Tell us about the great games which you played but no one else did

[Beefy]

I got to thinking last night about a great game that I used to play with my friends growing up. It was called 'Brian Clough's Football Fortunes'.
#votebeefy
http://s64.emuunlim.org/?/gameinfos/briancloughsfootballfortunes/briancloughsfootballfortunes1.gif

I first played it on my friend James Webb's BBC Micro and then a year or so later another friend and I saw it advertised for the Commodore 64 on the back of 'Shoot' magazine. We both cobbled together our pocket money and bought copies.

Brian Clough's Football Fortunes was a football management game. But it was also a board game.

http://plus4world.powweb.com/dl/covers/b/brian_cloughs_package.jpg

Every game week you'd move around the board based on the roll of a dice traversing the perils of the 'Selection Problems' square and hoping instead to stumble onto 'Managers Luck'. Other players would hope that someone triggered a 'Player Auction' which would allow people to bid for a new player.

http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/442943-brian-clough-s-football-fortunes-amstrad-cpc-screenshot-problems.png

http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/square_small/0/1987/793424-bcff__6_.gif

The point of the game was to build a squad and compete for the League Title. You'd earn gate receipts as you go, you'd hope to encounter windfalls and you could sell players to raise cash. Players were represented by cards with real player names on them and a rating of 1-5 stars to reflect their ability. There were also blank cards for you to put in extra players who you wanted to be able to bring in but maybe played for a small club in the second tier, for example.

http://images.generation-msx.nl/cover/419648f8.jpg

You could put your players into whatever formation you wanted and on match day you'd enter their ratings and the game would calculate scores and spit them out using a vidiprinter just like Grandstand.
#votebeefy #dontvotebeefyvoteMMH
When you're nine years old, playing Brian Clough's Football Fortunes with five mates was about as fun as it got and looking back on it now I really appreciate the design of the game and how well made it was. The best team generally won but there was enough randomness about the results that even players who'd drawn a shit hand and had then seen Bernie Slaven piss off abroad on a free transfer mid-season could still hope to cause a giant-killing on the Saturday.

What great game do you look back on fondly but that no one else seems to remember or that no one else really appreciated at the time?

[Simon]

Haha that seems mental.

I've mentioned before but Olympic Soccer was a little gem of a game that was on the original Playstation. Terrible graphics even for that time, the sound was terrible (shots sounded like you were kicking a cardboard box), fake player names because FIFA had all the rights and it was absurdly difficult playing against the computer.

But on the plus side it was COMPLETELY NUTS. Unlike the helpful control systems of other football games where buttons did different things in different contexts (ie. X would be a pass if you had the ball and a tackle if you didn't), the buttons did the exact same thing regardless of the situation. So if you were sprinting down the wing with the ball looking to put in a cross, but accidentally pressed the wrong button, you might find your player suddenly throwing himself into a bicycle kick, leaving the ball to slowly roll off the pitch. As with earlier games like Striker there was a comical amount of after-touch - you could make the ball swerve in three or four directions before it reached the goal - and there was no auto-aim, so if you aimed your shot at the corner flag, it would fucking well go to the corner flag. Also the game hugely exaggerated the impact of snow, so if you put a slide tackle in on a snowy pitch you could find yourself sliding a third of the pitch or more.

It made for ridiculous but brilliantly entertaining multi-player games which were just complete mayhem with everyone trying to slide the ball into the net or trying to tackle via diving header, and shots flying all over the place. Weirdly despite the crazy gameplay it didn't seem like it was trying to be an alternative to the slick and refined likes of FIFA and ISS - it was a licensed Olympic game and even had Alan Green on commentary. To this day I honestly don't know for sure whether it was an attempt at a realistic football game which went horribly wrong, or a 'wacky' version of football which they absolutely nailed.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA9Nde5D46g

Another properly awful game which I have weirdly fond memories of was Player Manager on the PS1. Having just got into the Championship Manager series and been a long-fan of FIFA and Pro Evo, the idea of combining the two was an impossible dream...until this abomination arrived. It started out well - a decent layout, plenty of detail on the management and passable graphics. If it was just a management game, it would be a 6/10.

The problem was the Player side of it. There was only one difficulty setting, and it was 'ludicriously easy'. Not 'amateur level on FIFA' easy, where a decent through ball will bypass the defence - I'm talking 'get the ball anywhere out wide and dribble diagonally towards goal - no one will try to stop you, including the goalkeeper, so you can just run the ball directly into the net'. You could also toggle between manager and player-manager during games, so if your pain-stakingly detailed tactical masterplan to turn Manchester United over at Old Trafford had failed and you were 3-0 down with five minutes to go, you could just take control of the team and run the four goals you needed in without any hassle whatsoever.

Absolute bollocks. I would never recommend anyone buy it, but I do look back on it with amusement, it was just so clearly unfinished...the management side was fine, but they obviously just gave up on the playing bit and released it anyway.

[The Rosk]

This is where I say how great Legend was/is again.

[Simon]

Was that the side-scrolling game like Final Fight? Loved that. I used to love Pit Fighter on the Mega Drive too.

[Beefy]

This is where I say how great Legend was/is again.

This thread originally started with 'A few years ago The Rosk tried to get us all to play some game that he had raved about but that no one else seemed to know...."

[Nordberg]

I don't know if anybody else bothered to get Bushido Blade II on import on PS1?
i ordered it from a dodgy guy my dad knew and it was all in Japanese as it only got a legit release there.
You run around chopping and slicing various people. At the time the game was unusual because you could end a battle in little more than a few attacks. You had to be really onto the defense and or timing. If you've played Niddhogg it kind of worked like that.
Anyway there were some awesome choices of weapon, from traditional katana to sledge hammer and naginata. If I remember rightly it may have even put Soul Calibur to shame on that score. Each played differently.
There were some gimmick characters as bosses, one chap who pulled a pistol on you and killed you with a single shot if you messed up the timing. It was awesome and it captivated me all that summer.

[Mr McGregor]

I only assume not many people played this because it wasn't released in the States until last year and I couldn't convince any of my mates to get involved at the time, probably because it looks a little daft, but one game that I had a lot of good times with and that influenced me to be more open-minded about different genres was Vib Ribbon.

A rhythm-based game from the same folk who produced PaRappa The Rapper and UmJammer Lammy, there was no story or narrative to the game, you simply controlled a skipping wire-frame rabbit on a single white line that changed speed and morphed into different obstacles depending on the tempo and pitch of the soundtrack, a different button or combination of two corresponding to the shape of the obstacle, with the goal to make it to the end of the track. Making a mistake would cause the rabbit to squeal and the environment became shakier the more mistakes you made. Consecutive mistakes would cause the rabbit devolve into a frog type thing, and then a box with a tail, and then death. Successfully traversing the obstacles without mistakes would let you evolve back to being a rabbit, and eventually some sort of royal rabbit with wings, but none of these evolutions affected difficulty or gameplay. The game would score you on completing the track.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFXz_xKQa40

Yeah, it was adorable. The only knowledge of the game I had before purchase was from a small article in a magazine that raged about how trippy it was. There were 6 songs available on the game disc, 2 for each difficulty, and these were all really strange hilarious, half-broken English sung, Japanese mindfucks that just added to the quirkiness. What was really cool about the game was that it added infinite possibilities by letting you play your own CDs which would generate totally unique levels of varying difficulties. Any songs from the history of time. Any. At the time of release, for me it was my brief nu-metal phase, so I was playing the game to albums like Infest by Papa Roach and Hybrid Theory by Linkin Park, as well as other stuff like RATM, Placebo and The Smiths. I'd try out different music genres, like dance and pop, to see how varied the levels would get. Weirdly, you'd presume a ballad type song would give you an easy level but often the opposite occurred, generating a quick-paced varied level, so it was fun to experiment.

I think if I hadn't ever have given this game a try and enjoyed it, I might not have been willing to try other recent and more uniquely stylised games later on, such as Journey or Hohokum, or ventured outside of the beat-em up and traditional platform genres I was focussed on prior to this. So thanks, Vibri.

[Romford Pele]

Emlyn Hughes International football on the Amstrad.

[The Rosk]

About.

[Beefy]

Yeah the point is to tell us a bit about a game that people may never have heard of.

Although Emlyn Hughes International Soccer was one of the biggest selling games of its time and was in the UK charts for three years after release...

[The Rosk]

OK I'll go for Battle Of Olympus on the NES.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7c/Battle_of_olympus.jpg

A side-scrolling adventure game set in ancient Greece. You play Orpheus, whose lover has been kidnapped by Hades and taken to the Underworld. You've got to get her back with the help of all the Greek Gods. You go seek them out, curry their favour and get their powers so you can defeat fucking Hades. Getting things like the Fire of Prometheus and the power of Argus weirdly meant a lot having met actual GODS you had heard of to get them. The music was also very regal and engaging.

You have a top-down map of Ancient Greece full of areas to explore:

http://cdn.wikimg.net/strategywiki/images/7/71/Battle_of_Olympus_world_map.png

And the gameplay is really quite fun. Seems a really "clean" and fluid game for the time and it plays a lot like Zelda II.

http://www.oldiesrising.com/images_testsv3/Nintendo%20Nes/The%20Battle%20of%20Olympus/The%20Battle%20of%20Olympus9.jpg

This is you asking Zeus for something.

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/battleolympus-3.jpg

It felt like it should go down the educational game route but it wasn't at all. It was Greek mythology shoved in your face in an exciting and consistently action-packed game, facing you off with minotaurs, centaurs, cyclops cunts etc. When I finally completed it it genuinely felt like an actual achievement.

[Matthew]

I don't know if anybody else bothered to get Bushido Blade II on import on PS1?
i ordered it from a dodgy guy my dad knew and it was all in Japanese as it only got a legit release there.
what

it was released in north america. i bought it at toys r us.

[Hero!]

I LOVED Bushido Blade. Chopping down the bamboo while fighting was always dope.

[Nordberg]

Bushido blade 2? I thought it was only on Japanese import. I know the first one was released, but I'm pretty sure not the second.

[Pablo Diablo]

Bushido Blade 2 (ブシドーブレード弐 Bushidō Burēdo Tsu?) is a fighting video game published by Square, released in both Japan and North America in 1998. It is the sequel to Bushido Blade, which had been released the previous year.

From wikipedia

[Nordberg]

Ah. I grew up in England, where it was import only.
Do I still get a point?

[Pablo Diablo]

You do.

[Psycho666Soldier]

Bushido Blade was the shit. 1 had slightly better gameplay, but two had the better characters, story, and single player mode. Always wished we could get a current-gen sequel. I could only imagine the shit they could do with the system nowadays.

[G-Fresh]

I'd love another Bushido Blade.

[Peter Griffin]

Dino dinis soccer,who is Dino Dini? I don't know.

[Beefy]

Dino Dini is the developer of the kick off series. Later he made GOAL! which in many ways I preferred to Sensible Soccer.

Apparently he is working on a new football game for modern consoles now.

[Peter Griffin]

Fair play, I seem to remember that game being kind of cack but it was the only football game I had at the time.

[Beefy]

Haha that seems mental.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA9Nde5D46g

.

How was that offside at 3.30? Typical 'Big Club' decision in favour of the Germans! Great hit at 3.50 though

[G-Fresh]

Dino Dini sounds like a strain of weed.

[Dreyski]

Body Harvest (N64, 1998), was written by DMA design (later known for the GTA series) as their first 3D sandbox game. You travel through time killing aliens and generally saving the human race. The GTA influence is there in the character movement/shooting actions and the chance to commandeer vehicles/airplanes.

Yes it's very basic-looking, and the controls are a little clunky, but it's a game I can't get enough of:

Intro:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR_fa9jXXD4

First stage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mB43WdGReI

[Romford Pele]

Although Emlyn Hughes International Soccer was one of the biggest selling games of its time and was in the UK charts for three years after release...

Really? No one I know has played it.

Was a side scrolling international football game funnily enough. The problem is you could NEVER save it, so you would always start off again.

That said the playability was brilliant for its time (you could do chips, volleys and drives on an Amstrad!) which is why I mentioned it

[Psycho666Soldier]

Body Harvest (N64, 1998), was written by DMA design (later known for the GTA series) as their first 3D sandbox game. You travel through time killing aliens and generally saving the human race. The GTA influence is there in the character movement/shooting actions and the chance to commandeer vehicles/airplanes.

Yes it's very basic-looking, and the controls are a little clunky, but it's a game I can't get enough of:

Intro:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR_fa9jXXD4

First stage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mB43WdGReI

The only thing I remember about this game is I was trying to find a copy of Harvest Moon for N64, and my friend said he actually owned it. He brought it over, and I thought the game seemed entirely different than the gameplay I saw, until I realized that the title was different. Never gave it a fair shake back then because of my odd desire for farm simulation, but maybe opinions could be different these days.

[The Rick]

Sky Gunner - PS2
I think DVDA was the only one that even recognised this title when I talked about it in a previos "hidden gem" discussion

https://youtu.be/fdVDT8rzPOg

It is a really fun sky combat game with anime style artwork.

[Rancid_Planet]

Old school nomination. Cobra Triangle for the NES.

http://s.emuparadise.org/Nintendo%20Entertainment%20System/Snaps/Cobra%20Triangle%20(U).png

http://media.tasvideos.org/cobra425.png

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTz4kvRIP0SAL7WI9mxi3tze7M6vqyr_ wHrti38g8YZ9NctUymw

It was made by Rare shortly after RC Pro Am and the graphics and design were very similar. You played as a boat in various different types of levels where you would race, battle, complete obstacle courses, battle sea monsters, rescue civilIlans etc. It was a game that both from a gameplay, graphics and sound standpoint was very advanced for its era. It was reviewed quite favorably but wasn't a very big hit. I've only met a few people who have ever played it.