Big Red Racing. So silly it's good especially multiplayer
Here is ADG's review, skipping right to how to enable the "secret" SVGA mode
https://youtu.be/WRNdTxbRX2A

World War 3 Black Gold. an RTS with a nice balance between gameplay and realism.

Joakim wrote on 2021-09-02, 17:33:

One game I don't see people discussing is SeVerance. I haven't played it in years but I remember playing, replaying it and even did some maps for it. If I remember correctly the map editor was 'inverted' you actually cut material out rather than add walls to a room. Also graphics were mind blowing at the time. The game had shadows!

I remember playing the demo and being absolutely blown away by the graphics. It also had somewhat of a steep learning curve.

So, I see your Severance and I raise you:

Die by the Sword

Die by the sword. I tried the demo once. I could not play it because of the controls. Similar controlled game though, that I did play 'Silver'. I recently picked up a boxed version. 😀

Big red racing rings a bell, but watching the clip I don't remember it. It looks like fun! Ww3, never heard of it.

You know, I was watching a random Youtube video about Nesticle, and it reminded me of Bloodlust Software. When I was a kid I downloaded shareware versions of two games of theirs and played them obsessively for a hot month. I think they were Noggin Knockers and Time Slaughter.

Die by the Sword was awesome, especially the arena mode in multiplayer.

Let's dive deeper into obscurity with Crusher from 1991:
https://youtu.be/51EofwnlrnM

Crusher It reminds me of Digger, man I haven't thought about that game for ages.. played it ca 1990.. i remember the smell of the floppy disk when I think about the game but not really what it was about..

I did play Big Red Racing and Severance, only had the demo version of the former back then but would play splitscreen with my brother haha. Severance was amazing because you could sever stuff, I played Knight but didn't manage to finish the game, there was an arena mod I remember, and lots of fun combos to use. It seems to be coming on Steam as a remastered version.

I am not sure if this is forgotten, but Time Commando is still pretty endearing to me, because of the animations. Little Big Adventure often seems more popular. Others are forgotten RTS like Dark Colony and a pac man like game, Grid Run/Grid Runner.

Severance: Blade of Darkness will be re-released next month, in a remastered package on Steam and probably other stores too. It will now be known as Blade of Darkness, to differentiate it from the earlier release.

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2021-09-03, 19:49:

It will now be known as Blade of Darkness, to differentiate it from the earlier release.

That was the US title.

I wonder what it was called in Germany, knowing their strict gore prohibition probably "lightly touching friends easily in a friendly way (also not sexually)"

henryVK wrote on 2021-09-03, 13:08:

I remember playing the demo and being absolutely blown away by the graphics. It also had somewhat of a steep learning curve. […]
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Joakim wrote on 2021-09-02, 17:33:

One game I don't see people discussing is SeVerance. I haven't played it in years but I remember playing, replaying it and even did some maps for it. If I remember correctly the map editor was 'inverted' you actually cut material out rather than add walls to a room. Also graphics were mind blowing at the time. The game had shadows!

I remember playing the demo and being absolutely blown away by the graphics. It also had somewhat of a steep learning curve.

So, I see your Severance and I raise you:

Die by the Sword

Oh Die by The Sword.....I had truly forgotten this game, 🤣.
Thank you for mentioning it!

Navy Strike. It is quite an obscure game, but I like its strategy game elements. Come to think of it, I always love flight sim/strategy hybrid like Their Finest Hour, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, Reach for the Skies, and Total Air War.

Knights of the Sky. It was overshadowed by Red Baron during release time, but Microprose games always have their own charm.

Dawn Patrol. The spiritual predecessor to Flying Corps, with no less entertaining gameplay.

Air Force Commander. A nice RTS that is not C&C nor WarCraft clone.

Ports of Call is a pretty fun sim game, imo. I don't see it talked about incredibly often. It's available for Amiga and IBM PC, both are good though I think the Amiga version has generally better animation and sound.

Given my interest in obscure titles, some of the stuff I like might have not been well known in the first place, so it'd be hard to talk about "forgotten".

But I'm getting the impression that Will Rock is such an unduly forgotten game. Sure it's a Serious Sam clone in an Ancient Grome setting, but it does not play exactly like Sam, and in fact I don't think I now of any other game that would be exactly like that. I had a lot of fun with it back in the early-mid 2000s during my University years, played the campaign several times but never multiplayer though. I checked some MP maps in game host mode and they felt fun too, pity there were no bots to play around with.

The developers (based in St. Petersburg, Russia BTW) took a serious approach and had an expert or two on Ancient Greek and Roman architecture on board who consulted them on structure designs used in the levels. The game is nice-looking, fast-paced and fun to play, without getting too difficult or playing the gotcha game with teleporting monster traps and such. There are no particularly intricate layouts and most secret areas are easy to find, but almost every area feels unique and has its own design and theme.

Will Rock was actually the game that brought me back into playing 3D FPSs, because back then I used to think that anything after Duke3D was kinda meh. Mind you, at the point when I discovered the WR demo I had not played Serious Sam and only had a very vague idea of what it was (which is a shame because I love Ancient Egypt).

Annoyingly, WR is not available for purchase today AFAIK -- possibly because of hardware compatibility issues? I think Saber Interactive later made other games on the same engine but not sure.

There's a spin-off of sorts called God Mode (available on Steam) - a co-op MP third-person shooter which recycles many of the character designs (multiplayer skins) and monsters from Will Rock. But honestly from watching game footage I had the impression that it failed to recapture the original atmosphere, possibly the developers (unrelated to the original WR team as far as I can tell) didn't even intend to.

Will Rock had serious mouse input problems with the framerate pacing back then (similar to criticism of early UE3 windows games) and wasn't very enjoyable for that.

leileilol wrote on 2021-09-07, 22:46:

Will Rock had serious mouse input problems with the framerate pacing back then

Perhaps my relative inexperience with FPS games of the time prevented me from noticing that. I don't remember any serious performance or gameplay issues, it worked well and I completed the singleplayer campaign several times on hard difficulty with my trusty NVIDIA 64MiB VRAM what's-that-model-called.

I do remember a magazine reviewer pointing out that the frame rate was unstable and prone to drops, proportional to the amount of action on the screen. Now that I'm thinking, there were infrequent slowdowns whenever the player got hit by a hefty explosion, but nothing game breaking. Or maybe I was willing to forgive any shortcomings of the kind, because it was one of the few games that I had, and I did love the Graeco-Roman setting too.

What's worse is that the release I had also had corrupted shadow maps (?) in some levels (roughly in every third level), resulting in ugly, irregular dark smudge on walls and other surfaces. But even that did not ruin the enjoyment for me.

Dark Reign: The Future of War

It's a real-time strategy game in the vein of Command & Conquer but with some highly advanced features. Terrain elevation and type play a tactical role for visibility and unit movement. For example, units that use hover technology can travel over water but cannot climb slopes.

It's also possible to customize unit behavior in great detail. You can set a single unit to scout an area while avoiding combat, use fast moving units to harass enemy harvesters and so on. The story is also pretty good but, unlike with C&C, it's not presented through in-game movies so you need to read through a bunch of text in the manual to get the full scoop.

If you like RTS games, be sure to give Dark Reign a shot. In some ways, it's even more advanced than StarCraft, despite being released before it.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2021-09-09, 04:00:

Dark Reign: The Future of War […]
Show full quote

Dark Reign: The Future of War

It's a real-time strategy game in the vein of Command & Conquer but with some highly advanced features. Terrain elevation and type play a tactical role for visibility and unit movement. For example, units that use hover technology can travel over water but cannot climb slopes.

It's also possible to customize unit behavior in great detail. You can set a single unit to scout an area while avoiding combat, use fast moving units to harass enemy harvesters and so on. The story is also pretty good but, unlike with C&C, it's not presented through in-game movies so you need to read through a bunch of text in the manual to get the full scoop.

If you like RTS games, be sure to give Dark Reign a shot. In some ways, it's even more advanced than StarCraft, despite being released before it.

I have that and i agree it's a very good RTS with potentially deeper tactical choices. I could appreciate it but never enjoy it quite as much as C&C though and i'm not sure why, perhaps there was less immediacy about it. There were lots of RTS games around in the mid-late 90's and this is definitely one the better ones

thepirategamerboy12 wrote on 2021-09-06, 19:48:

Ports of Call is a pretty fun sim game, imo. I don't see it talked about incredibly often. It's available for Amiga and IBM PC, both are good though I think the Amiga version has generally better animation and sound.

I remember a family friend showing me this one on his PC. I was never much into the whole business simulation genre but you have to admit that for a 1987 game Ports of Call looks fantastic and seems to have a very tidy and functional interface. The Amiga version's animated water in the habour/rescue minigame still looks good and even the PC version had the animated hourglass. Very cool effort considering the developers never made another game: https://www.portsofcall.de/index.html