

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by The_Griffin

There was also this other one... Cosmo, I think it was. You were an alien (with suction cups for hands) on his way to Disney World for his birthday when their ship was attacked and his parents abducted.

There's also Commander Keen 1-5 (although they're hardly obscure).

A friend of mine had this on his computer when we were kids. That an the Commander Keen games. He had some other great titles on there, but possibly not quite as obscure, such as Hocus Pocus, Jazz Jackrabbit, and the classics Word Rescue, and Math Rescue. Looking back, man, adults really found creative ways foist education on me.

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Holy SHIT I remember Blake Stone.

ALIENS OF GOLD. That old man who would teleport and start shooting you randomly was creepy

And omg, I played BOTH Crystal Caverns AND Secret Agent. I fucking beat them BOTH, too. The anti-gravity level on Crystal Caverns was a BITCH.

This is my childhood. Some people remember comics or Saturday morning cartoons. I remember old-ass games.

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Oh man. I remember Math and Word Rescue. Also I remember Cosmo as well. Jass Jackrabbit was neat. I don't remember Hocus Pocus though. Bang Bang. windows 3.1 game. that was always fun.

FELIPE NO

Oh yeah, remembered this one. I think it was called Tiny Toon's Movie Maker for NES. Essentially it gave you a series of 'levels', where you could make some movies. Like making the baby Wile Coyote chase the baby Roadrunner. I really enjoyed that game.

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I didn't really have any "obscure" games when I was a child but I don't hear "Jackal" for NES mentioned in any conversation too often and that game was fuckin' RAD. It wasn't until middle school when I started playing computer games that I came across one that would take me another 10 years to finish: The Dark Eye.

The Dark Eye was a point-and-click adventure in the vein of Myst and was based on Edgar Allan Poe's stories and poems... And it creeped me the fuck out. Since when I first played it, it belonged to a friend. He took his game back and I barely found out the name of it a couple of months ago, found it on Amazon and bought it. <3

EDIT:
I had this really fun FPS on the Genesis when I was a freshman in high school called "Zero Tolerance" that got stolen a LONG time ago. Too bad too because I've never been able to find a copy of it anywhere since then.

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My childhood was filled with Atari 5200, Apple IIgs, and Gameboy.

Atari 5200: Pitfall II. I'm not sure how obscure this title is, but I only ever hear its predecessor mentioned, not the sequel. In fact, I think this might have been an unlockable in the newer Pitfall-series game for GC/PS2/Xbox, so I might have to pick that up after all. This game was great because I thought it was the only Atari-age game with an ending (I hadn't heard of "Adventure" back then) and so it was fairly revolutionary to me. It took me a year to get to the 2nd cavern (stupid balloon!) but once I did I beat it fairly quickly. The Atari 5200 controller was 95% of the difficulty of any given game for that system.

Apple IIgs: Tass Times in Tonetown What can I say, it's ultra-tass! This was a hybrid text/graphical adventure game where you're shot into an alternate reality and the focus of the game is "blending in." You can buy weird clothes, eat odd food, get chased around by a talking aligator that runs a pet store, buy a pet "blobpet" (that actually does things in the game), and basically try to rescue your grandpa. Fun for the whole family! This game really turned me on to the whole idea of PC gaming vs. console gaming, and easily showed off the power of the Apple IIgs when compared to the FAR inferior IBM-compatible version. God, IBM-compatible... doesn't that just bring back memories of the olden-days?

Gameboy: Boomer's Adventures in Asmik World This game had a pink dinosaur on the cover. You went around a maze digging stuff up, like the compass the would point to the buried key that you had to find and dig up to access the stairs to the next level. You could dig a hole, an enemy would fall in, then you would bury the enemy. You could eat ice-cream cones to gain "freeze breath" or something similar to get fire-breath. It seemed really cutesy at a basic level, but it was extremely hard. Each level had ~3 different random locations the key could be buried in. So, you could memorize these 3 locations, but you never knew which specific one it was in when replaying that level. Also, the boss fights in this game are some of the hardest you will ever run across. When you got to the top of the tower of levels... well, let's just say this game played a familiar trick. This is actually one of my favorite Gameboy games. I got it as a birthday present (normally, I don't buy games about pink dinosaurs. )

Also on Gameboy: Gargoyle's Quest To this day, I still feel that Gargoyle's Quest had the best Gameboy graphics. I played a ton of Gameboy games back in the day because this was my only system (I wasn't allowed to have a NES so it wasn't until years later that I picked up a SNES). Since then, I have tried out just about ever Gameboy game made via ROMs. Gargoyle's Quest was definitely a Gameboy game ahead of its time in the graphics department.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

HAH! Zero Tolerance was fucking badass. I remember at one point snipers open fire on you when you near a window. It was so damn unreal of a concept for me at the time =o I was all "NO WAY BLOL" and then I died =(

Roms are your best friends, Paco~

And Gargoyle's Quest was fucking HARD ;_;

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I'll heartily second Marathon (not just the first game, but the whole series) and Tass Times in Tone Town. Durandal and Ennio all the way.

Virtually everything in Bungie's back catalog is terrific (and it's all freeware now to boot), so I'll add Pathways into Darkness to the mix. A demo of the game came with our Power Mac, and I spent many youthful hours getting wasted by bizarre things and reading humorous death messages.

Another game that I've never heard much about is Solar Winds. It was loaded on one of the old computers in our lab, but lost when they upgraded. Sort of like Star Control, only far more linear and plot-driven, with some great VGA graphics (for the time) and space combat.

I also used to be a huge fan of the You Don't Know Jack series, and it was a fixture of road trips in the family for a long time. But it seems to have died out, and I see dozens of copies in thrift stores nowadays.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

The fact that I remember vividly all of those Apogee shareware classics scares me to my very core...

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Hoy, we are going back in time, no?

Atari: This little Big Bad Wolf game. I doubt I'd really enjoy it now, but back then I'd play with my dad...him trying to blow down my house, my pigs trying to build it all up.

Apple II: Number munchers was one. I'd play that forever, and got very good at multiples. No one could top me and a friend when we'd play in contests in that game. We seriously just could work with numbers fast and accurately.

Another game was this weird game where you'd have to deliver stuff to places. Seriously, a trucking game. Best part was putting these commands into DOS:

Speed up

Computer: If you do, you might get a speeding ticket.

Speed up

Computer: Okay, but don't say I didn't warn you.

I REALLY wish I could remember that darn game. I'd play it again!

NES: MC Kids. Yes, you all heard of it (so not that obscure), but it SERIOUSLY was not THAT bad.

SNES: Tiny Toons um, multiplayer game. I hate to say it, but my 'rents have a good choice in games. I said it. I admit it. Tyey picked this game up and I had reservations. Turned out to be a really fun multiplayer game. REALLY fun.

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Probably not all that obscure, seeing as it's a Gradius spinoff, but I've never seen anyone else ever mention it ever anywhere ever. I spent hours upon hours playing that shit when I was like six. wooo konami code ~. I'm just glad I seem to have been on the cusp between the eras of "kids play awesome games" and "ea presents: the simpsons kart smasher rape 39084".

Also, at one of my schools in the USA (we're talking like 1995 here), there was a table full of Apple IIs with strangely compelling edutainment games. Spellevator was my favourite because I was in a class of shitcocks who literally couldn't read. Man I had so many friends.

FELIPE NO

Arrow Flash, a Genesis game.

It was a shmup that was fairly average, but it had a phenominal soundtrack, one I STILL can't find to this day... ;_;

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Keith Courage and the Alpha Zones.

It was for the TGX-16. It was fast, furious and hard as hell last I remember. And I think it had a good soundtrack, but its been so long since I played I cant remember.

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