games u feel no one remembers.... 🖳

[SWZTCH]

There's a couple of examples that often come to my mind when I think about my own gaming journey and feel like no one else took certain paths.

this was such a interesting read as well!!! tysm for sharing!

i swear ive seen the first one listed, outwars. i was born to a gamer dad with a gamer friend who owned a independent gamer rental store in 1999, so it mightve been something i saw in passing when i was very small which, if true, is a crazy coincidence!

i agree w/ your last statement too (i hope i read it right, its 3 am my time at time of posting), i think a lot of the games here will be console games because so much stuff is just lost to time and unsupported OS. i think if i wanted to delve deep into pc games that no one remembers, i would start thinking about the older games i played on bigfishgames.com in like 2006 (maybe not the same era most people in here will be from? we will see haha//). im talking mystery case files: ravenhearst (2006), Azada (2008)(VERY HAPPY to see this on steam for 10$ though!), Alice greenfingers (2007), etc etc etc. maybe not as niche as i think in the greater space on the internet, but these are all things ive never ever ever ever seen even mentioned in my greater circles online and offline.

[Beancatte]

Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth.

One of the few instances of a shmup on the system thats just as solid as the rest of the series. It is also one of the N64 games that refuses to sound bad

[Flint]

i agree w/ your last statement too (i hope i read it right, its 3 am my time at time of posting), i think a lot of the games here will be console games because so much stuff is just lost to time and unsupported OS.

That's definitely part of the issue - if a game hasn't been re-released one way or another, getting these things to work is a lot more of a headache than simply plopping an old cartridge in an old console. GOG has done incredible conservation work over the years to make a massive amount of old PC titles, including many largely forgotten ones, available and playable on modern computers but of course their ability to do so is limited - there's some real classics missing from their site thanks to convoluted rights issues etc.

But the main point I haphazardly plonked out was how console gaming simply dominates gaming as a whole when it comes to gaming media these days. When 1980s/1990s in gaming is discussed it's always N64, PS1, Dreamcast, Mega Drive, SNES etc - that's the source material for all the video essays, retrospectives, "best forgotten games" listicles, etc. In the process a lot of PC gaming history has ended up being stifled and titles that I grew up knowing as classics or gaming 101 material have basically been all but lost. A great recent example of this has been the phenomenal (and still ongoing) Ultima series retrospective by Majular: it's a franchise that can claim the credit for literally creating RPGs, MMOs and immersive sims (among many smaller game design traits now considered baseline), but you look at the comments for each video and you see so many people either saying they had never heard of this series before, or lamenting the fact that Majular's series is like only the second proper retrospective such a legendary series has ever had. This isn't me dunking on console games (I've owned a bunch!) or anyone who doesn't know ins and outs of random PC games from several decades ago because that's totally fair; I just often feel like a lot of the games I grew up playing are a lot more obscure than they should be because of how console-dominant gaming history discussion has become.

Sorry for the super topic derail btw!

[SWZTCH]

Sorry for the super topic derail btw!

no worries! i think this is still very relevant. im excited to see if this thread ends up console or pc leaning now that i have this in mind! kinda hoping to see more niche random pre-2000s pc games too now haha// everything everyone has put so far has been so cool!!!!

[Cayman]

Flint, have you ever checked out myabandonware? There's a lot of classic PC titles preserved on there, as well as some really obscure and janky stuff. A surprising amount of text adventures and proto-GUI stuff.

[SWZTCH]

Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth.

whoa thanks for sharing!!! got back on my pc to listen to this and do a little investigating, the gameplay looks really fun too!!

is it normal to reply to everyone posting in a topic? im actually just really enthusiastic haha// i love dialogue!!

[Flint]

Flint, have you ever checked out myabandonware? There's a lot of classic PC titles preserved on there, as well as some really obscure and janky stuff. A surprising amount of text adventures and proto-GUI stuff.

Yeah, I sometimes bump into this site when I'm trying to track down something retro that isn't available on GOG. Been a great boon at times (I had a pandemic project of binging a bunch of old click 'n' points and this helped a lot) but of course sometimes they can require quite a bit of work to get it running. To use one of my own examples, I did actually bump into Riddle of Master Lu there but could never get it working with the limited advice available on the internet.

It's a fantastic site though and definitely good to bring up in this topic!

[Cayman]

Flint, have you ever checked out myabandonware? There's a lot of classic PC titles preserved on there, as well as some really obscure and janky stuff. A surprising amount of text adventures and proto-GUI stuff.

Yeah, I sometimes bump into this site when I'm trying to track down something retro that isn't available on GOG. Been a great boon at times (I had a pandemic project of binging a bunch of old click 'n' points and this helped a lot) but of course sometimes they can require quite a bit of work to get it running. To use one of my own examples, I did actually bump into Riddle of Master Lu there but could never get it working with the limited advice available on the internet.

It's a fantastic site though and definitely good to bring up in this topic!

I'll have to check out GOG more, I've never really used it. My focus of "preservation" is more on the PS2/Dreamcast/Gamecube era. I was always a console gamer--still am--and it's astounding how many games were published, burnt to disc, distributed, and lost to landfills.

[Flint]

Flint, have you ever checked out myabandonware? There's a lot of classic PC titles preserved on there, as well as some really obscure and janky stuff. A surprising amount of text adventures and proto-GUI stuff.

Yeah, I sometimes bump into this site when I'm trying to track down something retro that isn't available on GOG. Been a great boon at times (I had a pandemic project of binging a bunch of old click 'n' points and this helped a lot) but of course sometimes they can require quite a bit of work to get it running. To use one of my own examples, I did actually bump into Riddle of Master Lu there but could never get it working with the limited advice available on the internet.

It's a fantastic site though and definitely good to bring up in this topic!

I'll have to check out GOG more, I've never really used it. My focus of "preservation" is more on the PS2/Dreamcast/Gamecube era. I was always a console gamer--still am--and it's astounding how many games were published, burnt to disc, distributed, and lost to landfills.

GOG is a really excellent service if you ever do want to explore old PC games. Whilst it now also offers modern games, it originally started as a way to preserve PC gaming history by offering old PC games which their team had fixed so that you could just run the exe and it works straight "out of the box" on modern PCs - you get manual scans etc too which for some of these old games is a must. They tend to come pretty cheap too so it's not a bad shout to throw a few currency units their way to keep the good thing going, and they listen to their userbase by seeking out even some completely obscure titles if someone out there wants it. Whether they then list it or not mainly tends to depend on whether they can get the rights for it - e.g. one of the most requested games for years has been No One Lives Forever (classic) but the rights for it is such an incoherent kudzu maze that they can't do anything about it.

I've played with both PCs and consoles throughout my life but between Mega Drive and GameCube I was basically a PC-exclusive guy, so a lot of my personal gaming nostalgia is strictly restricted to the beige box and sites like GOG, Abandonia, MyAbandonWare etc have been a mainstay in helping me revisit some of the titles I grew up playing.

[HakariSquish]

Okay, whenever someone asks me "What is a niche game you obsess over?"
this, does anyone remember this masterpiece omfg.