Extremely Weird And Obscure Games

[Doomstruck]

FUCKING GLOVE ON FIGHT 2, NO ONE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT IT, BUT I DO!!!! I'LL ALWAYS LOVE IT!!!!

One that I'm shocked didn't blow up during the Y2K craze was Slap Happy Rhythm Busters

NO JOKE THESE 2 ARE TOP CONTENDERS FOR FAV FIGHTING GAMES, ESPECIALLY GOF2 BUT THAT MIGHT BE MY INDIE GAME BIAS

 

[spectresfrommercury]

degenki bunko fighting climax at least to me that is

 

[Taukyrie]

Transformers Devastation is a game I hardly hear anyone talk about, it has a lot of interesting mechanics and being developed by Platinum the soundtrack is absolutely fire

Considering this thread is the first time I've heard anyone but my older brother mention it, yeah, I would call it obscure.

Piggybacking off of this, I would probably mention War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron since I don't really see those two being mentioned much.

Oddly, just about every list on the internet for "Obscure/Forgotten/"Hidden Gem" PS3 games includes Folklore and Dragon's Crown. If everyone mentions these two games specifically, then are they really obscure?

Makes you really think tbh. I'll admit, I don't really think Dragon's Crown is obscure myself since I still see people mention it a lot.

But if we're talking obscure PS3 games, Resonance of Fate and Valkyria Chronicles first come to mind for me.

 

[hazys]

• Natural Doctrine
• Toy Home
• Rain
• Papo & Yo
• NeverDead
• Way of the Samurai 4
• From Dust
• Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters
• Datura
• Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom
• Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death
• Quantum Theory
• WET
• Aquanaut's Holiday: Hidden Memories
• Afrika
• The Saboteur
• Haze
• Hydrophobia

 

[Jotaro]

in no order

- mirror's edge
- folklore
- remember me
- asura's wrath
- nier and nier replicant
- resonance of fate
- syndicate
- blacksite area 51
- quantum theory
- starhawk
- dark sector
- x-men destiny
- dark void
- scourge outbreak
- inversion
- tales of xilia 1
- driver san francisco
- neverdead
- yakuza dead souls
- transformers devastation
- atelier: escha and logy
- fairy fencer f
- bionic commando
- blades of time
- valkyria chronicles 1
- tales of graces f
- binary domain
- the afro samurai game

 

[tigg]

 

[Nidoking's icon Nidoking Nidoking]

 

[King Koopa's iconKing Koopa]

 

[lukebuskin]

The kinds of games you can find on the deeper parts of the clear net are some of the most interesting and compelling experiences you can have with a piece of media today. It's a well-established hobby at this point, with tons of insufferable Youtube top tens and iceberg narrations having touched on most of the classics, so we don't need to get into the decade-long history of Le Weird/Obscure Gaming. This thread is just meant to be a new place for general discussion of arcane, strange and wind-swept interactive software from the earliest days of the internet to now. The days of LSD Dream Emulator being a niche cult classic are far in the past; we're talking about the realer stuff: your Eastern Minds, your Garage: Bad Dream Adventures, and your Blue Sangoes.

This image Reddit stole from /vr/ is pretty dated, but it still stands as one of the earliest instances of the iceberg macro trend that's untarnished by the Web 3 crowd and can still function as a catalogue for deep internet games worth looking into, although the really good stuff only starts at Tier 6 and a lot of it has become Lost Media Wiki canon since 4chan covered it. Saint has mostly gone offline in the past few weeks and the recent history of his Youtube channel consists of a lot of unedited streams, but you can use his uploads from the past ten years to a similar effect. His friend F3l0n used to curate an IA list containing redumps of all kinds of cool weird physical software and old discs, but it seems to have been lost to time. Ultimately, the only real way to find this stuff is to go out and look for it yourself. Once Vinny Vinesauce started covering the weird indie circuit (magicdweedoo, Catamites, Arcane Kids, etc), it was only a matter of time before their development cycles ended up catering more towards that audience, which you can see with Anthology Of The Killer, so I'm not going to link them here.

The ultimate catch-22 with this kind of thing is that e-celebs covering a niche game will always cause it to reach an audience that doesn't appreciate it, which will degrade the community, demotivate the devs and stagnate interesting discussion, which is why unearthing all the weird stuff lost to the annals of the Internet Archive is so important.

Two rules:
1. No hoax games. No Petscop, no Sexdick, etc. Nothing that didn't have a development cycle before it started receiving attention.
2: No games developed in a modern engine like Unity that are meant to look old and weird but aren't, so no Haunted PS1, Ultrakill, Buckshot Roulette, etc.

 

[Deleted member 171852]

Toribash isn't really cryptic but was my absolute Jam for a long ass time, and i don't see anyone remembering it(outside of an user here on RGT), or at least playing for more than a few minutes, maybe because the skill ceiling was too absurd. Matches would take a long time so in order to grind and improve i would spend all day long playing in servers. One of the contributors to me learning english too.

Saw many people talking about this in the past along with many other Ray K games, but only because of the initial shock value of looking at the themes and the characters, but in the reality no one really plays it or talk about it online(and barely even know what the game is about really). I wasn't able to find any real guides for any stuff in the game and that kinda added to my experience because i was learning new things through experimentation, but i still wish there would be more actual discussion about the game and not just "look at how messed up this game looks lol" in a post and that's it. I was stuck many times because of simple stuff, but i enjoyed it.

 

[ObscureJigglypuff]

no Sexdick.

NO BARE BREATS!!!!?????

 

[lukebuskin]

Toribash isn't really cryptic but was my absolute Jam for a long ass time, and i don't see anyone remembering it(outside of an user here on RGT), or at least playing for more than a few minutes, maybe because the skill ceiling was too absurd. Matches would take a long time so in order to grind and improve i would spend all day long playing in servers. One of the contributors to me learning english too.

Toribash was recommended to me by an ex-friend a long time ago around the time I found out about Mugen because of my burgeoning interest in customizable/creativity-focused fighting games, but I never played it. I always assumed it was dead by now.

NO BARE BREATS!!!!?????

No Caddicarus references either!

 

[PrismRed]

View attachment 31899
Toribash isn't really cryptic but was my absolute Jam for a long ass time, and i don't see anyone remembering it(outside of an user here on RGT), or at least playing for more than a few minutes, maybe because the skill ceiling was too absurd. Matches would take a long time so in order to grind and improve i would spend all day long playing in servers. One of the contributors to me learning english too.

Good to see you young'un, I used to run an org and a clan back in the day, more than a decade ago.
The forum is still active the last time I checked.
I thought my username is a blatant giveaway.

 

[lukebuskin]

The user who dumped Blue Sango has an Internet Archive page that might be worth checking out if you have a 95 or 98 emulator, but just know that I haven't vetted any of the software there personally. QEMUsad.

 

[Deleted member 884]

 

[Deleted member 171852]

Weird and obscure is a way to put it alright...

 

[dropsmegamega]

I found about a lot of these old jap director games (myst type games) a few years ago through the unofficial garage discord. And made this list dedicated to strange games in backloggd, although not all the games on the list are necessarily obscure: https://www.backloggd.com/u/HeidenNaugler/list/strange--surreal/

 

[lukebuskin]

I found about a lot of these old jap director games (myst type games) a few years ago through the unofficial garage discord. And made this list dedicated to strange games in backloggd, although not all the games on the list are necessarily obscure: https://www.backloggd.com/u/HeidenNaugler/list/strange--surreal/

Excellent list! Thank you. I tip my horns to your Total Distortion.

 

[Deleted member 171852]

I found about a lot of these old jap director games (myst type games) a few years ago through the unofficial garage discord. And made this list dedicated to strange games in backloggd, although not all the games on the list are necessarily obscure: https://www.backloggd.com/u/HeidenNaugler/list/strange--surreal/

I just want to point out to be careful with the term "jap" because it's seen as kinda offensive for many Japanese people. I made this mistake before and was embarrassed publicly lol

 

[Azura]

Corpse Party

 

[Nacho-01]

it's so weird but at the same time it's so fun
(it's only a playtest though)
download page: https://slappyhappy2000.itch.io/uncanny-cat-golf

 

[Deleted member 257420]

Sora’s cousins who glare at you for grabbing the board by it’s hanger instead of its end and smell like lung cancer.

 

[ImhotepTheSecond]

Pangya: an MMORPG focused on playing Golf. I found it boring personally but it looks interesting. Although servers are down there are still some private ones

Knights in the Nightmare: a weird hybrid between tactical RPG, bullet hell shooter, and tower defense? one of those games that are really hard to describe

Rasetsu Xan: Japan only RTS-RPG for PC and PS2. You might've seen pictures of it before because of its user interface

Bokura no Kazoku: by the same people who made Boku no Natsuyasumi. Effectively an RPG simulating your character and his family growing up and going through major stages in his life like graduation and marriage. very cozy!

 

[Cosmiken]

"Jackie Chan Simulator 2000 Game Of The Year Edition"

 

[Evaccaneer Doom]

Weird, but not obscure in the slightest

Post automatically merged: Feb 24, 2025

also if you want the DS equivalent to LSD,

Post automatically merged: Feb 24, 2025

I just want to point out to be careful with the term "jap" because it's seen as kinda offensive for many Japanese people. I made this mistake before and was embarrassed publicly lol

Remember to think of Sonic CD when abbreviating Japanese (JP)