Below is a list of games that have been shamefully overlooked, the great unwashed saw these games on the shelves and decided to pick up something else leaving these little gems to rot. We at Meodia understand; games cost a lot of money and you know that the next game in your favourite franchise probably won’t disappoint you (unless your favourite franchise is Sonic) but some games really did deserve your attention.

 

To be on the list they must fulfil three criteria;

1: They must have been released in multiple regions: no point saying that ‘Fatal Frame IV: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse’ didn’t sell in America and it seems to have an underwhelming number of supporters in Europe, when it never saw light of day outside of Japan.

2: They must have had generally good reviews: yeah ‘Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis’ only sold 1000 copies in the first week and nobody talks about it, but that’s because it was a rubbish game that deserves to be forgotten.

3: Lastly it had to have sold poorly: Fallout 3 overlooked, not really. God Of War the great forgotten game of the last decade, umm no. The game has to be good but for one reason or another it never managed to sell.

 

 

So without further ado here are 20 Shamefully Overlooked Games;

 

 

 

At the start of 1994 the 2D platformer was still king but only just. The Playstation was released in the same year and with it brought forth another dimension, the third plane of existence; which also made cameras extremely hard to figure out, but I digress. Dynamite Headdy was released in that year and as you’ve probably already guessed was a 2D platformer, made by Treasure with a helping hand from Sega, the game was at the apex of 2D platforming goodness.

 

 

It stretched the Mega Drive/Genesis’ hardware to the very limit with it’s bizarre backgrounds and levels but aside from the graphics it provided innovative puzzles, complex platforming, multiple hidden bonuses sprinkled through the world and unique power-ups (shooting stars out of your nose anybody?). All this and it was a lot of fun.

 

 

Oh yeah and it featured a bizarre number of muscular men in leotards but that’s something for another list entirely.

 

  

 

 

Yes Blazing Dragons, you either have no clue this title existed or you’re in violent coughing fits. “Why is a game spinoff of a little known cartoon series on this list?” Well surprisingly enough when I got this game I had no idea it was a cartoon spinoff; all I knew was it was brilliantly animated with fantastic character design and highly detailed backdrops but most important of all it was hilarious. Terry Jones of Monty Python fame wrote the story and it was all brought together by Crystal Dynamics who are so good (or bad) they appear on this list twice. As such when I heard there was a cartoon I went out of my way to view it and I was very disappointed, the characters looked wrong and the script just didn’t have the same zing to it.

 

 

By that merit if you’ll seen the cartoon show don’t dismiss this fantastic little game because it’s a lot better. If you’re going to dismiss it at least dismiss it for being a click and point adventure game. Yes, as with the fabled ‘Discworld’ games, the same bizarre logic runs through the game but with it being aimed at the younger player it meant less time pulling your hair out.

 

 

Oh yes and it’s all fully voiced over by the likes of Terry Jones, Cheech Marin, Jim Cummings and many other brilliant voice actors.

 

 

 

 

Ah back in the days before bizarre alien rabbit like creatures, the floating creation ‘Rayman’ was up there with the likes of Mario and Sonic. As with his rivals Rayman was forced into 3D and did so, so well that I would say it’s better than Mario 64. You’re now looking at the mighty list of platforms it’s appeared on and questioning if it should even be on this list but it did sell surprisingly poorly when it first hit shelves worldwide, Ubisoft spent a lot of money on this project and so ported, ported and ported this game all over place not so much to milk the franchise (although there was an element of that) but to get some payoff for its massive investment.

 

 

They should have got it too, the game looked fantastic and was highly detailed, the characters were quirky and not in the slightest bit annoying, the controls were spot on, music was funky but to top it all there was loads of innovation. While most of the game was about the platforming and fighting off robot pirates (oh yeah, they went there) every third level was something different. Be it a swimming level, a level where you propel yourself with rockets, one where you’re skimming across lava on a fruit or one where you’re slowly hovering your way down a deadly pit.

 

 

You know I never did pick up Rayman 3, maybe it should be on the list instead...to E-bay.

 

 

 

 

JRPG’s you either love them or you can’t stand them...or you played FFVII back in the day and everything else sucks. Either way Baten Kaitos is a very Japanese JRPG and by that I mean it’s completely bizarre. The game is set in a world where countries float around the sky, everybody has wings (but can’t fly) and you battle your way through the game using playing cards. Oh and you’re not controlling the main character, instead you control a spirit who lives inside the main character giving him extra powers and generally pointing him in the right direction.

 

 

All in all it was the cause of its own downfall, despite looking glorious with its 2D rendered backgrounds everybody was put off by the incomprehensible storyline, freaky characters and unique battle system. Shame too as while it was nowhere near a perfect game (voice-acting was horrendous) it should have got more attention on the RPG starved Gamecube than it did.

 

 

Don’t let all that flying fool you, you were very much rooted to the ground.

 

 

 

 

Prey is an unusual entry to this list because; well, I didn’t really enjoy it. I played it for the first hour and thought it nothing more than a bland first-person-shooter that you would expect to find in the bargain bin (which I did). Then it had the awful plot and characterisations, personally the game would have felt a lot better without the Native-American spirit sub-plot on-top of the alien abduction one.

 

 

So what’s it doing on this list then? Well I didn’t enjoy playing it until about half-way through the game when I suddenly noticed what I was doing wasn’t bland at all. All through the game there was little glimmers of unique gameplay and interesting ideas that gradually built up to create an interesting experience. You’ve got portals, gravity plates, some interesting weaponry, radio reports filling in on the background, spirit powers and alien vehicles to control. Shame that the game was in development hell for such a long time (over 10 years they were making this game), if it had come out sooner it would have received a lot more praise than it did. As by the time it did come out everything that would have been new and fresh 10/5 years ago had been done before.

 

 

They left the door open to a sequel too; I would pick it up if it ever came out.

 

 

 

 

Until this point you’ll be forgiven for thinking the List is going in chronological order, well it’s not. ‘Z’, yes that is its full title, is a classic Real Time Strategy game with a twist. Instead of farming or collecting resources you gained the necessary resources simply by controlling territories. Each level would be split up into sections with a flag in the centre of each one, you would attempt to take the flag and when you did would gain the points from that section, be able to place gun emplacements in it and use any of the robot making facilities within your controlled sectors. The points would be used to speed up the manufacturing process of robots, vehicles and guns.

 

 

Z (pronounced Zed) was the first RTS I had ever played and I enjoyed it immensely. The simple objectives, the way the game advanced as you progressed, the brightly coloured graphics and of course the humour all helped make this game stick with me. While it’s true the game did start easy it quickly becomes a much harder game with later levels being very unforgiving. It holds a rare place among my game collection few other games share; a game I spent hours and hours playing but never completed, I got stuck right on the last level.

 

 

It also had a sequel Z: Steel Soldiers which was also a good game and added all sorts of additional robots and weapons, it did make it feel a bit cluttered though.

 

 

 

 

You’ve heard of Earthbound, right? Infamous for its quirky Japanese styling’s, being a fan-favourite and of course selling very poorly. To be fair to the game it did sell okay in Japan but when it found itself on the alien shores of America people noticed it and quickly moved on, as such the game never got any further and the next game in the franchise, Mother 3, withdrew back to a Japanese only release sure in the knowledge that those westerners don’t know a good game when it looks them right in the face.

 

 

Earthbound was odd, granted; you controlled a group of young kids as they went around beating up space-men because some creature from the future told them they have to save the world. The weapons included baseball bats, frying pans and various other weird things to destroy the abnormally shaped creatures (and hippies) that attempted to stop Ness and his motley crew. The whole game was a loving parody of JRPGs, poking fun at its many well established tropes providing plenty of humour and a good game overall but it seems that people just didn’t get it.

 

  

This game deserves all the placements it has in “best game ever” lists.

 

 

 

 

‘Chibi-Robo’ a master of understatement, you control a small cleaning robot for a dysfunctional family. I know, I know but it is a lot better than it sounds. Being only a couple of inches tall makes the daily chores a mighty task to complete as you fight against the time of day and the amount of battery you have left. You were constantly attempting to finish one last task to get happy points, before one thing or another ran out.

 

 

While the gameplay was a lot of fun you also had a bizarre back-story too. Aliens have appeared and have made all the toys come alive and it’s up to Chibi to understand just what they’re doing in the backyard every night. On-top of that you’ve got to attempt to save the family from themselves saving the marriage and supporting frog-head Jenny. It was the cute little story with multiple lovable background characters with odd relationships towards each other than made this game such a joy to play.

 

 

Another game that sold pretty well in the Japan and it has two sequels (both on the DS) but it didn’t do so well over seas, in fact the second DS sequel never made it outside of Japan.

 

 

 

 

If you’ve played this game chances are you enjoyed it on the Xbox version ‘Conker: Live & Reloaded’, the original N64 game was overlooked because it came out just months before the Gamecube. Should have Rare waited and released the game on the Gamecube? Hell no, this game was a technological marvel on the N64 cramming in stunning graphics, hours of dialogue and lip-syncing. Released on the Gamecube at it would have been just an ugly port or stuck forever in development as Rare tried to keep up with the advancement of graphics. Besides we would have missed out on Star Fox Adventures and that would have been a crime, wouldn’t it?

 

 

So why does it deserve to appear on this list. Well if you have to ask you never played it, the game was brilliantly funny and the cute graphics contrasted against the harsh language and crude jokes. As the box-art clearly says this game wasn’t for anybody under the age of 17. For me it marked the change between “adult” games just being bloody and violent and when games became adult because of something other than gameplay it was the script, ideas and cruel humour...and a giant singing poo.

 

 

Interesting fact: the Xbox version is more censored than the N64 version, kinda shows that Nintendo allowed Rare a bit more leeway than Mircosoft does.

 

 

 

 

‘Fur Fighters’, there was a flaw with Fur Fighters, it looked like a kids game but it didn’t act like one. Instead of being a nice friendly platformer it turned into a third-person-shooter with an interesting back-story high in parody and humour. Problem being that nobody knew this until they bought it and those people that picked it up thinking it was just another platformer probably didn’t stick to it past the part where planes crash into the sides of the twin-towers, why yes, that did happened in the game.

 

They did attempt to make it appeal to the older gamer in the PS2 port but it wasn’t very successful. If you did manage to find this game however you were in for a treat with 6 distinct hubs, over 20 massive levels, multiple playable characters with different skills, 100’s of collectables hidden throughout the world, brilliant scripts, massive boss battles, a large selection of weapons and additive mini-games; this game offered hours and hours of fun.

 

 

I actually prefer the Dreamcast version simply because it doesn’t have dreadful voice-overs. I think I’m the only person in the world that enjoys game characters not saying real words and just making funny noises.

 

 

First 10 down, check out the other 10 on the next page.