Do you know some obscure 1990's PC games?

[Pixel Fiend]

Interested in old games

Edited April 17, 2021 by game

[Skootroot]

Exploding Lips (1990) is the first game that comes to mind, mainly because I find the game kinda disturbing and creepy. A bunch of 90's games give me that feeling for some reason.

[ReaperAA]

Some obscure 90's games I remember playing in my childhood include:

 

• Bad Toys 3D: A Wolf3D clone FPS released in 1998 where you fight against evil toys. Neat cartoony artstyle. There is also an older "non color" version released earlier in 1995 simply called "Bad Toys".
• Lethal Tender: A mid 90's "pie in the sky engine" FPS with a military setting. Never got far into it.
• Demonstar: A Shoot em up made in late 90's from the same developers who made Raptor: Call of the Shadows. Also has 2 mission packs (called Secret Missions).
• Blast Thru: A brickbreaker/breakout/arkanoid genre game and in fact is a clone of DX-Ball, but slightly different audio/visuals and having soundtrack.
• Radix: Beyond the Void: A Descent clone released in 1995. Fellow Doomworld member Jval made the RAD source port for it.

 

[Redneckerz]

2 hours ago, <<Rewind said:

The point is, I want to make a list of the most interesting retro games from that era that are relavant to play in 2021. I have only started playing games a few years ago and I won't have first-hand experience with some of the titles so I'd llike to have some of your input as to what retro game might be so timeless. In particular, I'd be interested in hearing about titles I might not already be familiar with, which might be as obscure as:

 

Dark Colony
Chewy: Esc from F5
Azrael's Tear
Eradicator
Callahan's Crosstime Saloon

 

etc.

Give me a few mins and ill drop you my retro game list with more games than you ever imagined. (Well okay not that much, but to illustrate).

[Redneckerz]

@<<Rewind A few is 30 mins in my world of living. I left out the most obvious ones. Here it goes, spoilered:
 

Spoiler

• Extreme Assault - Blue Byte, Terminal Velocity clone
• Gunmetal - Mad Genius, Terminal Velocity clone
• Surface Tension - Compro Games, Terminal Velocity clone
• Scorched Planet - Criterion Games, Terminal Velocity clone
• Strike Base - DOS, Terminal Velocity clone
• Outer Ridge - Graphicwares
• Cybermage: Darklight Awakening
• NAM/Napalm
• WWII GI
• Shadowcaster
• In Extremis
• Cyclones
• Target - 1998, De Lyric Games, Duke 3D graphics
• Troubles: The Living Dead - 1997 DOS predecessor to Raising Dead, also known as Smuta: Living Dead
• Redneck Rampage: Rides Again
• Liquidator
• Osarium - 1997, Doom graphics
• Depth Dwellers: The Quest
• The Terminator: Rampage
• XS: Shield Up Fight Back
• Eradicator
• The Varginha Incident
• Chill Manor
• I.M.Meen
• Roboquest
• Alpha Storm - Mass Effect like game
• Parkan: The Imperial Chronicles - FPS RPG, 1997
• Madspace
• Necrodome
• Shadow Warrior
• Alien Cabal
• Z.A.R.
• Realms Of The Haunting
• Rebel Moon Rising
• Rock N Shaolin: Legend Of The Seven Paladins
• In Pursuit Of Greed
• Rex Blade: The Apocalypse (Program your own mini games with the REXX language)
• Chasm: The Rift
• Last Rites
• Mars 3D
• Tao - 1998
• Goosebumps: Attack Of The Mutant
• Rebel Moon
• Rebel Moon Rising
• Defiance - 1997
• Witchaven
• Witchaven 2: Blood Vengeance
• Hades
• Angst: Rahz's Revenge
• Wrath Of Earth
• The Terminator: Future Shock
• The Terminator: Skynet
• Fate
• Marathon 2 - Windows 95
• Transland
• William Shatner's Tekwar
• Dungeons Of Kremlin - 1995
• Old Gold 3D
• The Hidden Below
• Robocop - PC - CDoom Engine - custom iWAD by Carlos, so standalone DOS game, uses ripped textures, 2005.
• Kaos (1995, see Werta Best. Doom 2 engine like clone even more so than Quiver, but custom engine, open source. https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/112561-kaos-obscure-doom-clone-from-italy-also-open-source/)
• Hades 2
• Quiver - ESD Games
• Chacal 3D - 1997 Deathmatch game with DOOM graphics, Wolfenstein 3D engine.
• Klooni - DOS up to version 1.3. It uses Doom graphics
• Strife
• Breakfree - Breakout but in 3D, Wolfenstein 3D level visuals but more refined, by Software Storm
• Mortal Coil: Adrenalin Intelligence - A tactical shooter)
• Muzzle Velocity - Digi 4 Fun - This was basically Battlefield in 1995.
• Ashes To Ashes: Feeding The Fires Of War
• Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri - Ted Engine
• Thanatos 3D: Army of the Night - 1998
• Thor 3D
• Lands Of Lore: Guardians Of Destiny
• Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Deathkeep - 3DO, Windows
• Towers 2: Plight Of The Stargazer - PC
• Savage: The Ultimate Quest For Survival - 1996, survive as a lion in the wild, Doom like engine, apparently supports first person view.
• Whale's Voyage II: Die Ubermacht - 1995 RPG with trading elements like Alpha Storm, Sci-fi, 3D Engine supports light shading and shadowing and a scrolling sky, its like Legends Of Valour but with shading
• World Of Aden: Thunderscape (Thunderscape: World Of Aden) - Doom level graphics, 1995, Like Witchaven and Amulets & Armor, first person animation - HUGE, absolutely HUGE multilayered map. First dungeon takes 6 hours to get through. DOS, Steampunk. True 3D engine, SSI. Each dungeon is like 6 real time hours, and there are.. 24 fucking of em!
• Lords of Midnight 3: The Citadel - 1995, Adventure, Strategy, but also first person exploration. Uses a voxel engine, with 3D modeled characters but sprite based 2D art elements. Not full on voxel view though because of UI though, like Ultima Underworld. Looks like Muzzle Velocity. Engine reused for Ring Cycle.
• Thor's Hammerrealms
• Ring Cycle - 1996 - Psynosis - Dungeon parts look like true 3D, outdoor parts are on voxel engine, bigger viewport, looks texture mapped but is not, first person exploration, third person combat, no strategy. Based on a play by Wagner. Voxel engine looks like Muzzle Velocity.
• Rol Crusaders/Rol Crusaders: The Quest For The Heretic - Wolfenstein 3D class engine, but textured on floor and ceilings, 1995
• Normality
• Amulets & Armor
• Traffic Department 2192
• The Elder Scrolls: Arena
• Hexx: Heresy Of The Wizard
• The Elder Scrolls Legend: Redguard
• The Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire
• Legends Of Valour - First 3D RPG, before Wolfenstein 3D, textured floors and ceilings, also ran on Amiga 500.
• Lands Of Lore 2
• Lands Of Lore 3
• Descent To Undermountain
• Might And Magic VI: The Mandate Of Heaven
• Might And Magic VII: For Blood & Honor
• Might And Magic VIII: Day Of The Destroyer - Also has a Japanese only PS2 port. These are all moddable with MMextension, uses Horizon/Labyrinth Engine
• Betrayal At Kondor - Doom like 3D movement, turn based attack on seperate plane
• Betrayal In Antara - Doom like 3D movement, turn based attack on seperate plane

 

[Rudolph]

Dark Colony! I never got the chance to play that game and while I might have enjoyed it two decades ago, I am honestly not really tempted to rectify this now, as it just looks like a StarCraft reskin of WarCraft II, ironically enough.

 

That said, I would not say no to a remastered release and I do love the soundtrack, especially the first Human one: 

 

 

[Ruritanian]

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3146/

 

Codename: Tenka.  It's unplayable without this ROM hack, as it didn't have separate buttons for strafe left / right.  With the hack, it can be remapped in an emulator onto the modern control scheme on analog sticks.

 

It was the first First Person Shooter game on the PS1 which had proper 3D polygonal graphics.  Unbelievably for a PS1 game, it has a widescreen option for presenting the game in 16:9.  I play it on my jailbroken Vita.

 

It's really good.

[[McD] James]

 

 

Edited January 27, 2021 by [McD]James

[Nekr0s1s]

Some of those might not be that obscure, yet i don't see anyone talking about them.

 

- Adrenix

- Motorhead (Not to be confused with the band)

- Astrorock 2000

- Seek and Destroy

- Scud: Industrial Evolution (and it's prequel Scud: The Disposable Assassin)

 

[alLAN95th]

Hi,

 

These are in no order and are from various years between 1990-1999 that I'd recommend checking into:
Vaxine

Thunderstrike

Stellar 7

Team Yankee

Corporation

Highway Fighter

Radix: Beyond the Void

Wrath Of Earth

Meat Puppet

iPanzer '44

 

Respectfully,

 

-alLAN95th

 

PS:: Please note these aren't listed as being my favorites or the best of the decade, but I'd consider them to be obscure, and most of them are at least fun. Others, are probably not fun to play today, but worth looking into if you wanted to dig into the history of 90s gaming a bit with some oddball examples.

 

 

Edited January 27, 2021 by alLAN95th

[holaareola]

18 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

@<<Rewind A few is 30 mins in my world of living. I left out the most obvious ones. Here it goes, spoilered:
 

  Hide contents

• Cyclones

 

What a nutty control scheme that game had. I quite enjoyed it though. Remember it having primitive room over room and dynamic lighting too that was quite impressive for the time. At least until Descent came around!

 

- Scorched Earth was one of the first really fun multiplayer games I got to try. Worms perfected the formula a few years later.

- Metal Mutant. Very cool graphics and some intriguing puzzles and core mechanics (you can switch between 3 robots at any time, each with unique abilities) but mostly fucking frustrating and fiddly. I never finished it.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabots - A mech action game. One interesting mechanic was having to rig up pylons to spread your sphere of influence far enough that you could attack the enemy base without running out of energy, a kind of forerunner to the zerg goo or protoss pylons in Starcraft.

- Late 90s, but Battlezone. I feel this game is really underrated. An unusual blend of FPS action and RTS style gather/build/extend/attack gameplay. It's fun to play, the graphics were excellent, interface was really intuitive for the time and the soundtrack is excellent.

- Monster Bash - EGA Apogee sidescroller where you play a snotty looking kid fighting the undead with a slingshot. I remember it having tons of secrets, that's about it.

- The Incredible Machine - Awesome physics based puzzler where you have to rig up a bunch of different pieces into a crazy contraption (cycling monkeys?!) in order to get a ball into a hoop etc.

Edited January 28, 2021 by holaareola

[Boaby Kenobi]

Harvester is a brilliant game from the 90s.

 

 

[Pixel Fiend]

Awesome, those replies already deserve a cool top 100 image that I considered making. Just trying to find some of those old covers is incredibly annoying. 

[Doomkid]

8 hours ago, Boaby Kenobi said:

Harvester is a brilliant game from the 90s.

 

 

This snippet is one of the best ads for a game I've ever seen and it isn't even an ad! Amazing.

[[McD] James]

 

[Robot J]

I don’t know if it’s that much obscure but I do know the house of the dead 1, 2 and 3 (albeit 3 wasn’t released in the 90s) got pc ports and good ones at that. Sadly the pc ports are a bit hard to play nowadays since no releases on steam, gog or anywhere and the source code was lost.

[Vermil]

14 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

Give me a few mins and ill drop you my retro game list with more games than you ever imagined. (Well okay not that much, but to illustrate).

 

I dream of having some of the games on that list in my collection.

[Chezza]

The Neverhood. Claymation puzzle game, part of my childhood.

[ReaperAA]

13 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

@<<Rewind A few is 30 mins in my world of living. I left out the most obvious ones. Here it goes, spoilered:
 

  Hide contents

• Chasm: The Rift

 

 

Oh shit, why didn't I mention Chasm: The Rift. I really liked this game. Aesthetically, it is a neat Quake clone FPS with some cool features like limb dismemberment and having pretty good graphics/sounds for 1997 standards. Unfortunately it lack's Quake's verticality because the engine is not good enough for it.

[bobstremglav]

Angst: Rahz Revenge (I guess 1996)

Really, as one reviewer said, "good game as shock therapy against activity crisis"

[Maes]

Supaplex (1993, 1994?) - a Boulder Dash clone with a hi-tech/electronic theme.

Tubular Worlds (1994) - a horizontal arcade shooter that, as it turned out, originated from the Amiga and also had a Mac (!) version, of all things.

not to be confused with....

Gateworld (1993), an Italian sharewave game by Homebrew software that looks and plays like Duke Nukem's (the original Apogee title) poor cousin.

Invasion of the Mutant Space Bats of Doom (1994). Yes, it existed. Yes, it was good.

Turrican 2 (1995). Though by no means an obscure title (it was big on the Amiga and Atari ST already in 1993), there was a little-known DOS version of it.

 

"SFPC" or "SFIBM": a Korean, bootleg copy of Street Fighter II for IBM PCs. What was interesting about it is that all files, graphics, sounds etc. were out in the open, and could be modified with little effort. Kinda like an early MUGEN.

Edited January 28, 2021 by Maes

[Bingo Johnson]

• Metal & Lace
• Ultrabots
• FX Fighter
• XCar: Experimental Racing
• GT Racing '97

[Rudolph]

4 hours ago, Chezza said:

The Neverhood. Claymation puzzle game, part of my childhood.

Did you play its spiritual sequel Armikrog?

[Pixel Fiend]

7 hours ago, Doomkid said:

This snippet is one of the best ads for a game I've ever seen and it isn't even an ad! Amazing.

 

I think Harvester beating Doom on my list will also be a good ad. I beat Harvester twice and saw two gameplay streams later. It's a perfect dark comedy.

[Pixel Fiend]

https://i.imgur.com/enWvFUz.jpg

 

A mosaic of 100 interesting games. Not final and not ranked for now. Some of those I don't have yet and some picks are inspired by your mentions in this thread. Feel free to say if you'd add something here.

 

Thanks a lot for those numerous oddball mentions by the way. They make this thread worthwhile. Turns out there are even more games hidden out there than I thought.

Edited January 28, 2021 by <<Rewind

[Redneckerz]

11 hours ago, Vermil said:

 

I dream of having some of the games on that list in my collection.

I have a few, but its a difficult show casing.

Stuff like Last Rites and Rex Blade is just amazing though, the latter more so for its unique aspects (You could create your own Asteriods game using a console there and with actual coding. Who dares to code a Doom port inside this game?)

11 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

 

Oh shit, why didn't I mention Chasm: The Rift. I really liked this game. Aesthetically, it is a neat Quake clone FPS with some cool features like limb dismemberment and having pretty good graphics/sounds for 1997 standards. Unfortunately it lack's Quake's verticality because the engine is not good enough for it.

The game engine is super interesting: 3D models, almost comic like visuals, but all on a flat plane. All in all, it resulted in a Quake like look, but actually being playable on at 486.

Rebel Moon is also noteworthy. It was ported to the Rebel Moon Rising engine, but its the first FPS that actually has colored dynamic lighting (like Unreal). Hugely impressive for its day, a visual show piece.

[Chezza]

6 hours ago, Rudolph said:

Did you play its spiritual sequel Armikrog?

I did not but aware of it. Something I should try when someday if possible. Unless it's as difficult to find as the Neverhood.

[Redneckerz]

Speaking of Rebel Moon, this is how it looked highlighting the colored lighting well:

[Rudolph]

1 hour ago, Chezza said:

I did not but aware of it. Something I should try when someday if possible. Unless it's as difficult to find as the Neverhood.

Thankfully no! It had a Kickstarter and is now available on Steam, among other things. It is alright, but unfortunately, it is nowhere near as memorable as The Neverhood and it does feel like too little too late, especially since it ends on a big cliffhanger that is unlikely to ever get addressed, as the developers seem to have since moved on to other projects. There is also the fact that Doug TenNapel was heavily involved in the project, so if you happen to dislike him (as many people seem to nowadays), you may want to give it a miss.

 

That said, the Terry S. Taylor soundtrack is totally worth getting!

[DuckReconMajor]

Quick Ctrl-F didn't see anyone mention Loom, but that and probably any other of the LucasArts SCUMM adventure games.