Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

Thomas the Shinyhunter · Feb 3, 2018

Mario and Luigi: Partners in Time isn't so much obscure, just underrated for me. It's really unique and innovative controlling the Mario Bros, past and present, in the classic style of the beloved M&L series, something only returned to in Inside Story (And Paper Jam, but we don't talk about that mess of glitches. If you glitch correctly, you can beat it in about a fucking minute), but replacing the Baby Bros with Bowser. With the Superstar Saga remake out now, I hope at some point, a PiT remake comes to the Switch, or whatever new console Nintendo has at the time. The writings's good, the gameplay is top notch, and the timeline is even more confusing. Can't wait.

Arsenic · Feb 3, 2018

SPEC OPS: THE LINE

Are you interested in something a lot more serious in your shooter? Spec ops is the game you want to play. If you can stomach the extremely generic (by design) 3rd person shooting gallery gameplay, this game has a lot to say.

It is a modern take on works such as Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, that touches (quite heavily) on topics more relevant to today's wars (and the wars of yesteryear as well.

It has left many an avid shooter fan jaded and not wanting to pick up shooters for a week or more,

you know... it's very hard to explain a game without explaining the game, just go play it, the story is fantastic!

Quto · Feb 16, 2018

Lost in Blue
Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii

Another great game by Konami.... and ruined and tossed into the garbage bin of forgotten games deserving a second chance.

For anyone who read my experiences with Survival Kids, this game is basically the same premise in some sense; though instead of a young child, your a teen who gets shipwrecked on an island in the middle of nowhere and have some additional game mechanics to work with. Your basically attempting to survive by gathering materials, forging weapons and tools which can break from overuse, forging backpack space and making your own furniture. The difference between Survival Kids and Lost in Blue, aside it being in 3D, is that you now have to keep up with a 'partner' and their health and it gets complicated as the later games go on... and I mean REALLY complicated in some sense, but I want to focus on the first two games.

You meet your partner early on in the game while looking for shelter and they become in charge of cooking your meals. IF you need to move them somewhere, you take their hand and guide them through the jungle, kinda like a romantic couple surviving together except one of them has a sprained ankle that needs hospital attention? It's kinda hard to explain the latter though it's a vid game and logic can be anything goes.

As far as herbs and mushrooms go, like Survival Kids, you don't know what does what until you experiment, though in the first, once you experimented, it won't tell you outright or even record what does which so some memory of what gives what boost or poison or status effect is needed and to keep from getting a game over and accidentally killing your partner, eat the stuff first before bringing it back to eat for dinner for consumption of dinner. Another difference is there aren't multiple endings like in Survival Kids, your basic objective is to survive and escape the island together. You explore the island for a way to get off whether it's finding materials to build an awesome raft or locating a pirate base or...... well, anything. You simply need to find and get off the island and that's it.

Konami really did a number to themselves over this IP however.... I mean the game is fun, all of the iterations are challenging and I own all of the current Lost in Blue game's on the Nintendo DS. In fact, if you can find a copy for about $5-$10, I strongly recommend picking it up. The game spans over 3 iterations, first one being a challenging classic, the second being more forgiving and more challenging and the last being difficult and fun all together. Though with 3 games from this series and a Wii title, you think Konami would attempt to publish a 3DS title, right?... Well, With them re-branding themselves into the casino-slot-machine business and only making METAL GEAR games with the newest iteration being about ZOMBIES among every other person on the internet gathering data and republishing how Konami is the worst company to develop any game under with EA game's being the runner up, it ain't going to happen in our lifetime or our existence. Lost in Blue had 4 releases, 3 on the DS and 1 that didn't do well on the Wii.... because it's the Wii. If they ever do return to game development and this title has SOME form of acknowledgement to develop, they'll probably take it, rename it, rebrand it to.... I don't know, Lost in Aqua or Lost in Disney World, survive on the left overs from the park visitors, escape the park only using what you find in t he park; get goofy's head and go Five Nights at Freddies on the park visitors!

.... Whatever the reason, this is another chunk of evidence to add to 'that' pile of reasons that Konami must either go out of business or die again... I find another overlooked Konami Game that get's butchered or screwed over, I'll have a nice Konami BBQ.... Maybe BOKTAI!..... Nah, not yet.

Quto · Feb 19, 2018

Toonami Lockdown
PC

... Alright; If there are any fan's of the old Toonami, those of you who had internet access and logged in all those years ago to play this old title; I hope you had a badass time like I did playing this old game.

A little background to those without cable TV and only have access to the internet or just like reading about the old days of something that was good and probably is still great. Toonami was a block of time on Cartoon Network where they would originally promote action-cartoons, not the slap-shtick stuff of Tom and Jerry or the comedy based stuff such as Power Puff Girls or Dexter's Laboratory or even Johnny Bravo. I mean shows that relied purely on action as the center piece of nearly every episode such as Batman Beyond, Samurai Jack or Big O.... Fun fact, Japan based Big O off of the Batman Animated Series cartoons without knowing what to do about it's story, it's story and characters being an odd confusing mess.... IT DESERVES A SECOND CHAN- moving on. Later on, it became a bigger gateway for anime translated, dubbed and brought to the airways, fresh out of Japan where we now get Black Clover, Both Dragon Ball Super and Kai, Cowboy Bebop and so on.... Well, not fresh, more like they sent us cookies and the cookies we're translated to English.

Toonami sort of kicked into higher gear when they presented Tom, the current host of the whole block whose job as a 3D character is to run the show. When the guys running the block wanted to do more fun stuff for their block, they did and started doing 'side' stories with Tom, Sarah and the Absolution. They then proceeded to create GAMES based off those series. Trapped in Hyperspace was a game based in Toonami's universe where it was mostly a 3D 3rd Person Shooter with guns and so on. Though I'm not here to talk about a game noone can no longer play anymore, I'm here to talk about Lockdown, a game that can still be 'technically' played... Sort of; it's complicated so bear with me while I explain the backstory to the game Lockdown.

In the show, Tom and Sarah come across an old ship giving off a distress signal; trapped in a tractor beam when they got too close. They release the DOK's, which are combat based defense probes or combat based 'Clydes,' which are hit with an EMP; loosing control over them from a long distance, insert science techno-babel where they give the players on Earth full control of the DOK's to go and destroy the Tractor Beam thing. Each week, a new episode from Lockdown will play on TV, opening up the next level in the game and providing players with a slightly expanded arsenal of weapons to help you fight your way through. We still have the TV show of them A-ok so we won and Toonami could keep going!

The game play was..... actually an interested blend of shooter and RPG. You would have your DOK or party or DOKs laid out like in a traditional RPG fashion with different weapons your equipped to each one assigned to a button along with an accessory like a shield. When their ATB bar filled up, if you clicked on a weapons or pressed the key for that weapon, then your mouse would become an aiming reticle. You would then have to point the reticle to the enemy and click to fire your weapon; you could fire on certein body part's to disable certain enemy abilities or just do damage; you would then have to throw up your shield to counter any damage you tool so long as your shield could hold before it breaks. For a 2D game attempting something like this was kind of awesome and it was fun to play through and it's a game I would consider classic or a retro title I can keep coming back to in order to play and still have fun.

NOW, the bad news, where this is going to get complicated; you can no 'longer' play the game on Cartoon Network. After Toonami died and went off the air for a good while before surprising us with a resurgence as an April Fools Joke, they removed their entire website; the games they had, wallpapers and so on. It's... Saddening for gent's who we're fans of the action block itself; I even enjoyed Toonami Jet Stream when they had Shows like MAR; Marchen Awakens Romance on the run there and prince of Tennis. However, there is still... Sort of a way to play it. Fans of Toonami with a degree in computer's or some for of hacking skill started literally digging into cartoon network and I mean they digged hard. They we're able to rip every single video game from Toonami's old site; apparently, they never deleted the site, just permanently sealed off access to it until our friendly-ish computer nerds came across the files, copied them, downloaded them and began setting up a file download to anyone smart enough to set-it-up. Among the files, Toonami Lockdown was one of the few to grab, but to get it working, you would need some old tech software and a web-server to set it up. The software being Adobe Shockwave, which can still be found and installed from old archives and as far as a webserver; if you got it or know how to setup a pseudo server, you can play it. There use to be a site that setup these old games, but they went out. Hopefully there's someone still out there with this title running or a tutorial on how to get it running.

Before I sign off; if there are any die-hard fans of Toonami around who enjoy some decent heavy base music that sort of crosses between techo, rave or mix; the folks over at Toonami arsenal have music albums based on the action block... No, I'm not joking if your asking Toonami had their own music to sell off.

The first one being Deep Space Bass which is difficult to locate a hard copy of to begin with. The following, Black Hole Megamix never hit store shelf's period, but the music to it is pretty good, at least for my taste's in music it is. And to top it off, if you've been living under a Rock, the original Toonami crew is re-introducing the stories or 'The Intruder over Toonami and the another one being 'the countdown,' maybe they'll do Lockdown this year.

Mr. X · Feb 20, 2018

Lets break out the old DS and see what I find... You know what, I lied. I'm just going to talk about Infinite Space, like I always do when someone mentions obscure titles.

As far as I'm aware, this was the most extensive game made for the DS. It has a extremely large number of characters that you can recruit (Ranging from the freebies, to the path locked, and a few guide dang its), but that pales in comparison to the selection of ships the game gives you to choose from (See characters for how this selection spans), as well as all the options you have for customizing them via the games module system. You could also modify each individual ships weapons (Well, with the exception of those vessels that have locked weapons) with a wide variety of options going from the standard single target laser, all the way up to the extremely heavy hitting quantum torpedos.

Fleet battles aren't the only fights you'll be getting into. The game also has a rudimentary melee combat system, though it's one that most people hate and the game could easily have went without.

But back to space combat. It's not just limited to lining your ships up in front of a enemy fleet and pounding them into space dust. If you wanted to, you could give em the death by a thousand cuts treatment with a swarm of strike-craft or - on a second playthrough - mechs. Though I wouldn't really recommend this - A full swarm of strike-craft, while able to rip anything to shreds, is also going to lag the DS a lot. As will using a fleet made up of the larger ships.

Or you could just wedge your fleet right next to a enemy fleet and board them. I'd recommend against this though, because the melee system is terribad.

As for the story, given the number of branching paths it will take multiple playthroughs (4 iirc, although they get easier since NG+ keeps character levels and money) if you want to see everything. As for the plot itself, as much as I like the game I dislike that it pretty much gives up one of the games main plot-points within the first five minutes. (The writers tried hiding it behind the standard sci-fi mumbo-jumbo, but it's not really that hard to figure out.) As for the plot itself, the game was inspired by Arthur C. Clarkes novel Childhoods End, so if you've read that (or seen one of the tv adaptations of it) then you'll have some idea as to the ending.

Also, if you've ever watched Legend of the Galactic Heroes you'd like this game. I've seen frequent comparisons between that and this game.

Quto · Feb 24, 2018

Grandia

Ok folks, BIG QUESTION! Who here has heard of Grandia?... You've only heard of Grandia 2?.. Only because it was one steam?! and the port is just breaking down EVERY 30 MINUTES?! NOONE HAS EVER BOTHERED TO LOOK FOR THE FIRST ONE?!

... Ok, Before I get into things; I want to explain Grandia to anyone who hasn't picked up a controller or those who HAVE picked up a controller, have a soft spot for RPG's and never bothered looking at this series. Grandia is a game series as Final Fatnasy is a series to itself. None of the games 'link' or create a story, rather they are as separate from one another and each story is encapsulated to itself. When most people think of a good game from the series, they point to the 2nd game claiming it's the best of the series and I agree with them. However this is a topic of games over-looked and I think the first installment of the game released on the PSX is just as good.

Why do I think that though? Well, first off; the whole opening is animated beautifully! You pop in the disk, wait for the game to load, and before you get to the title screen where you can load or start a new game, your treated to an opening with a whole sense of adventure about it and it's just looks freaking beautiful. A taste of what your we're going to encounter on this long adventure. The music is beautifully orchestrated and I'm just a sucker for old Anime or the scenes in the opening that have the old drawing style. When I mean old Anime, I mean aged anime where it was produced between the 90's and 2001, it's a style of art I grew up with when I first got into anime, so it's sort of a 'look rose-tinted set of glasses' thing for me on that end, so bare with me.

How does the rest of the game play out? Your a preteen named Justin, setting out on an adventure with friends where your lives are constantly put in peril from monster's, soldiers from another country looking for an ancient city and ancient traps established to protect those cities. That aside, He claims he would go out and claim his fortune and make his named reknown when or if he finds the ancient city called Angelou along with his friends and companions he makes along his long journey to the other end of their world. Such as meeting his love interest and saving her from being kidnapped and betrothed to some dumbass. Finding a small village of half-Canines and humans as they go to the 'edge' of their world to explore beyond it and raiding ruins for treasures and tools to better defend yourself. The game feels like having an adventure through a world your travel as your traveling with your companions. For most people going through some point of a hell-ish day or hell-ish life, this is actually a pretty pleasant escape for them. Even if it's not their cup of tea.

How does the game's take on the RPG system play out? How do I describe it.... For a turn-based RPG, it's a system I enjoy greatly. The battle system setup has methods to where you can prevent your opponent from attacking you. You can run around on the combat field using Evade and your opponent has a chance to miss their attacks. You have skills where you can delay your opponent's actions to prepare for those actions to fight back; So on and so forth. How does tha-? All the participants in the battle share the same ATB combat bar. You have a long ATB Bar, when the portrait reaches the far right, you select your action and that action executes. The skills can move other portaits back to delay attacks and you can move about the battle field in turns as monsters can freely roam to reach you if they choose too. If anything, you can probably think of it as a War Hammer tabletop game... minus the dice rolls and any immaturity from opponent players and anything else that goes with Warhammer.... I never played Warhammer mind you, though that's sort of what these battles feel like in a small sense except at a much faster pace. A Fast paced Tabletop RPG where noone has to check the rules every 10 minutes to see if they punched a ghost.

This is still a fun game and worth playing through.... I just wish that they had it republished from PC like they did for Grandia 2 and even then, I wish that Game Art would take the time to FIX their Grandia 2 PC port, OR ALTERNATIVELY, release their Grandia MMORPG to the west.... Which I'll address later if I find an overlooked-good-mmorpg; KINDA HARD TO DO WITH ALL THE FREE-TO-PLAY STUFF; except Runescape.... Runescape was kinda fun starting out until they went legit with a full download... I WILL NOT DO ONE ON MAPLESTORY, IT TAKES 3 MONTH'S TO LEVEL FROM LVL: 99 TO LVL: 100... AND THERE IS NOT HING COMPLEX ABOUT IT; SERIOUSLY! NOTHING COMPLEX ABOUT IT, PICK A CLASS AND UPGRADE NOTHING BUT THE STAT ASSOCIATED WITH IT!!!... It's... Just..... Bad game design.

If you want and have your old PS3 kicking, you can pick up this PS1 classic off of the Playstation store for about $10. Game runs on PSP pretty well; PS Vita if you have one lying around as well. If you have the time, I recommend going out there and looking for it; its a fun play through and still a pretty good collectable.

Quto · Feb 26, 2018

Freedom Wars
PS Vita

I HAVE YET TO AFFORD MONSTER HUNTER WORLD!!!.... mostly because bills and my job's payment frequency is putting me on a spin, a lot.

SO; I went digging on a console either everyone hated or everyone never bother buying. So much so that Sony abandoned it's support in America.... It's sad actually, its a pretty good console. Freedom Wars was a game that released on the PS Vita and this is one of those games that makes getting a PS vita worth getting that wasn't Soul Sacrifice or Little Big PLanet Vita..... Seriously...

Freedom Wars is... A VERY rough clone of Monster Hunter with a large number of exceptions. You take missions to fight other cities for supplies and territory since resources become so scarce that they consider Knowledge an important resources and even skills. You get amnesia, it's considered a crime for losing those resources the city declares it's own and your imprisoned and or hunted... Before I go into the story, I want to present the differences between Monster Hunter and Freedom Wars. First off, your given a hookshot which is referred to as a thorn... When I mean hookshot, You can shoot the wall or the giant robots which takes the place of monsters and mount, stick or reach higher areas to act as vantage points. The thorns have other functions as well such as healing or creating a healing hub, making a wall to block projectiles or stun just about anything that can move. You have a wide variety of weapons from guns such as shotguns, missile launchers, all that fun stuff. Aside from guns, you also have access to a wide variety of melee weapons to use for close combat situations such as sawing off limbs.... Which leads me to explain about the 'monsters' you fight in the game.

You don't 'hunt' monsters, rather you hunt and fight robotic mechs, and any human escort they have, designed to kidnap people and spirit them away to other cities; like I said before, people are considered resources in this setting and most of these mechs are stealing about 95% of the time, scientists.... And sometimes your NPC partners in story mode who join your party if you FAIL a mission and they die or something critical happens to them. What to note about these mechs though is that they have limbs that can be sawed off.... As in, if one of these weird mechs has a rocket launcher on it's arm, you can cut off the wrist if you have good aim to hookshot said body part and try to saw it off. You can also saw off arms, heads, wings if they're there even and all sorts of stuff. Once they fall, you can gather them as parts to use to build your own stuff with the help of these scientist's you save and develop new tech or trade in for years off of your prison sentence..... whiiiiiiiiich I'll get too soon. Want to focus on the mechanics. You can also all hookshot the thing as a group and tug it down to lay in more damage before it gets back up. It's kinda of awesome. So in a rough short, you can probably think of this game as Monster hunter with 3rd Person shooter elements.

The story is sort of interesting. You are a prisoner they refer to as a Sinner against their current society.... For losing your memory and the device or cyborg/android who keeps record of your contributions and prison sentence is destroyed as well. Your provided a new Cyborg/Droid thing, your sentence in prison has been set to 1 million years and you have to start to all over again. You loose your rights even to do stuff. You loose the right to recline and sleep well, the right to speak to people of opposite genders, the right to even speak to people who are not imprisoned, the right to where certain clothes, retain certain resources and so on.... More or less, you lose you ability to act like a human being; If you violate anything that you don't have the permit for, you get years added back to your sentence, and it get's annoying fast. From here, you undergo missions for the city your represent, shaving years off your prison sentence and earning points which can be cashed in to either buy back your rights to do things, buy things and even speak. While your earning your stuff back, you learn of a way to get rid of the ridiculous system of resources through an unknown source and you pursue it. I HAVE YET TO BEAT IT AND I'M ON THE FINAL BOSS PEOPLE!.... And even I'm at a loss for it's difficulty.

...Moving on; Like Monster Hunter, you do mission, forge new gear to help kill things bigger than it. I picked this game for two reasons..... one; the Vita needs some love as much as Sega. A console abandoned by it's own company and a decent platform to boot. Japan still makes games for it and the Vita is still a big thing out in Japan so there is some life for it; not enough though to convince Sony to keep supporting it out west... The second reason being, if you have a vita but can't afford monster hunter world yet; this is an awesome game to pick up and try out.

coolnameguy91 · Feb 27, 2018

Psi-Ops. A great, cheesy and over-the-top Sci-Fi movie in video game form. You play as an augmented super soldier that plays similarly to Starkiller in Force Awakens, with guns and more powers. You battle through a top secret complex highlighted by the MGS-esque super-powered bosses that run the place

Quto · Mar 4, 2018

https://gamerobscure.blogspot.com/

I started a blog on Obscure video games; mind you I still intend to post back here on any new ones I find, but you can also start expecting them there on the blog as well for each new one I post. The first published post is a re-review of my experiences with Oni; the game developed by Rockstar and Bungie after digging a little further on the interesting path this game has. Such as Bungie's OTHER PAST games, which they in themselves are also obscure gems that I will have to hunt down myself at some point.

The next post I make...... If I can find it, will be on a bungie game before Halo, before Oni and before Destiny.... If not; I'll get my paws on Soma, a game a fellow poster made here in Gamer Obscurea and post my own experiences to the blog, among any other games I can find and get ahold of.... I hope.

Quto · Mar 17, 2018

MARATHON
PC, Linux, Mac

Alright, I was able to track down a free copy of this old game over the internet and did a little digging on the games during some of my spare time.... And it's an ok game. Marathon was one of those PC games Bungie developed after another one of their earlier titles and after a little more digging, I discovered the game was originally meant to run on the Mac PC; not the new Apple computer you have to pay lord knows how much to keep functioning properly, but the older fashion ones from Windows 2000 to XP Era and up. Mind you, I run Windows and Linux machines and was unable to get ahold of a traditional copy, even if I wanted too, I don't have much cash flow to work with to go find old tech or even the parts for that old Tech to work. In fact, if I had the knowledge and resources, I'd make a pirated update for Windows XP to run and operate as a 64-bit OS.... But I digress.

After playing Marathon for a while, I found the game reminiscent of Doom since the title uses pseudo 3D.... Well, any game that uses pseudo 3D is going to remind me of Doom. If there are any differences though that separate Marathon from that old Title is the ability to duel wield weapons.... Before It was a thing in Halo 2, It was already a staple in Marathon, though the only way I was able to experience using duel wielding guns was with the pistols so there's not that much to write off on. Aside from that, There we're levels where you had to go out into space and enter environments with no atmosphere that it consumed oxygen and you had to watch it while fighting your way through the level to reach pockets of air and stations to replenished your oxygen tank.

As far as the game's story goes... I'll have to admit, it's sort of difficult to get a grasp on for me. Humans attempting to hollow out a moon for colonization and mining purposes and fighting aliens as well as gather logs from the game itself.... I mean, There are PC terminals with walls of text explaining the entire game's story and I've not even scratched the surface in an attempt to piece together Marathons story.... Someone else might have, but it's a little bit beyond me for the time being and I've enjoy what I played.

If you have time and want to give the game a run, even for you collectors out there, You can play the updated version for free; google it and all 3 Marathon games are up for grabs on all platforms. If you prefer to play it on what it was natively meant to be played on, Good luck in your hunt for the physical copies.

Quto · Mar 27, 2018

Megabyte Punch
PC

Folk's who dig into the obscure, with Smash Bros. Gracing our face's with the Inklings and Funimation wanting to ask Nintendo about including Goku to the Roster... Among other fighters and can't wait to Smash some faces in while settling very old play ground disputes which game character would win in a fight, Pikachu or Solid Snake; I want to show everyone a game out here from it's lime light and hope there are some people who haven't heard of this. Maybe even sate their lust and love for Smash.

Megabyte Punch is roughly a Smash clone where every fighter is a 'Mii' fighter... except with MULTIPLE combinations that Nintendo wouldn't touch with a 8-foot pole. What do I mean? In the game's story, you play as one of this polygon mech's and while I'll admit, I can't remember it 'correctly' but you can go into it to collect part's for your mech and the part's you collect to customize your mech are 'nearly' endless. You can give your mech a sniper rifle, and he can do damage from the farthest side of the area pretty quickly. Give your mech a shield, and he'll take less damage from the front and even more less when guarding. Give him a head that gives him the ability to fly or a body to expand his threshold to keep him from dying out, even recolor them, so on and so forth.

How fighting works, is sort of like a traditional match of Smash bros. Bring in your fighter and beat the snot out of each other. How your knocked out is sort of unique; You build up damage taken and it's suppose to make you lighter and fly off the stage like a traditional gladiator, The same principle applies in Megabyte punch, though there are multiple ends to save yourself as well as get knocked out. If you fly off the stag and gain control before you hit a black block that cause's instant death, you can rocket yourself back to the field to keep fighting. On the other end of the spectrum, if your arena has a ceiling and you go flying, if you hit that ceiling while lost control, you will receive a knockout and be out of the game for that stock, though that's just my initial observations to the game itself.

The music is upbeat and hyper if you can take the heavy beep bass techno and pretty well composed. If your looking for a game to sate your urge for Smash brothers, I recommend giving this one a look.

Quto · Apr 13, 2018

Skies of Arcadia
Dreamcast, Gamecube

This is an RPG from one of my all time favorite consoles and was one of the games that became the reason to get a Sega Dreamcast. Some of you might ask, why am I including this into a list of obscure games if most people know about it? Like my review of Golden Sun, It's another game that will soon be or already lost to the through's and sea's of time and memory; Or rather, it's another game for people just now getting into gaming to look at and pick up the controller themselves... That and there's a link at the bottom of this post with a petition to go to Sega and show people WANT an HD re-release of this title to return to Arcadia... I also wanted to pay Omage to an RPG that deserve's credit where credit is due to a good game. SCREEN SHOTS INCLUDED!

In Skies of Arcadia, your a sky pirate... Not the traditional sky pirate of Final Fantasy 12, I mean a literal, flying wooden ship sky pirate, raiding large warships for their stuff and taking off with said stuff while beating the living sh*t out of their opponents before sinking or let sailing their victims. You are raiding the ship of a fancy and advance kingdom and rescue a woman with strange garments. After you rescue her, you learn she comes from another kingdom known as the silver kingdom Luna; which you down know where such kingdom is, but you learn she game there to retrieve something called a moon crystal to stop the awakening of an ancient weapon called a Gigas.... Which I won't spoil here, GO PLAY THAT GAME TO FIND OU- moving on, with her in tow, you begin you adventures as a sky pirate and explore the games world, earning a title for yourself and going down as a legend in history as the greatest sky pirate and fighting unfair, overpower doppelgangers of yourself. You explore a massive world of floating islands, land marks, flying fish, getting involved in ship battles, bounty hunting for landmarks and other pirates alike in a massive-ish world.... It's not as massive as one would like to give; it's a big world to explore, don't get me wrong, but after exploring and going to it's end and edges, it's difficult to go beyond.

The Game's battle system is odd, but unique, traditional RPG turn based with some location or Area of Effect elements... in a small sense of the meaning to it. You have a 'team spirit' bar at the top which acts like a 'shared' mana pool. If you get ready to perform a special move or use magic, they use points from this bar at the top of the screen and perform the actions, everything from a simple explosion spell to SUMMONING YOUR CREW FOR A SLAUGHTERING OF TOUR ENEMIES AS YOU ROB THEM OF EVERYTHING FROM THEIR HP TO TO GOLD AND WEAPONS! MWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!....*Ahem* This aside, Magic itself is a little bit of a different story, each character has their own MP point or stat they use. Each time a spell is used, 1 point of mana is used and the spell uses the spirit from said spirit pool to pull off the rest in battle.... it's one point outside of battle for healing. ~~LOTS OF HEALING!~~ Aside from the standard RPG battles, you also have ship battles. You fight other battles, ship vs. ship and what your ship has equipped will determine how well you ride out your battles from cannons that deal damage over a set period of time to torpedoes that hit 2-4 turms later and if you can dodge your opponent while you can.

A fun minor note to add, this game was one of the view to include DLC to the games console.... No, I'm not joking. Sega experimented a lot with the Dreamcast over it's internet abilities and DLC was one of them. Though the thing you could download was a powerful sword for Vyse, the pirate you play the game as and you could only get it through Sega's Sega?Net. You didn't even have to pay for it, the DLC was free! It save to your game's Save file once it downloaded.

488664-skies-of-arcadia-dreamcast-screenshot-aika-heals-vyses.jpg

Next bit the music... If I could have an orchestra, I would have each of these tracks composed for kicks and attend the show opening night. It's the kinda of music you would want to see in it's own OST from Sega.... Though it might be better to go through Itunes, Bandcamp and google play for you music on this stuff.

My closing notes.... because I CAN'T DO THIS GAME JUSTICE!!!! EVEN ON A LIST OF FORGOTTEN GAMES AND THIS ONE THAT MAY SOON JOIN THEM WITH IT'S DIE HARD FANS, I CAN'T DO JUSTICE without spoiling any more of the story. Other than there probably will never be a Skies of Arcadia 2 and before I get a thousand angry.... whatever of anything, this is a game of exploration and piracy.... mostly the first with heavy RPG elements, There will be nothing left to explore in Arcadia. The world circles around, so there's no Flat Earth Theory or Boundries to the game itself, NO INVISIBLE WALLS GENT'S! After the game ends, there's nothing to explore beyond that.... You could give the argument WHY NO GO TO SPACE AND GO ALL TREASURE PLANET ON THIS!? Then it wouldn't be Skies of Arcadia 2, it would be Stars of Arcadia... I guess you could argue going above the clouds and exploring islands in high atmospheres or below where the remains of earth are just heavy with little to no oxygen... but why go that far?.. If there we're to be a Skies of Arcadia Sequel, it would have to either be a prequel or they would have to go to another planet and call it Arcadia. Even then, for those who BEAT skies of arcadia, why do we want to go back? Has enough been wrapped up? has everything been explored? Has every treasure chest been opened to death and back? Has the game been beaten in one long speedrun on a DDR pad or Marracca's enough times with 100% completion? At this point, I would rather this title draw breath again either on PC legally or on a newer console like the PS4 with graphics either touched up or re-vamped to support HDMI. Maybe add a Steam Workshop to add additional side quests, graphics or mods to the game itself and give even more to do with the world. Better yet, any enthusiast's who love this game to be willing to go all Sky Pirate, why not make a game mod for the original Dreamcast or Gamecube to add more to Arcadia, add a new island or add 10-20 or another 50 side quest's?... It might be doable on the Dreamcast port; I mentioned above that this game supported DLC for a sword, so that means there are ways to add stuff to the game, there might be ways to add more stuff to do to Skies of Arcadia, whether it's a sword or something else.

If there are any ports of Skies of Arcadia, I would recommend the Gamecube version HIGHLY! For a few reasons; first, the ultimate sword you can pick up as Vyse is included in the games data, you could only get this sword through DLC on the dreamcast unless you hacked it in yourself. Second, they did a lot of remodeling for the weapons in the game and updates to the polish a little to most of the graphics; most notably the weapons. Some of weapons have been re-balanced, the fights, it's just worth paying for... Sadly, If you go to Amazon, that copy is over $70 used, and over $100 for brand new.... THIS is why we need an HD remake or at least something.... Which is why the petition below is to hopefully convince Sega to do a remake.... Let's push for it and sail the skies of Arcadia once more!

https://www.change.org/p/skies-of-arcadia-hd/u/17917448

Quto · May 3, 2018

Malicious
PS3, PS Vita, PS4

This is a game that's been tossed out of the limelight one too many times and not a lot of folk seem to talk about much. So this is another game to make this list. This is the only game I am going to spoil a bit of the story too because the game give's you the entire story in a massive wall of text....

I am going to condense the text down some and explain the game's mechanics a little.

First off, you play as a math equation.... I am not kidding. In the game, you take the role of a spirit vessel carefully constructed using math, light and numbers by the prophets and assume the identity of the vessel as yourself; A being from another world who has gained control of this vessel, this being of light. to even further drive my point home, when the vessel take's damage, light and yellow-ish bits of light resembling numbers bleed from where the vessel is wounded. Ok, cool your a floating math equation made out of 'numerology,' what's my deal here? You are charged with the job of hunting down the holders of power and fighting a creature of great power that would consume the planet known as 'Malicious.'

Who are these holders of power though?... The prophets foresaw that this great evil would come, so they went to a human who was in a tight spot and offered them power through sacrificing loved ones to get out of that tight spot. In exchange, they would help the prophets fight the Malicious when it arrived. This human was known as the mad queen who was imprisoned and watched her children nearly dying to free her. In their dying state, they offered themselves to the prophets and we're remade into a mask and sword. After she took back her kingdom, she attempted to gather others and generals into a weird fellowship and try (Keyword: try) to hold up her end of the bargain for he power and fight the Malicious, attaining weapons from these same prophets. Though the weapons given to them corrupt them until they become hulking golems and beasts of death and carnage and the queen going mad with power in an attempt to gain more land in the years that come.

You as a spirit vessel, a doll you are controlling from 'another world' become a being who cannot be corrupted by the powers these holders have through the vessel and have to use that vessel to reclaim the powers needed to go fight the Malicious alone.

Game Mechanic time! This game has a weird taste and feel of both Dynasty Warrior and Cuphead, because every single battle is a boss fight with soldiers you need to kill before taking on the holder of power you are facing... but it's a good taste in a sense. When you start in a level, The power holder takes notice, summons it's armies to attack you and attacks you itself; you then have a set time to beat the boss before you as an equation of light and numbers fall apart like a rag doll held together by a very, very, very complex thread. You have to attack the cannon fodder of soldiers to gain Aura, which is used for Healing and boosting your attack power as Sky High as possible. When you gain enough aura (about 2,000 to 3,000 does the trick), you can 'unleash' it and go into this Beserker mode where you deal unimaginable damage, though your aura drains fast like spending money on an EA update needed to play StarWars Battlefront. While in this released mode, you lay as many physical hits whether long ranged or close, on your target before you run out or have to back off and cancel that mode to save aura for your next pass, this tactic is needed to beat the boss within the time limit.

For each power holder you slay, you get a new power from gliding to having more destructive fists and so on. What happens at the end? I really don't know because I've fought my way up to the Big bad Malicious itself and have yet to beat it or have a lucky chance, it is HARD.... It's on a whole other level, it's so ridiculous that I would pay a donation to speed runners to beat this title in one sitting with the highest obtainable rank they can get.

If your interested in the game's feel, Check it out on youtube. You want to play it yourself? Dust off your PS3, find your PSVita or hop onto the PS4 shop and look up a digital copy, it's a fun play through!

Hands · May 3, 2018

Quto said:
Skies of Arcadia
Dreamcast, Gamecube

This is an RPG from one of my all time favorite consoles and was one of the games that became the reason to get a Sega Dreamcast. Some of you might ask, why am I including this into a list of obscure games if most people know about it? Like my review of Golden Sun, It's another game that will soon be or already lost to the through's and sea's of time and memory; Or rather, it's another game for people just now getting into gaming to look at and pick up the controller themselves... That and there's a link at the bottom of this post with a petition to go to Sega and show people WANT an HD re-release of this title to return to Arcadia... I also wanted to pay Omage to an RPG that deserve's credit where credit is due to a good game. SCREEN SHOTS INCLUDED!

In Skies of Arcadia, your a sky pirate... Not the traditional sky pirate of Final Fantasy 12, I mean a literal, flying wooden ship sky pirate, raiding large warships for their stuff and taking off with said stuff while beating the living sh*t out of their opponents before sinking or let sailing their victims. You are raiding the ship of a fancy and advance kingdom and rescue a woman with strange garments. After you rescue her, you learn she comes from another kingdom known as the silver kingdom Luna; which you down know where such kingdom is, but you learn she game there to retrieve something called a moon crystal to stop the awakening of an ancient weapon called a Gigas.... Which I won't spoil here, GO PLAY THAT GAME TO FIND OU- moving on, with her in tow, you begin you adventures as a sky pirate and explore the games world, earning a title for yourself and going down as a legend in history as the greatest sky pirate and fighting unfair, overpower doppelgangers of yourself. You explore a massive world of floating islands, land marks, flying fish, getting involved in ship battles, bounty hunting for landmarks and other pirates alike in a massive-ish world.... It's not as massive as one would like to give; it's a big world to explore, don't get me wrong, but after exploring and going to it's end and edges, it's difficult to go beyond.

The Game's battle system is odd, but unique, traditional RPG turn based with some location or Area of Effect elements... in a small sense of the meaning to it. You have a 'team spirit' bar at the top which acts like a 'shared' mana pool. If you get ready to perform a special move or use magic, they use points from this bar at the top of the screen and perform the actions, everything from a simple explosion spell to SUMMONING YOUR CREW FOR A SLAUGHTERING OF TOUR ENEMIES AS YOU ROB THEM OF EVERYTHING FROM THEIR HP TO TO GOLD AND WEAPONS! MWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!....*Ahem* This aside, Magic itself is a little bit of a different story, each character has their own MP point or stat they use. Each time a spell is used, 1 point of mana is used and the spell uses the spirit from said spirit pool to pull off the rest in battle.... it's one point outside of battle for healing. ~~LOTS OF HEALING!~~ Aside from the standard RPG battles, you also have ship battles. You fight other battles, ship vs. ship and what your ship has equipped will determine how well you ride out your battles from cannons that deal damage over a set period of time to torpedoes that hit 2-4 turms later and if you can dodge your opponent while you can.

A fun minor note to add, this game was one of the view to include DLC to the games console.... No, I'm not joking. Sega experimented a lot with the Dreamcast over it's internet abilities and DLC was one of them. Though the thing you could download was a powerful sword for Vyse, the pirate you play the game as and you could only get it through Sega's Sega?Net. You didn't even have to pay for it, the DLC was free! It save to your game's Save file once it downloaded.

Next bit the music... If I could have an orchestra, I would have each of these tracks composed for kicks and attend the show opening night. It's the kinda of music you would want to see in it's own OST from Sega.... Though it might be better to go through Itunes, Bandcamp and google play for you music on this stuff.

My closing notes.... because I CAN'T DO THIS GAME JUSTICE!!!! EVEN ON A LIST OF FORGOTTEN GAMES AND THIS ONE THAT MAY SOON JOIN THEM WITH IT'S DIE HARD FANS, I CAN'T DO JUSTICE without spoiling any more of the story. Other than there probably will never be a Skies of Arcadia 2 and before I get a thousand angry.... whatever of anything, this is a game of exploration and piracy.... mostly the first with heavy RPG elements, There will be nothing left to explore in Arcadia. The world circles around, so there's no Flat Earth Theory or Boundries to the game itself, NO INVISIBLE WALLS GENT'S! After the game ends, there's nothing to explore beyond that.... You could give the argument WHY NO GO TO SPACE AND GO ALL TREASURE PLANET ON THIS!? Then it wouldn't be Skies of Arcadia 2, it would be Stars of Arcadia... I guess you could argue going above the clouds and exploring islands in high atmospheres or below where the remains of earth are just heavy with little to no oxygen... but why go that far?.. If there we're to be a Skies of Arcadia Sequel, it would have to either be a prequel or they would have to go to another planet and call it Arcadia. Even then, for those who BEAT skies of arcadia, why do we want to go back? Has enough been wrapped up? has everything been explored? Has every treasure chest been opened to death and back? Has the game been beaten in one long speedrun on a DDR pad or Marracca's enough times with 100% completion? At this point, I would rather this title draw breath again either on PC legally or on a newer console like the PS4 with graphics either touched up or re-vamped to support HDMI. Maybe add a Steam Workshop to add additional side quests, graphics or mods to the game itself and give even more to do with the world. Better yet, any enthusiast's who love this game to be willing to go all Sky Pirate, why not make a game mod for the original Dreamcast or Gamecube to add more to Arcadia, add a new island or add 10-20 or another 50 side quest's?... It might be doable on the Dreamcast port; I mentioned above that this game supported DLC for a sword, so that means there are ways to add stuff to the game, there might be ways to add more stuff to do to Skies of Arcadia, whether it's a sword or something else.

If there are any ports of Skies of Arcadia, I would recommend the Gamecube version HIGHLY! For a few reasons; first, the ultimate sword you can pick up as Vyse is included in the games data, you could only get this sword through DLC on the dreamcast unless you hacked it in yourself. Second, they did a lot of remodeling for the weapons in the game and updates to the polish a little to most of the graphics; most notably the weapons. Some of weapons have been re-balanced, the fights, it's just worth paying for... Sadly, If you go to Amazon, that copy is over $70 used, and over $100 for brand new.... THIS is why we need an HD remake or at least something.... Which is why the petition below is to hopefully convince Sega to do a remake.... Let's push for it and sail the skies of Arcadia once more!

https://www.change.org/p/skies-of-arcadia-hd/u/17917448

I sold the gamecube port of this recently! Excellent game, hopefully someone is enjoying my old copy today!

Quto · Jun 6, 2018

I do apologize folks, I haven't been keeping up with this list or catalog, mostly because I've been running the discord and RP for a new iteration of Earth and Sky. Even then, It's becoming slightly harder and harder to look for obscure games on platforms I grew up with as a kid to teen to adulthood here. Like looking for Polybius... Except the game can be literally played, purchased and/or downloaded.

There is another platform I've roughly ignored. The portable PSP, the console that went toe to toe with the nintendo DS with what gamers wanted, a simple console with no gimmicks other than to play games and listen to your music over; maybe some digital videos or disks you bought over UMD's which we're suppose to become the next form of floppy disk but never caught on. Even then, the PSP was more powerful than a DS in terms of graphic performance to a certain extent, had a better library of multiplayer games such as Monster Hunter 1-3 and there are so many hombrew mods with back door and front door angles that it's insane to what could be done with a PSP. Which is why my next few post's will be on obscure PSP games that got released to the market and some of these titles we're "brushed" aside.

157341-Innocent_Life_-_A_futuristic_Harvest_Moon_(USA)-1453541671.png

Innocent Life
PSP, PS2

Innocent life is quite literally what it states in it's subtitle, It's harvest moon set in 'THE FUTURE!' *insert Nostalgia Critic Dramatic Effects.* In the game, you play as an android... A literal android, not a cyborg, not an aging piece of flesh, not one of the more destructive warriors from Dragon Ball Z where they confuse the two and the whole mini Android Saga is the cyborgs blowing sh*t up, just an android. Your are created by a professor who want's you to refer to him as father and set's you up a space to live in an abandoned temple... OK, why? More or less, he has assigned you the job to learn about life, how precious it is and why it must be preserved; and learn this lesson through farming and befriending the villagers on the island your living on alongside with to buy stuff from. To top things off, your farm is ontop of the temple you live in and the patch of land your given it pretty basic and small while the rest of the land is sealed with some type of magic sealing tiles. These tiles and land can be unlocked by exploring the island and getting crystals you discover in your travels. If you can gather 4 water crystals, the land you unlock with those crystals will retain water longer so you don't have to re-water them often as the days pass. Earth crystals for better crops and higher pay-outs, fire crystals fore plant growth and speed, so on and so forth. The tools your are given are pretty nifty as well. You got the basic stuff, such as your hoe, watering can, so on and so forth; then you got the future advanced tools such as sprinklers, multiple baskets you can store stuff into and a trolley system with tracks you can purchase to set baskets onto to carry your crop baskets among other items around the farm on autopilot or when you summon it and so on. Some of these features have already been introduced in Harvest moon before like Harvest Moon 3 for the GBC, though Innocent life takes things a little farther in their execution, farming is just a little easier with the future tools at your disposal and the awesome looking 4-wheeler ATV your given to act as your horse to get to town and back.

CONS! There are a few cons now, the game's pace is hindered by events, including exploration. If your blocked in the cave and can't go further because you need a special tool, you have to either wait for the season to come along where you can forge the tool yourself or wait for the event to happen where your inventor/father invents the tool or a villager gives you a spare tool they no longer need.... It's sort of aggravating, especially when you want more land to til your crops.

There are also no spouses or girls to chase in this title... So no dating sims or dates; which I think was one of the few mechanics a lot of people liked about the harvest moon series in general. There's a girl you do befriend in the game and you become very close together, but nothing that would instate a li8teral relationship, since you are an android... It would be like that futurama episode with Fry dating the Lucy Lu Robot, but the roles are reversed and the human is smarter to not do that... or chooses not to that.

The game is more story driven however and the story does have a purpose to why you have to farm and explore and it's kept my interest til the end. If you got an old PSP, look up the game and give it a whirl. The introductions are sort of like Two Worlds 2, Annoying and painful, but once the game let's you go, it's your world to do with as you see fit.

Quto · Jun 12, 2018

Neverland Card Battles
PSP
by: Yuke's

There is a large library of PSP games and a LOT of them are well known, and I do mean literally; even in multiplayer. So obscure video games in this field is more difficult, THIS INCLUDES FINDING THE HARD TO FIND VIDEO GAMES!

I did find one, that for a card game was actually a lot of fun... for a tactics gentlemen like myself. Never land Card Battles is an interesting fusion of Culdcept Revolt meet's Final Fantasy Tactics or Yu-Gi-Oh meet's Shining Force for the Sega Genesis.

In the game, you play as a dashing rouge who has inherited your grandfather's deck of cards and get guided to a massive underground tomb. You meet the guardian who teaches you about the cards, shows you how to use them, the purpose of your existence there and the game start's. At the bottom of the tomb is suppose to be a big bad villain who's main goal is to take over the world.... 'OF COURSE!' Your objective is as follows, seal it, kill it or re-awaken it. On your way down, you'll meet other people with deck's of their own with their own agenda's, such as one of them wanting to awakening the big bad due to being possessed, another just looking to gain more cards to bring to the surface and do his own world domination scheme's and another just being an explorer documenting the tomb. Etc.

The game is fair and fun if your enjoy games like Culdcept Revolt on your 3DS and has multiplayer options, so it's a spiffy step in the right direction... So why did the game fail?.... Not a lot of people we're into card game tactics mixed with tabletop element's which this is in the end, kinda what it is and the niche audience for this title is incredibly hard to find anymore. I did a little more digging on the developer's, Yuke's and found out they mostly developed sports games; most notably wrestling and fighting titles from the WWE line-up and more obscure fighter titles such as Rumbling Roses.... which is a female boxing game title, so foxy boxing? I won't get into the details since I don't own nor have I played that title, moving on. If you played a WWE, there's a 95% chance that Yuke's we're behind some of the coding to the title and having their shtick published by a publisher such as the dead THQ or EA or Activision or D3 or 2K games... Wow, lot's of publishers.

In my opinion, I think we stabbed a developer in the back as a consumer, because when researching this title, they we're the only gent's I could find as a publisher. They we're a game company trying to get around on their own and join the league of gaming giants with fantasy and arts or something new and we killed it without even looking into this game, the game itself had exposure in the media and said 'HEY AMERICA! JAPAN! THIS IS COMING OUT!" and we ignored it. If you have a love of card games and tactic's I recommend giving this title a VERY hard look and give it a playthrough.

Quto · Jun 18, 2018

Steambot Chronicles: Battle Tournament

This is the last title for the PSP I will be doing for a while, because digging for obscure PSP games is not easy.... Gamers of the obscure, if you find any, I'm all ears; just understand these 3 games I presented from the PSP we're not push-overs to find.

Steambot Chronicles: Battle Tournament is one of those weird Japanese games where the entire thing involved mech's and the multiple uses of those mechs. Whether you entered combat tournaments or used them as a stage for your band. Another weird thing they did with this mech title is they refer to all the other mechs in the game as TrotMobiles... TrotMobiles.... BUT HEY, WHO CARES?! The fun parts about this title are the customization options. You can customize your mech 3 ways from Sunday, give it a chainsaw arm, use a tree as an ogre club, give it a flamethrower and cook your opponents to a nice Backyard BBQ. Mmmmmmmmm, BBQ. You can even customize your face and rear license plates with self made artworks and give everyone on the road THE FINGER! MWAH HA HA HA!!!!.... Awwwwww... .The only thing you can't do is set the town on fire for being so peaceful.

*AHEM* The thing that pads the game out are the requests. In order to progress through the title, you need to do subquests which earn you cash and fame which gives you a better chance to enter tournaments... And that's about it, your main story is to fight your way to the top. You can do AD-HOC with up to 4 friends and slug it out in mech matches, so that's kinda fun.... That's all I got to say about this title.... IT's OLDER OBSCURE Brother on the other hand....

Steambot Chronicles

Steambot Chronicles.... How do I describe it.... A Studio Ghibli film turned into an Elder Scrolls game... I am not joking.

To me, it's not even good at being what it claims you can do in the game's opening such as 'Be the Bad Guy if you want, Steambot Chronicales!; or 'Win the world over with music, Steambot Chronicles!' *insert my frustration with the title music here*. Unlike the game's younger brother on the PSP, this title, I guess, you could say is a Megaman Legends with 20 tons of weight attached to your legs and you run on gas. The controls you have are tank controls and you use the shoulder buttons to commence mech actions...

I am not a big fan of controls like this, though it's understandable, because like the PSP counterpart, there are a TON of customization options, Not as many as the ones in the PSP, but enough to keep your game entertaining. As far as the rest of the game goes, there are a ton of side quests and the main story of the game is subjective, there is a winning end; though it's an end you don't have top explore. You can take on the side quests as jobs, earn cash, fix up your mech, buy clothes, play music and earn money off that music, cook your own meals.... They give you the ability to do a lot of things as if the ma,in spirit of the game is suppose to be how we treat SKYRIM!!! SIDE QUESTING AS WE SLAUGHTER THE TOWN WITH OUR LEVEL 9,000 WARRIOR THIEF AS WE ROB THE TOWN OF IT'S CLOTHES AND SET FIRE TO THE BUILDINGS OF OPPRESSIVE RICH A$$H****.... Don't tell me you never did that on Skooma as a Kajhit.

NOW FOR THE BADDER STUFF, You can't unlock any more of the game's content until you pursue the story a little further, such as watching the starting town get raided by a gang who want's to build a rocket ship, but don't know JACK about rocket science or watch your love interest board a train top go get famous while leaving your amnesia butt in the dirt. It's just aggravating, especially when things are dragged out over a long period of time and even further when you can't destroy the town good-old-fashion style by getting a mech to do it or starting a gang to do it for kicks. Then after that, there's bringing your mech into town, You can't leave it in the middle of the road, your set on autopilot until you pick a space to park, get out and go do stuff, such as eat or you won't be able to run as a human on the world map and have to walk everywhere or have your mech reaction become sluggish... Yes, you have a hunger bar and need to eat to keep the game optimal operation...

All in all, this is actually a good title to track down; you can't do any fun stuff you could do with a mech like in Megas XLR. But the game is reminiscent of an anime where you decide what happens in the story and, like I said, the game is mostly side questing and doing whatever you want from cooking to playing your hormonica on the street or going to classy piano bar and play the piano in a pseudo guitar hero style vid game. It's not half bad... IT's just getting past the story elements to the oint where it's actually fun, and there are a few people I know out there who wouldn't want to deal with that.

Quto · Jun 29, 2018

Vectorman
Sega Genisis, Android, iOS, PC, Linux... Nearly wherever you can find a Sega Classics Game on any platform, this title is in it.

OK folks, this is a game I want to draw attention too and pay my respects too; mostly because it recently hit the android shop for sega's classics. Vectorman was basically the DarkSoul's of the 90's where Megaman meets and Arcade Cabinet for a one-night stand and had this as their kid. It was a HARD game, so hard that there was a $25k contest for the first player to actually beat it! A contest that wasn't won until 3 Month's later and the ****** quality of how the contest was run!

Let's go over the games story a little; shall we? The game is set in a distant future where we trash the planet to where it's no longer breathable or suitable for life, so we do the next laziest thing; we build a bunch of 'orb' bots among other machines to clean up our mess for us while we live in space. A robot named warhead, named after a nuke was attached to a orb bot's head, begins to reprogram the other machines with intent to destroy us. Vectorman, a bot coming back from burning a load of garbage on the sun takes notice to to the other machines and goes off to scrap them and fight warhead.... Ok, from the game's story, we got an environmental message, along with a villain who sounds like he belongs on a heavy metal album and a robot who sounds like he should be a badass of a hero who works as a garbage man.... WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE?!

Game Mechanic wise, you start the game in the city. You have a double jump and a hand that can fire photon's or energy bullets. You can fire in multiple directions by pushing the D-pad in that direction, even under you in mid air and you can duck to dodge incoming attacks. Controls are pretty tight and you have a life bar, 4 hits and you start over, or rather, start from where you destroyed your last TV. That another thing, there are goodies and power-ups all over the levels held inside TV's. You break one, it releases the goody and doubles as your check point. The power ups vary from transforming Vectorman into a bomb, a drill, a car, a fish.... or... Nearly anything, the transformations are actually quite clever, and weapons such as a shotgun laser, bolo, grenade arch like shot, it's a short list, they're handy. Surviving in the game is hard, unless you know what to do or look for, there's a power-up to expand your life in each level and getting a high score or rather, hitting the the score needed to earn extra lives are the key's to surviving Vectorman. Beating it requires just real platforming skill.

Moving onto the contest and how it was handled; I've only been able to reach level 6 before dying(succumbing) to the games cruel difficulty, and playing with me trying. There are 10 more levels, more harder than the one I die on a lot, 16 levels of difficulty ramping up higher and higher that would even give Megaman a run for his money if the blue bomber went through these levels. So the game has earned it's infamy and difficulty with me as a gamer from the 90's, but after doing some digging on the title about the contest, I came across a fact that would have literally enraged any gamer participating the contest.

You see, when the contest was announced and the cartridges we're being flashed, or rather, having the ROM chip loaded up with the game code and what-not. They only programmed a handful of the contest cartridge's to have the screen unlock at the hardest difficulty, which could be adjusted from the game's option menu; which doesn't change much except the point cap you need to hit to get extra lives, easy being every 10k of points, you get an extra life and hard being set at 40k.... Meaning that in order to win the contest, you not only had to buy the game, the game had to have the line of code that gives you a special screen with the proper contest number. So not only did you need to beat the game, on the hardest difficulty, you had to be lucky enough to have a winning cartridge!!! Which I guess ticked a lot of people off back then for those who had the skill to beat the game in advance to discover there was no 'contest' screen after they beat it. The contest though, like I said, was won and beaten by a 12-year-old boy in 3 month's since the games release, who won the cash prize, got to tour Sega HQ and premier in a Sega TV commercial. After which they removed the contest label on most of the future produced cartridges and replaced them with the standard label.

Aside from the difficulty, the game's levels vary in creativity in how you explore them to find the exit or end and like I said before, the controls are pretty tight, not as tight as Megaman, but enough that the death's and mistakes are on the player's skill level and not the game's coding or in-game bugs and glitches. And the music to the game itself is beautiful in itself, the music of Vectorman defines the age of Sega Genesis.. In fact, the music released as it's own Music CD, produced by Sega and distributed in stores for purchase.... One of those CD'S which I do happen to own! It's high tech-ish, electronica-ish music if I had to describe it, (Not much of a man for music genre defenitions) but hearing the title to this game put's me in a mood to keep my mind up and my wit's sharp. In fact, every level of the game's music I've experienced so far has been a joy to listen too while having my butt handed to me by the games difficulty; so much so that I'm not even mad if I loose. Game restart's, I hear that title and I'm ready to play again.

Megaman players, I do recommend giving your copies of Megaman a break while preparing for the next Megaman game from Capcom. Give the Nes a rest, and give this game a shot, you won't be disapointed!

BEFORE I sign off of this personal favorite; I do have a parting gift.
This is for the gamer's who either get the app, a Sega collection thing or pirate the title: I COULD CARE LESS!

Cheat Codes! More or less for the gamer who want's to play casually and not deal with the games difficulty.
During Game Play: Push Pause then...
A, B, Right, A, C, A, Down, A, B, Right, A - Restores Life
C, A, Left, Left, A, C, A, B - Invincibility

Level Warp:
There's the debug option of a level warp you can google, though I find this more fun. When you start the game and get to the Sega logo before the title, you can move Vectorman around. Have him get under and shoot the Sega 24 times and hit Vectorman's head on it 12 times. Sega will start dropping letters. IF you grab enough letters, you can warp to a further level in the game.

Blow-Up The Screen:
This is just an Easter egg, at the same screen before the title where you can move vectorman around, there's a hidden TV along the top, Shoot it to get the power-up that kills all baddies on screen and use it. You will have broken the Sega Logo and the screen.

Quto · Jul 7, 2018

~~SEQUENCE~~
BEforE ThE Echo
PC

I want to introduce folks to another game not very well known, called Seq-... Wait. Since when was it this?.... Oh...... I mean, Before The Echo!

Before the Echo is a game that mixes RPG elements into a DDR format.... To a lot of you, that doesn't sound like the type of RPG to get into... and you would be normally right, though this game has caught my attention before it was called what it is now, which I'll get into why later on.

In the game, your play as yourself who was captured and forced into a tower of monster's which you have no idea how you got there or why you are there other than you are here. You then get guided by a beautiful young girl who instructs you on how to survive the tower, gives you your first set of spells and teaches you the bare basics. From there, you have to escape the tower by reaching the top floor.. As you travel through the tower, you start breaking the 4th wall in terms of the games logic.... As in, the character notices he doesn't need to eat or sleep, he doesn't feel tired and has gone on a long time without being thirsty and start smaking other observations that shouldn't be real.

What happens next, I leave to you, but I'll go over how the fights go. First off, you get to pick your battles, so there's no other reason to blame anyone but yourself of what you get into. The battle starts and your given 3 DDR boxes. One is a Shield, Another is a sword and the last is a (+) sign. In the shield, DDR arrows fall representing damage you will be taking, unless you start hitting the arrow keys to start catching and stopping the attacks coming in. When there's a break, you can cast an attacking spell, which you swap your focus to the sword box and start dancing to the arrows in that for the combo. If you finish the combo fully, you cast the spell and deal the damage. If your running low on mana to cast the spells, you swap over to the (+) and hit the arrows to regain the mana... And you have to do ALL of this under a certain time limit, because like the real DDR, You have until the end of the song to finish off your opponents.

Alright, some of the huge pro's! The game's story is pretty deep and the characters are well fleshed out as you go through the tower with enough difficulty ramping up to make the game interesting. The music is superb, so much so, that they have the OST available on steam and it is a must have for music lovers... in a sense, if you feel like you'd better off just enjoying the games music as it is in the game, go for it.

There are some con's now. In order to get items to help you out, you got to forge them; meaning you need to beat monster's in these musical dance off's and get them to drop stuff. When you reach a safe room, you have to alchemize them together, but in order to do that, you have to pay EXP points.... I'm not joking. At level 5 from floor 1, you may need to pay 400 exp, which not only knocks you back to lvl 4, but has a chance of failing! IF you fail, you don't get the experience back! Though to be fair, the items don't get destroyed, so you'd have to go back and fight a creature to gain back the EXP to try again to forge the lousy key to get past the floor boss and onto the next floor. The same roughly goes when you want to learn new spells; If you have a scroll to learn a new spell and pay the experience points for it, you go into a DDR screen with only 1 DDR block to focus on, you then have to hit enough of the arrows correctly to learn the spell to add it in your arsenal for battles... which seems to make some sense, though the more powerful the spell, the more difficult the challenge is to learn it and more difficult it is to attain... I was level 11 when I tried top learn the best spell in the game and I got knocked back to level 3!!!! BEFORE I COULD LEARN IT! It was TERRIBLE!...

All in All, it's still a fun game if you enjoy DDR, RPG's and good music, this is the kind of game you'd see Gunkey enjoy since it requires fast and constant attention.

..Also, my notes above earlier; This game USE to be called Sequence before a certain company 'Jax LTD.' came along and forced a take-down and shut-down if they did not change the game's name. Which Sequence was then called 'Before the Echo.' Which I don't see the reason why if Sequence is also named after a lousy card game also called sequence.... Eh, who knows, maybe people out there still play it.

Quto · Jul 13, 2018

Rugrats Adventure Game
PC

Alright folks of the obscure, I want to take you to a familiar and unfamiliar territory. LICENSED VIDEO GAMES! *I feel the forum board groaning at me in disgust before they leave.* Ok, COME ON! I know about 95% of the games licensed by whoever or whatever we're terrible cash grabs done just so we would scream at the top of our lungs as young brats at our parents and then we would kick and cry when we didn't get what we wanted.

There is the 5% though, the RARE 5%, that there are licensed games out there that have had effort put into them to actually make them playable. The Treasure Planet Battle at Procyon I posted earlier promotes there are good titles in the sea of bad licensed products which does count them towards as obscure games. Games that are not seen because people look at the license as a whole rather than look at the details in the property.... Or in layman's terms, Watching a boring episode of bob's burgers until your told there's a topless, insert your preferred gender or being your attracted to here, and you watch that episode again to find it, you then find it and it becomes your favorite episode.... My next few post's will be on games from different licenses that have HAD that extra effort put into them to actually fulfill the idea's of our childhood and this title was one of them.

Rugrat's Adventure game is a point and click title that does as it sounds, it's an adventure to rescue Reptar; the babies favorite godzilla-knock-off toy. The toy gets thrown out by mistake and the babies attempt to get it back. Pretty simple, right?... Well, You need a method to get to the doll, a method to scare off any garbage men about to get the trash cans and I guess a method to get outside.... And the game does not make it easy at first glance. If you watched the show growing up, there are a few shakes of a hint here or there and tributes to the source material about the humor and items needed to solve certain puzzles, though you need to also think a little more like the babies themselves a little on how they can construct and put 2 and 2 together.... It's a hard method to explain, but it would be like seeing the answer, but the character's don't see the answer until you bring them to the spot and they get the idea and can move onto the next step to solving the problem... If you can track the game down and give it a whirl, you'll see what I mean.

It's fun to play as Tommy and explore the pickles house as a kid that age with the world so big and wide before him.

Before I sign off on this entry, I want to make note of Broderbund.... Mostly because they helped shape another part of the culture in video games; the developed a bunch of strategy games for the commodore64 and we're responsible for everyone's favorite thief who dresses in red, "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" WHICH will not be getting it's own post because nearly everyone on the internet knows who she is or do a quick search for her in google, It's thanks to Broderbund we even have her to begin with!... I mean, the series taught geometry about 99% of the time as an education game, but even then this IP still lives and breathes.... Broderbund no longer makes games anymore as they we're bought out by the learning company and in turn bought out by.... a lot of companies in general to a point where all of their IP's and nearly owned by Ubisoft.... Heh, Carmen Sandiego in an Assassin's Creed Game.... Would actually be incredibly interesting!

... WHELP, I'm off to dig through the internet, topside and Deep web side for more of the licensed titles that were worth the dollar paid for... or at least fun for what you paid for.

Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

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Thomas the Shinyhunter

There are no game overs. Only continues.

Arsenic

[div=font-size: 18px; font-family: 'Kaushan script

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It's... kinda effective?

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I was saying Boo-urns

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