Some "Obscure" Video Games I Recommend

How many of these did you guys already know about/had played in the past? Let me know right here on this comment some of your favorite "obscure" games. Love yall

Loom is one of the reasons I got into the game industry. Years later I was out in LA working with some voice actresses, and afterward I was talking with the voice producer we had met, and she told me her first title in the industry was Loom as a temp and that was her start in the industry, and I got to tell her how Loom was one of the things that shaped me as a kid and as a developer and thanked her for her work as we both were tearing up. Definitely made it a weird dinner for the rest of our dev group! It is one of my all time favorites and will always hold a special place in my heart. I often sneak little references to Loom in many of the things I've helped make, or even my personal projects. Thanks for highlighting it!

Troika deserved so much better than they ended up getting. ToEE, Arcanum, and Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines are all beloved games with dedicated communities to this day.

Highly recommend Sega Saturn games. Super underrated system and has a ton of great games that are easy to pickup and play. I'll recommend a few games with a paragraph for each, so safe to say big wall o text incoming. Panzer Dragoon I & II - Starting with one that actually got some recognition with a cool remake recently. Contrary to what it sounds like, it's an on-rails shooter in which you ride a dragon and shoot stuff. That's literally it and it's fun as hell. Like most Sega games, it has tons of enemies, explosions, and is easy to pick up and play. There are limited continues, so keep that in mind if you're using some kind of emulation. You can also play the remake on Switch, which I haven't played but I highly recommend anyway since it might be our chance to see more remake goodness from Sega. Bulk Slash - Do you like mechs? I like mechs. Play as one in third-person and blast and shoot stuff. Tons of high-quality sprites and animation by Hudson, so expect detailed anime stuff. Levels are in 3d and are pretty open. You can even fly around if you want. Exploring is recommended as you'll find pilots who need assistance and give you new abilities. Pretty self explanatory, and goddamn is it satisfying to shoot things. Saturn Bomberman - Holy Homberman, it's Bomberman. You probably get the gist: place a bomb and kill some dudes, but try not to get killed by your own bombs. Tons of cool powerups, including the then-new Dinosaur helpers, who give you an extra hit as well as various abilities such as jumping over stuff. Why should you care? Because this is a Bomberman game that supports TEN PLAYERS. This can also be done through emulation, just make sure to activate your multiplayer adapter in whatever core you're using. Even the single player is tons of fun, and can also be done with 2 players. Grab some friends and have a BLAST. Fighters Megamix - The Saturn's Smash Bros., a crossover fighter with Fighting Vipers and Virtua Fighter with tons of unlockables from other Sega games like Virtua Cop and Daytona USA (YES you can play as the car). People will talk about the insane skill ceiling, but simply starting this game couldn't be simpler: you have a block button, a punch, and a kick. That's it. Don't stress about the learning curve, just grab friends and have fun like you do in Smash, because this is an amazing game for goofballs. Did I mention you can play as characters from Sonic: The Fighters? Legend of Oasis - A prequel to Beyond Oasis on Mega Drive, you play through an Arabian-style overhead setting with a sword, solving puzzles and fighting stuff like big bad bosses and big dumb knights with various techniques. It's mostly like Link to the Past, but unique to this game are Elementals, spirits that follow you around and do various things like heal you or burn fellas. Another game that's pretty simple to understand and play. It's also called Legend of Thor 2 in Europe. Astal - Short artsy single-player platformer. Play through a fairy-tale story as a little kid with super strength and a bird companion. Interesting bird mechanics changes per stage. Co-op allows the 2nd player to be the bird. JP version recommended since the USA version has limited continues and an alternate intro without lyrics. Understanding Japanese is not required, as it's yet another game that's easy to understand how to play and the story is pretty simple despite having a lot of talking in the intro. Policenauts - Before Metal Gear Solid, Hideo Kojima made some sweet cinematic adventure games. This one in particular features detail-rich anime cutscenes taking place in a future scifi world in which you are an astronaut awoken from cryosleep and now must work as a detective in LA. The rest of the story is incredible, but I'll say no more as it's best played blind. Has been on a few systems in Japan, but has unfortunately never seen an international release. Fans have picked up the slack, as the best port of this game is on Saturn with fan translation. Panzer Dragoon: Saga - Goddamn does this game tickle my pickle. Set to compete against Final Fantasy VII, it's Panzer Dragoon as an RPG. Tons of story and cutscenes with voices, it pushes the technical prowess of the Saturn to its limits and is a technical marvel. Rare and expensive, this cult classic can sell for upwards of $1000 complete in box. Someone in the comments of a longplay I found said it's the best game they've never played, and I can't say I disagree with that.

Holy- FUTURE TACTICS? For most of my life now, I would occasionally think about that game from my childhood, but could never remember the name. It's like a nostalgic fever dream hearing Ghostcharm acknowledge it existed.

Custom Robo Arena for the DS went hard as a kid. You control a little robot in a tabletop diorama thing, and you gotta clean it with a little ring, and apparently there's a criminal gang that uses illegal military grade robo parts for the tiny toy sized robots. That's what I faintly remember

why u so Chill

Holy sweet baby batman..you have no idea how long I've been looking for the game Silver. I have a single memory of the game, sort of like a screenshot in my mind, of a friend playing it on PC so many years ago. I could never find out which game it was. I tried searching for it by describing this image I had of the game on google and stuff like that, but never found it. Over the years whenever that memory came up I always tried to figure out which game it was but always in vain. I was just casually listening to this wonderful video while working, and when I glanced at the screen my jaw dropped as I instantly recognized the game as the same "screenshot" in my mind. Crazy stuff! Thank you and awesome video!

I would like to reccomend you a RTS game made by THQ Nordic called Impossible Creatures, i don't know how obscure it actually is, but people don't talk about it enough, the main gimmick is that you can make an army of animals to fight with, except your animals are made of animal fusions, you can take 2 animals and mix and match their bodyparts to create a frankenstein version of both, and use them to muster an army, there's a lot of animals to pick and choose and you can just get lost on the beast creation process The RTS part was fun enough too, the campaign honestly speaking was kind of slow if i remember it, but that was probably just me being too impatient to unlock more tech and animals, which you had to go out and collect their DNA The game is currently availible both on Steam and GOG with all patches and extra content, and people have made some mods for it too, there's a very cool one with dinosaurs that i found recently and may give it a try

About Magic: The Gathering - Battlegrounds, you say there is always emulation, but the game actually does exist on PC! I played it for ungodly amounts of hours as a kid, and I even still have it on my laptop for whenever I'm out traveling and need a small game to pass the time in an airport or whatever. I really do hope they one day remaster it or do this idea again but more refined.

LOOM is one of those games I used to watch my dad play, and I pretty much started hyperventilating upon seeing it again. I'm so, so happy that it's on Steam (even if that's imperfect) because I'm not tech-savvy enough to rig up these old games myself . . .

Three. You hit me with three deep cuts here. First was Loom, which I remember watching my """adoptive dad""" play on a cobbled together scrap computer, it was running DOS from what I think was an original disc (like, to install the OS with) and Loom was loaded in the same way. Second was Goblin Commander, which I actually own/owned a copy of on GC, and even played a little bit of. I'd never played an RTS before, and I was young and not too patient for it's very alien (to me) gameplay, so I never got far, but I DID play it. And third is I-Ninja, a game truly near and dear to my heart, though unfortunately, one I never 100 percented (a few of the special challenges were just too friggin hard for me, like the one hit rock-em sock-em robots challenge, egg head something or other I think). Really nice hearing somebody talk about them, even if it's basically just because of the feeling of that DiCaprio meme (the TV pointing one).

One game that i's call obscure is Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicle's: My Life as a Darklord, which takes the Tower Defense genre VERY literally! It's a shame it was a WiiWare exclusive, but that only makes my Wii all the more valuable! Also could you do a Villianpedia on the Overlords from the Overlord videogame series?

I've played Septerra Core, I always thought that's where valve got its inspiration for Alyx's robot friend Dog in Half Life 2 since there is a robot dog creature companion very similar to him in SC .

I really dig this video, this topic has always been one near and dear to my heart and I gotta give you kudos for experimenting outside of what you're more well known for. Keep it up! Also I have a few "obscure" picks of my own, I'd love to see you cover any of these if you did a follow up! Or just recommendations for anyone in the comments looking for more weird games like I am right now lol. 1: Stonekeep: Though it's pretty well known as one of the last classic PC dungeon crawlers and a big dud for Interplay in the late 90's, neither of those things are talked about much anymore. But I have fond memories of the goofy FMV, the wild interface and inventory system, and even the spin-off novel that was supposed to come out along with the sequel. Deserved better for sure. 2: Psi-ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy: A super edgy PS2/Xbox early 2000's stealth/shooter by midway with the added wrinkle of playing a protagonist with psychic abilities. It should be more well known if only for the fact that it had fully physics based gameplay a while before Half Life 2, and having a cheesy music video that's very era appropriate. 3: Blood Will Tell: A PS2 action game based on the manga "Dororo" by Tezuka Osamu. Obviously a product of it's time in that it's heavily inspired by DMC, but it has a lot going for it that I think made it but ahead of it's time as well. Not the least of which is the source material it's adapting, playing as a dude who has lost most of his body parts to fifty different fiends and uses a bunch of prosthetic weapons to get them back, like samurai swords attached to his arms, or a freaking cannon hidden in his false leg. On par with God Hand for underrated action games for me. 4: Lost Odyssey: A JRPG that was meant to be Microsoft's answer to Final Fantasy along with Blue Dragon and Enchanted Arms. Probably the least obscure item on this list of mine but still crazily underrated. Nobuo Uematsu himself on the soundtrack, and some of the best character work I've ever seen in a video game with the in-game novellas called the "Thousand Years of Dreams." Criminally underrated and trapped on the 360, what a shame. 5: Zax the Alien Hunter: Definitely the most obscure game I can think of off the top of my head. A strange little story-based top down shooter on the PC from around 2000. Crash-land on the planet of a primitive alien species and rescue them from a Borg-like robot overlord that's capturing them and turning them into cyborg slaves. The graphics are what sticks out in my memory, animated sprites made of high-poly models over pre-rendered backgrounds, like Diablo or Donkey Kong Country. Fun as heck to run around and blast nerds with the different guns you can craft from materials you find along the way. And your ship even has a holographic AI personality that is somehow alien Marilyn Monroe. A real wild ride from a time when games were just different. Holy crap, didn't mean to type a novel. Anyway take care and happy gaming!

If you're a big fan of Gladius and also enjoy boardgames or the table top experience, I highly recommend looking into the two Hoplomachus titles from Chip Theory Games. Gladius was the direct inspiration when making the series, and they live up to the video game. One of the releases is a fully solitaire experience called Hoplomachus: Victorum, each run of the game you're selecting a hero character and building up a troop of gladiators, and then make your way through three acts of defeating the big bad's champions and then finally taking on the boss on Mt. Vesuvius. The second title is called Hoplomachus: Remastered, which is a collection of nearly all the original Hoplomachus games that were Chop Theory's first games with entirely new art and balanced so you can interchange things with Victorum and vice versus. Remastered focuses more on larger arena one off skirmishes, either PvP or PvE, with multiple game modes for all, and two different arenas with different mechanics. They're both large lifestyle games, built around replayability and high production value. I can't recommend them enough if you enjoy both Gladius and table top gaming.

11:29 Septerra Core being like "We have Midgar at home."

I'm not sure if this game could be considered obscure, but definitely Sacrifice. I don't think I have heard anyone talk about it and it is honestly one of my favorite games. Also, it has Tim Curry so it is a must. ALSO WHEEL OF TIME FPS MENTIONED!!

The sheer validation i felt when I-Ninja was mentioned lol I rememeber playing that game for hours and hours as a kid on the ps2, and i never got tired of it. THERES A GIANT MECH FIGHT AT THE END LIKE CMON?!! Im glad that lil kid me at least kinda understood what was cool, cause that game is still so much fun today. I remember my oldest sister gettin it for me for a bday, it was like $5 at gamestop or somethin, and i played that thing until it stopped workin, genuinely. I also didnt have a memory stick at the time so i had to redo the entire game every time the ps2 turned off, but i didnt care. It was that game, sly cooper, and some weird duck driving game where youre on a moped and theres an aligator thats unsettling lol

An "obscure" game I recommend would be Starseed Pilgrim. It's pretty obtuse, but brilliantly designed, really fun to go into blind and see how much you can figure out. It's like an infinitely replayable puzzle game where you get these little seeds that grow diffrent types of blocks with their own rules and interactions with each other, and you're trying to grow away from the central starting island because there's like, a black corruption spreading up through it towards you and you gotta get away. There's more to it than that but I'm choosing not to spoil it :) It's got a cool vibe and aesthetic, it feels quite contemplative and meaningful--but in a very open way, it's a very subjective experience and can be about as much as you want it to, as big and all encompassing in its themes as you can imagine or a very simple, personal story. It feels like a very humble, unassuming title that just somehow gets you asking these big and small questions through engaging with its premise and just by... continuing to play and see the outer-limits of the world and discoveries.