Good obscure Pre-1995 PC games?

[Whitbane]

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream (which, coincidentally, was made in 1995) is one hell of an awesome game, based of the short of the same name published back in 1967. It's the typical point and click adventure game with puzzles, an awesome story, and several good twists.

Read the story too, it's great as well.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

There's also Aces of the Pacific, if you like WWII flight simulators.

 

[mattaui]

Given what an enormous market electronic gaming is now, the PCs games in the 80s and early 90s are by definition somewhat obscure because there were just so few people who played them relative to the millions and millions who play them now.

The first game I got for my PCjr in 1985 was The Ancient Art of War, which was a cool little semi-real time strategy game, and it was followed by The Ancient Art of War at Sea. Some other favorites that followed in the mid to late 80s were Starflight and Wasteland. Wasteland in particular has enjoyed a lot more attention based on its spiritual successor, Fallout.

It is funny to hear the Ultima games referenced in such a manner, being the lineage that finally gave us the still extant Ultima Online, but as Icehearted noted, EA did pretty much run them into the ground in the process of dismantling Origin. It's really like they added insult to injury by naming their hated digital distribution platform after the previously beloved studio that gave us Ultima, Wing Commander and others.

 

[Bullfrog1983]

The Wing Commander series of games
The Ultima series of games
The Might and Magic series of games
Demon's Winter
Wasteland
Darklands
Covert Action
Warlords 2
Railroad Tycoon

 

[drthmik]

Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe; Flight Sim/Combat, Lucasarts

WWII combat sim where you could fly missions as Allied or German air forces. focused mostly on the crazy (fun) Luftwaffe secret weapons, some of which were only in service for a very short time during the war and some only saw prototypes. Flying wings, rocket planes, jets, antiaircraft rockets and more. (I especially like the vertical rockets on the komet rocket plane, they fire when the shadow of a bomber hits light censers on top the plane, shooting the rockets up into the bomber's belly)
Also, everything is destructible, every building, factory, barn and haystack can be blown up.

As far as I know, Secret Weapons was a sequel to another Lucasarts flight sim called "Their Finest Hour". I never played Secret Weapons but "Their Finest Hour" was one of my favorite Amiga games, it also had an excellent manual. Lucasarts made quite a few flightsims at that time I think.

Yes I think of Secret Weapons as Tie Fighter but during WWII and it's more fun flying in the bad guys planes

Capcha
in the limelight

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

Its hard to tell WHAT is obscure. People KNOW about System Shock 2 (for example) but NO OF THEM played it.

System Shock 2 came out in 1998. (I played it, and still do.) System Shock, the original and great, came out in 1994. Sold less than a hundred thousand copies. It also got a 98% review score from PC magazine and happens to be my favorite game of all time.

Hey, what do you know? Obscure AND great? Damn, I wish somebody made a forum topic asking for suggestions of games like that...

 

[acey195]

Ascendancy, by logic factory 1995,
Inspired a lot of 4x space games


Colonization, Sid meyer 1994,
prequel to civilization.

Commander Keen(1 till 3), 1990,

Played these games, before I could read English, probably did help though(keen not so much I guess).

 

[Kyle LeMaster]

Played these games, before I could read English, probably did help though(keen not so much I guess).

Probably helped you learn the Standard Galactic Alphabet though =)

I was going to post Commander Keen, but Acey just beat me to it.

Of course the best game ever made was for PC, but came out in 1998: Grim Fandango.

 

[Callate]

Jones in the Fast Lane, a vaguely "Game of Life"-like computer board game by Sierra about managing your limited amount of time each week to progress to better jobs, education, etc. while still finding time and money to eat and relax.

Sid Meier's Covert Action. Basically a series of mini-games the player performed in the process of fulfilling procedurally-generated missions for their agency, but good fun for all that, and succeeded in maintaining a surprising illusion of depth (at least for a while, until the player started recognizing the patterns.)

Flames of Freedom (a.k.a. "Midwinter 2"), an early (and admittedly fairly ugly) polygon-based first-person game that tasked the player with "turning" various islands between your home nation and that of an enemy nation planning to invade in order to guarantee the good guys will win the battle. You could commandeer virtually any vehicle in the game- tanks, helicopters, planes- and turn them against your enemies, and you were tasked with various RPG-lite tasks involving assassination, meeting up with rebel leaders, etc. It also had a surprisingly robust portrait designer, used for both your agent and all the other characters in the game (the polygonal graphics were pretty ugly, but the 256-color graphics for the "story" segments weren't bad for the time.)

Sort of a weird predecessor of "Just Cause", in a way...

The Terminator. Based on the movie. Also an ugly combination of polygons and higher-rez graphics (mostly to keep computers of the day from bursting into flames), but something about stealing a M-60 from an army depot and mowing down civilians as a near-invincible cyborg just doesn't get old.

(Or maybe that's just me. Please don't call the authorities.)

 

[Jacob.pederson]

I get the feeling that there is a huge wealth of uncharted gaming territory for the PC pre-1995. I am not talking about the obvious games like Civ, Simcity, Elder Scrolls arena. Those all have recent entries in their series. I want the obscure games that were great, but due to not selling hundreds of thousands or not getting sequels, have been lost to the mists of time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starflight_2:_Trade_Routes_of_the_Cloud_Nebula

1991 Starflight 2

A rougelike adventure RPG IN SPACE, in which the developers designed their own AI friendly computer language (forthought) to create it Looks great in DOSBOX, available on GOG for $6

 

[blackrave]

Star control 1-3
I've tried 2 and played 3
(I assume that there is StarCon1 and that it's worth trying)
3rd is really good
(occasionally obscure, but still good)

 

[Breywood]

Retrogaming. Awesome. I'll throw in my $0.02 worth since I do a lot of retrogaming.

Dune 2 (1992) Not the first, but certainly the most famous of the real time strategy games, possibly obscured by the mists of time.
Wasteland (1988) While Fallout was its own game, and a damn good one in its own right, it borrowed a lot from this game. Quirky, but mechanically excellent.
Gunship 2000 (1991): I had wasted plenty of time on this one.
TIE Fighter (1994): While you're starting in a tin can capable of taking 3 blaster shots at the most for the "Evil Empire", I thoroughly loved playing this one.
Master of Magic(1994): The game was tons of fun if you liked turn-based strategy.
Warlords II (1993): My favorite one of the series. You could even obtain an expansion pack that allowed you to do plenty of map and graphical editing.
Strahd's Possession (1994): A gothic horror Eye of the Beholder style game. A lot of good highlights and story, even if the dialogue is a bit stilted.
Dark Sun: Shattered Lands (1993): Buggy, but worth playing through once.
Discworld (1995): Fiendish puzzle game with Terry Pratchett's famous universe. What more could you want?

I will apologize in advance if any of these are missing their "obscure" tag.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

I originally played them on the Mac waaaaay back in the day, but I think at some point in the past few years free PC versions of The Fool's Errand and 3 in Three were put up on the creator's site. They're pretty clever little adventure/puzzle games (I particularly liked 3 in Three, but they each have their own style, both in terms of types of puzzles and presentation) that I'm guessing most people never got a chance to play. I think I saw somewhere that The Fool's Errand is even finally getting a sequel after all these years.

Star Control 2 (1992) <<< Mass Effect was "inspired" by this game.

For a certain type of people, the "Mass Effect" is the uncontrollable urge to burst laughing and/or screaming at how much mass effect was "inspired" by SC2. IMO SC2 is the better game in all respects but that's just me.

Heh. I remember when I first encountered scanning planets for minerals in Mass Effect 2 and thought that it seemed familiar from somewhere, only it'd been done better the first time around, a couple decades earlier. I think I still have a notebook somewhere with hand-made star charts and lists of what planets are in every system and what types of minerals they have and anything else of interest.

Star control 1-3
I've tried 2 and played 3
(I assume that there is StarCon1 and that it's worth trying)
3rd is really good
(occasionally obscure, but still good)

Lies. There are only two Star Control games. The first is ok, but it doesn't have any plot, just the ship combat mode. The second is one of the best games of all time. Sadly, they never made a sequel.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Anything on gog isn't obscure anymore.

That was the most hipster post anyone could make in this thread short of posting a photo of themselves wearing matching cutoffs with their girlfriend.

And yet it is still correct.

 

[blackrave]

Star control 1-3
I've tried 2 and played 3
(I assume that there is StarCon1 and that it's worth trying)
3rd is really good
(occasionally obscure, but still good)

Lies. There are only two Star Control games. The first is ok, but it doesn't have any plot, just the ship combat mode. The second is one of the best games of all time. Sadly, they never made a sequel.

Star Control 3 was released in 1996, and it was direct sequel to Star Control 2
(you're playing same ship captain I believe, at least other aliens react on you as if they know you)
They planned StarCon4, but it was scrapped

P.S. Unless StarCon3 is treated by StarCon fans, like C&C4 by C&C fans, then yes, StarCon3 was never released, keep lying to yourself

 

[Jacob.pederson]

Given what an enormous market electronic gaming is now, the PCs games in the 80s and early 90s are by definition somewhat obscure because there were just so few people who played them relative to the millions and millions who play them now.

The first game I got for my PCjr in 1985 was The Ancient Art of War, which was a cool little semi-real time strategy game, and it was followed by The Ancient Art of War at Sea. Some other favorites that followed in the mid to late 80s were Starflight and Wasteland. Wasteland in particular has enjoyed a lot more attention based on its spiritual successor, Fallout.

It is funny to hear the Ultima games referenced in such a manner, being the lineage that finally gave us the still extant Ultima Online, but as Icehearted noted, EA did pretty much run them into the ground in the process of dismantling Origin. It's really like they added insult to injury by naming their hated digital distribution platform after the previously beloved studio that gave us Ultima, Wing Commander and others.

Bless you I'd completely forgotten about Ancient Art of War, I had it on the Tandy 1000SX. Those little archers mowing each other down were EPIC.

 

[xDarc]

I had fun playing the Police Quest games from Sierra.

 

[Avaholic03]

I find a lot of the PC games in the late 80s and throughout the 90s were more innovative than the games today.

By necessity, I assure you. There were far fewer gaming tropes to work off of back then, and also more system limitations to work around. That forced developers to be innovative to simply make an average game. But given a choice, I guarantee developers back then would have taken the easy road-more-traveled if it was there for them to take. So let's not get blinded by nostalgia and pretend like gaming was so much better back then. I'm really sick of that argument.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

Pre-1995? But 1995 is when shit started to get good!

Anyway, I'm not sure how "obscure" this is but pre-1995 I was mostly enjoying Frontier: Elite II IIRC.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

P.S. Unless StarCon3 is treated by StarCon fans, like C&C4 by C&C fans, then yes, StarCon3 was never released, keep lying to yourself

Now you're catching on. It's not a terrible game on its own, but it is kind of a mediocre game. When compared to StarCon2 though, it's a joke. The quality of the writing, which was one of the strong points in 2, took a significant step backward, and the story was a mess. The pseudo-3D combat was unplayable and had to be disabled just so you could aim properly, and the ships weren't as varied and interesting and well-balanced as before either. I did like what they did with the some of the puppets for the alien races, and a couple of the new ones were fun. The audio quality may also have been better in 3, but 2 had more memorable music.

Really what the problem was was that the first two were made by Toys for Bob (who recently have made the Skylanders games and are too busy now to make a true sequel, even though they've said repeatedly that they were interested in doing it), and then the publisher got someone else to make the third one without their involvement at all. It completely ignored a lot of things previously established by the series as a result, both gameplay and lore, and kind of pissed off existing fans. It wasn't a bad game so much as it was just an average game being sold as a sequel to what was at the time (and sometimes still more recently) considered one of the best PC games ever made. It's ended up in a weird place where people who played it on its own seem to like it, but people who played the previous games first and Toys for Bob themselves have disowned it and consider it non-canon. Heh.