Very obscure games from popular series

[Stopdoor]

This game was TERRIBLE. The gameplay involved you scraping across the DS repeatedly to make Pikachu run, and it pretty much singlehandedly destroyed my original DS' touchscreen.

This was very much a game from the launch period of the DS where developers were trying to figure out what they could do with touch controls, and this experiment did not turn out well.

There was a kind of neat feature where you could import your Pokemon from the GBA games to turn their sprites into racecourses though.

Click to shrink...

I'll defend this game, the move mechanic is kind of dumb but it's only destructive if you let it and the rest of the game is a really weird, cool design for a racing game. You essentially have to scope out your next path/destination yourself, and playing multiplayer is a one of a kind experience with everyone ballooning up and skydiving around huge maps.

 

[alundra311]

Does Persona 1 and 2 count? LOL.

 

[ElMexiMerican]

My favorite ways to play DMC4 & Dead Rising are of course on a mobile device:





On a more serious note, the DOOM RPG and Wolfenstein RPG games are my favorite games in their respective series.

 

[Chumunga64]

Related: I feel like no one remembers this game even happened lol
Too many spin offs I guess

Click to shrink...

Pretty sure a lot of people remember conquest cause if it's insane premise

They should, because it's in the top 3 Pokemon games :(

I don't think anyone remembers the pre-smartphone mobile games for Assassin's Creed or God of War...

They were both pretty damn good.

Click to shrink...

The funniest part of the God of War mobile game is that it's Canon (or at least it was) Kratos killing one of the God's pet made then sour on him

 

[Deleted member 721]

star ocean blue sphere (star ocean 2 sequel for gbc)

2 mobile bof4 games

Breath of Fire IV: The Sword of Fire and the Magic of Wind

Breath of Fire IV: Honō no Ken to Kaze no Mahō

Breath of Fire IV: Honō no Ken to Kaze no Mahō (lit. Breath of Fire IV: The Sword of Fire and the Magic of Wind) is an action role-playing spin-off of Breath of Fire IV. Taking place sometime during the events of the game, the player controls Ryu and Nina as they try to escape soldiers of the...

bof.fandom.com

Breath of Fire IV: The Faeries and the Key of Light

Breath of Fire IV: Yōsei-tachi to Hikari no Kagi

Breath of Fire IV: Yōsei-tachi to Hikari no Kagi (lit. Breath of Fire IV: The Faeries and the Key of Light) is one of the small series of mobile phone games based around the Breath of Fire Series, Breath of Fire IV: Yōsei-tachi to Hikari no Kagi was exclusively released in Japan by Capcom in...

bof.fandom.com

Dragon Quest: Young Yangus and the Mysterious Dungeon
prequel to dragon quest viii

 

[Lilyth]

Thanks for these posts, this is what I come here for!

My pick is GTA for Game Boy Color:

 

[Tokyo_Funk]

I dare you to find something weirder and more obscure.

Click to shrink...

Well, I wouldn't say weird, but obscure definitely fits this : SegaSonic Bros. A Columns-like puzzle game featuring Sonic that was play-tested in a few arcades in 1992 then shelved until something like 3 years ago when the prototype ROM was leaked online. There was not much fanfare about it and I've never seen it brought up outside of a single short post on a Sonic Fansite.

 

[Kazooie]

There was a port of the Game Boy Advance game Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge to mobile phones in July 2004. It was, however, different from the original game. Some of the details from the wiki...

The levels in the game have the same themes and names as in the Game Boy Advance version, but they are much smaller in size. Banjo and Kazooie do not have as many moves, and there are no Mumbo Jumbo transformations.

Click to shrink...

Do they have anything to offer to people who know the GBA version?

 

[DiipuSurotu]

___ for the Virtual Boy

 

[Biggersmaller]

 

[Grunty]

Do they have anything to offer to people who know the GBA version?

Click to shrink...

Only less and a graphical downgrade. Here's a play through of it I just found on YouTube...



Honestly it's actually quite impressive though considering this was in 2004 before Smart Phones were a thing.

 

[Kazooie]

Only less and a graphical downgrade. Here's a play through of it I just found on YouTube...



Honestly it's actually quite impressive though considering this was in 2004 before Smart Phones were a thing.

Click to shrink...

Thank you. Good that it has no extra content, because the game pausing everytime a soundeffect plays makes this more than slightly unattractive.

 

[Foffy]

I'd nominate Castlevania: The Adventure Rebirth. It launched on WiiWare, so it was already on a relatively niche (now dead as dead can be) online service. Released just at the end of the Igavania run of the series as the first new traditional, linear 2D game in over a decade, and a year before the franchise got a western-focused reboot, this remake of one of the top three most terrible Castlevania games is one that even fans of the series slept on. The platform it was released on, the original title it was a remake of, and the timing of release really meant only super fans knew of it and had a chance to actually play it. It's also one of the rare times M2, a studio known for incredible ports, actually was the lead developer on a completely original title.

 

[Pablosamo]

That Grandia Gameboy something "sequel"

 

[RadioHeadAche]

Play Novel: Silent Hill

Basically a visual novel adaption of the first game released as a launch title for the GBA in Japan. It released several months before SH2 in 2001. There are three separate scenarios: Harry's, one for Cybil and one featuring a character named Andy who presumably was one of Cheryl's classmates. It was available only through a mobile service where you connect your gba to a mobile phone and download the scenario to your cartridge. Because the service is long since discontinued, it's pretty much lost to time.

 

[Theorymon]

This and Kirby's Star Stacker feel weirdly forgotten in the pantheon of Kirby Game Boy games

Click to shrink...

This actually got a sequel that was only reasled in Japan, on the SNES!

Most notable thing about this game to me has always been that its the only Kirby game I know of where we see Kirby drunk off his ass lol

Anyways, there's also another lost Mario game of sorts: All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros!

It's a weird remix of Super Mario Bros, replacing most sprites with the likeness of actual Japanese radio hosts. It replaces some levels with modified lost levels variants, and even has a modified version of Lost Level's post game, with worlds A, B, C, and D! I like it quite a bit, but it'll probably never be re-released just because it has the likeness of real people, unfortunately.

 

[HylianMaster2020]

Majora's Mask it's so unique yet people had problems with its time sequences it's the only Zelda game to feature a unique moon hovering over the world ready to collapse in 3 days time.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow for mobile

 

[Rotobit]

This actually got a sequel that was only reasled in Japan, on the SNES!

Most notable thing about this game to me has always been that its the only Kirby game I know of where we see Kirby drunk off his ass lol

Click to shrink...

Oh yeah, I saw screenshots of that but at a glance I assumed they were of Kirby's Avalanche. Kirby sure does get a bunch of spin-offs, even now (I can see Kirby's Blowout Blast ending up in these threads in a matter of years).

Also I'm totally making every single drunkard in that screenshot into Slack emojis

 

[joeblow]

Honestly, its funny how much the original Street Fighter, is such an "also-ran" type of game, that I bet only a really small percentage of people have played. For 99% of people, that series really began with Street Fighter 2 (it really isn't a wrong notion at all, the original Street Fighter was clunky as hell, and not 1/100th the game its sequel was, and not really worth much more than being a footnote in the series history- but it explains the Ryu/Saget rivalry and the chest scar!). And Ken really wasn't much more than a red colored "player 2" option that mirrored Ryu's move set, so 2 players could fight each other.

Click to shrink...

I'll see your reference and raise it by 100x in obscurity.

The original Street Fighter game wasn't played by many as you said, but what was played even less is the deluxe version of the arcade release. Take a look at the cabinet in the picture below... the player controlled Ken or Ryu with a standard joystick and two pressure sensitive buttons instead of the standard six on/off buttons.

The idea was to tap the punch or kick button lightly for LP and SK, press it with moderate strength for MP and FK, and hit it hard for HP and HK. That's pretty crazy when you think about it.

 

[deathsaber]

I'll see your reference and raise it by 100x in obscurity.

The original Street Fighter game wasn't played by many as you said, but what was played even less is the deluxe version of the arcade release. Take a look at the cabinet in the picture below... the player controlled Ken or Ryu with a standard joystick and two pressure sensitive buttons instead of the standard six on/off buttons.

The idea was to tap the punch or kick button lightly for LP and SK, press it with moderate strength for MP and FK, and hit it hard for HP and HK. That's pretty crazy when you think about it.

Click to shrink...

Yep, that's exactly the one I played in the arcade- at some point long after Street Fighter 2 was a thing. Simultaneously neat, and also damn near unplayable. I also had a friend with a rare Turbo CD and got to sample it and remembered the game was ass then, too. Just truly amazing going from this piece of crap to one of the most iconic and genre defining games of all time.

 

[andysexton]

I think Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume fits this too - it was a tactical RPG made by tri-Ace that was a prequel to the original game. I remember the story being really well done, but suuuuper dark.

Zone of the Enders: Fist of Mars was another strategy spin-off, but I don't remember it being particularly amazing.

Space Channel 5: Ulala's Cosmic Attack was a weird port of the og Space Channel 5, but using midi music and pre-rendered sprites. It wasn't great, but it's neat it exists, I guess?

 

[ReddishGUI]

For a somewhat modern FF game it is somewhat forgotten.

 

[electricmastro]

I've never seen this installment of Tetris brought up:

 

[Deleted member 1102]

Street Fighter Online: Mouse Generation. It's a weird ass online game where you played with a mouse and featured Street Fighter and Rival Schools characters, an OC named Shin and a ton of licensed characters like fucking BARACK OBAMA.

 

[Sumio Mondo]

Ronde for SEGA Saturn. Was actually the third SRPG released after Majin Tensei 1 and 2 on SNES by ATLUS, this time for SEGA Saturn and was that teams attempt a Shining Force 3 style game but was considered a failure both commercially and from the fanbase.

Speaking of super obscure ATLUS games, did you know there was a Persona Online MMO for phones?

There was also a prequel to Shin Megami Tensei 2 that ATLUS themselves developed for phones called Shin Megami Tensei: 20XX, which itself also had a super obscure spinoff game called Devil's Colosseum, both games were built off the same engine/assets that the SNES MegaTen games had and sound pretty damn good, shame they've been lost to time:

Shin Megami Tensei: 20XX

Shin Megami Tensei: 20XX is a Japanese cellphone game, created as a prequel to Shin Megami Tensei II, showing what happened in Valhalla before Aleph was born. There was a spinoff named Shin Megami Tensei: 20XX Devil's Colosseum. The gameplay and music are taken from Shin Megami Tensei II and...

megamitensei.fandom.com

Shin Megami Tensei: 20XX Devil's Colosseum

Shin Megami Tensei: 20XX Devil's Colosseum is a cell phone game created as a prequel to Shin Megami Tensei: 20XX. The "Demon EXP" system was implemented in this game, which allows demons to gain EXP and level up. The game uses the Elemental-Based Combat System, but the races of demons were...

megamitensei.fandom.com

Lastly, Panzer Dragoon Mini for Game Gear definitely fits here. It had a very short production run, the original director Futatsugi said that his only contribution to the game was the packaging and most of the game was handled by Sega of America but only came out in Japan.

Panzer Dragoon Mini

Panzer Dragoon Mini is a Game Gear game exclusively released to Japan in 1996. It is a spin-off to the main Panzer Dragoon video game series. The game has simple 8-bit rail shooter gameplay, cartoon-like visuals (rather than the traditional Panzer Dragoon style), and enemy designs and background...

panzerdragoon.fandom.com

 

[GamerJM]

This game was TERRIBLE. The gameplay involved you scraping across the DS repeatedly to make Pikachu run, and it pretty much singlehandedly destroyed my original DS' touchscreen.

This was very much a game from the launch period of the DS where developers were trying to figure out what they could do with touch controls, and this experiment did not turn out well.

There was a kind of neat feature where you could import your Pokemon from the GBA games to turn their sprites into racecourses though.

Click to shrink...

I remember my mom got this game for me for my birthday since it came out right around it, and when I started playing it she asked me how it was. I said "It's......okay...." and she asked "Just okay?". In response I said "I mean it's pretty good" but in my heart of hearts I knew it was kinda trash lol.

 

[maximumzero]

Sonic Adventure : Tiger Handheld/Portable



Never met anyone with one, and it rarely gets brought up on Sonic game sites/forums.

Click to shrink...

I remember seeing one of these at a KMart and was tempted to buy it, but I had literally gotten a Dreamcast weeks earlier and it seemed silly to buy such an inferior version of the game.

 

[Bigg]

I literally just learned of Sega Golden Gun like a week ago

It's a Sega rail shooter made by the House of the Dead team for Chinese audiences and its a HOTD game in everything but name. It recycles a lot of assets from HOTD4 and they even wink at it by having the protagonists celebrate their victory by going to an arcade to play HOTD at the end.

 

[Many]

Some of these sold well but you just never hear anyone bring them up:

Click to shrink...

Tetra's Tracker was cancelled
EDIT: I think I'm wrong

 

[chiller]

An uncountable number of tie-in mobile games from the aughts, most of them completely inaccessible now. thank you suda for remaking the 25th ward
Here's a notable one.

.

The "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII" has Before Crisis, an episodic prequel only released for mobile phones in Japan, where you play as a new recruit of the Turks. They shut down the whole infrastructure for the game in 2018, so it's pretty much lost to the public in the form it was released as.
iirc there's a fan-translated video playthrough somewhere out there, and Ever Crisis is going to cover some of its event.

Radical Dreamers, from the Chrono Trigger / Chrono Cross series

Click to shrink...

Radical Dreamers for the SNES/Satellaview in the Chrono franchise is pretty obscure

Click to shrink...

This one's fun because they don't even clue you in until the very end of the main scenario.

 

[Ertai]

Before Revelaitons this game was also set on a boat with a weird hybrid mix of top-down gameplay combined with 'first person' combat encounters akin to ones found in JRPG's.

 

[Arithmetician]

Everyone knows Wario Land, and everyone knows WarioWare, but does anyone remember WarioWorld on the Gamecube.

For a major release on a major platform, it's pretty incredible how no one has ever talked about the game since it released. Truly ignored. It wasn't particularly great by the way, so I'm not saying that people should talk more about it, just surprised they don't since every obscure game has a few fans somewhere on the internet.

 

[Oozer]

Maybe not as obscure as some other games mentioned in this thread, but there are two Halo twin-stick shooters. Halo Spartan Assault and Halo Spartan Strike. They are both available on Windows Phone and iOS and the former is also available on Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Even more obscure, but possibly not fitting the thread, is Halo Warthog Launch, a flash game made by a fan that was then included with the Limited and Legendary Editions of Halo 3.

 

[KhandoleezzaRice]

Phone games from before the smartphone era almost feels like cheating. So many random things to come out and disappear forever.



I'm trying to think of others but a lot of the ones that come to mind are probably familiar if you're fans of the franchise like Metal Gear Acid, or Atelier Annie: Alchemists of Sera Island.

 

[Atolm]

I literally just learned of Sega Golden Gun like a week ago

It's a Sega rail shooter made by the House of the Dead team for Chinese audiences and its a HOTD game in everything but name. It recycles a lot of assets from HOTD4 and they even wink at it by having the protagonists celebrate their victory by going to an arcade to play HOTD at the end.

Click to shrink...

Scarlet Dawn as well.

 

[GamerJM]

Tetra's Tracker was cancelled
EDIT: I think I'm wrong

Click to shrink...

It was in the Japanese FSA but removed from the localized version for some reason.

 

[KhandoleezzaRice]

It was in the Japanese FSA but removed from the localized version for some reason.

Click to shrink...

Tetra would talk in the background while the game went on, maybe it was an issue of not wanting to pay for voice acting for something so niche.

 

[Ryuhza]

Who doesn't remember Tekken's Nina Williams in: Death By Degrees (2005)

Came out in the US the same month as Tekken 5. Synergy!(???)

 

[NeoBob688]

Huge uncharted fan, but the Vita game. Hyped up, released on dying system, not bothered to be included in the collection .

 

[LordHuffnPuff]

Who doesn't remember Tekken's Nina Williams in: Death By Degrees (2005)

Click to shrink...

I sure do, entirely because it was the cover story game for Issue #16 of GMR, which was EB Games' version of Game Informer (and much better than Game Informer, IMO) before GameStop acquired them.

 

[Eamon]

The time that IGN demoed a version of Halo on the Nintendo DS seems appropriate for this thread:

 

[Celine]

The Warioware concept predates before the first game on GBA, in fact it appeared for the first time as a mode called Sound Bomber on Mario Artist Polygon Studio for 64DD which as you can imagine is quite rare.
The concept would be later expanded for a full commercial release on GBA.

 

[Lobster Roll]

Had this one growing up. Got pretty fast at typing as a result …

 

[Muffinnutz]

Maybe not as obscure as some other games mentioned in this thread, but there are two Halo twin-stick shooters. Halo Spartan Assault and Halo Spartan Strike. They are both available on Windows Phone and iOS and the former is also available on Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Even more obscure, but possibly not fitting the thread, is Halo Warthog Launch, a flash game made by a fan that was then included with the Limited and Legendary Editions of Halo 3.

Click to shrink...

Both are available on Steam.

Halo: Spartan Assault on Steam

Halo: Spartan Assault brings the excitement of Halo combat to Steam for the very first time. Battle your way through 30 action-packed missions against the Covenant as you explore the origin of the Spartan Ops program featured in Halo 4. *DirectX feature level 10 required. *

store.steampowered.com

Halo: Spartan Strike on Steam

Halo: Spartan Strike makes you a Spartan supersoldier battling evil forces. Delve into 30 challenging missions through cities and jungles using a devastating arsenal of weapons, abilities and vehicles including the iconic Warthog against the Covenant and Promethean enemies. *DirectX feature...

store.steampowered.com

 

[Cantona222]

 

[jmsebastian]

I don't think this is super obscure, but I always found the mobile version of Dead Space to be really interesting due to its support for the Xperia Play: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Space_(mobile_game)

For the time, I thought it was really impressive, though the more I've played of it, the less I actually like it. Tons of mobile control gimmicks (which I get, but just don't work all that well). Still, pretty interesting look at how different an approach game publishers took to mobile gaming back then compared to now.

 

[DeadMoonKing]

If you think Tsumuji is obscure what do you call Suikoden Tierkreis: Stardust Castle?

Click to shrink...

Damn and here I thought I was gonna bring the knowledge with Genso Suikoden Card Stories...

 

[RomanticHeroX]

The Japan only Neo Geo Pocket Color sequel to Ogre Battle

 

[UshiromiyaEva]

Maybe not as obscure as others in the thread but given how beloved Typing of the Dead is, a lot of my friends were excited when HotD: Overkill was being released on Steam as Typing of the Dead: Overkill, to the point where they'd taken to calling it Typing of the Dead 2. Later on, I'd found out that Sega had already released Typing of the Dead 2, taken from House of the Dead 3, but unlike the other entries, it wasn't released outside of Japan.

One day I wanna try it but it doesn't seem like it'll be as fun if I don't have a comfortable understanding of Japanese, some of the boss encounters in the original game were hilarious.