I played Evergrace at my cousin's house. I have such fond and vivid memories from that game. But when I went back to play it as an adult, I realized that it's kind of terrible.
I started playing music around the time my friends moved on to PS2 from PS1 and I didn't have any bandwidth for anything else for years. Everyone my age has these memories and I have never played more than a couple of hours of PS2 in my life. I'm like Tony Hawk, AMIRITE?
I wasn't allowed any video game consoles growing up, but I've gotten into emulation in recent years. Ps2 games have been my absolute favorite (they also emulate really well) and would recommend to anyone. Definitely got to play a lot of tony hawk pro skater 2 on the pc as well!!
Jake 3,
Made me realize at a young age that I love vehicles in games but not necessarily driving games themselves.
Especially if they let you upgrade/customize them.
I was looking at random speedruns recently and I came across Shinobi, and holy shit. A rush of memories came flooding into me like a download from the Matrix. My pupils dilated, and suddenly it was 2002 all over again.
I was cursed with an xbox as a child and have Nightcaster: Defeat the Darkness as mine. I dont think it was even particularly good but it remains a monolith of cobwebs
Ask yourself: Would this meme have seemed sexist if it had said “between a girl and the ps2 game she grew up with”?
Still specific. Somehow not “exclusive”. In my view, it’s just the noir trend of including pointed details to generate a firmer visual in people’s minds. He’s not drinking “a shot of liquor”, he’s drinking “a 4-year-old cognac that the bartender lied and said was 12 years”
Def Jam: Fight for NY (best fighting game I’ve ever played to this day!)
DOT Hack OG quadrilogy and the DOT Hack GU games which actually got that remaster a few years back. I like the OG quadrilogy better though, as the main character in GU just wasn’t my cup of tea. He does get better in the other two games but so cringe man.
Looking back, it didn't make sense at all how addicted I would get to that game, because compared to the other Sims games, there was very little content. But I could play that for hours on end, easily.
Actually it was the GC game Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. It was a game about unraveling the mysteries of the murder of your uncle that devolves into fighting the old gods.
I love it and come back to it every so often, I even still have a GameCube squirreled away for it, but I'd rather play it on my Deck more often than not.
I loved this game as a kid, I sold my gamecube and all my games to buy a sony ericsson phone and sometimes I still regret it. Haven't thought about it in years, I have a steam deck as well. How do you get the game to work on a steam deck?
I just installed retrodeck, and it runs from an ISO. I got that working on my OG deck years ago, and I can play all sorts of games no issue. Been awesome to go through games I grew up playing like LoZ:LTTP/OoT/MM, and new games like Earthbound I never got to play.
If we're talking Zelda knockoffs, I had an obscure one for Sega Master System called Golvellius which I mainly liked because whenever you tried to buy something and didn't have enough money the shopkeepers would insult you with lines like "thou art a pinhead!"
My.memory is a little fuzzy and I'm sure it's nowhere near as good as I remember but was there a game called Ape escape? Something about catching monkeys and they had like flashing helmets or something and you would run around with a net catching them?
A very basic sounding premise but in my memory it was a really good game.
Anybody remember the CarPG Choro-Q? There was almost 25 games made across a lot of platforms so maybe not as obscure as I thought. I highly doubt I could find another person who has heard of it though.
It is a racing RPG based on a Japanese toy line similar to Hot Wheels. The toys are penny racers and the cars in game were just as deformed as the toys. What makes me remember the game still is the option to skip all other upgrades to put the biggest engine in the stock car. It could win races if you could keep it on the track pointed at the finish line.
I feel like the anime styled cut scenes delivered a more nuanced story than the other games. The story is told through the eyes of a boy who lost his family to war. Your silent protagonist slowly achieves fame. By the end, it's revealed that his story is a letter to you, the pilot. There's more plot, so any retro gamers reading this, it's super recommended for story and music. I love the gameplay, but obscure childhood game symptom.
Dude simpsons hit and run is a banger. I use to get that game from the video club store and play it for hours. Tbh all kid's movies and tv series on games were bangers, Kung fu panda, toy story, rattatouille etc
oh god. when i was a kid i bought one of those game magazine when ps2 launches. the first ps2 game they covered was mister mosquito and i remember thinking. wow, ps2 is so cool
You're a mosquito that gets into a house and you have to suck as much blood as you can from the family as you can without getting squished.
You fly around, waiting for the right moment to land and start sucking blood, being careful not to be seen. Each level has a certain amount of blood to collect before you can move on, and the family gets increasingly more vigilant about killing you as they talk to each other about getting bit.
I was obsessed with bobsledding as a kid and played so much of this game. I think my parents still have the n64 in their basement, I should see if it works.
Yeah super cubed up tanks, apparently its an import of something called ChoroQ. Since so many other tanks games tend to be paid freemium pvp I want more of THIS game.
I've been wanting to learn how to mod games to add vehicles and levels just to this game, since its such an early and simple physics game and should be simple by comparison to newer games, but I don't know how to start.
Not sure if you’re joking, but the game legit is the first game in the red dead series and is made by rockstar. It’s wildly different than the redemption games though.
146 replies
I played Evergrace at my cousin's house. I have such fond and vivid memories from that game. But when I went back to play it as an adult, I realized that it's kind of terrible.
I started playing music around the time my friends moved on to PS2 from PS1 and I didn't have any bandwidth for anything else for years. Everyone my age has these memories and I have never played more than a couple of hours of PS2 in my life. I'm like Tony Hawk, AMIRITE?
I wasn't allowed any video game consoles growing up, but I've gotten into emulation in recent years. Ps2 games have been my absolute favorite (they also emulate really well) and would recommend to anyone. Definitely got to play a lot of tony hawk pro skater 2 on the pc as well!!
Getting really really good at manuals so you can hear a full song on Tony Hawk
Hunter the reckoning
Xbox for me, Phantom Crash. That game is solid gold, baby! SOLID GOLD!
Jake 3, Made me realize at a young age that I love vehicles in games but not necessarily driving games themselves. Especially if they let you upgrade/customize them.
Core childhood memory. I remember getting this game for Christmas 2004 and playing it religiously until the sequel came out a year later.
I was looking at random speedruns recently and I came across Shinobi, and holy shit. A rush of memories came flooding into me like a download from the Matrix. My pupils dilated, and suddenly it was 2002 all over again.
God of War
Spartan Total Warrior was such a fun button masher
GC, but Skies of Arcadia: Legends got me good as a kid
Am grill but:
Bloody roar
Battlefront II LAN parties...
SSX Tricky
Not obscure at all
Dark Cloud 🤘🤘🤘
This is Freedom Fighters for me.
that game was so sick, taught me what a molotov cocktail was and what it was for
The Jesper Kyd Soundtrack.... Chefs kiss.
Picked it back up on steam for a few bucks. Honestly still pretty fun
I was cursed with an xbox as a child and have Nightcaster: Defeat the Darkness as mine. I dont think it was even particularly good but it remains a monolith of cobwebs
Ah yes, Yu-Gi-Oh duelest of the Roses
Yu gi oh was such a weird game franchise. They would make a game about anything other then the TCG
Einhänder was such a great side-scrolling shooter by Square, and I never see it mentioned
The low resolution screenshot they include in that article is hilarious. It's impossible to tell what I'm looking at.
Beloved game, played it to death.
now this is pointlessly gendered
It's not, he's talking about himself.
could just refer to himself as a person to make the meme not exclude people that are not men
Ask yourself: Would this meme have seemed sexist if it had said “between a girl and the ps2 game she grew up with”?
Still specific. Somehow not “exclusive”. In my view, it’s just the noir trend of including pointed details to generate a firmer visual in people’s minds. He’s not drinking “a shot of liquor”, he’s drinking “a 4-year-old cognac that the bartender lied and said was 12 years”
no, not sexist, but pointlessly gendered and excluding non-female people
yes it is
Why? Your misgendering him. He ID as a man therefore you refer to him as his preferred gender. Again this is authoritarian thinking.
he's not a person?
Wow, men aren't people. Your true colors show....
alright, troll
Ok bigot
Driver. My ps2 game was driver.
Oni
throwin dudes just feels good
fuck its abandonware i should just get it
A few I haven’t seen in the comments yet:
Def Jam: Fight for NY (best fighting game I’ve ever played to this day!)
DOT Hack OG quadrilogy and the DOT Hack GU games which actually got that remaster a few years back. I like the OG quadrilogy better though, as the main character in GU just wasn’t my cup of tea. He does get better in the other two games but so cringe man.
Parasite eve for PS one for me, except I'm a lady and was in my first year of graduate school.
Ratchet and Clank. I dunno. It just clicked for me.
Beyond Good & Evil
Maybe it has a bit of cult following now but it flew over everyone's head back then
Sims 2 castaway.
Looking back, it didn't make sense at all how addicted I would get to that game, because compared to the other Sims games, there was very little content. But I could play that for hours on end, easily.
Shadow of the Colossus.... Man, way to put me in my feels
I’ve revisited this game more than any other.
It still gets me.
Actually it was the GC game Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. It was a game about unraveling the mysteries of the murder of your uncle that devolves into fighting the old gods.
I love it and come back to it every so often, I even still have a GameCube squirreled away for it, but I'd rather play it on my Deck more often than not.
I loved this game as a kid, I sold my gamecube and all my games to buy a sony ericsson phone and sometimes I still regret it. Haven't thought about it in years, I have a steam deck as well. How do you get the game to work on a steam deck?
I just installed retrodeck, and it runs from an ISO. I got that working on my OG deck years ago, and I can play all sorts of games no issue. Been awesome to go through games I grew up playing like LoZ:LTTP/OoT/MM, and new games like Earthbound I never got to play.
A bit younger than ps2, and for PC, but still.
What? Is this the Original kungfu panda?
Um Jammer Lammy.
While I liked the Parappa games, I'll die on the hill that Lammy was better than either of them and should have continued as a series.
That captain crunch game for the PC.
Future Cop: LAPD.
Transforming mecha dystopian police shooter. It was pretty cool. It had a PVP arena mode, capture the flag sort of thing. Loved that game.
Wasn't on PS, but PC for me. It had same keyboard co-op. So awesone ❤️
Goddamn. Nostalgia fest scrolling through the comments.
Here are my additions (I was primarily a PC Gamer as my folks didn't believe in consoles):
Cyberspeed
One Must Fall: 2097
EGA Trek
Trans now and its a ps1 game but Darkstone: Evil Reigns
ICO State of emergency
Second Sight on PS2 came to mind after reading this. I don't think I have ever seen anyone talk about it.
Thank you for reminding me of this. What a game!
Alundra for me I think, for PS1.
It is a great Zelda like action adventure game. Loved the story and gameplay.
If we're talking Zelda knockoffs, I had an obscure one for Sega Master System called Golvellius which I mainly liked because whenever you tried to buy something and didn't have enough money the shopkeepers would insult you with lines like "thou art a pinhead!"
My.memory is a little fuzzy and I'm sure it's nowhere near as good as I remember but was there a game called Ape escape? Something about catching monkeys and they had like flashing helmets or something and you would run around with a net catching them?
A very basic sounding premise but in my memory it was a really good game.
Ape escape was one of the first games to require dual stick controls! One controlled the character and the other his catching net!
"shovelware" movie/cartoon franchise tie-in games, my beloved
Asterix & Obelix: XXL 2, Ice Age 2 (the game), G-Force (the game)...
"Slop" used to be peak.
What about random tie in games from non-game products? It's not exactly shovelware, but I have fond memories of the Doom-clone Chex Quest
Psi Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy
Midway my beloved
I was coming here to post this! Never been able to scratch the itch for such fun psychic powers in a game since
Steambot Chronicles! Still the best game I've ever played. Just finished up another playthrough a few weeks ago.
Dog's Life, anyone?
I actually have this. I saw it in a demo kiosk at an FYE and got it a few months later for my birthday when I was a kid
Naval ops warship gunner,
If we stretch the platform rule a little then PATAPON
The Legend of Dragoon. We need a reissue of it 🥲
The proto expedition 33
I'll just leave this here
GitHub - Legend-of-Dragoon-Modding/Severed-Chains: Legend of Dragoon decompiled, reverse engineered, and ported to PC/Mac/Linux/Steam Deck · GitHub https://github.com/Legend-of-Dragoon-Modding/Severed-Chains
Bro I had that for ps1. I had no idea how to play it but would waste hours on it just killing stuff
I would so fuck with that. It would be nice to see some of those cutscenes and dialogue with better translation and animation.
I thought that was ps1?
Anybody remember the CarPG Choro-Q? There was almost 25 games made across a lot of platforms so maybe not as obscure as I thought. I highly doubt I could find another person who has heard of it though.
It is a racing RPG based on a Japanese toy line similar to Hot Wheels. The toys are penny racers and the cars in game were just as deformed as the toys. What makes me remember the game still is the option to skip all other upgrades to put the biggest engine in the stock car. It could win races if you could keep it on the track pointed at the finish line.
N64: Snowboard Kids
I had a mad crush on Linda
the ol river city ransom. got deep enough into the series to play translated kunio kun roms
Neither are obscure, but I played the shit out of Ace Combat Shattered Skies and Simpsons Hit and Run...
Ace Combat 4 was one of the most legit games of all time.
Of the holy trilogy, I still like AC4 more because of the anime picture cut scenes.
I feel like the anime styled cut scenes delivered a more nuanced story than the other games. The story is told through the eyes of a boy who lost his family to war. Your silent protagonist slowly achieves fame. By the end, it's revealed that his story is a letter to you, the pilot. There's more plot, so any retro gamers reading this, it's super recommended for story and music. I love the gameplay, but obscure childhood game symptom.
Dude simpsons hit and run is a banger. I use to get that game from the video club store and play it for hours. Tbh all kid's movies and tv series on games were bangers, Kung fu panda, toy story, rattatouille etc
Playing as Mobius One felt incredible when enemy comma started referring to you as the Grim Reaper and whatnot.
What a game.
You're not going to believe this Jean-Louis! All of them have ribbon insignias!
Mister Mosquito
oh god. when i was a kid i bought one of those game magazine when ps2 launches. the first ps2 game they covered was mister mosquito and i remember thinking. wow, ps2 is so cool
What is the gameplay like, the screenshots make it look like a mosquito simulator 😄
That's exactly what it is!
You're a mosquito that gets into a house and you have to suck as much blood as you can from the family as you can without getting squished.
You fly around, waiting for the right moment to land and start sucking blood, being careful not to be seen. Each level has a certain amount of blood to collect before you can move on, and the family gets increasingly more vigilant about killing you as they talk to each other about getting bit.
Wow someone else that played this gem lol
Enteral Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem (GameCube)
gender-affirming lack of obscure ps2 game
coming back to this post later to find recommendations though...
There's plenty of girls that bonded with an obscure ps2 game in their youth. Xenosaga was the shit.
Jet Force Gemini on the N64
I am patiently waiting for this to get decomped so we can have native PC keyboard and mouse
Dreamcast: Pen Pen Triicelon.
Felt like a pretty big release at the time, but nobody in real life seems to have heard of it.
Edit : this game represents the one and only exception to a blanket rule i have regarding vidya - fuck the ice level.
3xtreme
You race other bikers/rollerbladers/skateboarders/aliens and can punch them mid race.
That game (and its predecessor 2xtreme) were not nearly as fun as the premise sounds on paper, but I loved every second of them.
I don’t even want to guess how much my parents spent on rental fees for those two titles alone. It had to have been cheaper to just buy them.
Mega Man 2
Mega Man 3
Adventures of Link
Final Fantasy
Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3
Double Dragon 2
...The Guardian Legend more than anything tho. This would be the one for me.
Legaia 2 and Dark Cloud 2...
Arc the lad 2: Twighlight of souls. Started my love for tactics and RPGs also the game reflects the messy family dynamics I had to grow through
not a ps2 but. pepsimaaaaaaaaaaaaan...
ratatatatatatatatata....
PA TA PA TA PON!
F E V E R!!
you should check ratatan. its a spiritual succesor to patapon. developed by the same dev iirc. its more chaotic
I'm too old for it to be PS2, but "Mick and Mack: Global Gladiators". Spent at lot of time on that for a game that is an ad for McDonalds.
This, though I did also become obsessed with katamari damacy in college
that's how i feel about yo noid
N64, but I was obsessed with the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics game. Picked it up recently. It is definitely shovelware.
I was obsessed with bobsledding as a kid and played so much of this game. I think my parents still have the n64 in their basement, I should see if it works.
My friend and I duct taped skateboards together and pretended to luge down this dinky hill in our neighborhood because of this game.
Only now 28 years later did I learn how to actually land the aerial freestyle jump.
Or a middle aged dude and the Commodore/Amiga games he played as a kid 😁
Rock Star Ate My Hamster will always be precious to me ❤️
Ps1 but I played on ps2, jumping flash 2,
Before there was Shadow of the Colossus there was Ico. Ah my love.
Seek and Destroy for ps2
OMG the cute tank RPG right?
Yeah super cubed up tanks, apparently its an import of something called ChoroQ. Since so many other tanks games tend to be paid freemium pvp I want more of THIS game.
I've been wanting to learn how to mod games to add vehicles and levels just to this game, since its such an early and simple physics game and should be simple by comparison to newer games, but I don't know how to start.
There are horror games called Obscure for the PS2 and there are obscure games for the PS2 so yes i did.
Played it co-op with my Dad.
Good times.
Future Cop LAPD
Oh, and G-Police
Hell yeah I have a fond memory of this one too
AirBlade
Is Project Snowblind obscure? Because I could do Jet Li's Rise to Honor instead.
I still play Rise to Honor from time to time. But meow that I don’t have the disc, I have to emulate and there’s a weird issue that stops progression.
I played a LOT of Project Eden on PS2. It was such a quirky (and buggy) game but I still have a lot of great memories playing it.
Was that the squad based game with the big robot teammate?
Yeah that was it.
I had it on PC and loved it! Quirky for sure, but it was fairly innovative.
Stranglehold and Red Dead Revolver.
Red Dead Redemption ancestor? 😁
Not sure if you’re joking, but the game legit is the first game in the red dead series and is made by rockstar. It’s wildly different than the redemption games though.
For me it was Kya: Dark Lineage. I think it wasnt a major hit when it came out but I use to love it and I thought no game came close
NDS.
Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2.
Fossil Fighters Champions.
That top down hot wheels racing game was the shit
Sega.
Atomic Robo Kid. A fucking fever dream game I bought for $3 at a swap meet and still must conquer before I die.
Wdym played? Servers still up ain't it?
Not ps2 but Nuclear Strike for PS1 was so much fun. Blowing up insurgents and destroying their villages 😭😅
For me it was ps1, but Threads of Fate
Trapt for me. Shame the Deception series ended there.