Games that live rent free in your head that nobody thinks about anymore

As a kid, I spent a lot of time glued to SimCity 2000, so stumbling into this game and being able to fly around the cities I built, and in 3D no less. And then do... awkward janky helicopter shit in them? Mindblowing.

I really cherish this one. The story and combat are simple and basic but the sense of community and overall goofy tone that evolves into a understanding of how bad systems of power can be for everyone living under said systems really stuck with me.

Oh fuck I didn’t say Arcanum because I assumed we are always thinking about it

I played all of Saboteur again last year!
You just need the GoG version, that one is fixed for Windows 10 and multi core systems.
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Saboteur

Freespace 2 is one of my favorite sci-fi stories, and an incredible game. Has shockingly good ongoing mod support, there are tons of high quality, fully voice acted campaigns.

Stunts/4D Sports Driving. That game was pretty incredible for the time with its 3D graphics, instant replays and track editor. One of the games that made me a racing game sicko as a kid.

https://xenkogames.gitlab.io/DIDOEN/

genuinely one of the best incremental games I've played, wish it got more progression.

That canned Resident Evil DS game that got recycled into a spooky moon fps game. You wouldn't believe it, it's called Moon

I'm not sure anyone ever thought of it unfortunately, but Yoku's Island Express was an indie metroidvania pinball game.

I had never really enjoyed a metroidvania before this game, but something about it got me excited about the genre in ways I hadn't been before. I've since played a ton of metroidvanias and its one of my favorite genres.

I highly recommend it if you've never heard of it. It's a lot of fun and uses the pinball mechanics in an open world really well.

https://www.freeinfantry.com/

Infantry Online. An old game that i think was owned by Sony in the early 2000's. It was F2p for a long time and I played it during that time with my friends. Had an absolute blast with it. But then it went P2P with a subscription, killing most of the playerbase and finally, the game. Its been revived a bit with the above private server, but its just not the same :(

No one has been able to re-create how this game felt. Every attempt at making a new version of this one loses something in the process. Game studios don't understand that graphics and fluidity aren't the defining features of a game. The defining features are

• no voicechat
• plasma discing someone mid air during a duel
• jetpacking into an enemy base, stealing their flag, and skiing away
• destroying your enemy's generators and hiding out in the basement to kill them when they come to repair them
• vibes

Haven't played this game in nearly 20 years and even then it was considered an old game with only around 3-4 dedicated servers left. Wonder how that's going nowadays.

So I'm old, but there's this NES game called Abadox that my brother and I played growing up. It was an insanely hard shooter that scrolled horizontally and vertically. You're inside some sort of alien body zooming around killing shit, but also some paths will dead end and you just die if you go the wrong way so you gotta memorize (or hand draw) the maps. One hit kills you and you lose all upgrades, so sometimes continuing becomes impossible because the enemies are too hard without upgrades.

I used to have nightmares about this game

Informed my imagination for years as a kid

Freelancer. Oh what could have been.

Sid Meier's Pirates! Oh what could have been.

Basically I like ships and the fantasy of being a privateer. But everyone who makes a privateergame fucks it up somehow. These are the only two that have gotten close.

Honourable mention to Armoured Core.

Another game that pops into my mind at time is Rogue Soldier (I think? You were a blue guy with a chip in his neck? It had some neat covershooter mechanics.)

And of course Time Splitters: Future Imperfect.

Lord of the rings: battle for middle earth 2: rise of the witch king

Golden Sun 1 & 2 (3 didn't happen)

I remember the Saboteur, it was part of that period where if you bought the game firsthand it came with a 1 time use code unlocking certain content, to deter secondhand purchases. The content for the Saboteur was uncensored titties in the burlesque shows you could visit lmfao.

I'll bring up Alpha Protocol, the janky secret agent rpg, it wasn't particularily good, but I remember playing it.

Syphon Filter, fun Metal Gear Solid-esque shooter for Playstation

I loved the Saboteur they should have made a bunch of them.

I liked all 3 Army of Two games for split screen coop.

Battle realms the Asian themed RTS that’s probably problematic but had so many neat things and quirks.

Saboteur just got a steam release actually, I went back and replayed it. I really liked that the progression system was based on challenges, if you wanted to you could go and do all of them before you even started the story. It still holds up graphically thanks to the way they did the colour.

My one would be Quake Wars (2007). It was the first asymmetric multiplayer game I ever played and it was the last proper Quake game.

Star Trek Elite Force. Weird combo for Star Trek to make a game in the Quake engine, but I love it

Dunno if it's still popular as it's about 20 years old, but S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chornobyl. Best experience I ever had in a game. Full of dread and tension.

Really like prey (2017). I want to play a dense basically open world game with multiple endings again.

Master of Orion 1, it was overshadowed by MoO2 but i still play it.

Dr. Muto - 2002 PS2 platformer where you can unlock transformations into 5 different creatures: a hamster, gorilla, piranha, spider, and a flying squirrel. Each mutation has different uses - squirrel can fly so you can reach previously unreachable areas, piranha can swim so you can reach the underwater areas of each level, hamster can travel through small gaps/holes. Pretty standard platformer, nothing really special in terms of level design or mechanics, but damn I loved this game as a kid because

Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters - 2002-3 Gamecube kaiju fighting game. This shit is what actually put me onto kaiju like Godzilla, Rodan, and Ghidorah. Had a Destruction mode that I really dug where you had to destroy more city buildings/infrastructure than your opponent. You could fucking call in Mothra airstrikes. The NPC Army would attack all monsters randomly with missiles and shit. But above all else, I loved just playing Destruction/Multiplayer mode with my brother and essentially roleplaying our own Godzilla movies.

War of the Monsters - 2003 PS2 kaiju fighting game. I have to pay respects to Destroy All Monsters because without it, I would have never stumbled across this game in Blockbuster as a child and been like "yes!!" but because I had played Destroy All Monsters, I remember being like "yes" immediately. Funnily enough, while Destroy All Monsters used actual kaiju like Godzilla and Rodan, War of the Monsters had 'original' kaiju that were very clearly meant to be shit like Godzilla and Rodan but tweaked enough to avoid copyright/licensing issues. There were a bunch that were wholly, at least from what I remember and know now having seen a ton of actual kaiju/Godzilla films, original though. Kineticlops, a giant fucking humanoid eyeball whose limbs are electricity and Preytor, a giant fucking preying mantis stay in the recesses of my mind. Me & my brother actually wound up BEGGING our dad to buy this game for us after we rented it 3 weeks in a row just so we could spend hours roleplaying as our favorite monsters in battles. Most notably, War of the Monsters had actual terrain/movement features that Destroy All Monsters lacked. Preytor could glide and climb up buildings fast as fuck like a bug, Kineticlops' attacks would bounce and arc between enemies, the larger monsters like the King Kong knockoff (Kongar was its name iirc) could grab things like transmission antennas off of buildings or cars from the road and use them as weapons. You could launch monsters through buildings with combos.

I mean, just look at these two dudes and tell me child you wouldn't go

Jet Set Radio Future - This one isn't wholly forgotten compared to like Dr. Muto or Destroy All Monsters; especially not with the reboot they announced a few years ago, but goddamn thank you Microsoft for bundling this and Sega GT together with new Xbox purchases because this game consumed me. The soundtrack still slaps today, thank you Hideki Naganuma. (Understand understand the concept of love - free love is too tame for him!

The Simpsons: Hit and Run - Another one that isn't exactly forgotten by most people who were gaming in 2003 but I have to put this one down because more than the other 4 games I've mentioned, this is the one my brother and I were OBSESSED with because we both loved the Simpsons. I spent so much time trying to master the Rocket Car's handling/controls because I was like "holy shit its so fast!!". The Ghost Ship vehicle...the monorail vehicle....my beloveds...10/10 game, especially the fact that they got the official cast to do the VA for the entire game. Bart's 'Eat asphalt, asphalt eaters' is what I say to this day when I'm winning in like Mario Kart. They dunno how to make games this good anymore that's why the Simpsons is on Season 35 or whatever and we still haven't gotten a remaster or even a rerelease of the original on like Steam...

All of the above were basically my childhood with more popular-ish games sprinkled here and there (most people go "what is that??" when I bring up Mortal Kombat Deception and Armageddon, but they recognize Mortal Kombat...can't say the same for Dr. Muto or even Jet Set Radio...Kingdom Hearts 4 will come out in the next decade...I don't even try to bring up Viewtiful Joe to most people because I'm not gonna get tricked into explaining what its about...)

Thanks for actually making me think about all these - I haven't reminisced on them in quite awhile and man, I forgot how much time me & my brother spent sitting in our dining room with the PS2/Gamecube/Dad's Xbox playing all of the above together and essentially just roleplaying. We, of course, did the same kind of thing with Melee (I used to make him pick Ganondorf so I could re-enact OoT with Young Link on the Hyrule Temple stage...we never managed to get the Peach turnip/Falco reflector/Super Scope black hole glitch to work but I probably spent an entire summer trying to convince my brother and sister daily to play with me on Hyrule Temple as Peach/Falco so we could try to get it to work...good times)

Sega GT and Wreckless: The Yakuza Missions on the og xbox

I really loved the menu music in Sega GT and I think about it a lot

Wreckless had wonderful maps and cool game mechanics. What it lacked was a free roam mode (at least version I played) but maybe bc you only got a taste of it during the missions it made the idea of an open world version of HK more tantalizing

I never once played a mechwarrior game but I got a copy of this in the box when my parents bought me Tribes and I absolutely loved it. I've never spoken to anybody whose even heard about it let alone played it.

I've played through the Saboteur at least 3 times and really enjoyed it (remember the heavies flamethrower guys being really annoying). I also remember Yahtzee's ZP review praising it quite a lot at the time which was rare in those days.

For me it's Brütal Legend. It came out at the height of my metal phase and I just became obsessed with it, I think I've fully played through it at least 12 times.

Another one I can guarantee nobody other than me thinks about. Alpha prime

Alien vs Predator 2

Chock full of jank. Weird ass Lithtech engine. But the multi-player was so fun.

Still the only "alien" franchise game where you start as a face hugger, lay an egg, and chew your way out of a chest. It's a delight.

Act of War:Direct Action. Basically Tom Clancy meets C&C Generals with more conspiracy slop. Had some neat mechanics, like your mercenaries have to fight over banks with the general urban combat rules, and PoWs somehow generating money (but money is also directly gained by refining oil). It got an expansion and a remake before Eugen went with the more tactical wargame series of game

This shit went so hard on the original thicc cobalt blue NDS. I should really replay it on steam deck

Universe at War: Earth Assault. Maybe the first PC game I bought for myself - I had no idea what system requirements were so it was a little while until I had access to a computer that could run it at all, let alone at a decent speed.

Oh hey, the original Red Faction was exactly what I was thinking of.

I instantly fell in love with the charming world, the characters, the story, all packaged into those lovely pearls of a game. I almost never play RPGs multiple times but those 2 I’ve played to death and beyond.

Arena fighters CAN be good, but people have forgotten the history

There's a game I don't remember anything from beyond that it was a very interesting RTS with good graphics for it's time and a load of different factions and heroes that had unique dialogue with each other. One of these heroes is a killer cyborg and in an interaction with another hero it'll say "you've got pretty eyes" and then it gets a positive response so it asks "May I have them, if you're not using them?"

That game haunts my mind.

Also just RTS games in general. I miss them. Dawn of War: Dark Crusade was peak and the fact it became yet another squad/hero thing was so sad.

Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. Pretty much the only Real Time Tactical space flotilla command game ever. Hits a spot between Ground Control and Homeworld that I never knew existed.

Oh, also Ground Control, possibly the first really good 3d RTS

The two games no longer in the zeitgeist that absolutely altered my brain are Chrono Trigger and Lufia 2. I played them one after the other repeatedly for the entire late 90's and burned all the weird story and lore bits into my brain

Another banger game where killing nazis is fun

Lawbreakers, best movement shooter and Starhawk, loved being able to deploy a mech (exosuit or transformer with jet mode), jetpacks, mini bases, hoverbikes, walls, turrets, etc.