There was this one game called calling for the wii. Since the Wii controller had a speaker, it would ring like a phone and you would answer it, then followed by game’s sound out of it as if you are talking on the phone. Plus it had a story I found interesting.
I remember a 3D version of Tetris on an early IBM PC clone. Very early like 8088 or 286 PC. Don't remember the name and it was only wireframe and 1color (amber or greenscreen?) but I was very impressed with it. Seemed ahead of its time.
There was an old PC game called “Dominus”. I don’t really know much about it. My dad just randomly picked it up as an xmas gift one year for me. It was pretty sweet.
You’re the lord of a kingdom that gets invaded by like eight armies. You have your own monster units you can deploy. You can deploy traps. You can cast spells. You can go down and fight hand to hand. If they make it to the throne room and kill you, it’s game over.
If you capture enemy troops, you can interrogate them. There’s a little animation where they get poked with a red hot iron poker. If you capture a leader, you can sometimes negotiate peace. If you capture an enemy mage, you can learn part of a secret spell. I never got a secret spell working, though.
It was super cool. Never met anyone who’s played it.
Back in the 90s maybe into early 2000s, my family managed to acquire a lot of VHS tapes, and some of them were fairly obscure
Two that I remember particularly fondly were 2 animated movies
Epic: Days of the Dinosaur, which was about 2 kids raised by dingos, kind of a weird fantasy movie
And Return to Treasure Island, which was pretty much just a straight-up if somewhat comedic adaptation of Treasure island, which was apparently made the USSR, and the Russian version had live action sequences that didn’t appear in the English version I had.
Maybe not super obscure, but I loved BMX XXX on the original Xbox. It was overshadowed my the plethora of other games like Tony Hawk, Aggressive Inline and SSX but I still love it.
If I wanted to see toplees girls on my modded Xbox I would just load up Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball with a nude texture pack. I genuinely enjoyed the riding aspect of the BMX game.
In 1997 the creator of Ren & Stimpy had a (somewhat) interactive flash based comic called The God Damn George Liquor show. I have that still. It’s definitely out there strange and not constrained by cable tv Standards & Practices. Highly enjoyable for what it is.
In 1990, a series of CGI animation collections began release on VHS tape. The Mind’s Eye was the first experience many people (myself included) had with pure computer animation.
The best known segment from the first tape is Stanley & Stella in Breaking the Ice, which was first released in 1987. You can just watch it online now of course!
The animation style reminds me a lot of Reboot, a childhood favorite. It still amazes me how interesting this style is even today, really shows how much more artistry and vision matter than technology. I believe this is also the first public demonstration of a flocking algorithm.
My brother brought this home along with the follow-up, Beyond the Minds Eye. I recall the first one having some scenes from The Lawnmower Man. I believe the soundtrack also featured Jan Hammer.
Sure thing! My dad bought a copy of the first one from Incredible Universe, before they sold everything to FRYS. There was a stage in the middle of the store, with big screens surrounding it, playing Minds Eye on a loop.
Holy shit, I saw this as a kid around 95-98 when I was visiting a friend of my mom I think, this as playing as music in the tv, the guy had like a home theater like setup and this burned into my mind, especially the segment on beyond the minds eye where there’s a guy/robot playing a fps. This was a wild trip to recall, thank you!
That’s why my mom bought me an Amega 4000. It was a birthday present. Never got that Video Toaster and never did get into animation back then but I had Brilliance and used it allot. I cant remember for sure but I think I remember the os being more Unix like. God I loved that machine!
Ever since I saw Beyond the Minds Eye I’ve wanted to do computer animation.
Larcen! He was awesome too. Such a great cast of characters, and each stage had a stage death you could unlock similar to a fatality. My brother's and I sank so many hours into this game.
I remember reading about that one in a video games magazine when I was a kid! I never played it. I kind of assumed it was a bigger deal because it had a lot of coverage in whatever magazine I was reading.
A movie called Sir Henry at Rawlinson's End, extremely surreal British Arthouse. Like an opium dream from the brain of a fox hunting aristo, part comedy part stream of consciousness spoken word poetry. The gags, puns, and quips are truely monumental. It's a gem, though not PC, you've been warned: https://youtu.be/N6W5RB50fXk?si=eYUlKqkTyyMvHz-Z
There was a door (plugin) for The text-based *BBS game Legend of the Red Dragon called Violet’s Tavern.
You could sit at the bar and buy a drink that enhanced your stats, You could go upstairs and pay for a hooker to replenish your energy or you could try to seduce the barmaid / owner and actually have kind of a sweet encounter with her.
It had a betting mechanic I don’t remember if it was blackjack, dice or what but you could game it a little bit by throwing a shit ton of money at it a few times. The initial odds to win or somewhat higher than the extended odds to win so if you hit it and hit big you just walk away. Sometimes you ended up empty but more often than not it worked.
How about Wally Gubbins? A series of silly skydiving videos. My father has a ton of them on VHS. I loved it as a kid. I just looked, you can even find them on YouTube. So maybe not that obscure.
In terms of software I remember having several ad games. So, games that are basically just an ad. I had a Bifi game. Some weird game about colours where I don’t remember what it was for. And a “game” about Chesterfield Cigarettes. I remember that I had to install QuickTime Player to run it. It was basically like Google Streetview when you walked into buildings with a few interactive elements put in. No idea where I got it. Might even still have the CD somewhere.
Back in the heyday of flash videos and before youtube, there was a clerks spoof featuring marvel comics heroes that I remember as being enjoyable, clever, and ultimately just a good tribute/ripoff of the source material. I have no idea how to find that again.
The Farmers Daughter. It was a text-based video game for the C=64 similar to Zork.
The premise was that you are a traveling lightening salesman whose car breaks down. You stop at a farmhouse to use their phone, and the beautiful daughter answers the door.
Your mission is to try to bang her. If the farmer catches you, he shoots you with his shotgun. If her brothers catch you, they’ll analy rape you to death. You need condoms but they are stuck to the shelf.
The appeal of games like this is so odd to me. They're moronic on one hand but viscerally addictive on the other. A very interesting psychological dynamic going on with this whole genre.
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