Something obscure that you feel deserves a bit more love. Let's share.
I'll start with Duke Nukem: Zero Hour, a game that has been on my mind, of late, after listening to Duke Nukem Forever impressions on several podcasts. This Eurocom third-person action game on the N64 was probably my favorite game in the series. It had great (Expansion Pak-enhanced) graphics for the time, a decent multiplayer, and a fairly epic single-player campaign. The campaign was a bit punishing, since you could only save between the lengthy levels, but I appreciated the old-school mastery that that save scheme demanded. Very fun, underappreciated game. I remember that it got ONE star in Next Generation magazine, which I subscribed to at the time. That might have been my first taste of losing faith in the game reviewing industry.
I don't think it's related to John Jakes, no. In fact, I didn't think it was related to anything at all, except Wikipedia just told me it's based on some Belgian comic book. So... go figure. Maybe it was a spin-off of the Smurfs.
@Anand Growlanser is pretty unique. Basically you have a team of like 4-8? people and when a battle starts everything is happening in real time, but each character has a "wait" time in between making moves so it's not just a huge free-for-all like a lot of RTS are. You set a path for each character, choose what they will do (attack with this or that, defend, heal, whatever), and and then you kind of watch it play out, jumping in from time to time to change up what your characters are doing. I'd almost say it's close to something like Final Fantasy XII's battle system? Only more interesting because it takes place top view on a map like an RTS would and the environment totally matters (a lot of your goals are environmental too, like get up to X and release this person from jail before the enemies get to him, yada yada.) Fun times.
This is a very bizarre game. But it is very good. You start as a fish and evolve your way up the evolutionary chain. I want this game to come to the Virtual Console so bad.
This game when you beat a boss, they join you [sometimes]. So rad.
Also, its by Capcom, so you'll hear a LOT of music that is pretty close to familiar (Duck Tales, Darkwing Duck, Rescue Rangers, etc). And its an awesome turn-based RPG. Just awesome.
@Mr_Mustache I love evolving into a dragon. There is also a way to evolve into a human but they are weaker. Damn it, now I want to play this game right now.
Metal Warriors on the SNES... I didn't get to play many multiplayer games during my SNES days, but this was one I had a ton of fun playing in both single player and two player modes (split screen and all).
Hmm. Never heard of it. Does it have anything to do with Metal Storm? Metal Mech?
--And its not in our database! Would you care to add it, NoName? You might know the most about it out of everyone! NoName: Negative World's Resident Metal Warriors Expert
Haha... I'm surprised I haven't added it yet or that it hasn't already been added. Or, even, that I didn't notice that it wasn't listed. I still have my copy of the game in my closet. I'll add it to the database here shortly. Thanks for the reminder to help build the NW Game Database!
As for whether it is related to either Metal Storm or Metal Mech, I don't believe so. I've never heard of Metal Storm, but I could see Metal Warriors at least being inspired to some degree by Metal Mech.
Oh, and I do like the sound the title you've given me. Though, it'd be more like, Negative World's Metal Warriors Amateur of Yesteryear.