For me it has to be Star Fleet II: Krellan Commander. The game looks absolutely daunting to a new player, and its original launch was so messy and buggy I avoided it for years.

Then I began to play it in earnest a few years ago, and it's become my all-time favorite game, as it pretty much has everything I want in a capital ship-focused space game. I now have well over 1,000 hours in the thing and I just love it.

I saw Dos Quake running on a housemate's PC at university and thought it looked brown, and ugly, and boring.
Then a couple of years ago I loaded it up on N64, just to check how it ran, and to my surprise started enjoying it quite a bit. Then last year I started using it on my Win98 PC to test opengl on an old graphics card and this was when I really got into it.
Finished the game with Fitzquake and a Voodoo 2, then started getting into all the maps from quaddicted like Beyond Belief and Insomnia, Honey, Underdark Overbright, and Deathmatch Dimension.
Next up is Arcane Dimensions but I will need a modern PC for that...

I had a similar experience with Quake. I got the rip with no CD audio in 1998 and played it and liked it but I did not think it was awesome.

Recently I installed the original CD version on my P2 350 and was blown away how much immersion is added by the psycho soundtrack.

Star Fleet 2 looks like a very old game where you really need to understand the mechanics or you will fail a lot.

Star Fleet II IS a very old game, having come out in 1989. It's daunting at first, but it actually has tutorials and two manuals to help. If an idiot like me can grok it, anyone can.

I've got one of each:

Accident: The Wolf Among Us.
I completely ignored this one when it was launched, by this time Telltale had already gone from making actual point and click adventure games into making basically visual novels with minimal gameplay that just didn't interest me one bit. Knowing absolutely nothing about the setting didn't help. Didn't give it a time of day.

Until years later I somehow ended up clicking some gameplay video of it on youtube, don't remember why. But something evidently clicked with me because next I went and watched a longplay of the entire game, loved it, then bought the game, played it through and loved it even more. Now I think it's on my top five of previous decade.

It's almost entirely character/dialog driven so people who don't care about that stuff will find nothing there, but I really like the characters and the setting. It's about fairy tale characters who had to escape from their realm to our world and are having a really bad time, the game has this really great somber atmosphere with fairly adult themes. I mean The Little Mermaid is working as a prostitute, that's one hell of a take on traditional fairy tales!

Second chance: Deus Ex.
First try: What is this janky pile of crap? The first level is incredibly boring! Why is the gunplay so bad? To hell with this.

Fast forward about two years of constantly hearing people praising the game to high heavens.

Second try: Yeaaaaaah one of the best games ever.

Dune 2000. Always loved C&C, Red Alert, Warcraft 2. But this one just run under the radar. Never liked original Dune 2 or Warcraft because of too much hastle to play them properly. No modern mouse commanding and grouping.

Deus Ex: Invisible War

I know this one gets a lot of hate, but I enjoyed it. Having played the first two Deux Ex, I feel the first one is overrated, but the sequel is underrated.

System Shock 2

While this game is highly rated, when I first played the demo, I did not understand the game. I was used to traditional first-person shooters. That this game is more of a survival horror didn't click with me and I gave up on it.

Years later, I revisited it with different expectations and it turned out to be amazing. I now get why it's so beloved.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-12-15, 16:16:

Deus Ex: Invisible War

I know this one gets a lot of hate, but I enjoyed it. Having played the first two Deux Ex, I feel the first one overrated, but the sequel is underrated.

Similar situation here. After replaying Deus Ex: Invisible War last year, I've come to appreciate it a lot more. Although it doesn't quite live up to its predecessor, it's still a decent game, which can be pretty fun at times.

Turns out a lot of my issues came from its steep hardware requirements, for the time when it was released. Meaning, the game was largely unoptimized, and loading times were horrendous. Replaying it on my i5 3570 + GTX 970 rig and using an SSD made the experience a lot smoother.

mombarak wrote on 2024-12-14, 07:53:

- Rampart: simply addictive castle battles

Yes Especially 2 or 3 player!
Micros Machines 2 is somewhat similar, Awesome split screen game.

Big Red Racing
https://youtu.be/WRNdTxbRX2A?si=3l4IR8TL1h_YH_uw

It's a bit rough around the edges but fun in a can't take the game to serous way.
2 Player either spilt screen or network is also fun

Headlander.
I bought it on a pack, and it really surprised me.

Deus Ex: Same here, it is still on my bucket list but I had the same issues when trying: First level is a WTF - why is this so praised...? Guess I need to finish the first level.
Dune 2000 is awesome because of the cutscenes and the great sound next to the pixel look which I love about the older C&Cs. Never got fully warm with the Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 look and feel.

Headlander looks weird. 😁
You mean the new game on Steam right Zup?

100% must be Skylanders for me. My girlfriend and I picked up a used Wii with a lot of extra stuff and games years ago. Including a few Skylanders figures and a portal for Skylanders: Giants.

At first we were like: "oh, this was probably some dumb fad to get kids to buy expensive toys." We were this close to selling them before we reluctantly decided to try the game.

Now years later we have all games on several consoles and bins full of figurines, 🤣. We fell really hard for Skylanders. It's just such an amazing and funny series.

One of my favourite 1998 FPS games I discovered back then on one of the many shareware/freeware/demo/shovelware CD-ROMs my late father would get from software stores (back when those were a thing) was Gunmetal by Mad Genius Software.

It's very impressive what they were able to make with such a odd engine; "The Fat Sprite Development System" as it's referred to in the credits and the game's log file. But, it sadly came out during a period of very stiff competition: Quake 2, Unreal, Half-Life, Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, and so on.

The game faded rapidly into obscurity and the devs of the game shortly dissolved and parted ways with one another shortly after the final 1.36 patch to the game was released.

I used to have videos and streams of this game but due to troll armies and extremely incompetent and easily socially engineered staff on said platforms I've taken down everything and got the hell outta' dodge of both Twitch and YouTube.

PSA: Do not use AI and/or automation as a substitute for moderation and do not hire people without a extensive background check on their "internet presence".

Accident #1: YSFLIGHT
I think it was 2009 or 2010. I was in elementary school then, and I found a book with a freeware CD for Windows XP in a used bookstore, so I bought it. YSFLIGHT was there.
It was my first time using a realistic simulator, and I had a hard time even taking off at first, but once I got used to flying, it was a lot of fun.
I also liked that all the aircraft configuration files were plain text. 3000 AIM-9s, 5000 unguided bombs, four 1 million horsepower reciprocating engines, anything goes! It was a great toy for an elementary school boy.
A little while later, in 2016, I joined an online server, which led me to get deeply involved in several communities, and those relationships continue to this day (even though I almost never play YSFLIGHT anymore).

Accident #2: TETREX
In April 2020, I was bored (yes, my school was closed) and I was looking for a game to kill time on Vector (the biggest freeware site in Japan). TETREX was there.
It's basically a Tetris clone with a "slight" twist (hexagonal blocks). There are many variations in how to clear lines (which makes it difficult), and standard mode requires an astronomical number of Lv.100 to clear.
At the time, I was only able to reach Lv.15. I've been trying for almost 5 years, but I can only reach Lv.72 (it takes me 35 minutes to get there).
I got so addicted to this that I even decompiled and modified it with DotPeek to play comfortably (avoid overflow of the random number source, prevent the game from quitting whenever I press Esc, etc.).
I can't find anyone else playing it on the Internet, but TETREX will always be with me.

Probably the early Tex Murphy games. They came at a time when everyone in america was in a Doom madness so clicking things and sloving the mysteys are for casuals!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So I skipped a lot of adventures that period. Kinda wish I hadn't nowadays!

The 1994 game's 3d engine and art also is something to behold for 3d tech artists. Also the game isn't serious and a lot of reviews then were polarized about that.

Also in 1994, but on the arcade side..... Gun Force II / Geo Storm. Really clicked with me enough to no miss it. Many often compare it to Metal Slug (or even misleadingly call it a beta of that)

Second chance? Probably MegaRace (1994 again!). It ran terrible on my PC then so I put it down and forgot about it for a decade and then I found new appreciation as this time around Christian ERICKSON isn't indecipherably stuttering anymore.