It could even be a youtube video or movie that you don’t think anyone reading this has heard of besides you.
Mad Dog McCree. A literal “video” game. Live action first person pointy shooty thing.
I remember coming across Mad Dog at a few arcades growing up (80’s kid). It had a great attract screen where McCree would taunt you if I recall properly. Thanks for the flashback. There was one or two other games like this. Also, the Sega holographic cube game was pretty legit looking but played like shit. It also used live video on a weird 3d plane.
I wonder if I still have the CD-ROM for this somewhere in a box.
Ah! I actually remember this one!
It was a game for PC around the year 2000, I don’t even know the name of it. I’ve been searching for it for years. It’s a point and click adventure game.
The premise is your spaceship breaks down on an alien planet. If you try to repair the ship immediately a giant alien spider will come and kill you.
After searching for a while you end up making friends with one of the aliens and sneak around one of the villages looking for parts.
I never made it past that point.
I highly doubt anyone will know what this is, I’ve tried multiple times on that reddit sub for games people can’t remember.
This sounds like Space Quest. Have a look at this excerpt from a walkthrough and see if it sounds familiar:
"After escaping the Arcada before its destruction you crash land on the planet Kerona. Before you do anything “take off seatbelt”. Look at the pod and “take kit”. This is your survival kit. Look kit and you will find an Xenon army knife and dehydrated water.
“Get out” and walk to the front of the pod. “Take glass”. This is reflective glass that we’ll need later on.
Walk to the right three screens and then take the path that leads up. Follow the path all the way around over a bridge that will crack as you walk on it. A spider droid will drop to the ground at some stage. Just ignore it for now. There are two pillars at the end of the path. Stand between them and you’ll be lowered into the earth by a secret elevator."
Check out some screenshots along w/ the rest of the walkthrough here: http://gamerwalkthroughs.com/space-quest-1-walkthrough-the-sarien-encounter/
Appreciate the effort but that’s not it. The game starts with the crash, not on a space station.
Can you further describe it?
Maybe if I dropped acid and was hypnotised, but my memory is quite poor.
Strings (2004) movie. It’s a trope-ish fantasy movie, but all of the characters are marionettes. The strings go up to the heavens and are taken into consideration with things like architecture having no roofs, and gates are arches that rise up out of the ground to prevent travel beneath them. Someone gets injured by the string on their arm getting cut, and their arm flops around lifelessly afterwards.
Anna and the appolypse, it’s a fantastic zombie musical with insanely good songs. I have never met anyone in the real world or online who have heard of it (except a few who I forced to watch with me).
I was telling people at work about this film a few days ago!
I watched it for the first time a few years ago and it has started to become a Christmas tradition for me.
I just watched this the other night. I was unaware going in that it was a musical, but thoroughly enjoyed it.
I watched it and I did not like it, but it is probably that I went into it with the wrong expectations. The entire premise of “musical about a zombie apocalypse” sounded a bit goofy to me and the trailer had the same mood, so I expected a comedy, or at least something a bit tongue in cheek. Instead, the movie is a total downer.
Yeah, it’s a bit bleak at the end for sure. But I just loved how catchy the songs were, and the cast was really great. I didn’t know anything before randomly playing it on Netflix, so that didn’t give me any expectations going in
GTA IV Pakistan edition
Basically, just a GTA4 pirate rip and modded and sold on actual disks.
There are several, and they are hard to find online because any uploads of it probably don’t exist anywhere anymore, and were already rare due to aforementioned disks.
Some of them are so regional and probably made by one person, the only way to find one is to get a computer HDD with it installed.
What differences does it have from the original?
Pakistani flags everywhere, reskinned character and NPCs, Pakistani songs, story characters replaced by famous IRL people, including some known mafia lol. Some original missions and reduxed interactions and updated story. Also lots of military additions.
Some were also themed after a specific city like Karachi or Lahore.
I’m sure Pakistan wasn’t the only country since I’ve heard there were hilarious and great modded bootlegs in other countries as well.
Funny, there is also a mod for GTA SA like this except it’s for my country haha
Nerve Damage, a game that was I think made on a random gamejam, and the whole premise is to make a game that’s actively trying to be as uncomfortable as possible to play, while also getting you into the flow and actually makes you enjoy it.
Unfortunately, I didn’t find how to play it, and it didn’t release as far as I know. I’ve heard about it on some kind of GDC presentation about Innovative/Obscure game design.
While that actually means that someone has indeed heard of, I’ve never met anyone else who got to play it. Or heard about it.
The Belgian 80’s metal band Ostrogoth.
Their website doesn’t exist anymore and the only band-run social media page is on Facebook.
If you’re a fan of retro heavy metal, give them a listen! They still tour, though you won’t be finding much about it online.
Sounds like they need a publicist or something.
they really do, but it seems they need more listeners to be able to pay one
Found them on metal archives and am listening through youtube.
I’m only a few seconds in, and I immediately get some early Helloween vibes from the guitar tone and playing in Queen of Desire, which is entirely a good thing. Rest of the sound so far is a lot more heavy than power metal, but it’s right up my alley for a Christmas afternoon.
Thank you very much for the mention!
I’m glad you enjoy it! spread the word, help others find the joy of obscure bands!
Okay, here’s one: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game. Not the SCUMM engine adventure game made by LucasArts, no I’m talking about the godawful action platformer that Tiertex smeared across every console and home computer of the early 90’s like shit across the handicap stall in the men’s room of a Ruby Tuesday. I knew it as the particularly heinous MS-DOS port but they put it on everything from the Commodore 64 to the Game Boy.
The controls are bad, the mechanics don’t make sense, the level design is bullshit, the enemy design and placement is unfair, the graphics are mediocre, the audio is bad to horrible depending on the port…it has no redeeming qualities.
I hope it’s obscure because lord it deserves to be forgotten. How do you take a white hot license like Indiana Jones and fuck it up so comprehensively?
Hand of Manos. Most likely thee worst movie ever made. I found it for a screen writing class. The assignment was watch a bad movie then present it to the class. Easiest A+ of my fucking life.
Another weird one is, there used to be a sex Tetris type game for Windows 98 or earlier. Little naked people would drop down and when you got a full line they would jump off the screen. I don’t know how that got on the family PC, but it was on it. I played it. So there’s that.
Do you mean Manos: The Hands of Fate?
MST3K made it famous in what is probably one of their best episodes.
Starsiege. No, not tribes. Starsiege, third game in the earthsiege series. Tribes was actually a spin off in the same universe that got much more popular (with good reason, tribes was awesome).
Starsiege was a pc game that came in a bigass box, complete with multiple books filled with lore from the game’s universe. It wasn’t as well received as mech warrior (another mech sim), so it didn’t have a big community. But those of us that played it loved it to death. I think you can still get the game running if you don’t mind fucking with a bunch of sketchy third party patches.
Decades ago, my dad bought a PC that came with a free CD for a game called Retribution. The box art looked unlike anything I’d ever seen before (basically 3D graphics at a time when the Mega Drive reigned supreme). Sadly, the disc didn’t work, but I’ve tried to get my hands on a copy, to no avail.
Looking at the graphics now, they weren’t even that good…but for the mid-nineties for a small child, absolutely amazing.
Is this it? https://www.myabandonware.com/game/retribution-2vc
Might be able to play that these days with DOSBox.
All from the early 90’s…
Life and Death II: The Brain - An old DOS medical game
Deadlock: Planetary Conquest- a competitive SimCity-like game
The Dagger of Amon Ra - A point and click mystery adventure game
Edit: added subtitle to Deadlock and video links
Competitive SimCity? How does that work?
Vague memories myself but I think I also remember a friend having it and would also be fair to call it related to something like civilization or master of Orion as a 4x type. Would have to go check it out again to see if I’m right or just mixing memories with other games we played around that time.
Found a rather good video explaining the game and gameplay: (I completely forgot the name has a subtitle. Adding to my comment)
Oh man, every time someone asks a question along these lines I always think of the movie Hank and Mike. I found it in a discount bin at a grocery store probably a decade ago so I took a little time to actually look into it more this time. I knew it was Canadian and unlikely a big hit, but apparently it was just so poorly received. It made less than $17,000 of the $2M it cost, and it’s real tough to find anyone even reviewing it. I even struggled to find the music from it. (The one song is badass). And it’s got a couple B-tier actors that I remember doing a great job, and I think Joe Mantegna really went for it in his role as the god Pan. Chris Klein kills it in this song.
The crude humor kinda puts people off I think but the satirical aspects cut a little deeper than the movie needed to. And probably when I discovered it I was depressed and had a drinking problem and the overall mood of it really felt at home to me at the time so I was able to just live in those aspects of the film and really absorb the more subtle message. It’s definitely absurd in many points but there’s a lot of heart in it.
On the Internet, everything is fundamentally both obscure yet ubiquitous, or so it seems. But in real life, there are at least 2 things that seem to be obscure to the point that people don’t believe me when I mention it:
-
A Super Nintendo game released in the US as Super Ninja Boy. It was a follow-up to (or maybe remake of) Little Ninja Brothers on the NES. I’ve even been told that I was confused and that I’m probably thinking of Legend of the Mystical Ninja.
-
On the original Playstation, there used to be a series of demo discs that would have “hidden” features on them if you pressed the right button(s). One of those demo discs had the entire music video for Usher’s song “Pony” and other than randos on the internet and my friends/family who saw it with me, I’ve never met anybody that remembers it. If anybody here does remember that demo disc, I think there was another hidden music video on there, I vaguely remember a band, with various shots of the drummer wearing black athletic-type shorts with a white band around the leg but beyond that I really do not recall.
Bro I was at the thrift store and I saw a PlayStation demo disc for $2 and I laughed because I didn’t even think it should be there. But I will literally go back, take a picture, buy it and send it to you if it makes your Christmas better lol
That’s awesome and very kind of you to offer. Not to be ungrateful, but I’m sure someone else would appreciate it far more than me. I don’t have a Playstation anymore and I don’t even have a CD/DVD drive on any device that would be able to run an emulator. Merry Christmas and thanks for being so thoughful!
-
The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One - A D&D podcast. It’s cast should be pretty familiar if you’re into other D&D podcasts - Brennan Lee Mulligan is the DM, Aabria Iyengar, Erika Ishii and Lou Wilson are players - but it doesn’t seem to have many listeners.
It strikes a nice balance between scripted narrative performances and actual play. It’s edited and scored with a light touch that stops it dragging like the raw sessions of something like Critical Role, but preserving the authentic character breaking reactions as the dice takes it somewhere interesting. The players don’t seem to be in on a “script”, anymore so than the normal sort of out of session discussions you might have in a narrative heavy game at home, but the DM does a very good job of keeping it focused. It’s also thankfully not another billion player table, three is much more comfortable.
The vibe is excellent. From cozy slices of life to drama that plays on your heartstrings as three childhood friends reconnect and go on an adventure. Its trailer conveys the tone pretty well honestly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q9et3Othu4
Its* cast
