RetroGaming

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.

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.

Legend of Legaia. It’s a JRPG from the PS1 golden era, which was completely overshadowed by larger releases like FF7 and Legend of Dragoon. And when I say “completely overshadowed” I mean that the first time I played through it, it didn’t even have a GameFAQs listing.

Nowadays it has a sort of cult classic following, because the combat system was pretty unique and the plot line is surprisingly long for only being one disc.

The American version of the game is apparently much harder than other versions for some reason; They decided to slash the exp and gold drop rates across the board, then bumped them back up for the European release. So the American version is extremely grindy in comparison.

Blaster Master on NES. I was so addicted. And then I got the NES Advantage controller and it was just pure Blaster Master bliss.

Tomba! (or Tombi!), one of my favorite PS1 games growing up. It's essentially a metroidvania done before the -vania part truly cemented the style: lots of items to find, lives to lose, mandatory and optional abilities to get, back and forth opening every chest once you get the keys.

The game got a Steam release some time ago

I also have a sweet spot for Mega Man Legends 1 and 2, though I don't think they'd count as obscure.

Crysalis for Famicom/NES

Gorillas.bas

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.

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.

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.

my niece thinks Morrowind is retro

I really like the old PSP Patapon games. They're catchy. After playing, I find myself humming the beat. The original creators are making a spiritual successor called Ratatan. Still not out yet, but I'm looking forward to playing it.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush_(video_game)

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.

It's not super obscure, but I think I'd have to go with Star Tropics. Gameplay wise it's very similar to Zelda, but the setting and story is more like EarthBound. Interestingly the game is a first-party Nintendo game that has never been released in Japan despite being developed there. Another thing is that it's been almost completely ignored by Smash Bros. I think it got a mention in Brawl's chronicle, but that's it. Even Ultimate forgot about it despite having all kinds of deep cuts among the spirits.

Seven Kingdoms II: The Fryhtan Wars

I found the disk at a Dollar Tree Store when I was a teen. I spent hours in endless matches trying to build my empire. I remember the spy system in this RTS was incredibly fun and nothing I've seen in any other game. Truly a gem with so much potential to become a cult classic with its charming art style.

Depends on how you're defining "obscure" and "retro".

If by "retro" you mean SNES, Genesis, NES etc... the game I was super into for a time was Xevious. A pretty simple top-down space shooter/bomber that for some reason I remember getting absolutely obsessed with completing. It wasn't even a particularly good game. It was repetitive, and when you DID reach the end it just started all over again. But for some reason I played the absolute shit out of it.

If you move "retro" up to the PS1 era, my favourite seemingly forgotten games of all time are the Colony Wars series (Colony Wars, Colony Wars: Vengeance, Colony Wars: Red Sun) Great story lines and a super fun conceit where in the second game, you're playing as the now-defeated enemy of the first game, rebuilding after their loss.

I personally loved ice climbers on the nes

3D MonsterMaze

I don't know how obscure it actually is, but I played the hell out of Threads of Fate when I was a kid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads_of_Fate?wprov=sfla1

One of my favorites was definitely Kororinpa (Wii) Yes, the Wii is now considered retro. It is now older than the NES was when the Wii first was released.

But of a desperate cry for help, but there was a 2D game on the NDS, in which you controlled a mech to fly through side-view levels and shoot enemies and turrets. It also had a story mode with an anime girl in orange and anime boy in blue as mech pilots. There was also a level editor, and you could transfer the levels to other DS's with the same game using sound, which sounded a lot like internet over a phone line.

I played this so much back in the day but I can't find the game (my mother discarded all my games from the attic some time after moving out, inc. fully functional SNES. Unrelated, I just needed to reshare the trauma) not the name of it.

Does anyone have any idea which game this could be?

ChoroQ HG (High Grade) 2 for the PlayStation 2, also known as "Road Trip" (NTSC-U) or "Road Trip Adventure" (PAL) outside Japan (IIRC). Be careful of the titles because various publishers have handled the international releases of games in the series without any care for consistent naming, so the same game can have different names in different territories, and sometimes two different games have the same name in different territories.

It's a licensed game based on a series of cute car models made by Takara-Tomy, one of a very, very long line of games stretching both forward and backward in time. As you might imagine, there are a lot of fairly straightforward racing games in there, but there are some other styles of game, too. This wasn't the first exploration-heavy ChoroQ game, nor the last (nor even the last by the same developer), but it's my pick of the bunch.

Some people try to rate it as a racing game and give it a terrible score. But to call it a racing game is like calling The Legend of Zelda a fighting game, or calling Elite a shoot-'em-up; it's missing the point by a wide margin. Sure the physics in the game aren't amazing, but they're serviceable enough for what they're meant to be.

It's an extremely open world exploration game, full of characters to meet, hidden treasures to track down, puzzles to solve, and errands to run. The racing is only there to give you something obvious to do next, or to give you a bit of thrilling action to spice up the otherwise quite slow-paced gameplay; it's almost a minigame, rather than the main game.

ChoroQ HG 2 has many faults, but I also find it very charming. I first played it in my 20s, and still play it now and then, and continue to enjoy it.

ChoroQ HG 3 was made by the same developer, and uses a lot of the same assets as well as retaining the exploration and puzzle focus, but they traded the open world for a series of connected areas, which just didn't feel as interesting to me. A couple of the earlier PS1 titles (by other developers) do something similar, and I feel that it somehow works much better there than in HG 3. Still, HG 2 on the PS2 is the best in my opinion.

Dude I fucking loved Lady Sia. I always loved getting to the part where you get the ring that lets you charge your main ranged attack. She looked badass summoning a giant energy ball and firing it off. The animations for that game were incredible

atomic runner on the Sega Genesis is pretty neat

I don't know how obscure this is. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong. illusion of gaia/illusion of time was one of my favourites growing up. It had a cool story, kind of a dystopia fantasy. I don't think I ever actually finished it. Come to think of it, that might be a good idea to put on my list for this year.