Since the late 1970s when PC, arcade and video games first became a popular pastime, there have been far more games than anyone could play, and for every undisputed classic that everyone knows and loves today like Super Mario Bros. or The Legend of Zelda, there are dozens of titles that have been overlooked, forgotten or completely ignored by gamers around the world.
I’m here to shine the spotlight on those games as part of a research project to go back to the earliest eras of gaming and rediscover the great games we missed. My research has uncovered thousands of games I’d never heard of and which surprised me with their depth and quality. I’ve explored PC platforms, console systems and coin-op cabinets along the way and replayed them all in the modern day to ensure that I’m not applying a nostalgic lens.
I’m not interested in covering what used to be popular - that’s well-trod territory already. I’m interested in covering the games the critics misjudged, that the public ignored, or which got stuck in one part of the world and never received the broader exposure they deserved.
As we get going, you’ll read about titles like the 1984 PC game Below the Root, a platform-style adventure game based on an obscure children’s novel series where you explore a city nestled high in the trees and glide down to the caves beneath the soil.
You’ll experience the joys of 1989’s The Legend of Valkyrie, an overhead hack and slash adventure that feels like The Legend of Zelda as an arcade game, and which includes cooperative play to boot.
You’ll learn how you can build your own rampaging army with the 1985 PC game Mail Order Monsters or how you can have kaiju including Godzilla destroy cities in the wonderful PC games Crush, Crumble & Chomp! (1981) and The Movie Monster Game (1986).
You’ll hijack planes and shoot down flying pigs in 1984’s Acrobatic Dog-Fight, you’ll retrieve lost items in the brilliantly-animated 1985 platform maze game Peter Pack Rat and you’ll battle costumed bad guys in a tokusatsu stage show at the Namco Theater as the magical girl-themed 1987 beat ‘em up Wonder Momo.
And you won’t just be limited to playing these games. You can design your own Breakout-style brick-breaking game with the 1988 PC game TRAZ, you can build your own scrolling or overhead shooter with 1987’s Shoot ‘Em Up Construction Kit and you can create your own primitive PC pinball machine with 1982’s Pinball Construction Set.
And as we get into the early 1990s, you’ll get to scare people out of their homes in 1993’s Haunting Starring Polterguy, you’ll discover the unlikeliest of animal mascot platform heroes with a baby elephant in 1992’s Rolo to the Rescue, and you’ll possess a wide variety of enemies with the ghost of a boyfriend bent on revenge in 1991’s Avenging Spirit.
You’ll discover one of the funniest fighting game series of them all starting with Atlus’s Power Instinct in 1993, encounter one of the strangest arcade games you’ve ever played in PuLiRuLa and enjoy the cartoony predecessors to Metal Slug as you venture underwater with 1994’s submarine shooter In the Hunt and the awesome GunForce II.
You’ll also learn about incredible beat ‘em ups like 1993’s Ninja Baseball Bat Man, 1994’s Denjin Makai and 1995’s Guardians and awesome RPGs like 1993’s Sega CD version of the action RPG Popful Mail, the amazing 1995 JPRG Terranigma and the criminally underrated 1990 top-down PC roguelike action RPG DarkSpyre.
And that’s all before we get to the multimedia era, when we’ll delve into the wonderfully weird (No One Can Stop Mr. Domino, LSD: Dream Emulator and Intelligent Qube), the cheerfully chipper (Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, YoYo’s Puzzle Park and Tail Concerto), the mechanically innovative (Silhouette Mirage, Glover and Guardian Heroes), the strategically interesting (Team Buddies, Hogs of War and Vanguard Bandits) and the absolutely overlooked (Goemon’s Great Adventure, The Neverhood, Astal and Felony 11-79).
And that’s not all. Down the road, we’ll have a special focus on handheld games and also do a deep dive on long-running franchises like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings as well as movies and TV shows based on video games - you’d be surprised how much there is to talk about with each of those subjects!
Along with all of my research, I’ll share a deep historical perspective for each genre and era, providing valuable context on how things came to be and spotlighting the games everyone ought to know as well as those that I don’t have time to cover, but which may be worth a look. And while I’ll admit that I’m biased towards North America since it’s the gaming scene I’ve experienced firsthand, I’ll try to provide a fair look at the contributions of Asian, European and Australian developers as well in shaping the history of gaming.
How Often Do You Post?
New posts for general subscribers go up on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday each week. I’ll be sticking to this schedule for quite awhile - I have so much content already written that I won’t run out for many years!
I also intend to post a feature on Saturdays that talks about more modern games. My current series focuses on titles that are “Retreaux”-style throwbacks to the retro era like UFO 50, Escape Goat 2, Baba is You, The Plucky Squire and You Must Build a Boat.
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