Mine is Lady Sia for GBA. It’s just a platformer but I just love it played and completed more 20 times. Will probably speedrun it in future.
3D MonsterMaze
I personally loved ice climbers on the nes
I don’t know if this is obscure anymore, but “Hamtaro: Ham-Hams Unite!” was always one of my favorite GBC games. The artwork was adorable, the way they communicate with each other is adorable, it’s just great.
Treasure are such a famous developer within the retro subculture that it’s hard to call any of their stuff “obscure” at this point, but I want to give my nod to Light Crusader for the Mega Drive (Genesis).
Light Crusader Full Soundtrack on Youtube.
It’s got a bit of that isometric controls jank, but it’s just got the perfect vibes for a Genesis game. The right level of difficulty (hard but beatable), awesome art, quirky as hell, and one of my favorite soundtracks of the entire 16-bit era. Do yourself a favor and check it out–at the very least, give the soundtrack a listen, as it’s some of the best that the Genesis has to offer, in my opinion.
Solomon’s Key (NES)
Finally beat it last year after trying for 35 years. Such a good game. It’s one of my favorite games of all time. Action platform puzzle game. It has two endings, and there is zero chance you’ll get the good ending without a guide. Not to beat each puzzle room, but to find all the hidden items. You see, if you miss one, all the ones after that don’t appear! So hunting for them naturally is nearly impossible. It also has a secret continue mechanic, too, without which the game is also pretty much impossible.
Blaster Master on NES. I was so addicted. And then I got the NES Advantage controller and it was just pure Blaster Master bliss.
If we’re talking RPGs like a lot of people in this thread are, while the Zelda GBC/GBA games were great of course (although not so obscure), I also really enjoyed Golden Sun. I believe another game I also played when I was younger was Racing Gears Advance, I think that one was a bit more obscure.
Crush for PSP, it’s a puzzle game where you switch between 2d and 3d. The style is cartoony, the music is amazing, and the puzzles are generally engaging without being too difficult. It’s really a shame it only came out for PSP and a slightly different version on 3ds.
Maybe it’s not obscure enough, but for me, Starflight on the Sega Genesis remains the greatest space exploration game ever made.
It was unforgiving the way games were back then, which added to the feeling that you’re just out there in unexplored space.
More than 800 different planets, most of them empty (except for resources), but that just makes it so exciting when you find an artifact hidden in ancient ruins.
And an incredible story on top of that. A huge mystery unfolds organically as solar flares start destroying planets across the galaxy and your explorable space slowly shrinks.
The back of the manual was a journal written by another starship captain who sent it to you from the future. It serves as a guide and a warning, giving some valuable locations and clues, in case you’re having trouble finding the path.
Oh, and the soundtrack! I can still bring it to mind thirty years later. Haunting.
Not sure if obscure, but I really like Buggy Run from Master System
Legend of Dragoon was so good, even if several twists were the kind you see coming. And it was insanely long!
I wish it would get remade so badly. I own it, and tried to make it work, but I don’t have a CRTV, so it went very badly.
M.C. Kids for the NES. It was a rock solid platformer held back by the McDonald’s theming. It was a bit too hard for the target audience, but it’s a fun romp otherwise.
moonstone: a hard days knight on amiga.
and of course zzt
Quest 64 / Holy Magic Century / Eltale Monsters is a bad game that nobody played, except for me, and I absolutely love it. It was my third favorite game on the N64 behind Ocarina of Time and Super Mario 64. I still play this game via emulation every now and then, maybe once a year or so.
This guy also played it and wrote an LPArchive story that contains all the lore this game should have had included in it. If you already know and like the game, this is an incredible read, highly recommend. If you don’t like the game this might arguably be a better way to experience it than playing it.
There are also a few YouTube videos on it for those inclined, I’ll leave finding those as an exercise for the reader.
I have a certain amount of nostalgia for Quest 64.
It kind of feels like half a game, and really doesn’t compare well to other RPGs of the era, but it definitely has some kind of appeal that’s hard to pin down. Sometimes I think about the game that Quest 64 could have been and it makes me wish that more love could have been put into it before release, but I’m guessing that business and time just stopped it from being what it was meant to me.
Maybe one day people will decompile it and we can mod it into something truly awesome. :)
Pretty sure tons of people played Quest 64 when they saw their PlayStation-owning friends fawning over Final Fantasy VII and wanted their own RPG.
Unfortunately, they got Quest 64 instead.
Shout out to https://bsky.app/profile/quest64official.bsky.social
Ok this is incredible and way more active than I expected. There are dozens of us Quest fans! Dozens, I say! Thanks for this.
I like this really old game called Skyrim, I like to cast the spells
I remember that one, my dad used to play it when I was a child! I should go dig out the old retro hardware…
