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Old forgotten games Thread  "Old games you love that nobody remembers its existence."

User is offline   juvenite 

#1

It suddenly came to my head to make a thread about games we love that everyone else forgot their existence.

For me, it's Need for Speed 2 (from '97, not Underground).
I love this game, it was a great part of my childhood, I used to play it all the time. I even owned a copy of the Special Edition. Those were fun days.



But nowadays nobody remembers this game, most don't even know it. So sad.

This post has been edited by Katrix Kytarix: 15 March 2019 - 11:04 PM

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User is offline   MrFlibble 

#2

We played NFS2 demo at school during breaks at out IT class in the early 2000s. Much later I downloaded the demo and played it at home, but never owned the full version. NFS1&2 are very nostalgic for me, even though I scarcely played either and certainly did not play when they came out. But they seem to capture the spirit of the time very well. I love the main menu theme from NFS2:

View PostKatrix Kytarix, on 15 March 2019 - 11:00 PM, said:

we love that everyone else forgot their existence

It's hard for me to judge what games are forgotten and which are not. There's plenty of obscure stuff that was apparently never popular in the first place, but played by enough people (sometimes to a small cult following even) to be remembered to any extent. Some games never garnered enough attention either because of intense competition (I mean lots of similar games in the market at the time of release) or because the release was limited to a single country (possibly exacerbated by a language barrier, i.e. the game was in a language that is not widely known).

It's not easy to estimate how many people play a game if it's not multiplayer and there's no community that creates additional content as is the case with Doom or Duke3D. Even with big hits like Warcraft II or Heroes of Might and Magic it's hard to tell, as it seems. I know there are (regional) communities that play Warcraft II matches (with some cut-down version of Battle.net edition and via unofficial servers, or something like that), you can probably even estimate the number of active players and frequency of such matches, but compared to let's say Doom it's very obscure. How many people still (re)play the campaigns or custom maps? I don't know. Does anyone make more maps? No idea.

I have a general interest in PC games from the 90s and digging the sources like mags and online publications I realise how many games came out back then (both commercial and self-published shareware) that are almost completely, let's say, invisible (I'd like to avoid the vague term "forgotten") these days except maybe for listings in game databases like MobyGames. There was lot's of stuff that was at least original to some degree, if not artistically well done (very often both). Some games apparently had concepts that, while being functional in the context of gameplay, were seemingly never expanded upon in later games, and never inspired a trend in the industry. That alone is also worth examining.
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User is offline   Aristotle Gumball 

  • banned!

#3

I liked NFS 2, but for me the most memorable racing game from that time was Motorhead:



Blew me away with its graphics, which still hold up pretty well IMO. Not many people have heard of it, though. There was another cool game called POD, which I think more people have played, and I always saw it as like the racing version of Quake with it's abstract and surrealistic design.

This post has been edited by thricecursed: 16 March 2019 - 05:53 AM

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User is offline   Mark 

#4

Scott Adams text adventure series and the later versions with crude 16 color graphics.Yes, I'm old.




This post has been edited by Mark: 16 March 2019 - 06:32 AM

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User is offline   MusicallyInspired 

  • The Sarien Encounter

#5

Man that all green command prompt screen brings back memories.
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User is offline   BloodGuy 

#6

I don't know how I got this game in my hands as a little kid but it was,,,,,well...something I spent a lot of time with....I dunno if it was good, I just remember playing it and the name...and now I searched for a youtube video and found one...It was called Desperabis and maybe in some way the very first ever FPS RPG



Hell yeah this was good graphics these days!
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User is offline   Daedolon 

  • Ancient Blood God

#7

A first person game I have never heard of? Weird.
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User is offline   Perro Seco 

#8

View PostDaedolon, on 16 March 2019 - 02:10 PM, said:

A first person game I have never heard of? Weird.
It was made in 2001 by just one person, and it was distributed freely from his website. Here's a link to download it: https://www.dropbox....perabis.7z?dl=0


By the way, I also would like to name Montezuma's Return, a game I enjoyed a lot as a kid:

Hard to play it nowadays; in some computers it runs too fast, in others it doesn't work at all.
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User is offline   leilei 

#9

Montezuma's Return! especially doesn't like to be emulated. Its strange Voodoo2-requiring multitexturing technique with fake bumpmapping on their detail textures pisses emulators off, as well as newer Voodoo hardware.

View PostBloodGuy, on 16 March 2019 - 12:49 PM, said:

.It was called Desperabis and maybe in some way the very first ever FPS RPG

not sure if you've heard of Ultima Underworld...

This post has been edited by leilei: 16 March 2019 - 05:02 PM

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User is offline   Perro Seco 

#10

View Postleilei, on 16 March 2019 - 04:39 PM, said:

Montezuma's Return! especially doesn't like to be emulated. Its strange Voodoo2-requiring multitexturing technique with fake bumpmapping on their detail textures pisses emulators off, as well as newer Voodoo hardware.
Excuse my ignorance, but what kind of emulators are you talking about? I was thinking about a virtual machine, but maybe there are better options. I'll also add that I always played the game with the VGA mode rather than 3Dfx.
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User is offline   leilei 

#11

This one
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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#12



keyboard works better than mouse

This post has been edited by Forge: 16 March 2019 - 06:49 PM

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User is offline   Avoozl 

#13

Maybe Zax: The Alien Hunter. I've never heard anyone speak about that game.
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User is offline   BloodGuy 

#14

Legend of the seven Paldins, the game that used the BuildEngine without licence in the middle of the 90s.
The video description says only a handful boxed versions were sold in Taiwan.



This post has been edited by BloodGuy: 16 March 2019 - 11:34 PM

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User is offline   Zaxx 

  • Banned

#15

I have a soft spot for Requiem: Avenging Angel. It's not exactly forgotten because it has a Steam release (which is nothing special, just the original game with a glide wrapper on it) but I rarely see people talk about it yet it is a pretty cool shooter. Turning people to salt never gets old, the level design is an interesting early attempt at a continous experience much like Half-Life, the weapons feel satisfying to use and the enemies are really nicely animated for the time.
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User is offline   axl 

#16

View PostZaxx, on 16 March 2019 - 11:52 PM, said:

I have a soft spot for Requiem: Avenging Angel. It's not exactly forgotten because it has a Steam release (which is nothing special, just the original game with a glide wrapper on it) but I rarely see people talk about it yet it is a pretty cool shooter. Turning people to salt never gets old, the level design is an interesting early attempt at a continous experience much like Half-Life, the weapons feel satisfying to use and the enemies are really nicely animated for the time.


Yes I I have been wanting to play it, but I can't manage to run it properly. Any suggestions ?
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User is offline   NightFright 

  • The Truth is in here

#17

Requiem is not on GOG any more. Does anyone know why that happened?

This post has been edited by NightFright: 17 March 2019 - 01:14 AM

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User is offline   Aristotle Gumball 

  • banned!

#18

View PostPerro Seco, on 16 March 2019 - 04:06 PM, said:

By the way, I also would like to name Montezuma's Return, a game I enjoyed a lot as a kid:

Hard to play it nowadays; in some computers it runs too fast, in others it doesn't work at all.


Dude!!! I've been looking for this game for years. I never knew what the hell it was, only played as a kid. Thanks!
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User is offline   Zaxx 

  • Banned

#19

View Postaxl, on 17 March 2019 - 12:52 AM, said:

Yes I I have been wanting to play it, but I can't manage to run it properly. Any suggestions ?

I only have one: if you pick it up on Steam don't touch the default stuff. If you want to run the game properly you have to stick with the 3dfx mode so nowadays you'll need a Glide wrapper (there is a DriectX mode that's actually better than 3dfx because it supports more resolutions but it's full of gamebreaking stuff on modern systems). The Steam version has nGlide but I've heard that dgVoodoo2 works too.

The Steam version's fine if you ask me, you can change the resolution in the nGlide config file so you can do stuff like having the game being rendered at a 16:9 resolution but with keeping the 4:3 aspect ratio. In-game you can change the FoV in the console so you can set the game up pretty nicely. One thing to keep in mind if you change the FoV: the sniper rifle's zoom will reset it to the default value every time you use it but it's a totally useless weapon anyway so that's not a big issue.

This post has been edited by Zaxx: 17 March 2019 - 03:51 AM

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User is offline   MrFlibble 

#20

View PostPerro Seco, on 16 March 2019 - 04:06 PM, said:

It was made in 2001 by just one person, and it was distributed freely from his website. Here's a link to download it: https://www.dropbox....perabis.7z?dl=0

Better yet, here's the official site (Wayback Machine copy).
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User is offline   MrFlibble 

#21

This seems like a good place to remember a game that I discovered recently but keep forgetting to post about. The game is called Gunmetal and it seems very obscure nowadays. I learned about it by chance when a user in another forum asked to help remember a tank-driving game from the second half of the 90s. I wanted to suggest Defiance but forgot the title :) and went to look for it at MobyGames. Gunmetal somehow caught my attention and I tracked down a demo version. Once I got ahold of the controls the game made a very favourable impression.

Here's a gameplay video for you to get the idea of what it is (I love this level):
https://youtu.be/-uoYc-fmXL4?t=25

A complete video walkthrough is available from the same channel:
https://www.youtube....D6059FC677E0CC1

The game takes place in the future where the world is ruled by megacorporations, and you happen to be a remote-controlled hovertank operator in the service of one such entity, Nataka Corp. You complete different missions, upgrade your tank in-between them, and all the while the story unfolds as another corporation declares war on your bosses.

Gameplay is pretty smooth, the levels have some clever design and boast a rather impressive degree of variety. I only played the demo versions, there are two of them with four missions each, but several levels are different between the demos so you get a total of six or seven levels in total. I also liked the music which I gather was written in-house by the developer, a company called Mad Genius software which AFAIK fell apart soon after Gunmetal failed to be a success. Apparently the game did not fare well in the rather thick competition of the 1998 3D FPS market, and some reviewers gave it a low score because they felt it was not up-to-date enough, not original enough etc. etc.

What I liked is that, apart from the really nice atmosphere, the game is very strongly mission based. You don't just blast through various environments to the exit, there are objectives you need to complete, and the levels are complex enough to be called realistic. There's one urban level where you need to get to a corporate office, get up the tower and rescue an executive. The game also conveys the idea that you're at war (as opposed to simply shooting mooks) pretty well too. Fairy often you feel outgunned and will have to manoeuvre and often run away to stay alive.

Overall I'd say that Gunmetal is fairly solid in its gameplay and design. There's a plot going on too if you bother reading all the screens, it's not Nebula award material but ain't trivial either. Someone made a voting poll to have this added to GOG.com, not sure if it's going to happen anytime, and the fact that a newer, similarly titled but completely unrelated game is more widely known doesn't help to rescue Gunmetal from complete obscurity.
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User is offline   Aristotle Gumball 

  • banned!

#22

Interesting synchronization - I just learned about Gunmetal yesterday, looking for "new" old games to play. I also stumbled upon Defiance and it's a pretty interesting game as well. The reviews were awful back in the day, I think people just didn't know what to make of it. Plays kinda like a mix between Quake and Descent:



Has a really solid soundtrack IMO. Brings to mind Deus Ex and some of the voice acting reminds me of System Shock. Just the whole world in general, really.

This post has been edited by thricecursed: 19 March 2019 - 02:14 AM

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User is online   ck3D 

#23

This thread is great because since I've seen it I keep randomly getting recollections of games I haven't played in a good 20+ years, and had completely forgotten about.



I probably spent way too many hours making custom tracks for this game; it came with a very intuitive editor and in general was very customizable. That was probably around the time of my very first Duke levels too. I'm not even a fan of cars and racing games at all.

This post has been edited by ck3D: 19 March 2019 - 02:51 AM

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#24

Does anyone here remember/have the full version of a side-scrolling platformer called Vigilance on Talos V? I only have the Shareware.....
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User is offline   NightFright 

  • The Truth is in here

#25

"Skaphander: Der Auftrag":



This was a German shooter published by Navigo in 1995, using a custom engine called Acknex written by Conitec. You work for a secret organization dedicated to cleaning the world wide web from dangerous virus infections while you are also searching for your lost brother. You are inside of some kind of tank all the time that needs to be recharged occasionally, therefore the controls are a bit slow/laggy. Level design and texturing kinda sucked IMHO, especially when compared to other competitive games of that time, especially Doom or Dark Forces. The "advantage" of its setting was that due to its non-violent/bloody setting (with viruses as enemies), it was considered harmless and did not risk being placed on "the index" (as liable to corrupt the young), which happened to many other games in Germany, such as Doom, Dark Forces or Quake. Setting reminds a bit of "The Matrix", even though this game predates the movie(s) and was therefore kinda ahead of its time.

This post has been edited by NightFright: 19 March 2019 - 06:23 AM

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#26

Always in German context, there is the point-and-click adventure "Dunkle Schatten" (Obscure Shadows) 1994 Published by Art Department Werbeagentur GmbH, Developed by Freelance Development and distributed for free by the German Federal Ministry of the Interior.
Posted Image
Probably the only way to got this outside Germany, especially in a period when Internet wasn't a big global reality yet, was to found it in one of those generic CD-magazines of the 90's that collected shareware and freeware DOS/WIN 3.1 games independently from where they come. I've had it this way.

The game follows the days of the teenager Karsten in helping to create a youth centre in attempt to do something against crime rate and street wandering among young people. However, this is made difficult due the actions of a Neo-nazi gang who spread violence and anti-semite ideals.

I couldn't even know of what was talking about since not know German language, so I've finished it trying every object and dialogue option combination, I still felt satisfied for having completed.

I wasn't even aware of the existence of 2 sequels, "Im Netzwerk gefangen" (Trapped In The Net) in 1996 and "Tod in der Südkurve" (Death In The South Curve) in 2000, that uses real life digitalized images, existed.
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User is online   ck3D 

#27

The talk about FPS games made me remember this one, it's an antiquity but it did get some cult following so I'm not sure it should qualify as completely forgotten. One of the first 3D survival games from 1994. Played this before Duke but it was mostly my cousin who was super into it. As soon as Duke dropped though, none of us really went back.



This post has been edited by ck3D: 19 March 2019 - 01:40 PM

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#28

https://youtu.be/8IxdAEhS_JQ
Amsterdoom is a game set and developed in my country.
Maybe you could've guessed it from the title, but its story takes place in Amsterdam and It's a FPS.
I have vague memories about this game and couldn't remember if I liked it or not, but it was memorable enough for me to keep the original box.

Also, this is developed by the same guy that made A2 racer (also set in the Netherlands).


This post has been edited by themaniacboy: 20 March 2019 - 03:57 PM

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User is offline   Sledgehammer 

  • Once you start doubting, there's no end to it

#29

The entire catalog of PC-98XX games, really. :lol:

But anyway, this gem:

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User is offline   Tekedon 

#30

This seems like a quite fitting thread to post this. I'm looking for an old (probably very obscure) dosgame I think, though might have been on Windows. It was a 3rd person cartoonish racing game with sprites (played the demo of it probably around 1995 but might be older) There was one level where cows would occasionally run out on the road and you could drive over them. Also there was one level with thunder. Not sure what more to say about it, but it was pretty original for it's time.
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