A note to my subscribers - Hello, thank you and enjoy this preview of what's next!
I'm appreciative of everyone who's subscribed. Here's where this project will be going the rest of this year!
Hi folks,
I want to first say I am grateful for every one of you who’ve subscribed to The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played. I’m planning to keep this Substack completely free for the foreseeable future because everything you’ve been reading is part of a manuscript I wrote and am hoping to digitally publish by the end of this year. More on that in just a moment.
I started this project because I became convinced that many games from the past are in danger of becoming forgotten as time moves forward. Outside of really hardcore retro gaming communities, it’s getting harder and harder to find people who remember any games that aren’t perennial favorites, and many major publishers of the day either no longer exist or did a terrible job of preserving their backcatalogs.
But gamers also have a tendency to elevate the games they enjoyed the most and to forget about the rest. There’s no doubt nostalgia is heavily at play, but there’s also the fact that most gamers spent most of their time playing those popular titles and didn’t have the time, money or access to play many of the games that flew a little more under the radar.
For example, Ultima and Wizardry and Might & Magic are in no danger of being forgotten, but many of their contemporaries are virtually unknown today. The catalogs from Sierra On-Line, Infocom and LucasArts are well-remembered now, but there were many other great adventure games of the era that never received that sort of recognition despite having many fun ideas to offer.
I myself had not played a lot of these games before commencing in my research, and I’m really glad I took the time to do so, because many of these games are now favorites of mine. I grew up with very limited access to Atari 2600 and DOS PC games at home because my family didn’t really do video games, but I lived on a military base where it seemed like everyone I knew had a home computer and at least one console system. That allowed me to see and play a lot of games I never would have encountered otherwise. Even so, there was an entirely different computer scene in the UK and Europe that I missed out on, and I also never got a chance to play many Japanese PC games until I was much, much older.
My focus this year has been the various personal computer standards because these are really the foundations of modern gaming. Many games today owe quite a bit to ideas that first appeared on the PC, and the popular modern categories of role-playing games, strategy games, first person shooters, sports management sims, city builders, rougelikes, open world 3D explorations and massively multiplayer games all originated with mainframe networked systems and personal computers.
In a couple of months, I’ll be transitioning to the other side of things as we explore arcade and console games from the 1970s and 80s, and while those games are really interesting to play and to write about, so much more of that discussion centers on Japanese developers because American and European game development outside of PC games massively tanked following the market collapse of both arcade and console games in 1983. You have a lot less discussion about games built by hobbyists and enthusiasts and a lot more about young programmers who wound up working for major corporations that wanted to get into the video game business and treated games as being disposable products rather than long-lasting experiences. The shift is a little jarring, and I hope you all will enjoy the twists and turns that ride has to offer.
As with the PC games I’ve covered, I’ve worked hard to find some familiar-but-forgotten titles as well as some truly obscure titles that are only available thanks to the online emulation community. A few we’ll be covering include:
Pepper II (1982, Arcade and ColecoVision) - Imagine that you took several Pac-Man mazes and mashed them up with Qix and then added in an angel with a fascination with zippers and an aversion to floating eyes. Give that angel an ability to turn into a devil whenever he captures a pitchfork and you’ve got Pepper II, a brilliant arcade game from Exidy that’s even better in its ColecoVision port.
Happy Trails (1983, Intellivision) - A clever and unique puzzle strategy game where you rearrange tiles in a maze to help your sheriff retrieve money stolen by the evil Black Bart. It even has a two-player mode where you compete for points.
Acrobatic Dog-Fight (1984, Arcade) - Have you ever wanted to hijack a plane in mid-air, shoot down some flying pigs and then parachute down to the ground, only to get roasted by Godzilla? You can do all of that and more in this peculiar little gem of an arcade game with some unique gameplay mechanics and a whole lot of charm.
Peter Pack Rat (1985, Arcade) - A charming stealth action game where you retrieve items from around three different levels and battle mean-spirited animals who don’t want you to have nice things. The graphics and music are true stand-outs, particularly for a game from the mid-80s.
Momoko 120% (1986, Arcade) - You begin as a 4-year-old girl escaping her school as aliens invade the floors and flames rise from the bottom. And then, you do it again and again and again until you get married, have a daughter and watch her repeat the cycle. It’s a weird and wonderful concept for a game that also begs the question of who, exactly, is setting all these fires?
Wonder Momo (1987, Arcade) - A distinctive beat ‘em up where you play as an idol singer putting on an Ultraman-style stage show for her adoring fans. It’s a Japanese game through and through, but it features a wonderful heroine, a catchy soundtrack and an awful lot of charisma.
SpellCaster (1988, Sega Master System) - Is it a sidescrolling action game, an RPG, an adventure game, an overhead shoot ‘em up or an anime adaptation that’s been lightly localized? The answer to all five questions is “yes,” and if you’ve ever wondered if you missed any truly great games on the Sega Master System and haven’t played SpellCaster, the answer there is “yes” as well. Things are a bit stiff and clunky at first, but once you get going, you’ll find a spirit-filled adventure unlike any other. The sort-of-sequel Mystic Defender is also worth checking out on the Sega Genesis, though it’s an arcade action game through and through.
Xexyz (1988, NES) - A game that has a little bit of everything, including action platforming sequences, shoot ‘em up stages, light action RPG and adventure mechanics and a mishmash of fantasy and science fiction foes along with giant ocean-inspired bosses. There are even hot tubbing nude fairies to rescue. I’m not sure how Hudson Soft and Atlus got past Nintendo’s censors or why they gave the North American version of this game such a ridiculously unpronounceable title, but Xexyz is definitely worth your time to play.
Herzog Zwei (1989, Sega Genesis) - Technōsoft didn’t create the real-time strategy game, but it did establish the template that inspired the mid-1990s craze thanks to Westwood Associates and Blizzard copying its formula. If you enjoy RTS games like Total Annihilation, you’re going to love this game, which has you fly a powerful transforming Robotech-style mech and deploy troops around a map filled with bases you either need to conquer or destroy. It even has a two-player competitive mode.
Last Alert (1989, TurboGrafxCD) - Imagine you inserted a blatant copycat of Rambo in an anime-style story filled with Metal Gear Solid-like villains sourced from other popular action movies. Then you made an exciting and fun overhead shooter to go with it, complete with fully voiced cutscenes and a rocking soundtrack. Now suppose you hired a cut-rate studio to handle the English language localization and dubbing, with hilarious results, to include in a CD-ROM game on a console add-on barely anyone outside of Japan bought. All of this actually happened, and the result is one of the cheesiest run and gun games I’ve ever played; a shooter which is so silly, it almost seems like a parody of itself. I love every minute of it, and I bet you will too.
The Legend of Valkyrie (1989, Arcade) - A beautiful and fun action arcade RPG that’s sort of like The Legend of Zelda if it were a co-operative overhead shooter. It features branching levels, big bosses and deep mechanics as well as a lot of charm. I recommend the PlayStation version from Namco Museum Vol. 5 since it’s the only edition to date that’s been translated to English.
I’m hopeful that we’ll continue to see the readership grow and that I can excite some interest in these older games. I’m also working on a weekly podcast/video concept to accompany this series I hope to launch in October or November and, of course, the book itself.
And ah, the book! It’s some of what you’ve seen here plus quite a bit more - some additional history and context, my must-play list and, of course, even more write-ups on great games worth playing. It’s volume 1 in a series that will take seven volumes just to get us through the 1990s, and what’s more, it’s pretty much finished, as is volume 2 and about half of volume 3.
Along with those, I have also written a book that provides a comprehensive look at every Star Wars video game from the old unofficial titles up through the latest releases, including quite a bit of detail on the two MMORPGs and a look into more obscure Star Wars games that many people probably never even knew existed. I have more books like that planned as well, and I’m hopeful that the community we’ll build through this Substack will help me to get the word out once those titles are finally available in eBook form.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this sneak preview of what’s to come and I also want to thank you once more for your readership and support. It means a lot to me to know there are folks who enjoy what I’m doing, and I hope you’re as excited as I am about diving back into the past to look for games that have been forgotten, lesser-known or entirely overlooked!
-SJJ