Obscure game recommendation thread

[pjft]

@A2ra3L I'm going to check out The Firemen, even if just because my oldest son loves firemen, so it should be a fun one to try out.

[EctoOne]

I never was into Sportsgames but one game got my attention when i was young.
Track Meet for the Gameboy. It's an Track & Field clone. The obscure thing about it are the crazy opponents you have to compete with. Like a Ninja or Fakir riding a carpet.
Skip to minute 14 in the video to see another special.

[Omnija]

GBA
-Car Battler Joe

-CIMA - The Enemy

-Lady Sia (The art.. so well done)

GBC
-Hands of Time

-Samurai Kid

-Toki Tori (Figured id mention this one for those with little kids)

-Azure Dreams (the psx version was mentioned above, figured nobody knew about the gbc)

GB
-Avenging Spirit

-Cave Noire

-Mole Mania

[pjft]

@Omnija Toki Tori is a really nice puzzler.

If we're going for gbc, I can recommend the two Tomb Raider games, which are nice platformers a la Prince of Persia.

Also on the GBA I've recently caught wind of Ninja Cop/Ninja Five-O which is a surprisingly competent shinobi-like platformer.

[ZioDarkmage]

So I know that Phantasy Star IV on Sega Genesis/MegaDrive really isn't that obscure, but it is what really got me into the RPG genre. But in the RPG vein, I would like to recomment Koudelka. It is an RPG set with a horror story.

[Capeman]

This is my kind of thread!

JJ Squakers MAME

Cliffhanger Edward Randy MAME

Pop'n Twinbee SNES

Bio Miracle Baby Upa NES

King of Demons SNES

[Capeman]

OoOops! Forgot a couple! I could do this all day...

Pulseman GENESIS

Worm War 1 ATARI

Magical Chase TURBOGRAFX

Blade Buster NES

Summer Carnival 92: Recca NES

Panic SEGA CD

R-Type Leo MAME

Ninja Baseball Bat Man MAME

Cosmo Gang SNES

[UDb23]

@Capeman R-type Leo ... cannot be really defined "obscure"; it's a very famous game ;-)

[Capeman]

@UDb23 I consider it kind of obscure since it never got a port anywhere else from the arcade, most people think of Super R-Type and R-type3 for SNES or sometimes the TG16 ports... Some people are surprised when they heard there was an R-Type game that you can only play in MAME, and just how kick ass it is!

[UDb23]

@Capeman I like it too and, jokes aside, I'm happy you mentioned it.
It's a good way to make it known to those people that never heard of, or never played, R-type games.

[Capeman]

Alot of us MAME-heads tend to forget that people new to MAME usually haven't had exposure to any of the really good "common" MAME gems...aside from the super obvious classics such as donkey kong and pacman of course.

Pull JJ Squackers or Ninja Baseball Bat Man out of your pocket and people look at it like the glowing suitcase from pulp fiction! hahaha!

[Capeman]

Everyone knows battletoads, but only MAME-heads know that one of the best ones was arcade only! BOOM!

Battletoads MAME

[cyperghost]

Obscure games?
Well let's call this ... Grand Theft Auto 0 - ASPHALT on CPC - I loved this game :)

Annother obscure one ... because shooting on humans is not okay, but killing aliens is - here it is SPACE Invasion (AKA Commando here are you killing humans). Now this makes me really laugh.... Hey these guys wear white jump suits - how gay :D

[pjft]

@Capeman R-Type Leo certainly deserves a mention. I was a big R-Type fan from the time of the ZX Spectrum, later on got a hold of R-Type 2, played Delta on the psx, but had never heard of Leo until recently.

I played it a bit once and blazed through the first level pretty much unscathed, only to then be demolished in the first part of the second stage :) Still, one to play again in the future.

I mentioned Sega Ninja in a separate thread, on MAME. I'm honestly not sure how famous it is, but I found it quite enjoyable. Think of it as Commando, but with a few mechanics on top.

I apologize for never posting videos - I'm on my phone :(

[backstander]

@Capeman
Thanks for the list!

I noticed that Blade Buster is a homebrew!
http://www.romhacking.net/homebrew/24/

Also Summer Carnival '92: Recca's Wikipedia page says that the original cartridge was only released in Japan and is quite rare (sells for around 20,000 yen now). It was re-released on the Virtual Console.

"Recca is described by shoot 'em up fans and reviewers as one of the toughest games in history. Although it is a little known game, Recca is one of the few games that pushed the hardware of the Famicom console. Recca worked around sprite limits of the Famicom hardware by showing sprites for effects like explosions every other frame (at 30fps instead of 60fps). One reason for its general obscurity is due to the fact that upon its release in 1992, focus was already on the Famicom's successor, the Super Famicom console."

"By using a rom hack or cheat code, the Sega logo appears and explodes, then the Nintendo logo appears. ('Sega' and 'Nintendo' are spelled with '?'s instead of 'e's.)"

[Capeman]

@backstander An even more random fun fact is the music in blade buster is directly stolen from a TG16 shooter. I only realized this the other day when I was drinking beer and playing shooters on my arcade. I cant remember if it was Super Star Soldier or Blazing Lasers... but it was definitely one of them.

EDIT I think it was Soldier Blade, hence the BLADE in both names! That makes sense!

[CodeDrawer]

I'd have to say battleship by nintendo for the gameboy colour? Or the gameboy. There is no differnce. Other then the colour XD

[pjft]

I forgot to mention Rolling Thunder! One of my favorite games from back in the day.

Unsure of its popularity meter, but both arcade and ZX Spectrum versions are good to recommend.

[CodeDrawer]

But then again, I just love battle ship.

[mediamogul]

@Capeman

I only realized this the other day when I was drinking beer

This is the same way I realized how amazing I am at Karaoke.