f13.net

April is notoriously the slowest month in gaming. Slower than January, why? Because it's the month before E3. What's a gamer to do?

I know what I'm going to do. Play through two different games every day (except sunday) and document them. But there are rules.

1. Must have Screenshots.
2. Must be at least a little obscure. I'm not going to play anything like Madden or Final Fantasy.
3. Must play at LEAST 2 A DAY. That's just not going to work.
4. Must spend at least 1 hour playing each game, no matter how much my brain (and eyes) want me to stop.

But there are things you should know as well:

1. Posts will contain spoilers. Sorry, no avoiding it. Some of them will be DRASTIC.
2. I'm the only one that can make threads in forum. Too bad, so sad. I can't figure out how to set that permission, instead, if you make a thread in this forum I'm just going to move it to the den. Right? Right.
3. There will be one chronicle for each day leading up to E3 starting with April 10th.
4. You are free to make suggestions for games in this thread, they can be for the following sytems: NES, SNES, TG16, SegaCD, Jaguar, PSX, PS2, Xbox, 360, Genesis, 32X, N64, PSP, GBA, GB/GBC, DS, NGage, Gamecube, and PC.
5. You can not complain about the games I'm choosing to play. I'd like to be at least a LITTLE entertained so I'm not going to be playing Horizons and Second Life back to back. Hell, I won't be playing them at all, deal with it.

That should just about cover it. Enjoy my insanity.

Get some sun and exercise before hibernating for the summer?

I'm sitting by a window. In a month the sun will burn through my skin. By the time you see me at E3 you'll be able to call me Jamal.

That's only one of two points.

One of those games MUST be the last game you'll ever desire. (http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/468719.asp)

You're a real bastard.

I think rule #2 may get you off the hook on that one.

Suggestion:

Shadowrun (Genesis) - Was talking about this one in the cyberpunk thread.  Give it a go and tell me it's not ludicrously deep for a console RPG, particularly of that era.  The combat is simplistic (cycle through targets with one button, shoot with another button, occasionally toss a spell or hand grenade) but at least it's not completely abstract ala Final Fantasy.  There are no separate battle screens, badguys can accidentally shoot each other in the back if they get in the way, and you have to be careful how you toss your grenades.  When you're sneaking around a building, you actually have to sneak, paying attention to which way the security cameras are facing and things like that.

There's a SHITLOAD of interesting stuff to buy.  Armor, guns, laser scopes, silencers, cyberware, lockpicking tools, cyberdecks, software, and so forth.  Most of the best shit is illegal, harder to find, and will draw the ire of the cops if they see you with it.  Unfortunately, beyond a certain point you become so badass that the cops don't matter.  On the bright side, eventually they realize this and will occasionally run for their lives when they realize who they're fucking with.  Oh, and the Matrix hacking is goddamn brilliant in this game.  You can easily spend hours just roaming around the datafiles of different companies, stealing information to sell and reading the occasional report or memo.  And pimping out your cyberdeck with upgrades and software is like crack.

Once you finish the noob zone and are tossed out into the world, you could easily ignore the main plot for ages and just run around doing randomly-generated missions, hiring runners, gaining contacts, making money, and becoming leet if you wanted.  I've very rarely seen an RPG this deep and open-ended on a console.

Ok, I'm done slobbering now.

Thing is I've already played it, it's not obscure AT ALL and I'm not giving you a virtual reacharound. It's a good game, you don't need reassurance.

I suggest The Watchmaker (2001, adventure game) and Tread Marks (2000, Tank action game). Both for PC.

The latter one is actually worth playing, too.

Arcanum? Anachronox? Anything with the name Kohan in it? That PS game with VOs by Bruce Willis?

Yoru's are obscure. I'd never heard of either.

Strazos, yours are not so obscure. I do believe the Bruce Willis game was named Vendetta. if I can find a copy in a local store, THAT ONE might be worth suffering through.

Pick a game that was your favorite game at some point but that you haven't played in five years or more.  Like one of the old Mario games.  I don't think I've played SMB3 in something like ten years, but it's still one of the best platformers of all time.

Hmm, seems my train of thought was more in line with "under-rated."

Also, IMDB says the Willis game is Apocalypse. I owned it at one point, and it was somewhat fun, with an oddball control scheme.

Unfortunately, I can't refer to my own game collection at the moment, as it's still in boxes from when I moved in Feb.

I'm in no rush to fully unpack.

EDIT: Also, you playing one of those Borderbund (or whatever) Carmen Sandiego games would be amusing.

Feh, I was firmly in the SNES camp back then, and bought my Genesis secondhand well into the PS1 era.  Anything Sega besides Sonic the Hedgehog is obscure to me.  Also, I expect you to turn your nose up at any RPG that doesn't have an active community of teenage girls writing buttsecks fanfics about the protagonist.

How about EVO: The Search for Eden on SNES?

Crystalis for the NES

Maybe not very obscure, but it'd be interesting to see what games were like back when they weren't really made to be beatable by just about anyone.  I still haven't beaten it without my trust Game Genie.

You can emulate it easily enough, but I have a hard copy you can borrow.

We're one, but we're not the same.

Doesn't anyone else want to see him play Final Fantasy X2?  Am I the only one?  I know it's not obscure, but it's dreadful.  My other suggestion is Sorceror's Kingdom for Genesis.

The point of this isn't to make him play the worst games we can possibly imagine until he explodes in a shower of bile and vitriol on the front page.  He's not Haemish.

I reccomend Phantasy Star.  Break out the graphing paper!

SubSpace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_%28computer_game%29

The first commercial MMOG, and it just turned 10 years old.

Ookii has been an admin or gm or mod or whatever for Subspace for like 7 years. I've no interest in that shit.

Oh, also, part of the point was to have at least half the games be games I think people should play. Like the ones I played today. Despite the gripes, they're both wonderful little gems that I'm glad I didn't miss.

Sidescrolling RPG/platformer with incomprehensible Engrish storyline = motherfucking win.  And it's fun.

(http://www.rpgclassics.com/shrines/snes/evo/pics/bosses/Image10.jpg)

Did you just call EVO obscure? I think we have a cartridge or two of that in the house here. Maybe. I'd just load up the ROM anyway (screenshots are easy). If I do pick 1st, 2nd, or 2.5 gen (Sega CD, etc) stuff, I will be doing video me thinks. I may even add a voiceover track.

Fuck yes it's obscure, by normal human standards.  Go grab ten average slobs off the street who had SNES back in the day and they'll all know Contra 3, but you'll be lucky to find one or two who played EVO.  Granted, nothing is obscure here on the website of the guy who posts pictures of himself playing up to level 276 of Tetris, but those are the breaks.

Also, you need to do one or two older games, and this one has character.  You could find some shitty top-scrolling shooter that only six people outside of Japan have ever heard of, but who gives a shit?

EDIT:  Failing that, how about River City Ransom 2 for SNES?  I found a ROM of it a couple years ago and crapped my pants with glee before realizing it was all in Japanese.

I agree, also, Act Raiser.  If you don't review EVO or AR I will bombard your inbox with reviews of FF3 at the rate of one per day.

Maybe I'll do Rampart. Or Treasures of Rudra. I'm tempted to pick a game that's like 10-15 years old, never released here that has a fan made patch out there. After which the translated rom would magically appear on Yousendit.

Can't do Actraiser. Too much love for it. Gotta give it another 5 years in the nostalgia incubator before I break that out again.

Just do RCR2.  The fact that you can't understand WTF anyone is saying will just make it more fun, at least for the audience.  When I played it I watched some guy gabble at me in Japanese, then ran outside and beat the shit out of random women in the mall until I got bored, realized I didn't know where to go, and gave up.

Review Narc for the Xbox (http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/914630.asp?q=Narc). It's the best game EVER. Not kidding, it's so bad it's fun. Try to get ahold of the preview build, it's even buggier than the full version. MUCHO FUN. PROMISE.

But IT'S FUN! You get to die five times on the first level 'cause the controls suck ass. Play Narc! Play Narc! Schild for Narc!

Who's with me?

I've picked out the games for Day 2. It's not Narc or RCR2. One of the games is relatively recent and completely underrated and the other is 10 years old, Super Nintendo, and not available in America though there is a fully translated english ROM floating around. I should have video from the second one and most people will wish they knew it existed before now.

You'd review Blackthorne if you were a real man.

ok a serious suggestion - there was this hacker sim game, which was somewhat decent and noone I know played. Review that :)

Uplink?  Yeah cool game.  The same guys are currently making a nuclear war strategy game that looks very tasty.

My vote is for Ashen Empires (formally Dranisk).  A low-rent UO clone where not only can one bake bread - you can grow the wheat first!

Chronomaster - 1996 PC point-'n-click (like the old Lucasarts games) adventure game, featuring Ron Perlman doing the voiceover for the main character. Sci-fi story written by Roger Zelazny. It's a good one.

You people.

I am going to suggest a couple that I liked, that I think people should play, and which I also think are obscure.  You'll have to tell me if they are obscure.  I grew up in Alabama, where most contemporary entertainment was obscure.

Blaster Master [NES]
King Arthur's World [SNES]

I had a boxed copy of this back in The Day(tm). I recall that I could never get out of the first part of the game because it kept freezing and crashing on me. Then again, I also had a shitty computer at that time.

There's a space combat game featuring voiceovers from Bruce Campbell. I think it was released in the '99-'01 timeframe. Ah, here we are: Tachyon: The Fringe (http://www.mobygames.com/game/tachyon-the-fringe), released in 2000.

Uplink is good, but it's not really all that obscure by Schild's standards, I don't think. Fun game though. I'm looking forward to Defcon.

Download WinUAE (http://www.winuae.net/), then play Wizkid and Speedball 2.

Kabuki Warriors for the NES.

Battlemaster for the Genesis. Took some time to get into for me, but I remember playing it when I was on the road with the band. I also had access to copious amounts of free narcotics and hallucinogens, so ymmv. The music still lurks in my cranial regions.

Knights of Legend by Origin (1989) - Very, very deep turn based party combat RPG with an isometric view.

Great game, way ahead of it's time.  You will either love or hate the combat.

Tachyon was a decent little space sim.  I remember the intro had a neat take on the basic tutorial, which I found out later was written by Kevin O'Hara (Q-3P0 of early SWG fame).

Michael Jackson: Smooth Criminal, I think it was for Genisis.

I take that back. Everyone is happy the game I'm playing didn't get localized. Son of a bitch.

I played Dransik back when it was still some kind of weird alpha prototype using the Ultima V tileset.  I did the Ashen Empires free trial last year, and it wasn't awful, but it wasn't really worth paying money for either.  The noob zone was devoid of other players, and pretty much every MMO sucks as a single-player game.


Blaster Master was reasonably popular, the second one I never heard of.

We have a copy of King Arthur's World in a box about 10 feet from me. I've never played it so I may bite on that.

You should play and review at least one bizarre hentai game.

Sigh. While you're probably right

Found the hentai game. Fun shall ensue. I might play it tonight.

Gemfire/L'Empereur

That game was awesome.

I remember something about throwing sparklies at the badguys.

And I think it molested me at some point.

Aside from that, it's all a blur.

Here's something that's been bugging me.  First of all, are we talking obscure to the F13 crowd, or obscure to the general public?  Because I get the impression that there's a tremendous gap between the two.  Most of the people here have probably heard of something like Langrisser, but most of the casual gaming public wouldn't have the first clue.  Secondly, there seems to be a focus on RPGs and strategy games.  What about old action games that no one's ever heard of?  That said,, I'd also like to see him review the original Drakkhen or Arcana.

Sword of Vermillion for Sega Genesis?

And HEY, I always wanted to play the King Arthur game, but could never find a copy.

Maybe I'll get to play it on the Revolution!  :evil:

Hey, since you're working your ass off with this (inasmuch that playing and talking about games is working- if it's not fun that makes it work, right?) why isn't it getting any front page play?  There should be giant gaudy announcements all over the front page, SCHILD FREAKS THE FUCK OUT AND VOWS TO REVIEW EVERY GAME or something.

I mean, like I said, I used to only look at the front page before I started posting.  I would currently have no idea you were doing this.

I still only look at the front page, although I do enjoy a good dip into these hallowed halls of hatred from time to time.

I'll second this one.  I think I spent more time waiting for one of the 12 floppies to load on my C64 than I ever did playing it, though.  Sort of like dealing with Daggerfall crashing every 15 minutes.

9, and Subspace would be wierd to review, for the gameplay depends on which zone you are in.

Not obscure and not even particularly good, but A Boy and His Blob for the NES was at the very least a pretty unique game.  And maybe throw in some Bass fishing in there for variety.  I seem to recall enjoying Sega Bass Fishing for the Dreamcast, and Super Black Bass for the SNES.

Battlezone.  I don't hate you enough to recommend the other game on my mind at the moment.

Oh oh, do tell, whitey.

Very well.

Bubsy 3D.

You were right. I apologize for calling you whitey, whitey.

I'l try recommending a bunch, you've probably played most of em though.

Terranigma [SNES] - Very good RPG which doesn't get mentioned that often
Chaos Engine [AMIGA] - http://www.bitmap-brothers.co.uk/our-games/past/chaos-engine.htm excelent game
Genesia [AMIGA] - Remember this game as an AWESOME empire builder titel, dunno how well it has aged
Wings of Fury [AMIGA] - I remember this as a truely incredible side scrolling flight game. You both dog fight other planes and bomb in enemy territory.
River City Ransom [NES] - One of the best NES games ever, RPG/side scroller

RCR1 wasn't a big hit when it came out, but it's acquired such a cult-following since then that I can't call it "obscure" with a straight face.  But shit, Schild, do it anyway.  Side-scrolling action/RPG = WIN.  Castlevania II was the best of them all.

Castlevania 2 was the best of them all. Though Cave Story ranks up there.

Carnage Heart (http://www.gamespot.com/ps/strategy/carnageheart/index.html) maybe?  It's unique, and pretty fun if you have a couple buddies that want to play too.

RI35 HVFY
E45V XERT

That's the password for Castlevania II that will set you up to go kick Dracula's ass and win the game.  It's been bouncing around inside my head for the last 17 years.

(http://zeke.tzo.com/rpgww/misc/yalogank/zznonrpgww/signs/lol_lollerskates02.jpg)

Brain Lord.  It's Zelda with pretty hard puzzles and familiars.

What's sad is that jpeg has better graphics than the game.  Probably more fun too, or at least he looks like he's having fun.

If Schild were a Real man, he would play Bubsy 3D, and then shift right over into Sonic 3D Blast.

God, those were two horrible games.

I would play Nights into Dreams and Christmas Nights before hand. I have no clue where my copy of Christmas Nights is though. :(

I always wanted to try Nights.

Forgive me< I read the first page and didn't wanna scroll the second and third. Did you like Jet Force Gemini (N64)? Once you get past the wonky controls it's pretty fun. I'd also mention Conker's Bad Fur Day, but since they redid it for the XBox it's pretty much over.

I want you to play River City Ransom again, schild. Get lots of sushi and massages.

I liked that "shoot behind you with the shotgun" thing that he did.


Stuff to review:

2 Cinemaware classics. They were on PC as well, but the Ami versions were always better.
It Came From the Desert (Amiga)
Wings (Amiga)

From Dice, before they became a 1-trick pony and were gobbled up by EA
Deadline (PC)

Just a fun game that I never heard much about from others:
Blast Corps (N64)

LA action adventure game, but overshadowed by the Licenced Movie Tie-in
Herc's Adventures (PS1)

Punch Shit up
Dynamite Cop (Dreamcast)

I will not be playing RCR2 unless the translation patch that's in the works for it gets finished or I can get a hand on an early copy.

Yeah, pretty much useless in terms of gameplay but definitely sweet to talk to the chained up dudes and then run pat them and fire behind your back without looking, instantly killing them.

That was the gameplay, insofar as I recall.  :wink:

Other than that I remember some vaguely Prince of Persia type walking around. Old-school PoP of course.

Most of Blast Corps was just a cockblock to fun.

"Yo Noid!" for the NES.

I loved Yo Noid.

It had it's moments.  Most Capcom platformers back in the day had some.

I'd still like to see you try and get through Sword of Vermillion for the Genesis.

Deadline (PC)

Last night I tried to play  Super Mario Bros. I played for like an hour and, try as I might, I could not get past world 3-2 without using warps.  Holy shit, I think it might be the hardest game ever made.  On the other hand, when I was 8 I could never beat Donkey Kong Jr., and now it's a piece of cake, easily beatable in 10 minutes.

Since you've already hit the hentai, I'd reccomend some stuff from Cliff Johnson, the uncrowned king of the narrative metapuzzle game. His twin classics, The Fool's Errand and 3 in Three, are freeware these days and available from his website (http://www.fools-errand.com/).

These games are for the Mac, and I don't think you can get more obscure then that. Great stuff, though. He has links to Executor, a free Mac emulator for the PC, and instructions on how to get the game working optimally.

Errr... don't pre-order A Fool and His Money from that site, though. I like the guy's games, but that one was originally suppossed to come out in October of 2003...

Since you seem to like tactical RPGs, I'd like to ask, have you played Vandal Hearts? I used to own a copy before I lent it to somebody which I can't remember. It would probably be hard to find in this day and age, but if you really like tactical RPGs it would probably be worth a shot. I remember loving that game, I don't know how it would compare to todays standards though.

For the 15th anniversary coming up next month, I recommend White Men Can't Jump on the Jaguar.