Do you know some obscure 1990's PC games?

[Biz!]

Duke Nukem II

[Jello]

6 hours ago, Redoom said:

Duke Nukem II

I really don't think Duke Nukem (Nukum, hehe) and Duke Nukem II are obscure in the least. Less popular than Duke Nukem 3D sure, but certainly well known. Otherwise they wouldn't have gotten sequels.

 

Now God of Thunder on the other hand seems to be relatively obscure. I got the first episode on a bulk shareware disc I got in the mid 90's, had "Over 1,000 games" I believe. Most were absolute crap, but I did kind of like God of Thunder. There was also another game, flight game where you were flying a B-2 stealth bomber that was pretty enjoyable at the time. And one rudimentary 3D game where you were on a motorcycle that was kind of interesting. Oh, and Terminal Velocity, Realms of Chaos, and Hocus Pocus.

 

Wish I still had that disc, not sure where it ended up. Anyway, God of Thunder:

 

 

Oh, and it's actually free on Steam if anyone is interested. Although it crashes when I try to put it in fullscreen, so I might have to play around with that.

Edited May 10, 2021 by Jello

[jupiter_ex]

Creature Shock (no relation at all with System Shock)

 

Cyberia (not related to Syberia from 2002)

 

Rise of the Robots

 

Noctropolis

 

Hell

 

Titus the fox

 

Electro man

[jupiter_ex]

On 5/9/2021 at 10:26 PM, Jello said:

God of Thunder:

 

Had a demo of this on a CD. Loved the music in the first level

[Kyka]

Final Doom lol.

 

[F your good vibes bad vibes only]

Did someone here mention Recoil (1998/9)?

[Pixel Fiend]

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/4r4i9g/100_worthwhile_dos_games_of_the_90s/

[ReaperAA]

1 hour ago, game said:

https://www.reddit.com/r/retrogaming/comments/4r4i9g/100_worthwhile_dos_games_of_the_90s/

 

Finally some good quality stuff from reddit

[deus-ex]

On 5/10/2021 at 3:26 AM, Jello said:

Oh, and it's actually free on Steam if anyone is interested. Although it crashes when I try to put it in fullscreen, so I might have to play around with that.

 

The author of God of Thunder released the full game as freeware. It can be downloaded from here: https://www.adeptsoftware.com/got/

A DOS emulator like DOSBox is required to play the game on a current Windows PC.

 

[deus-ex]

On 5/16/2021 at 7:41 PM, jupiter_ex said:

 

Had a demo of this on a CD. Loved the music in the first level

 

The music was originally created in the MIDI format. The MIDIs then got converted to a unique sound format that has been used in the game 'God of Thunder' only. Someone ripped the music and converted it to the OGG format (streaming format like MP3). The music can be listened to and downloaded here: http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php/God_of_Thunder_(DOS)#Music

[Wadmodder Shalton]

The software titles by Parrity Interactive.

 

They are as follows:

 

- Pyst: a parody of Cyan Worlds' Myst. Was planned to have a sequel being a parody of Myst's sequel Riven called Driven but it was never released.

- Star Warped: a parody of Star Wars released around the time that the Special Editions from 1997 were released. It even has a very funny opening crawl sequence with a Star Destroyer blasting at it, causing it to explode.

- The X Fools: a parody of The X Files, enough said.

- Microshaft Winblows 98: a parody of the Windows 9x series of operating systems released in 1997 a year before Windows 98, and around the time Microsoft was abusing it's monopoly on the browser market with the release of Internet Explorer 4.

 

Wanted to mention these games here, as many of you never heard about Parrity Interactive.

Edited June 12, 2021 by Wadmodder Shalton

[Wadmodder Shalton]

A crappy FMV game I can think of is Gundam 0079 The War Of Earth. This was a live action FMV game based on the Mobile Suit Gundam franchise released in the 1990s.

 

Edited November 24, 2021 by Wadmodder Shalton

[unerxai]

Some I remember playing as a kid:

 

 

Beetlejuice in: Skeletons in the Closet

 

I was surprised this one didn't have a console port

 

 

 

FX Fighter

 

I was really into this one at some point. I would use the insect guy because I could spam a combination of attacks and win every time (except with the final boss).

 

 

 

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

 

Apparently it's a different game than the console ones with the same name. Never made it past the second stage despite playing it like a hundred times.

 

 

 

Also:

 

-The Adventures of Micro Man: Win 3.1 platformer.

-Cobra Mission: "Panic in Cobra City": Old adult anime-ish adventure game. The theme song has always been stuck in my head.

Edited June 6, 2021 by unerxai

[LadyMistDragon]

Wheel of Time from 1999. I only played 20 minutes of it once, but most people aware of it seem to like it.

 

 

 

There was another game @pagb did a playthrough of called Eradicator I think that was an FPS.

 

 

Edited June 7, 2021 by LadyMistDragon

[Jello]

5 hours ago, LadyMistDragon said:

Wheel of Time from 1999. I only played 20 minutes of it once, but most people aware of it seem to like it.

 

 

 

There was another game @pagb did a playthrough of called Eradicator I think that was an FPS.

 

 

I need to see if I still have my disc for Wheel of Time. I got it mainly because my older brother was a huge Robert Jordan fan, and I was interested in the universe as well. I thought he would love a Wheel of Time game, unfortunately he has been extremely obstinate in his refusal to play a game with mouselook ever since Quake 2 came out. He just will not play them, refuses to learn how a dual analog controller works, will not touch an FPS if you have to aim along both the X and Y axis. And he was around sixteen or seventeen when Quake 2 came out, shouldn't have been complicated. The last FPS game I can still play with him when he visits is Perfect Dark on the N64. It's fun, but it'd be nice if we could at least play the remake on my 360, but nope, no dual analog. Still boggles my mind.

 

But the game itself was absolutely breathtaking at the time; it used the Unreal engine in ways I never thought possible. It was just damn gorgeous, and fun. Never finished it though, can't remember why. I put several hours into it, and it wasn't overly difficult, and it was engaging, not sure what came up that made me forget about it. I didn't buy it right at release, would've been months later, so, Hell, it might've been American McGee's Alice that replaced it.

 

Anyway, it was a pretty good game. I'll have to find it, and then spend a few hours getting it to run on a modern system. 

 

Edit: Well, while looking for it I did find my Bodyworks Voyager cd. No idea how Windows 10 is going to react to that. Not well is my presumption.

 

Extra edit: Yeah, I got it to install via Dosbox, and even run, in fullscreen with sound. I was able to use the menus, select my difficulty, and heard "Welcome to Mission Control, Ensign." Before the whole thing crashed with a ton of memory errors. All in the lovely DOS font. It took me back. It'd probably be more trouble than it's worth to figure out just what the problem is. But dammit, if hearing "Welcome to Mission Control, Ensign" didn't take me back almost thirty years.

 

Anyway, Windows said the version of my product is not compatible with Windows 10, and they suggested that I should contact the publisher. I'm sure "Software Marketing Corporation" and "Mythos Software" will get right on that. I never realized those were the names of the publisher and developer. Seems kind of... mysterious.

Edited June 7, 2021 by Jello

[Maes]

@unerxai: That Terminator 2 game has a 1980s Batman (also by Ocean) vibe to it (those mugshot life bars...). Quite ambitious title actually, for trying to follow the movie plot and even having some proto-video intermissions. OK, the fighting portions are really primitive, esp. with Street Fighter 2 being just around the corner at the time. The truck-motorcycle chase portion does have a Rally Bike vibe to it...only done much more sloppily.

 

Never saw it back in the day though, so obscure is right.

Edited June 7, 2021 by Maes

[Jello]

11 hours ago, unerxai said:

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

 

Apparently it's a different game than the console ones with the same name. Never made it past the second stage despite playing it like a hundred times.

 

 

Reminds me of Predator 2 for the Genesis.

My step-grandparents had a Sega Genesis in their basement, I'm assuming it was for their grandkids. He only had two daughters, and they were adults at that point, and they didn't play videogames. Must've been for the grandkids and step-grandkids. For some reason they got coerced into buying Predator 2, and I'm pretty sure I know which one of my step-brothers convinced them to do that.

 

Anyway, we had quite a bit of fun with it. It reminded me of a mix of Smash TV and the overhead levels from Contra 3. Rather violent, and I'm not sure if it's obscure or not, but I don't think I've seen it anywhere else except their basement.

Edited June 7, 2021 by Jello

[Michael Jensen]

[Maes]

19 minutes ago, A.H. Sankhatayan said:

 

That wouldn't fly in Greece..."vlakas" means "moron". :-)

[Michael Jensen]

4 minutes ago, Maes said:

 

That wouldn't fly in Greece..."vlakas" means "moron". :-)

The game is from Czech Republic. Vlak means train in Czech (and a bunch of other Slavic languages)

One of the computers in my elementary school had it, along with many other 90's games. Apparently, it's now downloadable from the Microsoft store, for free of course. 

[Maes]

I can't remember the name, but it was a shareware breakout/arkanoid clone with colorful 256-color VGA graphics, and intro with a Conan-like character (taliking about how he got a "muscular body, as a result of his many adventures"), and, most notably, a soundtrack specially composed for sound cards with an OPL3 chip, taking advantage of all 4 operators. Or so they said.

[Mr. Freeze]

 

I can't find anyone else who played it. 

[mrthejoshmon]

Rites of War is a seldom mentioned strategy game in the Warhammer 40k universe focusing on the Eldar in particular, the few who speak of it remember it fondly.

 

Spoiler

 

 

Unfortunately I cannot find widescreen support so I have to play it in 640 x 480.

[UnknDoomer]

A scary "Doom brother" from Amiga - Gloom Deluxe (1996).

 

 

Edited June 7, 2021 by UnknDoomer

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Any of the software titles released by Selena Studios.

 

These include but not limited to:

Read-a-Rama - a low-budget edutainment game with crappy voice acting and badly designed characters & graphics.

Spell-a-Rama - another low-budget edutainment game with crappy voice acting and badly designed characters & graphics.

Kinderama - possibly the same lower-budgeted edutainment style as Read-a-Rama & Spell-a-Rama.

Math Wizard Plus - possibly the same lower-budgeted edutainment style as the other games mentioned above.

Sadly only the first two have been recently well known, as LGR did a review of both Read-a-Rama & Spell-a-Rama a few years ago.

Edited June 15, 2021 by Wadmodder Shalton

[MrFlibble]

8 minutes ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

Sadly only the first two have been recently well known, as LGR did a review of both Read-a-Rama & Spell-a-Rama a few years ago.

Watching it right now :) The box opening part is hilarious

 

 

[out_of_service]

I remember playing this back in the day.

 

 

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Hard Drivin' II Drive Harder

This was a PC exclusive sequel to the Arcade racing games Hard Drivin' & Race Drivin' released in 1990 on the Amiga, Atari ST & MS-DOS.

Edited June 16, 2021 by Wadmodder Shalton

[deus-ex]

On 6/7/2021 at 5:08 AM, LadyMistDragon said:

There was another game @pagb did a playthrough of called Eradicator I think that was an FPS.

 

https://www.gog.com/game/eradicator

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Treasure Quest - this was a puzzle game for Mac OS, Windows 3.1 & 95 released in 1996 by Sirius Publishing, the same company that produced the ill-fated MovieCD format between 1996 to 1999.

This game used an older version of the MotionPixels codec called MVI1, compared with MovieCD which used MVI2. I'm guessing the game has the same compatibility problems & software bugs as the MotionPixels codec, not being natively being compatible with Windows Vista onwards, meaning that Windows 3.1, 95, 98, 98SE, NT 4.0, ME, 2000 & XP can play this game with a few issues.

 

There was also a contest that was to be held between April 10th 1996 to December 31th 1999 regarding a puzzle with "The Tree of Life" in the game, with the prize being $1,000,000. Apparently, the puzzle was solved by P. Dreizen of San Francisco, California in May of 1998 and supposedly that person won the prize.