Do you know some obscure 1990's PC games?

[Panzermann11]

Moorhuhn, a German game where you hunt chickens. Might not be that obscure to you Germans out there. 

 

A few fun facts about this game:

• The first game is apparently sponsored by Johnnie Walker, which my family used to and still own some of their drinks.
• It's also where 'ol Graf Zahl's profile picture originated from.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

DX-Ball and DX-Ball 2: both clones of both Breakout and Arkanoid released in 1996 and 1998 respectively.

[MrFlibble]

DX-Ball is probably the most popular Breakout clone for Windows, or at least one of the better known AFAIK.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

On 2/3/2023 at 9:39 PM, Panzermann11 said:

Moorhuhn, a German game where you hunt chickens. Might not be that obscure to you Germans out there. 

 

A few fun facts about this game:

• The first game is apparently sponsored by Johnnie Walker, which my family used to and still own some of their drinks.
• It's also where 'ol Graf Zahl's profile picture originated from.

I believe Graf worked on the mobile port of the game. It was everywhere in the USA for a long time. Anytime you went to Walmart, Target, K-Mart, or any store's PC section, the chicken was everywhere.

 

You also have several "Chicken Invaders" games:

 

 

Edited February 7, 2023 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[rouge_means_red]

Silver (1999) Basically what if FF7 had real-time combat

 

 

Caesar 3 (1998) One of the best city building games ever. It has seen a surge in popularity thanks to the Julius and Augustus mods. Its "sequel", Pharaoh, is getting a remake in the upcoming weeks

 

 

Creature Crunch (1996) An adventure game inspired by Ren & Stimpy, where you "use" items by eating them. Most of the fun came from just clicking things and seeing what happened

 

 

[Tetzlaff]

On 2/4/2023 at 3:39 AM, Panzermann11 said:

Moorhuhn, a German game where you hunt chickens. Might not be that obscure to you Germans out there. 

 

Not at all. Moorhuhn in that time in Germany was the one videogame every casual gamer knew and every "real" gamer ignored.

[Individualised]

On 9/15/2022 at 2:53 AM, Wadmodder Shalton said:

The following Sonic the Hedgehog PC Games that were released in the 1990s way before Sega exited the console hardware business.

 

Sonic CD - originally released in 1993 as an exclusive for the Sega CD/Mega CD addon for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, which got ported to Windows 95 in 1996, and an earlier Dino OEM release in 1995.

 

Sonic & Knuckles Collection - a Windows 95 port and compilation of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles released in 1997, and earlier in 1996 in other parts of the world.

 

Sonic 3D Blast - originally released in 1996 for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and Saturn in 1996, which got ported to Windows 95 in 1997.

 

Sonic's Schoolhouse - a 3D edutainment game developed by BAP Interactive and Orion Interactive and released in 1996. It used the same engine as Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge which was released a year earlier in 1995. The game has also been famous for inspiring the indie game Baldi's Basics. 

 

Sonic R - A 1997 racing game originally released for the Sega Saturn and ported to the PC in the same year, first being released in Europe in 1997, followed by Japan in 1998, and in North America in 1999.

The 1995 Windows release of Sonic CD is actually a different port than the one that was released in 1996 (I think one used DirectX while the other used some sort of Megadrive VDP emulation layer)

[Panzermann11]

On 1/25/2023 at 2:03 AM, bofu said:

Sango Fighter came out in 1989, and its sequel, Sango Fighter 2, came out only a few years later. Both games take place in the Three Kingdoms era of ancient China (one of my favorite eras of history and one that's heavily romanticized in much of Asia even outside of China).

 

The second game is particularly noteworthy in how it approaches progression. In one mode, rather than playing as a single character, you pick one of the Three Kingdoms' rulers and control all of their subordinate fighters (including weaker generic sword fighters/spearmen/archer that can be used to preserve your more valuable character's health) and actually advance on a map of China, taking and defending territories while managing your team's health with the goal of conquering all of China. Whereas most games or adaptations based on the Three Kingdoms focus heavily on the warlord Liu Bei, who ruled Shu, Sango Fighter 2 gives equal credence to each of the Three Kingdoms, giving them equal treatment and allowing the player to choose their path.

 

There's also a simple story mode or arcade fights, Mandarin voicework, and some honestly pretty nice spritework and designs that borrow on folklore and historical records while also giving the characters their own distinct gaits and fighting styles. The music isn't bad, either.

 

While the fighting itself isn't as deep as more combo-oriented fighters that would come after, the tactical conquer-and-defend mode was really unique and fitting for a game about an era of military rivalries. I think Apogee was even in talks to publish an English version once upon a time.

 

Speaking of the Three Kingdoms...

This game, officially called "Three Kingdoms: Heroes of Shu Han" was featured in @Revenant100's obscure FPS series and is quite notable from the way it uses audio and graphics from other games, such as Diablo, Quake, Heretic and Hexen. There's also an English patch for this game.

Edited October 11, 2023 by Panzermann11

[Sonikkumania]

Pekka Kana, an obscure 90's 2D platformer where you control a chicken that can throw chainsaws at enemies. The game was never finished so it still remains a demo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixGNwENp8Tc

 

Also, Separial, an extremely juvenile game where your objective is to escort CP disordered patients to their destinations in a period of time. If the time runs out, the patients will violently attack you. You have limited lives, and when they run out, you die.

 

[MrFlibble]

On 2/12/2023 at 1:12 PM, Sonikkumania said:

The game was never finished so it still remains a demo.

IIRC the devs stated that they lost the registered episodes? Anyway, there's a fully fledged (no pun intended) second game for Windows, available from their site:

https://www.pistegamez.net/games.html

[DrRock]

On 2/7/2023 at 10:08 PM, Tetzlaff said:

Not at all. Moorhuhn in that time in Germany was the one videogame every casual gamer knew and every "real" gamer ignored. 

It deserves special mention just how big of a cultural phenomenon Moorhuhn managed to be for it's first few years in in it's home country. Think of any sort of merchandise item and there's a good chance that Phenomedia sold those with their mascot attached to it. Board games, Haribo gummy candies, mugs, shirts and even stuff like animated cartoon bumpers for TV airplay and a multi-week charting novelty pop single. Even as people quickly got over the fad the games still sold well enough to keep the company afloat for a frankly ludicrous number of more years. Though big part of that has to with the surprisingly large older-skewing casual pc gamer audience that absolutely loves simplistic games that churn out new installments in regular intervals. Even those beyond the border probably know of the weird fixations of our people with job simulators(which, last I checked, don't even really simulate much of anything at all) and hidden object games. As an aside: Phenomedia also created a bizarre bondage-themed garden gnome game(likely NSFW). Thought you people should know about that for whatever that's worth.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

The Lawnmower Man - a 1993 FMV game based on the movie that is completely different from the platformer game on SNES, Genesis and Game Boy. It also got a port for the Sega CD and Macintosh in 1994 and 1995 respectively.

Cyberwar - a sequel to the above mentioned FMV game released in 1994, with less focus on FMV and more on adventure game aspects.

Both games were developed by Sales Curve, which later became SCI Games, and both games have barely anything to do with the movie, and with a low video resolution, even has uglier CGI than what's scene in the film itself.

Edited April 24, 2023 by Wadmodder Shalton

[Panzermann11]

[deleted]

Edited March 22, 2023 by Panzermann11
Wrong thread.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Here's two games that had their CGI FMV scenes featured in the CGI compilation Odyssey Into The Mind's Eye.

 

The Hive - a rail shooter developed by Rainbow Studios and published by Trimark Interactive in 1995

Angel Devoid: Face of the Enemy - an FMV-based tech noir graphic adventure game developed by Electric Dreams and published by Mindscape

 

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

On 6/7/2022 at 7:16 PM, Bucket said:

Anyone remember a Win98 freeware game that was a multiplayer sidescrolling LMS shooter? The premise was that you were in Hell and had to fight to the death for Satan's amusement. (I know - so edgy.) The draw of the game was the number of characters in the map and the exaggerated violence.

I scanned the thread and didn't see this get answered; that had to be XEvil.  One of several of freeware games that were go-tos for me during the golden age of freeware, along with the likes of Tapan Kaikki, C-Dogs and Liero.

Edited April 25, 2023 by ETTiNGRiNDER

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Mystic Midway: Rest in Pieces and Phantom Express - both shooting gallery games released in 1992 and 1993 respectively for MS-DOS and the CD-i.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

SkiUp! - a German reskin of Winter Race 3D which was also developed by Pantera Entertainment released in 1998 exclusively in Germany.

Edited July 20, 2023 by Wadmodder Shalton

[QuantumEcho]

On 3/10/2021 at 1:39 PM, Ofisil said:

Kingdom O' Magic

Not very good, but definately obscure

 

The main character looks like he's voiced by Psychicpebbles

 

[Maes]

Not really an obscure game, but I discovered that there is an MS-DOS port of Trog, of all games. Huh.

 

 

The port doesn't look half bad, considering the year of release (1990), but it has that certain "not quite there" feeling compared to the Arcade. Still, not many other ports of this otherwise great game exist, apart for the NES/Famicom.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Watchy (AKA Team 47 GoMan in Europe) - a 3D Action game released in 1997, which was the final game of 47-Tek, the same guys that developed Sento and Creep Clash.

 

[Kwisior]

On 2/7/2023 at 10:08 PM, Tetzlaff said:

 

Not at all. Moorhuhn in that time in Germany was the one videogame every casual gamer knew and every "real" gamer ignored.

It wasn't even a German-only game. I'm Polish and I played the platformers when I was very young. It goes under the name "Szalony Kurczak" here, which means "crazy chicken".

I also played the Chicken Invaders game(s).

Edited September 25, 2023 by Kwisior

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

Stalker.

 

No, not that S.T.A.L.K.E.R.  This Stalker, often differentiated as "Path of Fire" after the title of its shareware episode.

 

Started down this rabbit hole when I was paging through a scan of an old 1995 Software Labs catalog and did a double take when I saw this description and felt certain it couldn't be a fake because it jogged my memory of that damn picture from when I got that catalog back in the day.

 

As far as I've been able to tell, there's no direct relation between this game and the modern ones, they're just both inspired off of the same sci-fi novel that was apparently popular in the USSR.

 

The game seems to have become super obscure, even the shareware version seems to be missing from a lot of the usual DOS shareware sites.  I was actually planning to post about this to the lost media thread because it seems as if the registered episodes (part 2 being called "Fight for the Gold Sphere" (in-game) or "Fight for the Golden Sphere" (ORDER.DOC) and part 3 titled "Way Home") might be completely lost to us; but there are a few other obscure sharewares with possibly lost full versions that I wanted to gather info on for that post.  Even the game's own documentation is kind of taciturn about who actually made it, it's credited to "MM Software Productions" (and is their only listed release), the title screen is also signed "M.M." but nowhere, as far as I can tell, does it say what M.M. stood for and the only other credit is a mention of a Chuck Hanson for the music, in the MANUAL.DOC.  (Nothing in the docs gives any backing to what TSL said in their catalog about it being from Russia either, the registration address given was in Connecticut, but I suppose it could be a local go-between as was the case sometimes; Roadside Picnic seems to have been a thing with mainly Russian/Soviet Bloc popularity as far as I can tell so there's that.)  It certainly wouldn't surprise me if not many people registered this, because, well...

 

It's not that good.

The controls are kind of wonky, it uses a numpad scheme, but you still have to hit the separate up and left/right keys together to jump over things, because the diagonals are used only for aiming.  This despite the fact that you have to hold the spacebar to actually shoot, so it could probably have been modal between those keys aiming or jumping depending on if you had space down or not.  There also seems to be either a movement grid, or just no way to take precise small steps, you always tend to walk several steps in a direction when tapping a key; the gun also tends to rapid fire two shots in a row when you tap, and you have limited ammo.  Also, every level's environment is a unique painting rather than being built from a tileset, which sounds cool until you realize that this causes the same problems it did in those infamous CD-i Zelda games: it's sometimes hard to tell what's passable vs. solid and what's safe vs. a hazard.  This is further aggravated by there either being clipping errors, or arbitrary hidden pit traps, I'm not sure which it actually is (could be a bad implementation of a "Zone anomaly" type thing I guess).

 

Definitely feels like the sort of game where they put most of their budget into making fancy graphics rather than into making the game fun (it does look pretty neat as VGA-mode shareware games go, someone on this project knew how to draw at least).  An interesting relic, but I can't in good conscience recommend playing it as anything other than a curiosity.

 

Here's the shareware and here is that catalog scan.

[Chesspionage]

I really enjoyed Dark Seed when it was released. An H.R. Giger inspired, psychological horror, point-and-click. I’ve got no idea how it holds up now but back then it was brilliant. 

[Panzermann11]

https://www.mobygames.com/game/69825/escape-from-doomworld/ Laughing My Arse Off, that game title.

 

There doesn't seem to be an appopriate thread for 1980's games, so I'll post it here. I happened to stumble across this game when I was looking for some obscure Commodore games on MobyGames.

Edited October 9, 2023 by Panzermann11

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Ringer King - an old horseshoe throwing game made in 1999 by TC Consulting.

This game caught my attention after I saw two videos recently uploaded by Radiation Hazard on the background.

[Artman2004]

Dark Earth, a post-apocalyptic fantasy game from 1997.

 

[coderamen]

DOOM!

[MrFlibble]

18 hours ago, Artman2004 said:

Dark Earth

Nice video, thanks for sharing!

 

Somehow I don't remember hearing or reading about this game back in the 90s at all, I believe I only discovered it while browsing MobyGames, and IIRC I also found a few official screenshots on a 90s magazine coverdisk when I was hunting for game promos (again, for MobyGames).

 

I love this early 3D style, the character models somewhat remind me of Deathtrap Dungeon for some reason (again, I've not played that game but I'm quite familiar with it), while the entire 3D models against pre-rendered backgrounds style is indeed very simialr to Alone in the Dark or Resident Evil.

Edited October 21, 2023 by MrFlibble
added the last paragraph

[stridertech]

anyone here ever mention happyland adventures for the DOS? it's a weird 2d collect-a-thon sorta game from the 90s. watched a friend play it one day and it piqued my interest

 

https://youtu.be/J1QDed-eSqY

Edited October 21, 2023 by scientifikgenius

[DoomGuy999]

DESCENT, DESCENT II AND DESCENT III. NOT SURE IF ANYONE ELSE SAID THIS BUT DESCENT IS REAL GOOD