Once popular games which no one seems to give a shit about

[electricmastro]

7 hours ago, Protocol Penguin said:

Very minor example, and possibly outside the scope of the thread, but… Remember Mega-lo-Mania on the Amiga? Got glowing reviews in all the Amiga publications, and it provided a more accessible post-Populous form of that genre, with early glimpses of what we’d now call an RTS game. But barely a year later, it was almost completely forgotten about. Did it sell badly? Did games journalists later reflect on its shallow gameplay? It’s barely spoken of as a footnote now, even as the game where Sensible Soccer and Cannon Fodder got their graphical style from.

Was the only command-based RTS on SNES I recall. I guess games like Dune, Herzog Zwei, and Command & Conquer outshined it.

[strawdonkey]

On 11/08/2022 at 10:24, electricmastro said:

Klax. Had over 20 ports back in the day, but no one seems to talk about it anymore even among puzzle enthusiasts.

 

There was only time for KLAX in the 90s.

[electricmastro]

Space Harrier. A game with a lot of interest in its day, partially due to the way it demonstrated the tech and graphics, but is now prob just seen as a glorified tech demo by many.

 

[SMD]

Just say arcade's dead

[JamesC]

Space Harrier was great in the arcade, especially with the hydrolic deluxe cabinet. It was really fast and the sprite scaling worked brilliantly. It also sounded fucking amazing.

The home versions just never quite captured the thrill. Space Harrier was a whole experience and you just couldn't do it justice sat at home in front of the TV.

[SMD]

I think the Saturn version was the first arcade perfect home port and that was what 15 years later?

[bignige]

On 15/08/2022 at 23:01, Xevious said:

 

Not a remaster, but Revenge is compatible with the Xbone and Series, and still plays really well.

Yep, I’ve still got my disc and play it on a semi regular basis. It’s a shame they turned the servers off as multiplayer races were fantastic. 

[bignige]

On 11/08/2022 at 10:24, electricmastro said:

Klax. Had over 20 ports back in the day, but no one seems to talk about it anymore even among puzzle enthusiasts.

 

This was another game I absolutely loved. They used to have this in a pub when I was a student and I would sink all my money into it. 
One of my goto games on MAME. 

[megamixer]

Driver - absolutely huge on PS1 and PC back in the day. Unfortunately Driv3r was so horrific that nobody gave much attention to the vastly-better Parallel Lines, and the amazing San Francisco. Now the franchise in general is just dead. Rarely see it mentioned these days.

 

Silent Hill - Massive praise for SH2 especially and it was up there with Resi for a while, even getting some movies, but increasingly dodgy sequels and the curse of being a Konami IP means that it is dead. I think this is one of those series' that many fans would rather just not come back as it will never scale the heady heights of the first two games.

[electricmastro]

15 hours ago, SMD said:

I think the Saturn version was the first arcade perfect home port and that was what 15 years later?

I think that would have to be version of Space Harrier on 32X, which was prob the best way to play the game in the home for the time, along with After Burner.

[electricmastro]

13 hours ago, bignige said:

This was another game I absolutely loved. They used to have this in a pub when I was a student and I would sink all my money into it. 
One of my goto games on MAME. 

 

How many popular games people have to now resort to play on MAME due to lack of re-releases anyway?

[electricmastro]

Does BurgerTime still get plenty of attention, I know it even received a follow-up on Switch not too long ago, and I suppose is one of the more standout games for its personality and charm, though even now, I’m not sure.

 

[spanky debrest]

On 01/09/2022 at 21:10, electricmastro said:

Was the only command-based RTS on SNES I recall. I guess games like Dune, Herzog Zwei, and Command & Conquer outshined it.

 

Lord Monarch outshines these games pretty effortlessly IMO, and it was on SFC and Mega Drive.

 

On 05/09/2022 at 23:19, electricmastro said:

I think that would have to be version of Space Harrier on 32X, which was prob the best way to play the game in the home for the time, along with After Burner.

 

32X version ran at half frame rate and lower resolution than the OG and Saturn port, nice as it was.

 

Also, Space Harrier has no place in this thread.

 

It's wasn't a fad or a weirdly popular game that fizzled out in relevance. If I were a Switch owner I'd absolutely have bought it again on that (despite it being somewhat of a downgrade from the 3DS remaster).

 

I *almost* put a pre-order in for a Mega Drive Mini 2 just to be able to experience the new exclusive versions of Space Harrier and Space Harrier II (which technically run on augmented MD hardware closer to actual System 16 spec), such is my boner for this game.

 

Just sayin.

[dataDave]

Pro Evo / Winning Eleven.

 

Lock the thread.

[SMD]

More Konami fucking up big time twice than people losing interest.

[Anne Summers]

On 01/09/2022 at 19:39, Protocol Penguin said:

Very minor example, and possibly outside the scope of the thread, but… Remember Mega-lo-Mania on the Amiga? Got glowing reviews in all the Amiga publications, and it provided a more accessible post-Populous form of that genre, with early glimpses of what we’d now call an RTS game. But barely a year later, it was almost completely forgotten about. Did it sell badly? Did games journalists later reflect on its shallow gameplay? It’s barely spoken of as a footnote now, even as the game where Sensible Soccer and Cannon Fodder got their graphical style from.

I remember (kind of) seeing a talk by (I think) Jon Hate at (I'm pretty sure) Play Expo one year. He said the release of the game was pretty much scuppered by the death of Maxwell and Mirrorsoft. I hadn't realised because I had an original copy myself back in the day, don't know if it was just that I was lucky to get one before the fat lady (man) sang (drowned). 

 

Edit: Just checked and this is covered in the Retro Gamer piece this month. It says that Virgin picked up the rights for conversions after Mirrorsoft went down but doesn't say if they re-released the Amiga version. If it was only the conversions that were available then that might explain the lack of giving a shit about it because we all know console conversions of Amiga games were never really huge hits with critics or players. This seems to apply even in cases where the games could be very similar thanks to the suitability for console controllers (Speedball 2 , Shadow of the Beast for example) which isn't the case for Mega Lo Mania. I played the MD version a fair bit not too long ago when I was prepping it for Antstream and it works ok. But I found myself wanting to play it properly. Luckily I found out that there's an (unofficial I think) Android port that works really well on touchscreen. 

[Protocol Penguin]

4 hours ago, Anne Summers said:

I remember (kind of) seeing a talk by (I think) Jon Hate at (I'm pretty sure) Play Expo one year. He said the release of the game was pretty much scuppered by the death of Maxwell and Mirrorsoft. I hadn't realised because I had an original copy myself back in the day, don't know if it was just that I was lucky to get one before the fat lady (man) sang (drowned). 

 

Edit: Just checked and this is covered in the Retro Gamer piece this month. It says that Virgin picked up the rights for conversions after Mirrorsoft went down but doesn't say if they re-released the Amiga version. If it was only the conversions that were available then that might explain the lack of giving a shit about it because we all know console conversions of Amiga games were never really huge hits with critics or players. This seems to apply even in cases where the games could be very similar thanks to the suitability for console controllers (Speedball 2 , Shadow of the Beast for example) which isn't the case for Mega Lo Mania. I played the MD version a fair bit not too long ago when I was prepping it for Antstream and it works ok. But I found myself wanting to play it properly. Luckily I found out that there's an (unofficial I think) Android port that works really well on touchscreen. 

Had a read of that article in RG too, nice to see the game get some modern recognition. My copy was in a double pack with First Samurai which was published my Ubisoft – suspect that was the most common release of the Amiga version! Didn’t seem to get a budget release, but then most Sensi games on the Amiga didn’t, for some reason.