Underrated retro classics?
- Thread starter Red XIII
- Start date
System Shock 1 just about fits "retro". Dodgy keyboard controls aside, that game defined "ahead of its time". More complex, scary, intriguing and well designed than all but the very best First Person games released in the 11 years since.
Dynamite Heddy was a classic Mega Drive platformer that was pretty damn trippy. You played a Puppet who had to save the Puppet show from the double threat of the Dark Demon and small-fry arch-rival Trouble Bruin (a cat thing that put its head on various machines in order to try and kill you). Heddy would get various head-power ups that changed his ability: there was a bomb-head that blew up everything on screen, a hammer-head that was slower by more powerful, a triple head that gave you three heads, a vacuum head that allowed you to suck up all the smaller enemies around you and many more besides. It was very hard and very, very japanese (a good, modern comparrison may be Katamari Damacy, which has the same air of insane inventiveness around it). The soundtrack was good fun as well. A good candidate for "the best game no-one ever played" IMO.
Alex Kidd in Miracle World Alex Kidd was actually very widely played - most people had it pre-installed on their MS. The problem is the nature of the gaming press: the Americans dominate the gaming press and the Master System was notoriously unpopular there, unlike Europe and Japan where it was immensely popular (Alex Kidd was SEGA's signature character until Sonic came along, appearing in about 5 different games). As Alex, you went around punching enemies, collecting money bags and eating the end of level handburger. Boss Characters were particularly strange, to be defeated by paper, rock, scissors matches (renamed Jenken Matches after the main bad guy, who by classic video game convention was about 4 times the size of everyone else).
Settlers I An excellent strategy game for the Amiga and PC. I personally never owned it (though it is abandonware now so it can be downloaded on the net), but the main draw for me was the ability to play it split-screen against a friend if you had a second mouse. It was far from being the fastest game in the world, being more Sim City than Command & Conquer, and it was always fun to see your little pixel people doing their jobs. The little forester would pop his trees into the ground, the forester would chop them down with his axe, the tree would get taken along your path to the sawmill and the resulting wood would end up in your storehouse. Waging war was fun but just building your kingdom up was enough. The second game was fairly good, losing a bit of the cute factor and the following games were ugly and lost the character of it all.
Dynamite Heddy was a classic Mega Drive platformer that was pretty damn trippy. You played a Puppet who had to save the Puppet show from the double threat of the Dark Demon and small-fry arch-rival Trouble Bruin (a cat thing that put its head on various machines in order to try and kill you). Heddy would get various head-power ups that changed his ability: there was a bomb-head that blew up everything on screen, a hammer-head that was slower by more powerful, a triple head that gave you three heads, a vacuum head that allowed you to suck up all the smaller enemies around you and many more besides. It was very hard and very, very japanese (a good, modern comparrison may be Katamari Damacy, which has the same air of insane inventiveness around it). The soundtrack was good fun as well. A good candidate for "the best game no-one ever played" IMO.
Alex Kidd in Miracle World Alex Kidd was actually very widely played - most people had it pre-installed on their MS. The problem is the nature of the gaming press: the Americans dominate the gaming press and the Master System was notoriously unpopular there, unlike Europe and Japan where it was immensely popular (Alex Kidd was SEGA's signature character until Sonic came along, appearing in about 5 different games). As Alex, you went around punching enemies, collecting money bags and eating the end of level handburger. Boss Characters were particularly strange, to be defeated by paper, rock, scissors matches (renamed Jenken Matches after the main bad guy, who by classic video game convention was about 4 times the size of everyone else).
Settlers I An excellent strategy game for the Amiga and PC. I personally never owned it (though it is abandonware now so it can be downloaded on the net), but the main draw for me was the ability to play it split-screen against a friend if you had a second mouse. It was far from being the fastest game in the world, being more Sim City than Command & Conquer, and it was always fun to see your little pixel people doing their jobs. The little forester would pop his trees into the ground, the forester would chop them down with his axe, the tree would get taken along your path to the sawmill and the resulting wood would end up in your storehouse. Waging war was fun but just building your kingdom up was enough. The second game was fairly good, losing a bit of the cute factor and the following games were ugly and lost the character of it all.
I've just remembered anothe couple of great classic games
God of Thunder- another great old adventure game, solving the puzzles was frustrating but fun in its own way, and the sound effects were great. It's freeware now, so no excuse not to try it out.
Catacomb Abyss- a very old fps (with fireballs instead of guns), had a curiously addictive charm.
God of Thunder- another great old adventure game, solving the puzzles was frustrating but fun in its own way, and the sound effects were great. It's freeware now, so no excuse not to try it out.
Catacomb Abyss- a very old fps (with fireballs instead of guns), had a curiously addictive charm.
t0ffe3m4n^
Kiznaiver
I use to LOVE the original Oddworld game, "Abe's Oddysee" on the PSone.
Regardless, Abe's oddysee doesn't count as retro.
Anyways, I really did love A game by EA (before they alligned themselves with Satan) Called "the Immortal". You play this wizard dude, and you go around this dungeon trying to find your master. The battle system was kind of wierd, you had a fatigue bar, which denoted how fast you could slash/dodge. the monster had one too. you had to wear down a monster's HP, and then performing a finishing blow, there were 50, I think (about 5 with the sword, the rest using magic)
Good game, good times.
Anyways, I really did love A game by EA (before they alligned themselves with Satan) Called "the Immortal". You play this wizard dude, and you go around this dungeon trying to find your master. The battle system was kind of wierd, you had a fatigue bar, which denoted how fast you could slash/dodge. the monster had one too. you had to wear down a monster's HP, and then performing a finishing blow, there were 50, I think (about 5 with the sword, the rest using magic)
Good game, good times.
Just realised I forgot to add me own games to the list. So here we go, a couple off the top of my head: Psycho Fox and Alex Kidd in Shinobi World on the Master System, Tetris Attack and Super Mario RPG on the SNES, Paper Mario and Blast Corps on the N64, and The Dig and the Little Big Adventures on the PC. All of them very underrated and deserve a second look, even today.
Rocket Knight Adventures on the Megadrive. Amazing and very innovative platformer, with a nice degree of humour put in.
Landstalker, also for the Megadrive, and the best real time RPG until Ocarina of time dethroned it. (and i would say best RPG full stop) Still amazingly good fun, and insanely difficult!
Two largely forgotten games which don't deserve to be
And i would have said Dynamite Heddy if i wasn't prempted. Brilliant, if incredibly difficult game.
Landstalker, also for the Megadrive, and the best real time RPG until Ocarina of time dethroned it. (and i would say best RPG full stop) Still amazingly good fun, and insanely difficult!
Two largely forgotten games which don't deserve to be
And i would have said Dynamite Heddy if i wasn't prempted. Brilliant, if incredibly difficult game.
Gallus Glee
Dandy Guy, in Space
Weird, I've played or owned virtually every game mentioned.
My classics would have to be:
Desert Strike and Jungle Strike - for the MD, particularly desert since it was the game we rented along with the megadrive I was rented for 3 days. Isometric 3D chopper budda-budda-BANG shoot everyone fantastic. After being stuck with a ZX spectrum since day one, this was a fantastic feeling for a 10 year old kid.
Kid Chameleon - Came with my second-hand MD which we bought from some guy who'd advertised in the paper. It was the first non-spectrum game I owned and my first taste of real console platformers. Difficult, looked and sounded great, loads of different headgear to morph Kid into loadsa critters - even a tank with a skull mounted on top - Hasta La Pizza BAY-BEE.
Alky Ollie - Fantastic stuff, frappy game for my Spectrum which involved getting Ollie to each of the 12 pubs in Hopstown and staggering home. Nothing moved, not the dogs or thugs or anything, the problem is that Ollie staggers the more he drinks, if he hits anything he loses energy. After visting the pubs, you then have to try and pick the right excuse to give to Mrs Ollie, or she'll stove your head in. Made a nice change from Dizzy and Cyclone.
Wonderboy 3 - Dragon's Trap - for the MS. This was something that I was leant when some kid was on holiday, I got his machiiine for a week. It was paradise, Platform/RPG hybrid with colourful graphics, fantastic soundtrack and gameplay which was entirely too much fun.
Soleil - for the MD, AKA Crusader of Centy, it was a quirky little top-down RPG (much like Zelda III) where you could pick 2 animals to give powers to your weapon (freeze blade, boomerang blade, glued blade etc.). It was fun, the boss music is a tune I still think about now, only took me 3 days to complete first time though, that was spaced out too.
My classics would have to be:
Desert Strike and Jungle Strike - for the MD, particularly desert since it was the game we rented along with the megadrive I was rented for 3 days. Isometric 3D chopper budda-budda-BANG shoot everyone fantastic. After being stuck with a ZX spectrum since day one, this was a fantastic feeling for a 10 year old kid.
Kid Chameleon - Came with my second-hand MD which we bought from some guy who'd advertised in the paper. It was the first non-spectrum game I owned and my first taste of real console platformers. Difficult, looked and sounded great, loads of different headgear to morph Kid into loadsa critters - even a tank with a skull mounted on top - Hasta La Pizza BAY-BEE.
Alky Ollie - Fantastic stuff, frappy game for my Spectrum which involved getting Ollie to each of the 12 pubs in Hopstown and staggering home. Nothing moved, not the dogs or thugs or anything, the problem is that Ollie staggers the more he drinks, if he hits anything he loses energy. After visting the pubs, you then have to try and pick the right excuse to give to Mrs Ollie, or she'll stove your head in. Made a nice change from Dizzy and Cyclone.
Wonderboy 3 - Dragon's Trap - for the MS. This was something that I was leant when some kid was on holiday, I got his machiiine for a week. It was paradise, Platform/RPG hybrid with colourful graphics, fantastic soundtrack and gameplay which was entirely too much fun.
Soleil - for the MD, AKA Crusader of Centy, it was a quirky little top-down RPG (much like Zelda III) where you could pick 2 animals to give powers to your weapon (freeze blade, boomerang blade, glued blade etc.). It was fun, the boss music is a tune I still think about now, only took me 3 days to complete first time though, that was spaced out too.
Gallus Glee
Dandy Guy, in Space
Weird, I've played or owned virtually every game mentioned.
My classics would have to be:
Desert Strike and Jungle Strike - for the MD, particularly desert since it was the game we rented along with the megadrive I was rented for 3 days. Isometric 3D chopper budda-budda-BANG shoot everyone fantastic. After being stuck with a ZX spectrum since day one, this was a fantastic feeling for a 10 year old kid.
Kid Chameleon - Came with my second-hand MD which we bought from some guy who'd advertised in the paper. It was the first non-spectrum game I owned and my first taste of real console platformers. Difficult, looked and sounded great, loads of different headgear to morph Kid into loadsa critters - even a tank with a skull mounted on top - Hasta La Pizza BAY-BEE.
Alky Ollie - Fantastic stuff, frappy game for my Spectrum which involved getting Ollie to each of the 12 pubs in Hopstown and staggering home. Nothing moved, not the dogs or thugs or anything, the problem is that Ollie staggers the more he drinks, if he hits anything he loses energy. After visting the pubs, you then have to try and pick the right excuse to give to Mrs Ollie, or she'll stove your head in. Made a nice change from Dizzy and Cyclone.
Wonderboy 3 - Dragon's Trap - for the MS. This was something that I was leant when some kid was on holiday, I got his machiiine for a week. It was paradise, Platform/RPG hybrid with colourful graphics, fantastic soundtrack and gameplay which was entirely too much fun.
Soleil - for the MD, AKA Crusader of Centy, it was a quirky little top-down RPG (much like Zelda III) where you could pick 2 animals to give powers to your weapon (freeze blade, boomerang blade, glued blade etc.). It was fun, the boss music is a tune I still think about now, only took me 3 days to complete first time though, that was spaced out too.
My classics would have to be:
Desert Strike and Jungle Strike - for the MD, particularly desert since it was the game we rented along with the megadrive I was rented for 3 days. Isometric 3D chopper budda-budda-BANG shoot everyone fantastic. After being stuck with a ZX spectrum since day one, this was a fantastic feeling for a 10 year old kid.
Kid Chameleon - Came with my second-hand MD which we bought from some guy who'd advertised in the paper. It was the first non-spectrum game I owned and my first taste of real console platformers. Difficult, looked and sounded great, loads of different headgear to morph Kid into loadsa critters - even a tank with a skull mounted on top - Hasta La Pizza BAY-BEE.
Alky Ollie - Fantastic stuff, frappy game for my Spectrum which involved getting Ollie to each of the 12 pubs in Hopstown and staggering home. Nothing moved, not the dogs or thugs or anything, the problem is that Ollie staggers the more he drinks, if he hits anything he loses energy. After visting the pubs, you then have to try and pick the right excuse to give to Mrs Ollie, or she'll stove your head in. Made a nice change from Dizzy and Cyclone.
Wonderboy 3 - Dragon's Trap - for the MS. This was something that I was leant when some kid was on holiday, I got his machiiine for a week. It was paradise, Platform/RPG hybrid with colourful graphics, fantastic soundtrack and gameplay which was entirely too much fun.
Soleil - for the MD, AKA Crusader of Centy, it was a quirky little top-down RPG (much like Zelda III) where you could pick 2 animals to give powers to your weapon (freeze blade, boomerang blade, glued blade etc.). It was fun, the boss music is a tune I still think about now, only took me 3 days to complete first time though, that was spaced out too.
