Game(s) only you're playing right now

[Mushroom Rings]

Have you recently played any old, or obscure enough game about which you'd dare to say you might very well be the only person in the world to be playing at that moment? Yes, I know there are over 8 billion people living out there, but no need to be too anal about this.

A few days ago, I had this thought while playing The Secret of Donkey Island, an old Czech parody of The Secret of Monkey Island. I heard it's the first Czech commercial game ever, which I find mildly interesting. The plot is supposed to be set after the second Monkey Island game. You find yourself in the role of "Gajbraš Trípvůd", a brave pirate shipwrecked on an island of magical donkeys.



I found this game to be a charming enough tribute, but more frustrating than fun to play. It's short and it has a few jokes that made me smile. However, it's plagued with all the things that make me dislike old point-and-click adventure games, such as pixel hunting (the donkey in the screenshot is hungry and the only thing you can give him is grass from a very specific spot on the island), non-intuitive item combinations/interactions (you can't carry sea water in the bottle you got a while ago, dumbass, you have to interact with the sea to carry it in your mouth), and multiple spots to get soft-locked in without the game telling you your progress is screwed. Also, you meet only two donkeys in the whole game and only one of them is magical (the second one just lies on a rubber sofa all day, which still makes him pretty cool if you ask me)...

Anyway, I'm interested in your picks now.

 

[Henri Barbusse]

You forgot that the villain of the game is LeChuck's (LeČuk) brother LeGek, which is a reference to the 1939's Soviet children's book Chuk i Gek, which was mandatory school reading in socialist Czechoslovakia. I don't think I had much trouble with the game as a kid, though maybe I just had more patience for adventure game bullshit.

 

[TheArtilleryman]

I've never met another person who has even heard of Team Buddies.



It's a great little game.

Edit: Oh shit it's being remastered on Steam with online multiplayer. I'm excited.

 

[Dysnomia]

Marchen Veil for FDS. I don't really recommend it because it's got worse cliff collision detection deaths than Deadly Towers. And I actually like Deadly Towers. The only reason you'd probably play Marchen Veil is for the gaming history aspect. It was a really good early example of story driven cutscenes, called "visual stage" in-game. Unfortunately, like Ys, the game is broken into halves and the second half is only on PC98, whereas the fist half is on multiple platforms.

It's one of those games where you are just dropped into the world and have to figure out what to do. The graphics don't help. It took me awhile to realise that you could walk on the black part of the screen and actually have to in order to reach some areas. The PC-88 version is available on Switch. The graphics aren't as messy there. The FDS version does not look so good outside of the cutscenes. But at least it has an English patch.

I also played Ai Senshi Nicol. Sounds like a magical girl game. But it's not. It's an FDS game made by Konami. It's similar to Zelda gameplay wise. But you have a space gun and fight aliens across spaceships and planets trying to rescue your girlfriend. It's really a shame it never made it stateside. It's a really good game with great graphics and music.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

The original Master of Orion, although it may not be that rare to still be playing that.

Being a vidya from the early '90s, the original Master of Orion can feel rather '80s.

like in this screencap:

View attachment 7581606
(yes that is a full-size cap)

I also like how if an alien colony is out of scanning range, the report will say "Last Reported As A [Name$] Colony"... seems other "Civilization in Space" '90s vidya do not have that feature. Like in Master of Orion 2 one can see alien colonies in explored systems as they are currently: there's no "fog of war" like there is in the original MoO.

 

[An Idle Observer]

I'm a guy who can appreciate a game if it screeches "Missed Potential." I'll boot up Brink every now and again to shoot some bots. It's not the greatest experience obviously, but everything from the presentation to even a lot of the basic details of the game just really reek that there IS in fact a good game in here somewhere... even past the horribly balanced level design in places... even past some of the downsides of the gunplay... even past the wonky class progression...

There just coulda been a contender here, yanno? And it pains me we didn't get one. So I play every now and again just to see it.

Also props for featuring a metaphorical coke can as a suppressor. I like good dieselpunk design and how this is the only game I've seen that in surprises me.

 

[Lammy]

Not recently, but I did feel that way last time I played Wolfenstein 2009 a few years back. It's delisted from storefronts and nobody seems to ever talk about it.

Took me about an hour to realize "Wow, this game's level and gameplay designs are actually really boring and it's no surprise nobody talks about it anymore", then promptly uninstalled. I really enjoyed it when it came out, but I dunno what changed. Maybe it was a better game relative to the other generic militaryslop of the era, but in the present day it's not much better.

 

[I'm Retarded?]

I really enjoyed it when it came out, but I dunno what changed. Maybe it was a better game relative to the other generic militaryslop of the era, but in the present day it's not much better.

yeah, pretty much. late 2000s gaming was brutally cursed, just about every major release was a console action/adventure or military shooter. God of War clone, Assassin's Creed/Uncharted clone, Call of Duty clone, that's about it. games that broke the mold or had any ideas at all that weren't just lazily copy/pasted from the era hits were pretty rare. remember how Wolfenstein: The New Order (2014) was celebrated as being "old school" and "a breath of fresh air" due to having non-regenerating health and allowing you to carry more than two weapons at once, despite otherwise being an extremely rote console military shooter? linear levels, scripted sequences everywhere, no manual saves, iron sights being required to hit anything, etc.? it really was that bad.

I had the same experience with a game from 2010 called Singularity. I was into it at the time, but when I went back to it recently, I couldn't see it as much more than a Call of Duty reskin. same shitty controls, same shitty gameplay. in fact, the assault rifle in that game is actually a literal reskin of the M4 from Modern Warfare. it felt so old despite being considerably newer than some of the boomer shooters I replay relatively often. depressing.

 

[An Idle Observer]

Took me about an hour to realize "Wow, this game's level and gameplay designs are actually really boring and it's no surprise nobody talks about it anymore", then promptly uninstalled. I really enjoyed it when it came out, but I dunno what changed. Maybe it was a better game relative to the other generic militaryslop of the era, but in the present day it's not much better.

Never underestimate the power of rose-tinted goggles. It's why I have an emulator playlist of loads of PS1 jank in it because I grew up with that shit, and it really does help that some of those game have inexplicably good OSTs to them. Could just be that it came out at the right time at the right place, it could be that you just got too good for it and understand the game too well. Any number of things could have done it sadly.

 

[JULAY]

The original PC Ultima Underworld. Great fucking game... I've been playing all of my old favorites recently because modern games are all fucking gay. I recently replayed Zelda 1, Link's Awakening and A Link to the Past, and I think I'm going to tackle the original FFVII next. That was the last game I devoted a ton of time to when it came out, hard to believe that was almost 30 years ago.

 

[Tate McRae]

I'm currently playing Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town and Yakuza Kiwami.

 

[Megaton Punch]

I recently played Wizardry - as in, the original game - after a brief conversation with @Make Wraith Wraithy Again. It's one of the most user unfriendly games I've ever played and all discussion about it is from years and years ago. I still had fun because it felt like video game archaeology, but I wouldn't be surprised if nobody else on earth was playing the non-remade version at the time.

For a possibly even more obscure game, how about The Quest? It's got a deeply SEO-unfriendly name and it's basically Bad Might and Magic, but it has a surprisingly competent Android port so I played it on my phone for a bit. It doesn't really hold up, but it's the closest thing Android has to a decent old school CRPG that I'm aware of.

 

[George Lucas]

There are a bunch of random shitty Japanese PC games from the 80s/90s I play regularly, but I think most people here will be interested in this obscure port of Super Mario Bros. by Hudson Soft.

Just FYI if you want to play these kinds of games, the X1 ports are generally better than the PC-88 versions. Also use a good CRT shader on emulators. PC-88 games especially need some kind of filter to smooth out the dithering.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Urban Chaos: Riot Response. A PS2 FPS where you play a riot cop shooting masked gang members who burn everything. Tazering them until they catch fire. Beating the to death with your shield. Hugely underrated. I've been playing it on and off for a while. Lots of replay value in that one. And emulates well.

There just coulda been a contender here, yanno? And it pains me we didn't get one. So I play every now and again just to see it.

I remember the audio logs in that game being great. On PC, I remember it felt odd, like everything was animated at 30fps in a 60 fps game.

I've never met another person who has even heard of Team Buddies.

I've heard of it. Even beat it back in the day. I remember the cover had a little "sticker" on it saying it's not for kids.

I played Wolfenstein 2009 a few years back. It's delisted from storefronts and nobody seems to ever talk about it.

I remember enjoying it. Though I had really low standards for FPS games back then. Still do. The thing I didn't like was having to clear room, then backtrack to collect money and treasure. It killed the flow of the game.

 

[An Idle Observer]

There are a bunch of random shitty Japanese PC games from the 80s/90s I play regularly, but I think most people here will be interested in this obscure port of Super Mario Bros. by Hudson Soft.

I know this actually! If you're looking just to play the game, I know there's a port/ROM Hack that tries its best to clean the code up and make it run as a Mario platformer should! Sadly I don't know the name of the ported version off the top of my head though.

 

[Wraithdolf the White]

I recently played Wizardry - as in, the original game - after a brief conversation with @Make Wraith Wraithy Again. It's one of the most user unfriendly games I've ever played and all discussion about it is from years and years ago. I still had fun because it felt like video game archaeology, but I wouldn't be surprised if nobody else on earth was playing the non-remade version at the time.

For a possibly even more obscure game, how about The Quest? It's got a deeply SEO-unfriendly name and it's basically Bad Might and Magic, but it has a surprisingly competent Android port so I played it on my phone for a bit. It doesn't really hold up, but it's the closest thing Android has to a decent old school CRPG that I'm aware of.

>The Quest
Dude, someone has to save them. The chick's been locked up in the FM-7 version for so long she's lost her boobs!

For me I went to the old novalogic web site or fan web site and grabbed Delta Force 2 mod missions to see what the players made over the years. ... 3500+ missions for this game alone.
Anyway after grabbing every single one of them I'm messing with them seeing what level of skill or autism I can find in them.

 

[Miller]

Tazering them until they catch fire.

Like in Syphon Filter? Nice.

 

[Calandrino]

I pulled my old hacked Wii out of mothballs and I'm seeing what I even had on it. Wiiware had a massive library of garbage exclusives, but a few decent things snuck in. Probably not a lot of people even playing the relatively high-profile games like Castlevania Rebirth, Gradius Rebirth, or Alien Crush Returns. I tried Space Invaders Get Even but it's all in moonspeak.

 

[George Lucas]

>The Quest
Dude, someone has to save them. The chick's been locked up in the FM-7 version for so long she's lost her boobs!
View attachment 7806275


For me I went to the old novalogic web site or fan web site and grabbed Delta Force 2 mod missions to see what the players made over the years. ... 3500+ missions for this game alone.
Anyway after grabbing every single one of them I'm messing with them seeing what level of skill or autism I can find in them.

The text says ‘Please press a [keyboard] key to start the adventure.’

Wizardry was really popular in Japan and they actually got better looking ports! Tons of shitty dungeon crawling RPGs were ported or made there. Then Chunsoft made Dragon Quest. They combined the combat of Wizardry with the open world travel of Ultima and the JRPG concept was born.

 

[NH-8340]

I'm sure some other autist is playing it right now, but Silent Hunter III. I don't really know how to play it, kinda just learning the controls and how everything works at the moment. I took this clip a little while ago.