Maybe "La espada sagrada" is so hard to find because it's not french... it's spanish.

Also, mobygames is not as complete as it should be. There are lot of pretty known games (at least in 8 bits computers) that aren't in their database.

My most obscure game would be a "You're in a shaceship shooting asteroids then buy upgrades" game called 'piranha'. It had very nice graphics, very nice music and can be played in coop and multi (and it won't run on XP).
Could never find any info on it, I'd end up with those fish instead 🤣

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Well to me, the most obscure game is D.R.A.G.O.N Force from Interstel. The game does not even exist in Mobygames. Searching with the keyword "Dragon Force" gives you this instead, while "D.R.A.G.O.N Force" gives you Delta Force. So far, the only review I can find about D.R.A.G.O.N Force is in HOTU, by entering keyword "D.R.A.G.O.N" (with periods) in the search menu.

I have played the game before, and despite HOTU's lukewarm review, I find it quite entertaining. I especially like the "real time with pause" system, and I like it even better than the one in Baldur's Gate --which is too frantic for my taste. Too bad not many games use such system, probably because it doesn't go too well with multiplayer.

And frankly, D.R.A.G.O.N Force is the game that introduced me to squad-level strategy game. From there, I went to Laser Squad (the PC remake), Jagged Alliance, and eventually Fallout Tactics.

Ah YES! D.R.A.G.O.N. Force!! Wow! So we had a common Squad-Level Tactical Strategy Introduction!

I just love this game. I still have the games in excellent condition, including the box! Hmm...the box's copyright date is 1989!!

Oh, btw, I love all these Squad-Level Tactical Strategy Games. Including the real-time counterparts Desperados : Wanted Dead or Alive (Not it's sequels), Commandos Series (minus the latest Commandos 3 Destination Berlin - they messed up the interface in this). And can we forget Jagged Alliance! - Aniother Classic! (Of course, the X-COM series (minus the Enforcer) falls in this category.)

I've also noticed this genre has a very acute angle of coverage of fans. Not everyone enjoys this genre.

Coming back to D.R.A.G.O.N. Force, it's one gem of a game! Planning the routes, equipping weapons and giving orders to the troops, crawl, snipe, infiltrate the base, rescue operations, calling in air support...pure bliss!

The only true spiritual successor to this game that I can think of is New World Computing's Wages of War : The Business of Battle.

Zup wrote:

Maybe "La espada sagrada" is so hard to find because it's not french... it's spanish.

IIRC the game has English name, but I cannot remember.

Tetrium wrote:

My most obscure game would be a "You're in a shaceship shooting asteroids then buy upgrades" game called 'piranha'. It had very nice graphics, very nice music and can be played in coop and multi (and it won't run on XP).
Could never find any info on it, I'd end up with those fish instead 🤣

You mean this game? Does it run well in DOSBOX?

Malik wrote:

Ah YES! D.R.A.G.O.N. Force!! Wow! So we had a common Squad-Level Tactical Strategy Introduction!

I just love this game. I still have the games in excellent condition, including the box! Hmm...the box's copyright date is 1989!!

*drools*

I don't think you're planning to sell the game, no? 😁

Malik wrote:

The only true spiritual successor to this game that I can think of is New World Computing's Wages of War : The Business of Battle.

Ah, Wages of War. I read the review on a 1996 edition of PCGamer, but I didn't have the chance to try the game back then. IIRC the game is turn-based, isn't it?

I wonder if there is another squad-level game with "paused real time" like D.R.A.G.O.N Force. The closest thing I can think of is Baldur's Gate and Icewind's Dale. Once I had great hope on Fallout Tactics' real-time mode, only to discover you cannot issue orders during pause. Commandos is a good game, but it's more puzzle-solving instead of true tactical wargame.

Back when I was about 14 years old I purchased a shareware 2-CD package loaded with over 2000 shareware/freeware titles, over half of which were for DOS. (And it also has a few cracked things, like Game-Maker v1.0, which makes me question how they could sell this thing in stores.)

There are a massive number of obscure titles on these discs because a lot of them come from shareware/freeware authors who made one or two pieces of software and never managed to really sell them. Games such as AxTrons, Outland, Road Kill, none of which are on Mobygames.

The only reason why I haven't reviewed one of these really obscure titles on ADG yet is because it's extremely hard to find info about their legal state and I prefer to review the full/registered versions of stuff, even if the shareware version is fully functional. Plus, many of these games, you only play them for about 5 minutes and you realize they're not worth your time. :P

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

My most obscure game would be a "You're in a shaceship shooting asteroids then buy upgrades" game called 'piranha'. It had very nice graphics, very nice music and can be played in coop and multi (and it won't run on XP).
Could never find any info on it, I'd end up with those fish instead 🤣

You mean this game? Does it run well in DOSBOX?

There were no pics but judging from the review written there I think that's the one! I even remember that bug where you're stuck in one level, I work around it by starting with 3 players, let the other 2 die and for some reason it doesn't seem to happen.
Also theres a couple cheats, one includes a level-skip cheat so that bug isn't really a problem anymore.

I never seen the actual game btw, over 10 years ago a friend of mine was playing a *cough* special demo version 🙄 of the game on his P-166 and I asked if I could have it.
Never seen a copy for sale anywhere or I would've bought it.

I never tried it in dosbox but it'll run on 98 and ME for sure 😉
I reckon it's not hard getting it to work in XP. It'll actually work in VPC but the VPC graphics card can't really keep up, it's not very playable that way.

It runs in DOS but I'd recommend you use something like a 8MB good graphics card at the least just to you're sure you get no slowdowns 😉

Another thing, I remember having played an asteroid shooter very similar to piranha one time, but can't remember the name.
It was one of the weirder ones, there were many enemies shaped in relatively simple mathematical shapes and some enemies would make your 'bullets' bounce off.
I'd really love to play that game again but can't even remember what the name was 🙁

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

*drools*

I don't think you're planning to sell the game, no? 😁

Uh...not yet, I think...😁

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Ah, Wages of War. I read the review on a 1996 edition of PCGamer, but I didn't have the chance to try the game back then. IIRC the game is turn-based, isn't it?

Yes, it's turn based and the gameplay is quite deep in terms of the tactical planning and execution.

I really love turn based tactics rather than real-time counterparts.

And I really missed the turn-based combat in RPGs as those seen in SSI's "Gold Box" series. The last "new" RPG I played that have the true turn-based element, is Pool of Radiance : Ruins of Myth Drannor. At the lowest turn-speed setting, it becomes a full turn-based combat.

I recently picked up boxed versions of "Normailty" and "Bad Mojo" for just 50p each at a local used store 😀

Does anyone remember a DOS soccer game named Italy 90? It was probably not much, but it felt like a great step from Microprose Pro Soccer me and my brother were playing at that time.

Anyway, I'm not really into soccer game, but my brother is. Long before Championship Manager, he was playing a DOS-based, low-res 320x200 soccer strategy game. I'm not sure what the game was, but the result of our decision is shown by a very rudimentary goal cinematic. Anyone remember the game?

Maybe it was Football Manager. There were three parts released for the ZX Spectrum, and Mobygames says that at least FM2 was released for PC.

EDIT: Both Football Manager 2 and Football Manager 3 were released for PC. FM3 seems very polished, so your "only text" manager may be FM2.

My most obscure (commercially retailed) game is probably a "cartridge" game for Atari 800, and is called "Matterhorn". Once only rumored to exist as prototype, I own one out of only about 5 or 6 known copies in existence. As far as gameplay, it's an arcade-ish title that's almost a cross between Jungle Hunt and Pitfall.

I think the most obscure games are most 1995-2001 freeware games. The shovelware era in those years still clinged to the same old Win3.1 1991-1994 software, so the latter half of the 90s weren't well archived, not to mention the dotcom bubble in 2000 killing off the majority of the sites that had them while everything released 2001 and later seems to survive strong. It's a gaping hole in gaming history.

Unless some lucky person with a cable modem digihoarded everything in the late 90s, there's not gonna be a miracle for this problem.

digitaldoofus wrote:

My most obscure (commercially retailed) game is probably a "cartridge" game for Atari 800, and is called "Matterhorn". Once only rumored to exist as prototype, I own one out of only about 5 or 6 known copies in existence. As far as gameplay, it's an arcade-ish title that's almost a cross between Jungle Hunt and Pitfall.

And it's got deformable terrain, ha!

Thanks, I remembered playing laser gates years ago on my Atari 😁

Thinking about Lezac (Larax & Zaco) and Get that Girl. The first was a shareware demolition game, and the second... the name says it all.

I've found Lezac registered version (google for that), and I've found a shareware version of the second, but nothing more. I think the same as leileilol, most shareware of that years is lost forever.

Afterburner-like games... When I had my 486, someone lend me a copy of F-18 No Fly Zone. The disks were corrupt and I couldn't play, but I've never the game seen after that. Also, I remember playing Afterburner 3-D (I think it was not official), but now it's hard to find.

Not as obscure as those games, but still an oddity is Operation: Inner Space, a very underrated and fun Windows 3.1 game... that still runs on Windows XP (I don't know if it works in Vista or 64 bit systems). That game was the first action game I played in Windows with a good framerate (in a 486!), previous games had very lower framerates. The odd thing about that game is that still it's being sold by their programmers.

Also, another rare item would be Humphrey for PC (NOT the remake). I played it in my Sinclair ZX Spectrum +, and it seems that it was released, but there is no trace of that game.

Also, you could check Computer Emuzone, a site dedicated to all spanish games. Maybe you could find some "obscure" games that were somewhat popular in Spain.

Zup wrote:

The odd thing about that game is that still it's being sold by their programmers.

The odd thing I still don't believe their history. It sounds like bull shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! on a stick. "We are proud of our role creating the successful versions of After Dark and founding the screensaver genre. " 🤣

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

IIRC the game has English name, but I cannot remember.

It's called The Sacred Sword. It was also released on Amstrad and Sinclair Spectrum.

afterdark more or less did create the screen saver industry it was huge back in the win 3.0 days
surely you remember the flying toatsers

That's true, but I just don't believe some other jealous company's glory claiming story 😀

Zup wrote:

Maybe it was Football Manager. There were three parts released for the ZX Spectrum, and Mobygames says that at least FM2 was released for PC.

EDIT: Both Football Manager 2 and Football Manager 3 were released for PC. FM3 seems very polished, so your "only text" manager may be FM2.

Judging from the color, it seems to be Football Manager 3, but the three-quarter perspective of Football Manager 2 looks really familiar.

sliderider wrote:

It's called The Sacred Sword. It was also released on Amstrad and Sinclair Spectrum.

You are right, thanks!