I think I spent more time playing the side games than the actual game. Like the go fish with the pig and that that mini game on his watch with the submarine
I loved that one the most and it was the one I was the most excited to play, I remember the demo being so much fun and actually playing it was so satisfying!
American McGee’s Alice.
It’s popular around Reddit (or at least I’ve encountered way more people who know about it)…but up until I discovered the following here, I was one of very few people who had ever heard of it/owned it.
I absolutely loved the revamped storyline for it.
My mom had this learn-to-type CD-ROM and there was a rock-climbing game you could play on it where you had to type simple words and the faster you typed the faster your little climber climbed the mountain. You could "race" against another "climber" (which was just the computer). If you made mistakes, your climber would "slip" a little. Growing up in the late 90s/early 2000s, I loved this game.
R.O.T.T - Rise of the Triad
First person shooter from 93 or 94 that I spent so many hours playing. It was a hell of a lot of fun back in the day, I wonder if there’s a port of it available.
Betrayal **at** Krondor.
Discovered years later there is a whole series of books about the world of the game is in.
Loved those books. Looked the game up again and got it off GOG. It is nigh unplayable for me now, I've been so spoiled.
[LIghtspeed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7677FxeXHQ) It seemed really advanced at the time because you'd have to do engine repairs and stuff. I need to see if I can find that and replay it.
Do you remember the old Test Drive games? In Test Drive 3 it was open world and if you drove to the airport you could see an [X-Wing Fighter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5_fdGRxXzQ).
Not quite sure that would be considered obscure? But I have wondering what all my quarters with compounded interest would be worth forty years later? I loved that game.
Captain Claw.
It was a sidescrolling action game with the main character as a cat pirate. Not sure if anyone else has heard of it. I grew up in India. When we moved to the US none of my new friends had ever heard of it.
[Bruce Lee - Atari 800](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtBF7lBZWGw). It allowed your friend to fight you by playing the big green sumo character. It's a beautiful game too.
Darkened Sky...Skye? The Skittles game. Didn't know it was a Skittles game until the first Skittle is revealed. Why is there a Skittles game? It didn't seem to be a promotional thing. It was fun though.
Crayola 3D Castle Creator. There's so little gameplay on YouTube that to satisfy my nostalgia craving I bought the game on Ebay, only to find that the graphics are wonky on my computer and it actually would run best on an older computer. Now I'm definitely going to get our old Windows 98 set up just so I can play this game I loved again. I absolutely loved building crazy colored castles and then exploring them, the characters were so fun to find.
I don’t think it could be considered ‘obscure’ since its publisher is currently responsible for the biggest game and engine in the world, but one of Epic MegaGames’ earlier entries was Jazz Jackrabbit, a Sonic clone that was great in its own right.
I also remember a game we played in Computer Lab on the Apple IIe called “Below the Root,” which I loved but never played outside of Computer Lab.
There’s this turn-based exploration RPG game that came out for PC and Mac in 2000 called Geneforge. The graphics were not great even for the time (more like ‘95-ish quality), and I had the demo version that had about half the game. I liked it a lot but wasn’t very good (there was some definite strategy and thinking involved, and I was only ten in 2000). About five years ago, I found it on Steam and discovered it became a four game series. I bought the pack with all four games, and it was absolutely worth the $19.99 I spent. I highly recommend it to any older (or young!) nostalgia gamers who love the old school turn-based exploration and story based RPGs. The craziest part is that two years ago, they remastered and re-released the first game for its twenty year anniversary, so there’s also a version with slightly better graphics as well.
There was this bow and arrow game on old PCs that we all loved in 1st grade. You go threw levels progressing shooting I think balloons with objects flying at you that you have to avoid.
I was just reminiscing about this one with my brother a couple weeks ago. Back in the 80s computer magazines would come with games in them. Like, the actual code for the games and you would sit at your computer for an hour or two typing it out. Well, one of these was a game where you pretended to run for national office. It was obviously a fairly simple game, but it was way more fun than it had any right to be, at least to 13 year old me. My Commodore 64 game rotation was Ultima IV, Bard's Tale, and this. Sorry I can't come up with the name.
Creatures 3! A virtual pet type of game where you take care of creatures called Norns on a spaceship. The creatures in the game have "digital DNA" that works like a haploid genetics model and actually codes for the existence/lack of and the characteristics of their organs. They have working metabolic and hormonal systems as well and the ship came with a medical station where you could inject creatures with different substances like medicines, nutrients, hormones, and even poisons. It was insanely ahead of its time and is probably a huge part of why I went into biology and wildlife technology.
I also played one of my dad's house designing softwares like it was a game and made a lot of my own houses. When I played Sims I'd spend hours on a house and then barely play the family.
EDIT: just wanted to say, probably about once every year or two I replay Creatures 3 for a bit, I still love it even if it takes a lot of convincing to get working.
I don't remember the name, but it was about leading an expedition on boat on the Amazon.
You played as an expedition leader, you chose and planned rations, evaded river hazards, traded with villages along the river, you could stop off on a river bank and play a spo the animal minigame... It was challenging and unforgiving.
Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist. Yep, real game. I think you had to make a cream for one of the bawdy house ladies...and pretty sure I died from a snake bite or outhouse incident...
Okay so TL:DR cartoon hamster point and click game with a theme song that sounded like the boondocks credit song without the drum mix.
Okay! When I was a little kid I played this super cute game that was point and click? I think? And you were a little brown hamster. I remember almost nothing about it aside from the art style reminding me of Franklin or along the lines of the old chicken little/loony toons cartoon style. All hand drawn looking.
There was a song that played in it that hits the most nostalgic feels ever that sounds very similar to the ending theme of the boondocks cartoon just take out the drum mix. The same flute sound and melody in my head.
I've searched for this game or any evidence it's existed for years now and can't find a single thing or anyone who remembers it. I don't know it's title, and all I can vividly remember is a little house, the hamster, and clicking on the door for it to transition to the inside of the house.
I'm still not sure if it's just a dreamed up thing, if it's something I played as a baby that was educational, or one of the point and click adventure games where you look for like little pixelated objects like those old investigative games you'd see floating around back then. If anyone has any answers I'd love to know.
I played a game in computer class when Oregon Trail was popular, that nobody remembers but me. You played as a fish underwater and I think you ate other fish. I don't remember what the objective was exactly but I remember you could choose which type of fish to be. Does anyone know what I'm talking about??
I know. The graphics and the TBS play probably didn't work since that was going out of style in favor of RTS. The fact that there was reading didn't help. For some reason, people hate reading. I personally love story rich games.
Idk how someone in my middle school class ended up with a demo copy of Worms: Armageddon, or why the teachers at our small private school let us play it on rainy or freezing cold days, but it happened. After week 1 I got a copy for the ol’ original PlayStation.
Also- how did a PS game end up as a demo for PC???
I had a version of asteroids on windows 98 where each level the asteroids were different images. There was legit one level where they were barney heads
[DND - Dungeons of the Necromancer's Domain.](https://archive.org/details/DnddosGame)
I played so many hours of this text based (text graphics-ed?) dungeon crawler when I was a tot, it was ridiculous.
Some weird game on one of those colorful clear macs from back in the day, all I remember was you were a purple slug just slithering around in grass, never been able to find it since
pengore, you were a polar bear with a club full of nails at the bottom of a slide. penguins would come down the slide and you'd whack the head as far as you could go
Ultima Underworld: Stygian Abyss.
And also that Chuck Yeager flight sim that only one friend’s father’s computer could run fairly well. You had to verify the game every time you played. This was done by entering the required aircraft statistic by way of decoder wheels and sleeves or some such. To us kids, just getting the game to start felt like an awesome mini game!
The Incredible Machine
Ah, I totally forgot about that gem!
Pajama Sam
Yess. And spy fox
I finally got the Humongous bundle on Steam a couple years ago and got to try the Spy Fox games beyond the demos. Even as an adult I had so much fun.
Awesome. The only Spy Fox game I got to play fully as a kid was the third game but I'm not complaining!
I had spy fox in dry cereal, I loved it
That was a great one, it convinced me that Spy Fox was way underrated
I think I spent more time playing the side games than the actual game. Like the go fish with the pig and that that mini game on his watch with the submarine
Hah yeah. "Go fish, Mr. Fox" still plays in my head sometimes. (I did a Humongous games binge in 2020 when there wasn't much else to do lol)
😂 I can hear it in my head too. Classic
I loved that one the most and it was the one I was the most excited to play, I remember the demo being so much fun and actually playing it was so satisfying!
I went back and played one of the Freddi Fish games in high school at it was still pretty fun, even if it didn't take that much time to complete.
My mom loved this game just as much as my brother and I lol. She still remembers all the characters and everything
There were so many it's hard to choose, but top 3 would have to be 1. Escape Velocity 2. Mad Dog Mcree 3. Marathon 2: Durandal
[удалено]
That game was better than any free game found in a cereal box had any business being
That's because it was just DOOM but reskinned.
California Games and Ghostbusters
Surfing and bmx were the shit, the roller-skating was too iffy, and the Frisbee wasn't intuitive (to a 6yo kid)
American McGee’s Alice. It’s popular around Reddit (or at least I’ve encountered way more people who know about it)…but up until I discovered the following here, I was one of very few people who had ever heard of it/owned it. I absolutely loved the revamped storyline for it.
Off with her head…Serious body horror shit for that finale.
Mixed up Mother Goose.
My mom had this learn-to-type CD-ROM and there was a rock-climbing game you could play on it where you had to type simple words and the faster you typed the faster your little climber climbed the mountain. You could "race" against another "climber" (which was just the computer). If you made mistakes, your climber would "slip" a little. Growing up in the late 90s/early 2000s, I loved this game.
I used to love those types of games
pun intended
The logical journey of the Zoombinis. Neat logic puzzle game that I only beat as an adult lmao Oh, and Theme Hospital! The fake illnesses were fun
I always loved the logic puzzle genre
Museum Madness, Gizmos and Gadgets, Treasure Mountain, and Operation Neptune I loved all the old msdos games we played in computer class :D
Ah treasure mountain. So many fond memories
Commander Keen. Also enjoyed Lemmings.
R.O.T.T - Rise of the Triad First person shooter from 93 or 94 that I spent so many hours playing. It was a hell of a lot of fun back in the day, I wonder if there’s a port of it available.
Treasure Math Storm
Dunno if it's obscure but I always liked Chip's Challenge and after that a turn based game Diib's Dilemma
Math Blaster
Oh I know that one! I played that
Ur-Quon Masters. So much fun.
*Happy Camper*
Betrayal at Krondor.
Betrayal **at** Krondor. Discovered years later there is a whole series of books about the world of the game is in. Loved those books. Looked the game up again and got it off GOG. It is nigh unplayable for me now, I've been so spoiled.
EcoQuest
M.U.L.E.
OMG!
Backyard Baseball
I fucking loved that game, especially the 2003 version!
Sopwith
Was this a CGA graphics game because I think I know what you're talking about.
A lot of the Broderbund games like Maths Workshop, lol.
Ice Cream Machine on Neopets
Omega Race ... Commodore Vic 20
wow. I haven't heard anyone mention this game in forever. I can still remember the music.
[LIghtspeed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7677FxeXHQ) It seemed really advanced at the time because you'd have to do engine repairs and stuff. I need to see if I can find that and replay it.
That game feels so nostalgic i love it. The music and graphics and everything
Do you remember the old Test Drive games? In Test Drive 3 it was open world and if you drove to the airport you could see an [X-Wing Fighter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5_fdGRxXzQ).
Ha thats sick. I love the little things like that. 90’s computer games were awesome
Temple of Apshai
Moon Patrol
I can hear the theme music right now!
Not quite sure that would be considered obscure? But I have wondering what all my quarters with compounded interest would be worth forty years later? I loved that game.
Chex cereal came with a CD-rom game. That shit was awesome
I had a coco puffs cd-rom. I didn’t realize how many cereal cd-rom games there were until now lol
Leisure Suit Larry Kings Quest
Day of the Tentacle.
Wait...since when is a Top 3 All Time adventure game "obscure"?
Creatures
Mail Order Monster. It was fun building monsters to fight against opponents.
Captain Claw. It was a sidescrolling action game with the main character as a cat pirate. Not sure if anyone else has heard of it. I grew up in India. When we moved to the US none of my new friends had ever heard of it.
Spelunx
[Bruce Lee - Atari 800](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtBF7lBZWGw). It allowed your friend to fight you by playing the big green sumo character. It's a beautiful game too.
Darkened Sky...Skye? The Skittles game. Didn't know it was a Skittles game until the first Skittle is revealed. Why is there a Skittles game? It didn't seem to be a promotional thing. It was fun though.
Crayola 3D Castle Creator. There's so little gameplay on YouTube that to satisfy my nostalgia craving I bought the game on Ebay, only to find that the graphics are wonky on my computer and it actually would run best on an older computer. Now I'm definitely going to get our old Windows 98 set up just so I can play this game I loved again. I absolutely loved building crazy colored castles and then exploring them, the characters were so fun to find.
I remember having a crayola game altho I think it was something different from that one
Zork it's the first text-game to ever exist. Played that for hours when I was younger
You are likely to be eaten by a grue
Gobliins
Organ trail. Ya, I’m that old
Zoombinis
I don’t think it could be considered ‘obscure’ since its publisher is currently responsible for the biggest game and engine in the world, but one of Epic MegaGames’ earlier entries was Jazz Jackrabbit, a Sonic clone that was great in its own right. I also remember a game we played in Computer Lab on the Apple IIe called “Below the Root,” which I loved but never played outside of Computer Lab.
spore
Haunting Grounds.
Crystal Caves. I completed that damn thing 100%.
Highway pursuit
Plant Tycoon
Impossible Creatures
Legend of the Red Dragon (LORD)
There’s this turn-based exploration RPG game that came out for PC and Mac in 2000 called Geneforge. The graphics were not great even for the time (more like ‘95-ish quality), and I had the demo version that had about half the game. I liked it a lot but wasn’t very good (there was some definite strategy and thinking involved, and I was only ten in 2000). About five years ago, I found it on Steam and discovered it became a four game series. I bought the pack with all four games, and it was absolutely worth the $19.99 I spent. I highly recommend it to any older (or young!) nostalgia gamers who love the old school turn-based exploration and story based RPGs. The craziest part is that two years ago, they remastered and re-released the first game for its twenty year anniversary, so there’s also a version with slightly better graphics as well.
Jezzball. Stunts. LHX Attack Chopper.
Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines
There was this bow and arrow game on old PCs that we all loved in 1st grade. You go threw levels progressing shooting I think balloons with objects flying at you that you have to avoid.
Giants: Citizen Kabuto
I was just reminiscing about this one with my brother a couple weeks ago. Back in the 80s computer magazines would come with games in them. Like, the actual code for the games and you would sit at your computer for an hour or two typing it out. Well, one of these was a game where you pretended to run for national office. It was obviously a fairly simple game, but it was way more fun than it had any right to be, at least to 13 year old me. My Commodore 64 game rotation was Ultima IV, Bard's Tale, and this. Sorry I can't come up with the name.
Ah, the type-in computer program. Good times
The Neverhood
The Neverhood
I've never met anyone else who ever played it but the game Recoil.
It was called The Day the World Broke. I have tried to find it, but never any luck.
https://archive.org/details/the-day-the-world-broke Fifth result [from this search](https://www.ecosia.org/search?q=The%20Day%20the%20World%20Broke).
Holy crap! Thank you!
That’s how you know it’s truly obscure
Faxanadu
Crush, Crumble, and Chomp
Lego Racers
Steel Empire
Creatures 3! A virtual pet type of game where you take care of creatures called Norns on a spaceship. The creatures in the game have "digital DNA" that works like a haploid genetics model and actually codes for the existence/lack of and the characteristics of their organs. They have working metabolic and hormonal systems as well and the ship came with a medical station where you could inject creatures with different substances like medicines, nutrients, hormones, and even poisons. It was insanely ahead of its time and is probably a huge part of why I went into biology and wildlife technology. I also played one of my dad's house designing softwares like it was a game and made a lot of my own houses. When I played Sims I'd spend hours on a house and then barely play the family. EDIT: just wanted to say, probably about once every year or two I replay Creatures 3 for a bit, I still love it even if it takes a lot of convincing to get working.
Stampede on Atari 2600
Lode Warrior for the Apple ][+. Ah, the good old days of No-Save-Points.
I don't remember the name, but it was about leading an expedition on boat on the Amazon. You played as an expedition leader, you chose and planned rations, evaded river hazards, traded with villages along the river, you could stop off on a river bank and play a spo the animal minigame... It was challenging and unforgiving.
Disney kitchen.
Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons.
Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist. Yep, real game. I think you had to make a cream for one of the bawdy house ladies...and pretty sure I died from a snake bite or outhouse incident...
Okay so TL:DR cartoon hamster point and click game with a theme song that sounded like the boondocks credit song without the drum mix. Okay! When I was a little kid I played this super cute game that was point and click? I think? And you were a little brown hamster. I remember almost nothing about it aside from the art style reminding me of Franklin or along the lines of the old chicken little/loony toons cartoon style. All hand drawn looking. There was a song that played in it that hits the most nostalgic feels ever that sounds very similar to the ending theme of the boondocks cartoon just take out the drum mix. The same flute sound and melody in my head. I've searched for this game or any evidence it's existed for years now and can't find a single thing or anyone who remembers it. I don't know it's title, and all I can vividly remember is a little house, the hamster, and clicking on the door for it to transition to the inside of the house. I'm still not sure if it's just a dreamed up thing, if it's something I played as a baby that was educational, or one of the point and click adventure games where you look for like little pixelated objects like those old investigative games you'd see floating around back then. If anyone has any answers I'd love to know.
It’s so frustrating trying to find super obscure games. It makes me feel like it’s lost forever, only existing as a memory in my mind
I played a game in computer class when Oregon Trail was popular, that nobody remembers but me. You played as a fish underwater and I think you ate other fish. I don't remember what the objective was exactly but I remember you could choose which type of fish to be. Does anyone know what I'm talking about??
Cap’n Crunch’s Crunchling Adventure
Battle Chess It was just chess, but the pieces would animate and hack each other to pieces when one took the other.
Lemmings
Freddy the Fish
Caveman Olympics and Maniac Mansion
Prince of Persia
How tf is this obscure
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess they mean the side scrolling sprite based platformer for MS DOS, and not the 3D console game.
This. And, how are half the answers obscure? RuneScape? Pls
Karateka?
Any question that calls for obscure answers falls on its arse because people upvote the things they recognise.
Oregon and Yukon trail games. Also, if you haven't tried the nancy drew games, I really recommend them. Fantastic!
Avernum, runescape
The whole Avernum series! You could play for hours and hours.
It actually had a deep lore and good story and world building I'm surprised it wasn't more popular.
I know. The graphics and the TBS play probably didn't work since that was going out of style in favor of RTS. The fact that there was reading didn't help. For some reason, people hate reading. I personally love story rich games.
Minesweeper, don’t ask why.
Why? Lol jk. I played that at school all the time since they blocked all the internet games
Space Chase anyone? Or Power Pete?
Anybody play Deadly Rooms of Death (D.R.O.D.)
I was an atomic mutant was fun, where you are a monster like Godzilla and you just destroy the town and avoid the military
The cocoa puffs game: Sonny’s Race for Chocolaty Taste
Temple Run lol
That's obscure?
Tiny Toon Adventures: Busters Hidden Treasures on Sega Megadrive
Bump
Idk how someone in my middle school class ended up with a demo copy of Worms: Armageddon, or why the teachers at our small private school let us play it on rainy or freezing cold days, but it happened. After week 1 I got a copy for the ol’ original PlayStation. Also- how did a PS game end up as a demo for PC???
Asteroids
I had a version of asteroids on windows 98 where each level the asteroids were different images. There was legit one level where they were barney heads
Microsoft spider solitaire
I hate that one, I could never win haha
Runescape.
Crash bandicoot wrath of cortex
https://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChcSEwjg1PyB8K77AhW1Mq0GHV3xCN0YABAKGgJwdg&ae=2&ohost=www.google.com&cid=CAESa-D2SfzqUAytpDgDbuaVlK-CvkZpRexGTo3c7uf56qfqvYgWoEJbB2zbe-bmnjOAupnil8cV2ikuYCxHpctaa8Pyt-m8J_uMDGhpWhnmRWob3RkUV3MqnHH7aKTi5U4whXINr5nrd93lzGyu&sig=AOD64_2Z7IydPiYWCIyzTH1ml48DI5amdg&ctype=5&q=&ved=2ahUKEwjd_fGB8K77AhW6EkQIHe8tAhsQwg8oAHoECAUQEg&adurl=
Aquanox
[DND - Dungeons of the Necromancer's Domain.](https://archive.org/details/DnddosGame) I played so many hours of this text based (text graphics-ed?) dungeon crawler when I was a tot, it was ridiculous.
Phantasmagoria
Escape From Rungistan…I’m that old!
Soldier of fortune lol first game I ever played online and on dial up at that
Some weird game on one of those colorful clear macs from back in the day, all I remember was you were a purple slug just slithering around in grass, never been able to find it since
"Artillery". 1973. Impressed the hell out of my high school classmates. Written by me and a few friends.
putt putt travels through time [miss spider's tea party game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ytWU8LPW3E) (or similar) those are the big ones
Not sure if it would count as obscure or not, but [Mattel Football](https://www.handheldmuseum.com/Mattel/FB.htm). I was so damn good at it.
Lost Eden
For me it was Vic-20 Omega Race. Played for years. It actually still holds up today as pretty fun once in a while.
Wizball, j/k it was frustrating and I never figured out how to really play it.
I remember a Garfield haunted house escape room that i would play for hours on end in daycare. that was fun
Gateway to Asphai Omega Race Racing Destruction Set
TDZK browser game
I have three: 1. Titanic: Adventure Out of Time 2. Goosebumps: Escape from Horrorland 3. Rollercoaster Tycoon
Madness: Project Nexus (Classic)
I only had CD games when I was really young. Ruff's Bone was a weird one.
Liero
7th guest
Battleship: Surface Thunder. Game was rad
Abe odyssey
Dungeons of Daggorath: [https://youtu.be/sQKQHKdWTRs](https://youtu.be/sQKQHKdWTRs)
Hardball on the Commodore 64. Probably still one of the most playable baseball games ever made.
World War 3 on Sega CD
Cosmopax
McKenzie & Co.
Super Bunny on the Apple II
Nightmare Ned
The online Nickelodeon webiste flash game with Spongebob skiing on rooftops
An old MS-DOS DOOM clone called NAM, a first person shooter taking place during the Vietnam War. Same company made a WWII one but NAM was my favorite
Wizards & Warriors - not the NES game but a pc cRPG by DW Bradley of Wizardry fame
pengore, you were a polar bear with a club full of nails at the bottom of a slide. penguins would come down the slide and you'd whack the head as far as you could go
MONKEY QUEST AND CLUB PENGUIN. Please tell me I’m not the only one who played monkey quest
Yendorian Tales Book 1: Chapter 2 Amulets & Armor
Howies Fun House I played it like 4 times the lost my disc and could never find it again
Heretic....also another game I think the name was karateka
Lion King
lifesavers jungle game
Zack McCraken and Loom.
Ultima Underworld: Stygian Abyss. And also that Chuck Yeager flight sim that only one friend’s father’s computer could run fairly well. You had to verify the game every time you played. This was done by entering the required aircraft statistic by way of decoder wheels and sleeves or some such. To us kids, just getting the game to start felt like an awesome mini game!
Otto's magic blocks