Post by kaeldor on Oct 1, 2016 20:53:53 GMT -6
This is a thread for people to share games, whether past or present, that they feel are overlooked treasures. I am always looking for new material myself, and to share some of the joy that I have gotten from some of my favorites with others, so I thought this would be a fun idea. To start things off, I will bring up the first game I mention whenever a discussion like this comes up. It's called Little Samson, and it was released by Taito at the tail-end of the NES era.
Little Samson didn't enjoy nearly the level of exposure and commercial success that it (in my opinion) deserved, because it suffered from poor timing: towards the middle of it's production cycle, the 16-bit systems were released, and suddenly, focus shifted away from 8-bit gaming as the new wave of technology arrived. Nevertheless, as a budding game developer, this is one of the titles that I find myself coming back to time and again, not just for it's incredibly fun play, but as a lesson in really great principles of game design. It was really ahead of it's time in a lot of ways, and very innovative, even when held up in comparison to many platformers released on the next-gen systems.
It's a platformer that has a simple storyline, communicated through silent cutscenes between stages. Despite the lack of either vocalization or text speech by a single character in the entire game, the thread of the story is clearly able to be followed, and I found that this "silent cast" approach was actually more engaging in some ways, as it allowed my imagination to run wild... who was saying what to whom during those dramatic moments? The graphics were frankly some of the best that were ever offered on the NES, and the overall aesthetic was wonderful. The music, too, was very good, though I wouldn't hold it to the standards of some of the better known classic games.
What really made this game shine, though, was the gameplay. It had four playable characters, and you could switch between them mid-stage. Many of the different sections of different stages could best be traversed by a specific character, so part of being successful in your quest to stop the Dark Prince was knowing who to pull out when. Little Samson, the title character, could throw rocks at enemies, and climb along walls and ceilings. Kikira, the dragon, could fly for brief periods, and spit a spreading wall of fireballs at enemies. Gamm, the golem, was slow, tanky, and packed a powerful long-range punch that could be thrown in four different directions. K.O., the mouse, was super fast, as well as being small; this made him hard to hit. His weapon was bombs that were fairly powerful, and could be dropped as he ran, and like Little Samson, he could cling to walls. Level design was creative, and challenging without being "Nintendo Hard", and enemies were varied and had lots of different tactics that needed to be used to avoid or defeat them optimally. To round it all out, the game had a powerup system that was pretty comprehensive, with everything from bonus power to extra maximum HP being able to be picked up as you worked your way through the different stages.
Anyhow, that's my contribution to the topic. Who else wants to share?
Little Samson didn't enjoy nearly the level of exposure and commercial success that it (in my opinion) deserved, because it suffered from poor timing: towards the middle of it's production cycle, the 16-bit systems were released, and suddenly, focus shifted away from 8-bit gaming as the new wave of technology arrived. Nevertheless, as a budding game developer, this is one of the titles that I find myself coming back to time and again, not just for it's incredibly fun play, but as a lesson in really great principles of game design. It was really ahead of it's time in a lot of ways, and very innovative, even when held up in comparison to many platformers released on the next-gen systems.
It's a platformer that has a simple storyline, communicated through silent cutscenes between stages. Despite the lack of either vocalization or text speech by a single character in the entire game, the thread of the story is clearly able to be followed, and I found that this "silent cast" approach was actually more engaging in some ways, as it allowed my imagination to run wild... who was saying what to whom during those dramatic moments? The graphics were frankly some of the best that were ever offered on the NES, and the overall aesthetic was wonderful. The music, too, was very good, though I wouldn't hold it to the standards of some of the better known classic games.
What really made this game shine, though, was the gameplay. It had four playable characters, and you could switch between them mid-stage. Many of the different sections of different stages could best be traversed by a specific character, so part of being successful in your quest to stop the Dark Prince was knowing who to pull out when. Little Samson, the title character, could throw rocks at enemies, and climb along walls and ceilings. Kikira, the dragon, could fly for brief periods, and spit a spreading wall of fireballs at enemies. Gamm, the golem, was slow, tanky, and packed a powerful long-range punch that could be thrown in four different directions. K.O., the mouse, was super fast, as well as being small; this made him hard to hit. His weapon was bombs that were fairly powerful, and could be dropped as he ran, and like Little Samson, he could cling to walls. Level design was creative, and challenging without being "Nintendo Hard", and enemies were varied and had lots of different tactics that needed to be used to avoid or defeat them optimally. To round it all out, the game had a powerup system that was pretty comprehensive, with everything from bonus power to extra maximum HP being able to be picked up as you worked your way through the different stages.
Anyhow, that's my contribution to the topic. Who else wants to share?