Hidden Gems!

[RanmyakuIchi's icon RanmyakuIchi RanmyakuIchi]

Many of my examples are things that used to be hidden gem's but have since become more "dicovered", like Rise of the Triad.

 

[stealthRUSH stealthRUSH]

Egg (PlayStation) a strategy puzzle game where you maneuver an egg through mazes and obstacles with the end game being full development from embryonic type of lifeform to offspring. The gameplay is about throwing the egg in different directions to create new parts of your town, and evolve it. source: PSDC

 

[MiwaSata]

Dark Chronicle! Every time I mention the game people tend to go "Huh? Never heard of that one!"
The soundtrack alone should be something every one listens to at least once!

 

[Chocoburger]

There is a game I like a lot but not many know about, called Yanya Caballista: City Skater, its for PS2, and very similar to Jet Set Radio, but on a skateboard. The story is completely whacked-out insane, and I love it.

Ghosts-like Aliens have invaded New San Francisco, and the military is completely powerless to stop them. So what can the government do? There's only one option left, SEND IN SKATEBOARDERS! ... Yeah, really. Apparently the only thing that can get rid of ghost aliens is by performing sick skateboard tricks in front of them in order to excite them so much that they self-destruct with joy.

Don't go expecting anything like Pro Skater, this is more like a platformer where you ride a skateboard (you can't get off the board), the trick system is extremely basic and there's very little trick variety, but that's okay, because the challenge isn't about the tricks, so much as it is about performing them in front of the ghost aliens, which as the game progresses they get harder to reach and please. The game has a bit of a learning curve, and the dev team knew that because it has a very detailed tutorial and if you ever play this game, its absolutely mandatory to play the entire tutorial or nothing will make any sense and you'll probably end up hating the game.

There's one more thing you need to know about this game, which is that it came with a little plastic board that you're supposed to place over your analog sticks, and play the game using only the dual sticks as well as L3 and R3, no other buttons are functional. If that sounds strange, it is, and it also sucks to play the game this way. Most people don't realize that you can play the game the normal way by going to the options screen and select "Control Type B" (or "Control Type 2" its been a long time since I played so I've forgotten the correct term, but just go to the options screen!).

If you play it with the plastic board, Control Type A, its a terrible and gimmicky experience, and its partially why this game got bad reviews since this is how reviewers played it back then. Make sure to play it with the alternate controls and its a good time.

 

[Evaccaneer Doom]

Gotta crank the obscure to the max like He Man and the power of Grayskull

Atelier Annie

Started playing this one a few days ago and it's kinda fun. It's also the most forgotten Atelier (that released overseas). It's one of the first localized before we got Ryza, Yumia, and all that. It's the second game in a spinoff trilogy that went mostly unlocalised (Lise, Annie, Stahl). Atelier Lise is well known for being the only actual bad Atelier game that was prone to so many freezes that they made a second version that was fixed with a different color, hence why it wasn't localised. Supposedly, people took to calling it "Atelier Freeze," which if true . Not sure why they bothered with Annie though if not even Stahl could be localised though. Despite having positive reviews, the opinion on this game is incredibly divided. Most forgot it even existed, a lot more seem to hate it and view it as one of the worst games, and a minority love it. Here's the only video essay on it.

Custom Robo Arena

If I'm taking to talk about any Custom Robo, it's gonna be this. Battle Revolution has the more interesting story but Arena has more content, more robo options and a better artstyle. Seriously BR's graphics are kinda dogshit outside the arena and the characters are especially done dirty. Still recommend playing that game though, especially since it's one of the only to be localized at all.

A Witch's Tale

This is a...very unique playing turn based RPG. Good unique btw, not ominous unique like something along the lines of Gal Gun. If you know of DS Wizard of Oz, it's very similar to that.

Mojib Ribbon

Vib Ribbon's getting a lil too popular now, so here's its sequel. Little known fact is that Vib Ribbon is a trilogy (Vib Ribbon, Vib Ripple, Mojib Ribbon). Ripple is ass, but Mojib Ribbon is the closest to the style of the original. The entire game is spoken in Japanese though and very reaction based. Some beautiful calligraphy too.

Medabots

I like the risk/reward style of gameplay. The battles are dependent on parts and make/break a battle. If you lose every part or someone destroys the head, the winner gets one of the loser's parts. And yes, this also includes you and incudes even the default parts. There's a couple different attacks to use, like using the antenna to raise your accuracy or using one of two arms to go for (often) one of the lower body parts. There's two versions, and everyone agrees Metabee is easier, but I did not know this and started with Rokusho, which is also pretty easy, just slightly harder without range.

Dezaemon Kaite Tsukutte Asoberu

If this made it overseas, its influence would be MASSIVE. Dezaemon predates both Mario Maker and Mario Paint and does the good qualities of both arguably better. This franchise is all about making your own SHMUP, background music, graphics, bullet patterns and all. Devil Engine was actually made on Dezaemon 2 for Saturn. Naturally, it may be a bit of a chore figuring out how to use these games because the documentation is non existent, so experiment. The music maker allows you to do pretty much what Mario Paint does but with more accurate SNES instruments and sounds. It also allows you to change the speed, key, create multiple layers (only 2 in the game I'm specifically mentioning but 2 and Plus have like 5 layers), and make a 16 sheet long song, more in the sequels. If you're a fledgling music maker, then I can't recommend one of these games enough even if you don't want to make the game because it's good experience. There's 5 games in total: Dezaemon (NES), Dezaemon Kaite Tsukutte Asoberu (the one being mentioned) (SNES), Dezaemon 2 (Saturn), Dezaemon 3D (Nintendo 64), Dezaemon Kids (PlayStation 1), and Dezaemon Plus (a remake of Kaite Tsukutte Asoberu) (PlayStation 1). Just don't start with the NES game or 3D, they are far too complicated for how little documentation they have. I have not tried Kids yet.

Guwange

I could put nearly every CAVE game in this list but they all have their own niches minus another I'll add to the list. Guwange doesn't really have this. It's quite the unique shoot em up, it's very slow to simulate walking. Each playable character has a different shinigami next to them and you can move it around. Of course this means the bombs are different, but this also leads to another unique mechanic. If you point the shinigami in a direction, any bullets going that was will actually slow down while in range and you can use this to dodge some pretty good hits. It has eh music, but the gameplay and graphics combined with the strange boss ideas more than make up for it.

Muchi Muchi Pork

This is the other CAVE game without a niche. It's very similar to the Ibara series also made by CAVE as well as Battle Garegga by Raizing but the catch is pigs. Everyone is pigs. Even the playable girls. You like pig girls? Well now you do, I don't make the rules. Also it has this 10/10 intro (holy shit I am the first result when looking for this song)

Rosenkreuzstilette and Rosenkreuzstilette Freudenstachel

One of the earliest non fan game Mega Man likes. They're very derivative of the NES games, sometimes to the point I'm surprised they even sell them on Steam without Capcom knocking down their door, but they're really fun games with a really interesting story. They're a mix of Mega Man gameplay and Castlevania artstyle and you can especially tell in some of the more industrial stages. There's even a Dracula clone in the first game. In a surprising twist, Alpharad actually did a video on the first game a while back, but even that managed to not save these games from obscurity lmao.

eXceed 3rd Jade Penetrate & Jade Penetrate Black Package

Really fun Touhou like shmup (and it's remaster) that got dealt the worst cards imaginable. Publisher went down, developers went down, and the people who grabbed the rights to the franchise did nothing with them. Hell Capcom even published the localisation of these games (store page is actually still up) but they didn't wanna bother it seems. The only claim to fame this game has are but its composer (which is THE S.S.H.) and the final boss theme Intersect Thunderbolt (took off on Osu and is close to reaching 1M views as a result). These games are abandonware, but both are on the archive among other places.

Gravity Circuit

Honestly debated putting it here because of all the video essays that exist for it now, but looking further into it, even those video essays have NOT taken off so. You'll get the most mileage if you enjoyed the Mega Man Zero games. Also one of the few games available on Mac so you can literally play it on anything. Also the music slaps, but that's inevitable when it shares a composer with Mega Man X Corrupted.

Rabi Ribi

Let's end this list off with a bunnygirl. Rabi Ribi is an action Metroidvania with the bullet patterns often found in shmups and bullet hells, with these patterns also being common with the enemies. Sounds like hell, but it's quite nice. It has some incredibly deep combat and a whole lot of options and it's ballbustingly difficult, especially the post game. It has some AMAZING music too, second best of all the options behind Gravity Circuit above.

We'd be here all day (and I'd reach the attachment limit) if I talked about everything so I'm cutting it here.

 

[TomokiTensei]

View attachment 47114
Shin Megami Tensei 2.

All Megaten games are awsome. Also I am going to add Shin Megami Tensei If.

 

[Captain Murphy]

Post automatically merged: Mar 23, 2025

I could put nearly every CAVE game in this list but they all have their own niches minus another I'll add to the list. Guwange doesn't really have this.

Hell yea Guwange is amazing.

Here's one for you guys. It's called Shinkaron. It's the prequel to EVO search for Eden. It's so weird and awesome. I've never seen anything like it. It's way more involved than EVO was. Maybe I can review it at some point. It's got a really cool soundtrack by a guy named Koichi Sugiyama...

 

[Evaccaneer Doom]

All Megaten games are awsome. Also I am going to add Shin Megami Tensei If.
View attachment 47341

Holy shit Marsh at the bottom right going to descend the 8th floor of high school to fight the Minotaur at the bottom

 

[Swagmata]

Baroque is a really interesting game. Never played the pax version but I really liked the Wii version

the saturn version has really nice atmospheric lighting on crt. Pretty unnerving game

 

[hazys]

I've been playing Ruina: Fairytale of the Forgotten Ruins, a freeware RPGMaker game released in the late 2000s. It was translated to English in 2021. It's a really impressive game, especially considering it was by one person. It has a pretty basic battle system, but the exploration and party-recruiting elements make it feel more like a tabletop RPG, or a SaGa game. You can also start with one of several different "origins" for your character, which determines your starting stats and some story differences, but there is also a class-change system on top of that. The music is a bit indistinct, but the visual presentation is fantastic. I really recommend it.

 

[Yousef Yousef]

Finding momodora fans in the wild always feels like a life achievement.

 

[Big Finger Jim]

Every time. This will be my answer.

 

[PrismRed]

Crusty Demons.

 

[Captain Murphy]

Every time. This will be my answer

Good to see Shadow man getting some love. Super cool game. So weird

 

[mini pancake]

Summon night series

 

[snes9x]

I don't know if Picross 3D qualifies but I think it's peak puzzle gaming and doesn't get a fraction of the love it deserves.

 

[darkmood]

I know ¨¨hidden gems¨¨ could be a broad term but I been playing Final Fantasy in chronological order on my PSP and I love using this console, I also been trying hidden gems or games that you generally wouldn't see on a top 10 list or whatever. I'll leave some of those but lemme know if you have more suggestions!!

• What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord? - wtf this game is so weird lol but very charming
• Gitaroo Man Lives! - I LOVE RYTHM GAMES
• Capcom Classics Remixed - I love collections too, who knew?

 

[Eclipse14]

Hexyz Force and MotorStorm: Arctic Edge

 

[Cu-Neo]

Gungnir

 

[RustySK]

I've never been a PSP expert, but the Prinny games might fit this maybe?
Quite good and surprisingly challenging 2.5D platformers - good stuff. They're not super unknown or anything - even got ported to Switch! - but they also don't get brought up all that often.

Oh and maybe Metal Gear Acid 1 and 2.
They're turn-based stealth games with deckbuilding elements - the first is kinda janky, but the second is genuinely quite good! Since they're part of the Metal Gear franchise they're definitely no underdogs, but it's not like many people remember this particular spin-off series.

 

[DunkeyKong]

Zenonia and N.O.V.A, a top down Zelda like game and a Halo clone

 

[jankusanagi jankusanagi]

Not sure it I'd call them "hidden", but 7th Dragon 2020 and 7th Dragon 2020-II are pretty great

 

[MemeAlert]

Ys VII

 

[ThatOneLum ThatOneLum]

I second Metal Gear Acid. Also recommend Gurumin for an action adventure and maybe Mercury/Mercury Meltdown if you're into puzzlers.

 

[PSVitaForever]

If you like third-person-shooter, try "Coded Arms" and "Coded Arms Contagion": the first is random-generated areas, the second one has a plot and a fixed progression.

If you like racing games, try "M.A.C.H." racing with planes in different and cool scenarios.

If you like real-time-strategy, try "Generation of Chaos Pandora Reflection", it also involves sort of rhythm-based (button pressing in a certain and different order for different characters) minigames for attacking.