What's the 'obscure-iest' game you played as a kid?

[mbd39 | 2,020]

Some of my favorite DOS games as a kid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[GPX | 1,369]

I’m pretty sure I played a ton of obscure games on the C64. The problem is that they’re so obscure I forgot most of the names!

The ones I do remember and having decent fun are:

- Mystical Ninja (Snes)

- Mystical Fighter (Genesis)

Mystical Ninja in particular, is one of my all-time favorite Snes games.

[MrPeaPod | 121]

I'm one of the few people that I know that has played Mohawk and Headphone Jack, let alone bet it. I think my uncle gave it to us when I was a kid. That game came induce motion sickness

[bronzeshield | 293]

Computer games: plenty of super-obscure stuff on the TRS-80 Color Computer and Model III, including BASIC type-in games from magazines and such. I used to play a Pengo clone written in BASIC all the time. Also some Mac shareware.

Console games: Cosmic Swarm on the Atari 2600, maybe? That was the most obscure Atari game we owned, and I now know it to be the rarest too.

On the NES, a few unlicensed games like Captain Comic and Master Chu & Drunkard Hu -- or, on the licensed tip, a handful of offbeat titles like Arkista's Ring, Rad Gravity, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, or Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Also a few less-common black box games, like Clu Clu Land (hated it) and Slalom. I didn't own any of these -- all were rentals or borrowed games.

On the SNES I didn't play much in the way of obscure stuff until I wasn't a kid anymore. I guess Drakkhen and Lord of the Rings Vol. 1 were the main ones, along with Sküljagger and Harley's Humongous Adventure.

Edited January 16, 2020 by bronzeshield

[Foochie776 | 1,051]

My grandparents had Arkanoid but no Vaus controller. Probably the least run of the mill game I played!

[KokiriChild | 1,644]

I loved me some Sheep Raider on PS1. I played that for hours. I still stand by it as a true hidden gem for the system.

 

[Kguillemette | 1,544]

Lets see, some obscure games i beat to death as a kid

NES- Kickle Cubicle, Mickey mousecapades, little Nemo the dream master

Genesis- Phelios, Shadow Blasters

 

Kickle cubicle is a really good room by room puzzler in the style of Lolo. But better in my opinion. You solve puzzles by turning monsters into ice and pushing them into the water to make a bridge.

Nemo is an awesome non- linear platformer. You feed candy to certain monsters and you can use their ability to travel the stage and look for the 6 keys to unlock the door at the end.

 

Phelios is a shmup where instead of a spaceship, you are Apollo, the Greek sun god on a quest to save Artemis. Essentially, it's a shmup based on greek mythology. Cool bosses, epic music, creepy levels, good stuff.

Mickey Mousecapades is a run and gun platformer very similar to Mega man, just not quite as good. It has its moments, though. The platforming is based on making sure Minnie can make the jump too, which is tricky since she's on a slight delay.

Shadow Blasters is one of my favorites of all time. It's like a combination of NES TMNT where you can choose between 4 characters on the fly and Mega man, where each character's attack is effective differently against different enemies are sometimes ineffective in different levels. Really cool levels, some interesting and frustrating bosses and cool music. Not a big fan of the final boss though.

[CMR | 519]

I can remember playing some obscure arcade games.  The one that stands out the most is Tron.

[Strikezone1 | 154]

I had Little Nemo as a kid.

Also I remember we rented Snow Brothers a lot. A neighborhood kid discovered it first via rental, and since it was fun 2P coop it became a regular rental for awhile. I eventually ended up picking up a used copy from Funcoland.

[MeganJoanne | 365]

I dunno if any are obscure, but of the games I owned back then, some of the games I had that were not high profile (my brother and I were the only ones of others that we knew that had these games):

8 Eyes
Amagon
Astyanax
Battle of Olympus, The
Blaster Master
Conquest of the Crystal Palace (perhaps the most unusual and least known of those I owned)
Dynowarz: Destruction of Spondylus
Guardian Legend, The
Legacy of the Wizard
Low G Man
RoboWarrior
Snake, Rattle 'N Roll
Werewolf: The Last Warrior

As for ones we didn't have:

Mystery Quest (a friend had this, and it always struck me as something odd, that if I had known much about the famicom back then I would think it more appropriate on that than something for the US market, not sure really why, because it sorta reminded me a little of Milon's Secret Castle yet felt even more obscure and I never recall ever seeing Mystery Quest for rental back then)

Prior to the NES we had the 2600, but nothing out of the ordinary. Anything after NES and I was already an adult, I was a teen during the NES era, so sorta still a kid.

 

[Makar | 1,946]

Lost magic on the DS. Still haven't met anyone who's played that game. I remember only getting it because it had WiFi connectivity and playing online back then was magical to me. 

Wait, actually, if you count the jirachi bonus disk on the gamecube as a "game" then that's definitely more obscure.

[Startyde | 175]

1 hour ago, MeganJoanne said:

I dunno if any are obscure, but of the games I owned back then, some of the games I had that were not high profile (my brother and I were the only ones of others that we knew that had these games):

8 Eyes
Amagon
Astyanax
Battle of Olympus, The
Blaster Master
Conquest of the Crystal Palace (perhaps the most unusual and least known of those I owned)
Dynowarz: Destruction of Spondylus
Guardian Legend, The
Legacy of the Wizard
Low G Man
RoboWarrior
Snake, Rattle 'N Roll
Werewolf: The Last Warrior

As for ones we didn't have:

Mystery Quest (a friend had this, and it always struck me as something odd, that if I had known much about the famicom back then I would think it more appropriate on that than something for the US market, not sure really why, because it sorta reminded me a little of Milon's Secret Castle yet felt even more obscure and I never recall ever seeing Mystery Quest for rental back then)

Prior to the NES we had the 2600, but nothing out of the ordinary. Anything after NES and I was already an adult, I was a teen during the NES era, so sorta still a kid.

 

I remember going into a toy store in late 80s and my brother and I each got to choose a game. He chose Ninja Gaiden based on the cover (he was 6 or 7) and I chose RoboWarrior because I thought it would be like Transformers.

Guess whose still regretting it 30 years later?

Anyway, the most obscure game I think I've played in general has to be Sentient for PS1. I still have no idea what was happening.

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

I had Little Nemo as a kid too. It's probably more well known now, but it probably would have qualified as obscure back then.

[MeganJoanne | 365]

1 hour ago, Startyde said:

I remember going into a toy store in late 80s and my brother and I each got to choose a game. He chose Ninja Gaiden based on the cover (he was 6 or 7) and I chose RoboWarrior because I thought it would be like Transformers.

Guess whose still regretting it 30 years later?

Anyway, the most obscure game I think I've played in general has to be Sentient for PS1. I still have no idea what was happening.

Robowarrior was great. I never owned Ninja Gaiden until I started getting used games, before that played the first over some neighborhood kid's apartment, beat that then, and rented the second and beat that then. And then actually owned them later down the road. Still Robowarrior, while not one of the greats there was a time it was one of my favorites long ago. I had a tendancy to go after some of the more odd titles then, also because they tended to be cheaper, stuff usually $20 and under sitting on endcap of Toys R Us just begging to be bought and given a chance. As such was the case with most of those games on my list there.

[Tanooki | 4,932]

3 hours ago, Makar said:

Lost magic on the DS. Still haven't met anyone who's played that game.

Had it when it came out, finished it, don't think I'd care to again.  IT wasn't bad but it really didn't suck me in either.  I didn't play it online.

[Makar | 1,946]

58 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

Had it when it came out, finished it, don't think I'd care to again.  IT wasn't bad but it really didn't suck me in either.  I didn't play it online.

That's exactly how I felt about it. The spell casting via stylus could've been a lot better. Not a must play game by any means

[bronzeshield | 293]

Ah, RoboWarrior. I was pretty psyched when, as a kid, I borrowed a game I'd never heard of (i.e. RoboWarrior) from a friend and was greeted by something with such good production values. Even though the gameplay was kind of a grind, I still found the game intriguingly weird, but only made it through the first couple levels before I had to give it back.

Later on, maybe around 1993, I randomly ran across a Jaleco brochure which listed the boss's health -- is there a scan of this brochure anywhere on the web, BTW? -- and made beating the game sound totally impossible.

Then, back in 2012 (and again in 2016), I ended up playing through the game with the help of a walkthrough. The truth is it's not a hard game, just one that expect a lot of meticulous combing of the environment (and noticing one or two minor tricks). So I don't feel too bad about using a walkthrough since the game itself doesn't really require much skill, but it would have been nice to beat it back in the day.

Edited January 20, 2020 by bronzeshield

[Tanooki | 4,932]

5 hours ago, Makar said:

That's exactly how I felt about it. The spell casting via stylus could've been a lot better. Not a must play game by any means

Bingo, you nailed it.  I didn't want to mud the water on that one, but that was my huge beef with it, the cutesy forced touch mechanics stenciling out all the patterns to do basic or complex (worse) magic spells during live combat.  Perhaps tolerable if it were turn based but not while you're trying to avoid being vaporized by the enemies.  I never went back to it, it got sold.

[Link | 2,709]

Lot of mentions for Little Nemo ITT. Is it really obscure? The source material (McKay or anime) might be, but the game got a huge article in Nintendo Power #18. 

[fcgamer | 4,722]

We had Little Nemo too, got it from Sears iirc, a rarity in itself.

As a teenager I played Diahrea Dan.

[Sumez | 2,941]

I always considered Little Nemo quite a popular game - I guess being Capcom, smooth controlling, and good looking goes a long way.

The game itself I feel is quite overrated though.

[G-type | 2,480]

Tongue of the Fatman (a pre SFII fighting game on the PC)

[G-type | 2,480]

23 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Had it when it came out, finished it, don't think I'd care to again.  IT wasn't bad but it really didn't suck me in either.  I didn't play it online.

I had Lost Magic too.. On paper is sounds like I would love it... Real Time Strategy. Casting spells with by drawing runes with the stylus. I just didn't like it very much. 

[arch_8ngel | 1,597]

6 minutes ago, G-type said:

Tongue of the Fatman (a pre SFII fighting game on the PC)

The quintessential PC fighting game was One Must Fall.

[MachineCode | 159]

On 1/21/2020 at 2:12 PM, G-type said:

Tongue of the Fatman (a pre SFII fighting game on the PC)

I remember being about to buy this, from a Marshall's of all places, and ended up getting a boxed shareware copy of the brand new original Doom instead. Had to jump through all sorts of hoops and make a dedicated boot disc to get that to run on my IBM PS/2. Ended up playing TOTF years later tho. Pretty cool game.

 

I'm gonna go ahead throw Sierra adventure Codename: Iceman, the original Battletech/Mechwarrior, and Heart of China into the mix of obscure games as well.

Edited January 23, 2020 by MachineCode