Favorite games that nobody's heard of or played.

[Kagatob]

Battlezone II

I have no idea what Battlezone is or why this is the sequel to it (online searches resulted in little to no information). This game takes some of the best parts of Starcraft (Humans and aliens both playable) and Command and Conquer (Tesla coils, though not by name) and mixes them together. With that said it still manages to be one of the most unique games I've ever played.

The game itself is played primarily in the first person, with your character able to walk around and interact with the environment directly as well as taking control of any allied or unoccupied vehicles, you can even enter buildings and defensive structures, be the Tesla coil! While in first person on foot you get a sniper rifle and you can take out the pilot of some of the smaller vehicles and then commandeer them. If you build a command bunker you can even turn the view into a 3rd person overhead view and play the game like a traditional RTS. Another unique part of the game is that while you do get a solid variation of different vehicles, as you go up the tech tree you can even change the armaments on those vehicles.

The only issues that I had with the game were that the controls could of used a bit of streamlining, but for playing FPS mode while simultaneously commanding an army/building a base it was still manageable. The other issue was that you couldn't build additional Recyclers (Main building) and the second you or the enemy's recycler was destroyed you/they were defeated.

Despite those setbacks the game's graphics engine was amazing for it's time, even in 1997 it was full 3D and ran extremely smooth.

The game obviously fell under the radar as Pandemic/Activision wasn't a big name in PC gaming at the time, and quickly went to the $5 bin. This is a shame because if this genre kept going for another couple of generations there could of been some amazing creations in this style.

If any of you know any games that resemble this please let me know because I'd be interested in giving them a try. :)

I wonder what failed/invisible games my fellow EQ players found to be much higher quality then they were given credit for.

[quido]

I actually owned the PC release of Battlezone which was an Activision game that came out not long after Mechwarrior II: Mercenaries. It was similar-ish to the arcade game of the same name from back in the day but had this whole "develop a base" aspect to it with various missions and such. I never actually played all the way through the game because on of the levels always crashed out on me, but what I did play was really fun.

[Khaleesi]

Are we then only talking about games we programmed ourselves?

How about underrated or low advertised games?

Carfax Abby (Texas Instruments TI99-4A)
Barrage (Texas Instruments TI99-4A)
Total Annihilation (PC)
E.Y.E. Cybermancy (PC)

[Kagatob]

Total Annihilation (PC)

Game was MASSIVE.

[Millburn]

There's probably a ton of people that have played the first two Arc The Lad games on PSX but you never hear them mentioned when people talk about classic rpg and srpg's. For that I'm throwing them in this list because they are a great set of games, had solid srpg mechanics and a wide spanning story that was worth playing for.

That and it had great humor throughout, most noticeably in their manuals.

http://i.imgur.com/4H3xol.jpg

[Kagatob]

Shining Force was pretty rough, particularly because you didn't know which characters were going to end up neigh obsolete until you've wasted a ton of experience on them (there was no such thing as grinding or 'random encounters' in that game).
Shining In The Darkness was another painful RPG, just navigating that labyrinth... There were no online walkthroughs in 1992 ;)

[Funkutron5000]

You could def grind in the Shining Force series if you wanted to - kill most of the monsters in a fight, egress out, repeat.

[Kagatob]

You could def grind in the Shining Force series if you wanted to - kill most of the monsters in a fight, egress out, repeat.

Maybe the sequels but I don't remember egress in the first game.

[Hasbinbad]

This is what I played before EQ..

Legends of Kesmai:

http://i.imgur.com/xRwCbJz.jpg

2D timed turn-based Gameplay:

http://i.imgur.com/ATU0lMh.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/7L3YiBL.jpg

One of 4 or 5 world maps:

http://i.imgur.com/18Zrps3.jpg

Paper Doll:

http://i.imgur.com/Bdnv1N1.gif

http://i.imgur.com/utjgv4p.jpg

The world map of the death zone.. If you died, you had to solve one of 8 or 10 quests, all based on egyptian myth, each of which had 2 versions. Some of them were super easy and quick, and some were long, tedious, and or required skill or luck.

http://i.imgur.com/z2nLbjO.jpg

Bank full of shinies:

http://i.imgur.com/qhgucSG.jpg

[Hasbinbad]

there are several rival LoK emu's too

[Hasbinbad]

i played this when a lot of other people played UO.. and into 99/00 when eq came out .. i left my uber LoK empire to play eq in kunark, just like i had left my uber spam mud empire before that.

A sigh.

[eqravenprince]

Chaos Overlords

Copied from the wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Overlords):

Setting

Chaos Overlords is set in a dystopian cyberpunk future. By 2046, private industries started to purchase bankrupt national governments. By 2050, all governments had merged under one corporation, the World United Solidarity (WUS). WUS became a corrupt monopoly, and attempted to control the population by instituting censorship and banning ownership of weapons, drugs and pornography. Former crime lords and corporate heads arose to exploit the people by creating "chaos": selling drugs, guns, and pornography, running the numbers, and engaging in extortion and blackmail. These criminals, known as Chaos Overlords, bribed WUS to avoid crackdowns. As gangs joined them and they grew in power, cities became battlegrounds for their struggles to destroy each other in pursuit of money and power

Gameplay

The player takes the role of a Chaos Overlord attempting to control a city. Gameplay involves hiring mercenary gangs and deploying them on an 8-by-8 grid of city sectors to generate income, occupy sectors and take over the city. The player can choose from 10 different victory conditions. The four timed scenarios involve attaining the most cash, sectors, support, or all three. The six objective scenarios have no time limit and require the player to fulfill a specific goal, ranging from killing all other Chaos Overlords to controlling specific sectors of importance.

[EchoedTruth]

Lords of Magic (awesome mix of RTS/turn-based strategy, based on Lords of the Realm)
Dark Reign (starcraft + C&C)
System Shock 2 (not so much nobody plays, but so underrated and unknown for how amazing it is.. so scary)

[SamwiseRed]

Reunion for Px. Played it on a 386 or 486 dps box. Shit was legit and kinda like xcom.

[Hitchens]

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[Lojik]

I actually owned the PC release of Battlezone which was an Activision game that came out not long after Mechwarrior II: Mercenaries. It was similar-ish to the arcade game of the same name from back in the day but had this whole "develop a base" aspect to it with various missions and such. I never actually played all the way through the game because on of the levels always crashed out on me, but what I did play was really fun.

Battlezone was awesome. Single player campaigns were pretty good for American side, but the Soviet side felt pretty incomplete. Battlezone multiplayer was also awesome.

[Reapin]

Best games ever were Autoduel and Roadwar 2000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoduel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadwar_2000

They really need to remake these.

[MrSparkle001]

Master Of Monsters on the genesis was already mentioned, so I'll say Wizard's Crown (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizard%27s_Crown). It's a virtually unknown RPG that inspired the SSI gold box series, but with much more detailed combat. The commodore 64 version was best and I recommend playing it on a C64 emulator.

[Relikk]

Secret of Mana

Release date(s)
August 6, 1993[show]
Genre(s) Action role-playing game
Mode(s) Single-player, multiplayer

Secret of Mana is an action role-playing game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System developed and published by Square in 1993. The game was re-released for the Wii's Virtual Console in 2008, and was ported to Japanese mobile phones in 2009. Secret of Mana is the sequel to Final Fantasy Adventure for the Game Boy and the second installment in the Mana video game series.

Rather than using the traditional turn-based battle system of games like Final Fantasy, Secret of Mana utilizes real-time battles akin to the Legend of Zelda series, while also employing typical role-playing elements and a unique "Ring Command" menu system, which pauses the action, and allows a variety of actions to be performed without needing to switch screens. The game received considerable acclaim for its brightly colored graphics, expansive plot, "Ring Command" menu system, innovative real-time battle system, modified Active Time Battle meter adapted for real-time action, its innovative cooperative multiplayer gameplay, where the second or third players could drop in and out of the game at any time rather than players having to join the game at the same time, the customizable AI settings for computer-controlled allies, and the acclaimed soundtrack by Hiroki Kikuta. Secret of Mana was an influential game in its time, and has remained influential through to the present day, such as its customizable AI for player characters being used by many later games, its ring menu system still used in modern games (such as The Temple of Elemental Evil) and its cooperative multiplayer mentioned as an influence on games as recent as Dungeon Siege III.

Ability to unlock free navigation flying on a dragon!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5c/Flammie_Flying.gif

[Hasbinbad]

Wasn't that like, the first graphical MMO, that cost like $8 an hour to play on Usenet?
i think islands of kesmai (the precursor to legends) may have the distinction of being the first graphical MuD, but i'm not 100% sure

certainly the term "mmo" had not been invented yet.

I played it on AOL, which was one of 4? ways to connect to "the internet" back in those days (aol, compuserve, prodigy, and reaching out via telnet or ftp via a dialup BBS that had a t1 line). AOL had their games section as a payperhour setup, and iirc it was 5.99 an hour. I played multiplayer battletech, LoK, and air warrior here.

MPBT and Air Warrior also deserve to be on this list. Kesmai is one of the great unsung dev teams in the world.. so much of what they developed became standard, but only years later.

[Hasbinbad]

also played those games on gamestorm .. where i also played Silencer and Subspace, also easily 2 of the best unsung games in history