Games no one knows (but are awesome or at least pretty good)

[ysbreker]

back on topic: re-volt

[EvilDonut]

One of my favorite games of all-time is Tempest 2000 for the Jaguar. Most people have never heard or played it.

I don't think those people have the right to call themselves gamers.

Heh, I have that for PC

Tempest is a true classic.

Anyone heard of Uplink? It's a highly atmospheric sci-fi hacker "simulation", where you play as a mercenary stealing or destroying data from private and goverment systems all over the world, all from the comfort of your own home. I got hooked on it after ten minutes with the demo.

[Redwall]

Uplink rocks. There's a thread about the Darwinia (the new game from Introversion) demo around here somewhere.

[DustCropper]

Crimson Skies (PC version)

Sid Meier's Gettysburg

The Last Express, and a bunch of other adventure games

[Duncan]

Crimson Skies and The Last Express both rock, but I think/hope that people are at least vaguely familiar with both of them.

[DustCropper]

Crimson Skies and The Last Express both rock, but I think/hope that people are at least vaguely familiar with both of them.

I probably shouldn't have included Crimson Skies, but the Last Express? People might know about it here, but generally speaking, no one else does. Right before the game was first released, Broderbund's entire marketing team quit. The game was taken out of the market quite soon after its release due to some internal problems at Broderbund, and it was a massive flop. I think it certainly deserves its place in a list like this.

[ThunderPeel2001]

I probably shouldn't have included Crimson Skies, but the Last Express? People might know about it here, but generally speaking, no one else does. Right before the game was first released, Broderbund's entire marketing team quit. The game was taken out of the market quite soon after its release due to some internal problems at Broderbund, and it was a massive flop. I think it certainly deserves its place in a list like this.

Yipe! That's terrible! Why was it taken off the market? It should have been one of the most noted games ever... it's unbelievable!

[Kester]

back on topic: re-volt

Too true. The multiplayer mode where you had to steal the green stuff was the most fun LAN game ever. Like Mario Kart^2.

[SiN]

I have it on my desk at work, right next to my (current) console debugs. I get lots of strange, "is that an atari jaguar!?" type comments.

nice stuff! im currently playing it using an emulator called Project Tempest ... it works very well, but i can imagine playing it on an actual jag would be pretty damn amazing.

ive been playing for a couple of days now (nearly a week) and ive hit level 30 ... damn this game is hard!

SiN

[DustCropper]

Yipe! That's terrible! Why was it taken off the market? It should have been one of the most noted games ever... it's unbelievable!

Well, all that I know about its publishing disaster comes from Mark Moran's website (Mark Moran was the lead programmer of TLE).

But Express only remained in stores for a few months. Sadly, Broderbund's entire marketing department quit just weeks before the game was released, resulting in virtually no advertising for it. Softbank pulled out of the game market, dissolving its subsidiary GameBank and canceling several dozen titles in development, including the nearly finished PlayStation port of Express. As a final ironic blow, Broderbund was acquired by The Learning Company, which was only interested in their educational and home productivity software. Express was out of print long before its first Christmas season and nearly a million units before it could break even.

In 2000, the game publisher Interplay bought the lapsed rights and began quietly selling the game. Fortunately, unlike a 3D shooter which seems dated six months after coming out, The Last Express looks as beautiful today as it did in 1997. Unfortunately, Interplay recently went out of business, so the game is once again out of print. Such is its publishing curse.

[Graeme]

Just to add to the Tempest loving, there was a port of this being done for various mobile phones. (I think that Spaff and Kenty might have seen it.) I don't know whether it was ever released - it was pretty close to completion though.

Graeme