A video game you wish you had known about back in the day...

[killerkobra | 268]

Is there a video game that you had NO idea existed back in the day that you wish you did?

A game that had you known existed, you would have used your Birthday/Christmas (even Easter? Tooth fairy???)  presents to get it. You would have shoveled the snow, cut the grass, washed the dishes... anything to get your parents to buy it for you. 

My example would be Castlevania Bloodlines for Sega Genesis. I had no idea this game existed when I was a kid. I was in Love with Simons Quest and we got a Sega Genesis and not a SNES so this would have been heaven for me then. I didnt even know about it until the early 2000s! I bought a sealed (cardboard) one on eBay for $14 as soon as I found out about it. 

Crazy to think that with all the kids on the playground obsessed with video games and all the video game magazines I read and traded with the other kids. I never knew this existed. None of the Movie Rental Shops we frequented had it and I never seen it in stores ever.

If only I seen this ad in Gamepro back then…

Edited July 7, 2022 by killerkobra
spelling

[a3quit4s | 4,124]

I can’t even begin to list the games that I have learned about here and on NA but the biggest source of that information since SNES is my jam is @Reed Rothchild SNES rankings. I found myself buying a couple games every time he released a new list. Since I didn’t have a Nintendo power sub I never even got to hear about games that weren’t popular and before the internet it would have been almost impossible for me to get that information. Maybe it’s why I enjoy game collecting so much, always a game you’ve never heard of that is probably a blast to play. 

[fox | 1,673]

Shatterhand would have been my jam

[Sumez | 2,989]

I'm not really sure it would have made a difference when I'd learned about some games.

I do however wish I'd had the spare income to buy the $100-$200 arcade games I wanted back in the early 00's before they became $1000-$2000 games

[Makar | 1,946]

Definitely digimon world ds, digimon world dawn and digimon world dusk, and also boktai. I loved Pokémon and the dragon warrior monsters/dragon quest monsters joker series as a kid but I never knew those digimon games existed until I was either almost done college or had graduated. I would’ve sunk so much time into those games as a kid. 
 

boktai is a game I kinda knew about as a kid. I love the mega man battle network series and there are several chips in the game you can get that have characters or weapons from boktai. So I knew it existed but that was about it. No clue what the game was about. Then I played it in college and absolutely loved it. Again, another game I would’ve sunk way too much time into as a kid. 

[Tanooki | 4,950]

Despite having Nintendo Power there were games on NES and Gameboy I had no idea were there, or blew over it being a young teen and blown away on the SNES in 1991 so I just ignored stuff outright because...small allowance.

Off the top of my head I didn't know at the time that Final Fight (so wrapped up on SNES one from Christmas) that the Mighty Final Fight game existed, didn't get that until 2011 I think.

Bomberman 2 too, never liked the first one too much, overly basic, so my first happy experience was the DOS (yeah I warezed it in 1995) of Dynablaster which was a computer conversion of the PCE(TG) HuCard game and it's fantastic.  Bomberman 2 is so like that it's a shame I missed out.  I found this one sometime around 1995-96...and same as the next (same shop too I used to speak of.)

And that's the fact I was huge into Castlevania buying every NES, GB and SNES game, yet had no bloody clue that they did a parodius of it, Kid Dracula, which was a second hand grab I would have enjoyed for the years before had I known.

 

I've got two others that are even more date wise though.  They're both SNES games and I felt bad missing out so long.  The first one is I had no idea the stellar Magical Quest had a sequel, you know, because those capcom geniuses called it the great circus mystery.  The other, that would be Super Adventure Island II.  The first is pretty easy to get, it's more of the same, but new stages, a bit more refined, a choice of Minnie too, just an equally nice maybe (or not) better experience and no clue it existed until sometime in the 2010s.  And then well, given how the game was pretty but a pretty big step back from the NES titles, I blew off and ignored Super Adventure Island II forgetting it existed because by then I was over it and I figured it was more of the same...oops.  I just finally tried it out THIS year, 28 years after the fact, and it's surprisingly not only not garbage and not anything like the entire series, but it's actually a very well made and quite fun and challenging Super Metroid style type game where you explore, get upgrades, level up, open new areas, and return to expand others.  What a shock, hell of a title.

[DarkTone | 988]

SOTN. Still haven't played it yet but wow. I can see myself getting frustrated from it, but it looks incredible. 

[LeatherRebel5150 | 1,056]

Donkey Kong Country 3. I mentioned it in another thread just yesterday that I didn’t know this game existed until 2011ish

[RH | 4,965]

I didn't legit discover a JRPG until the PlayStation with Final Fantasy VII.  I was aware of FF II and III in the US, but didn't have a SNES, but I wish I played them, Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana.  I also had no idea what an RPG was in the NES era, so Final Fantasy was 100% off my radar back then.  I also didn't discover the Dragon Quest series until I bought DQ VIII for the PS2 and immediately fell in love with it.  In a different life, I could have seen myself being a bigger DQ fan than a FF fan.   I wish I had played those games back in the day.  I would have been obsessed with all of them.

[OptOut | 8,892]

I got two, one I actually knew about but never had as a kid and would have totally loved, and one that I had no idea existed.

The first is Duke Nukem: Zero Hour on N64. I LOVED Duke Nukem 64 as a kid, it was one of my favourite N64 games for sure. I never got Zero Hour because I was unsure about how it would play in 3rd person, and I felt that it looked kinda underwhelming in the magazine previews.

However, the game is actually really good, a nice chunky N64 adventure with tons of different levels, cool weapons, and a ton of fun. I know I would have loved it as a kid but hey, it's still something even now!

The other game I can think of I had no idea existed is Battlezone: Rise of the Black Dogs on N64. I was super into the solar system and space and stuff back then, and this game has great atmosphere and a ton of different features and game modes and stuff to fool around with, and the game itself is a very solid tactical 3D shooter. I would have probably put a hundred hours into that game if I had it as a kid, but it was a US exclusive, so it never came out in the UK where I grew up.

Those are definitely the best two examples I can think of, but there are undoubtedly tons more I could mention!

It's insane how many games I have these days compared to back then, and yet I don't even have time to play em anymore! Talk about your cruel and unusual punishments, eh?!

[Lynda Monica | 350]

I think a lot of the difficult games I learned to love later in life I would have hated as a kid.

All throughout the N64's life cycle though, my brothers and I didn't even know about Star Fox 64. We loved the SNES game a lot, so we'd probably have fallen in love with Star Fox 64 had we known about it. We found out about it much later in the 2000s.

[DoctorEncore | 3,691]

11 hours ago, DarkTone said:

SOTN. Still haven't played it yet but wow. I can see myself getting frustrated from it, but it looks incredible. 

I stumbled on this gem by renting it the year it came out! It blew my mind so I asked for it for Christmas that year and it became one of my all-time favorites.

As for games I wish I'd known about? Maybe Terranigma and Soul Blazer on SNES. I loved action RPGs, but never saw those games anywhere.

[phart010 | 1,708]

11 hours ago, OptOut said:

I got two, one I actually knew about but never had as a kid and would have totally loved, and one that I had no idea existed.

The first is Duke Nukem: Zero Hour on N64. I LOVED Duke Nukem 64 as a kid, it was one of my favourite N64 games for sure. I never got Zero Hour because I was unsure about how it would play in 3rd person, and I felt that it looked kinda underwhelming in the magazine previews.

However, the game is actually really good, a nice chunky N64 adventure with tons of different levels, cool weapons, and a ton of fun. I know I would have loved it as a kid but hey, it's still something even now!

The other game I can think of I had no idea existed is Battlezone: Rise of the Black Dogs on N64. I was super into the solar system and space and stuff back then, and this game has great atmosphere and a ton of different features and game modes and stuff to fool around with, and the game itself is a very solid tactical 3D shooter. I would have probably put a hundred hours into that game if I had it as a kid, but it was a US exclusive, so it never came out in the UK where I grew up.

Those are definitely the best two examples I can think of, but there are undoubtedly tons more I could mention!

It's insane how many games I have these days compared to back then, and yet I don't even have time to play em anymore! Talk about your cruel and unusual punishments, eh?!

I have excellent memories of Duke Nukem zero hour. I was in middle school and my oldest brother would invite me to play with his high school friends. I figured out a secret, to use the explosive shells in the shotgun and rain down hell from above with the jet pack. I lit these big kids up constantly 

[killerkobra | 268]

On 7/8/2022 at 12:21 AM, DarkTone said:

SOTN. Still haven't played it yet but wow. I can see myself getting frustrated from it, but it looks incredible. 

Dude! I just beat SOTN last week. I had played it back in the early 2000’s but never to completion.  One of the top Castlevania games and 100% lives up to the hype and then some 

p

[Tanooki | 4,950]

If the price of entry is a problem on SOTN, and you're not just a pirate, it is sold as a quite cheap download on IOS and Android, both can use a gamepad with no input lag issues and can be plugged into your TV to play it as it was intended.  I just looked to be sure, it's less than I paid for it, and it's not on sale so they sometime more recently dropped it to $2.99 on either.  Just try it out, $3 would barely fill you up on a dollar menu anymore so it's no loss.

[T-Pac | 7,585]

I just wish I had known about the NES when I was a kid.

I always loved 8-bit stuff when I came across it, but I never knew where it originated (aside from arcade machines). I could've enjoyed so many classics and started building a collection so much sooner.

I shouldn't really complain, though. I can enjoy plenty of classic games now, and learn about the 8-bit era to my heart's content on VGS / YouTube / etc.

-CasualCart

[pacowles | 48]

Conquest of the Crystal Palace - NES. I was just introduced to this game maybe five years ago, and it seems like something I would’ve loved as a kid in the glory days of the NES. 

[AstralSoul | 502]

I wish I got into the Dragon Quest games back when I had a lot more free time. I started with DQ8 and didn't play another until DQ11 and trying to go back and finish them all, well, it's a lot for me.