Games you never found another player of (or even heard of)

[Alcaste]

Star Crusader! I absolutely adored star crusader as a kid, I was huge into space combat flight sim games (oddly enough, though, not wing commander as much.)

Star Crusader was no Tie Fighter, but it was fairly in depth for what it was. Capturing other ships so that you could use them was a really nice mechanic.

 

[Benpasko]

Freakin Ephemeral Fantasia. The hypest jrpg, and nobody has ever heard of it.

 

[Duck Sandwich]

7th Legion. A shitty RTS where the two playable factions are nearly identical, and half of the time, your units don't do anything when you tell them to move. It had some interesting concepts, like Battle Cards (kind of like Age of Mythology's God Powers) that you could deploy and possibly turn the tide of a battle by doing things like make a group of your units run and attack faster, or make a bunch of your enemy's units explode.

This game had few redeeming qualities, some of them being an interesting premise that makes the "bad guy" faction not 100% evil, even though they're basically Space Nazis (their red and black insignia almost resembles a swastika, and they go out of their way in cinematics to kill "good guy" soldiers and random harmless animals alike in the most brutal fashion possible. "Oh hey. There's this random harmless lizard thing walking around minding its own business. Only one thing to do in a situation like this. STAB STAB STAB!")

For such a shitty game, it has *awesome* music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-StmWEpRPrI

 

[Samuki Elm]

Lords of Magic for PC. It's an RPG/RTS hybrid with a turn-based movement and economy system that switches to a real-time tactical battlefield when combat is initiated. There were eight different "faiths" you could play as, like order, chaos, life, and death, which gave the game a lot of replay-ability.

The only people I know who actually played it were my brother and I.

I remember that game. Didn't play it much. I preferred the original that it spun off of, Lords of the Realm. That one's pretty obscure, too.

Republic: The Revolution. A very interesting premise, spoiled by the fact that it was really, really boring - not very interactive. One reviewer compared it to "My Dinner with Andre - the Videogame" from a Simpson's episode.

 

[IllumInaTIma]

I've yet to meet someone who adores Front Mission 3 as I do.

 

[wottabout]

Oddly enough an MMO, Mabinogi.

Including the people who introduced me to it I have met less than 5 other players outside of the game.

I played that a little bit! It was a nice game, but I never got into it. I think it's still installed on my old computer.

I never hear anyone talk about Jill of the Jungle, but I guess it's not something that's likely to come up in conversation. No one I've mentioned it to has heard of it. Still, it was a major part of my childhood, along with the Xanth computer game.

 

[Clinky]

Snip

I actually owned that game! Since my mom owned a video game rental store we tended to get ahold of a lot of video games. I remember when I was little that game was so difficult(in a confusing way). I never got past the first level. =O But I did enjoy the feel it had, very cartoony and fun.

OT: For me the game that tends to make people scratch their heads when I mention it is a toss up between Legend of Legaia and Magical Starsign.

Legend of Legaia was a JRPG for the PS1, when my mom finally bought a PS1 she bought the game for herself and I wound up picking it up a little later. I loved it, it had a different system of attack. It was one part typical JRPG turn based attack and one part fighting game. With an itty bitty splash of 'Mon' game for good measure. You took turns attacking but to really do damage you'd input a combination of up, down, left, and right and the right combos would perform special attacks which would eat up AP which replenished some every turn. You would fight particular enemies with elemental symbols and if you got lucky you might end up where you would be able to 'summon' the creature and cast a spell with it. It also had a pretty neat story, the setting was really different and I have yet to see another game with a similar setting to it.

And Magical Starsign is the sequel to Magical Vacation(Japan only sadly), it's another JRPG and I found it a lot of fun. It had Paper Mario's turn based system where timed button presses made your attacks more powerful and everything. It's another game with a unique setting and also a unique art direction. A very fun game.

 

[V8 Ninja]

I guess I know some:

EYE - Divine Cybermancy
Hidden And Dangerous
Cortex Command

Fun fact; EYE - Divine Cybermancy was at the top of the Steam charts for its launch week. Take that as you will.

ANYWAYS: I've got a couple of games like this;

Dreamkiller: A bizarre semi-arcade-esque shooter with a two-weapon limit and bad voice acting. It doesn't hit that old-school shooter itch and feels too difficulty without being challenging (if that makes any sense). A nice piece of trivia is that this game was one of the first games I ever played using Steam. However, since the game didn't run well on my current computer at the time and I only had access to the game for a single weekend (free weekend for the game), I had to pass on it. I picked it up a year or two later and I was not satisfied with the purchase (if you couldn't tell). Definitely not a game to put on your wishlist.

Twin Sector: A promising but ultimately bad Portal-esque puzzle game. The main gimmick is that you can attract and repel objects while exploring an abandoned facility with a talking AI. The mechanics are used in ever-infuriating ways to the point where later puzzles become ridiculously hard. Also, your strafing and back-peddling speed were much slower than your forward walking speed. Seriously, who does that? I understand realism would dictate that as logical, but I play a game to enjoy playing a game.

Rad Doll Kung Du: I played this game for 2 minutes before condemning it to the deepest depths of my Steam library because of the awful, impossible-to-handle controls.

 

[Alcaste]

Rad Doll Kung Du: I played this game for 2 minutes before condemning it to the deepest depths of my Steam library because of the awful, impossible-to-handle controls.

Rag Doll Kung Fu was actually fairly decent after you got good at the controls, and the cutscenes were somewhat entertaining. Not the best game ever, of course...

 

[Dethenger]

The Bouncer for the PS2. It was a fighting game, one of the only ones I like. The story was a little... weird, but you got the option at the beginning of each level to play as one of three characters, and I always thought that was fucking cool.

Dark Cloud, also for the PS2. That was a fucking fantastic game, probably one of my favourites. It had a pretty solid storyline, a unique world, and the settings were just fascinating. The first one, anyways. I never finished the second one, it couldn't capture me the same way the first one did.

 

[Magicman10893]

Custom Robo on the Gamecube. I got it when I first got a Gamecube and it was the best game ever! It was one of the first games I literally sat and played for more than 7 hours in a row. Never met anyone else that ever even heard of the game until last year when two of my friends that I have known for over 6 years now revealed they played it and felt the same way. How it never came up in all that time I have no idea.

 

[gigastar]

For me, thats a PS2 title by the name of Sub Rebellion.

My dad brought it home at random from some guy at the local pub years ago.

Its an arcadey submarine simulator set in a post apocalyptic world originating from Japan.

Its a shame that it didnt catch on because it is still one of the best arcade sub-sims ive ever seen.

Spartan: Total Warrior.

A PS2 game, one of the only games in existance to feature actual mighty battles, with up to 200 fully interactible enemies and allies in the screen at the same time, with awesome action and good story.

And I have never met anyone who knew what this game was.

I remember that one purely because i died when a biulding fell on me during a cutscene.

Also i think it was the first game that convinced me that sleep wasnt really all that nessesary.

 

[VALOCARAPTOR]

civ city rome, i loved that game till the disc got scratched and i got a new pc

 

[Benpasko]

The Bouncer for the PS2. It was a fighting game, one of the only ones I like. The story was a little... weird, but you got the option at the beginning of each level to play as one of three characters, and I always thought that was fucking cool.

Dark Cloud, also for the PS2. That was a fucking fantastic game, probably one of my favourites. It had a pretty solid storyline, a unique world, and the settings were just fascinating. The first one, anyways. I never finished the second one, it couldn't capture me the same way the first one did.

The second one is so much better. My dad is actually in the middle of a new playthrough of Dark Cloud 2, he just finished the first one again a week ago or so. I liked the georama better in 1, but the gameplay is just so clunky compared to the second.

 

[w9496]

Dog's life for playstation 2.

I've never met another person that is even aware of its existence, which is a shame. Cause it is the best game ever made!

It was pretty fun playing as a dog and just doing dog things, wasn't it?

OT: Kings Field on the PS1. It was a first person adventure game that was fairly tough.

 

[Aariana]

Guardian's Crusade and Misadventures of Tron Bonne, both for PS1. Tron Bonne was about a chick who has to pay off her uncle's gambling debts so she decides to go into the smuggling business, or some other similar backstory.

Guardian's Crusade, well...that was by far one of my favourite playstation games. You play a knight who meets a little pink baby monster while out adventuring, and you take it upon yourself to return him to his mom. Sound childish? Yeah, maybe a little. But on the course of your journey, you have a run-in with cannibals, save a town from being taken over by a corrupt mayor, and help to take down a cult that's taking over the world. Not quite as childish as it may seem. Also, the baby monster was frigging cute!

 

[BytByte]

Just Today I picked up some game called Domino Rally for the Wii for a measly $5. Looks quirky and it was the first time I've ever seen it. Also, Radiata Stories is easily Atlus' (Tri-ace actually) the most overlooked RPG on the PS2

 

[OtherSideofSky]

Both N64 Goemon games and a weird little platformer called Chameleon Twist, along with its sequel.

I would have said Henry Hatswort or Ogre Battle 64, but I have successfully convinced friends to play both of those.

I've never met another fan of Shadow Hearts: Covenant in real life, although I have occasionally seen it mentioned online, and while I've know plenty of people who started playing Xenosaga, I don't know anyone else who actually finished all three of them.

 

[Mr. Purple]

<color=purple> Well, two of my all-time favorite video games have yet to ensnare any person I know IRL.

<color=purple> The first, Mischief Makers for the 64 was such a wonderful game for me. It took place in a super-odd world and kept giving me interesting bits of gameplay till the end. It was a solid platform/puzzle game with some difficulty to it all wrapped up in a surreal setting. To me as a young child it was almost mesmerizing. And later in life I picked up the game again. Filled with nostalgia and pure fun, I finally completed the game, which I couldn't when I was very young. Such satisfaction. Yet nobody even knows what game I'm talking about. What a shame....

The second game is for Playstation. Tai Fu: Wrath of the Tiger. Maybe its not as good as I remember cause I havent had the chance to replay this one. But I still revere it in the back of my head. I remember many hours of thoroughly enjoying the life of that tiger. I just wanted to go all Jackie Chan Adventures on some less than friendly animals.

I felt so strongly about these games that I resurrected this account that I haven't logged onto in quite a while.
Maybe that's some indication of whether or not you(whomever reads this) should actually take action to find and play these games.

 

[commasplice]

Oddly enough an MMO, Mabinogi.

So. Funny story. I wrote a 15-page paper on critical theory using Mabinogi as an example. This month. Lol. I started playing in Open Beta and continued for a year and a half or so.

Edit: Oh yeah. Forgot to mention that I was a member of Hotglue, on the Mari server, if'n you'd ever heard of us.