Or even more revolutionary: Ultima underworld. It had sloped floors, sloped walls, bridges/level over level, polygonal geometry instead of sector based, textured walls, ceilings and floors, a rudamentary lighting system, rudamentary player physics (jumping, swiming, sneaking), looking up and down with correct perspective and it pre-dates Wolfenstein 3D. They went for an immersive sim RPG, so they didn't need the framerate to be as high and they made the viewport smaller, but they never had to bother with the "2.5D" raycasting Doom did; they just went with full 3D levels. That game is so out of its time that it's like finding rabbit fossils in precambrian rock; it just shouldn't exist.
Finally i found the names of two games i remembered playing a bit as a kid, "Ken's Labyrinth" and "Nitemare 3D". I probably played some of the others but this two alonside with Catacomb where my favourites i really enjoyed the psicodelic style of those even as a kid.
Oh, a list of games to make Civvie play. Neat. I know of a few of these, and have played even fewer. I think I've only actually played Strife, Chasm, and Eradicator. By pure coincidence, I have the last two installed on my computer right now.
12:18 Chasm: The Rift from 1997 was not obscure, it was a great game for its time. I remember playing it at my cousin house on his PC. The game for me was so advanced! Just look how different it looks! Half of this games from the early 90s looks like shitposts with awful textures and terribble framerate :) Chasm looked fantastic!
its funny to see in 1997 the transition of FPS games, some still using the old Doom or Build engine and others starting to use the Quake 1 or their own 3d engine
I like how this one also has many other games I didn't know of yet, in addition to others already covered by a bunch of people from the past. Goes to show how much effort you've put into researching these games!
Malice was great, a Quake total conversion. It predated Half-Life, and in a lot of ways did many new things within the genre that Half-Life gets credited with. Lots of other great games on here that I was able to play back in the day, thanks to sites like Home of the Underdogs and Emuparadise.
Mortal Coil: Adrenaline Intelligence was insane good back in the days, i remember i was surprised by graphic and game mechanics. There a lot of good sci-fi and supernatural things in this game, i love how you can choose other teammates as playable character or just play your game as a first person shooter or a third person game. Ty for this list, i've found a lot of ms-dos games i never played before :)
Great video and content bro, awesome!! ❤️ When I watch this video, for some reason the games made by Capstone look good, starting from the UI or HUD, the graphics, and the gameplay looks smooth and solid, for that era. 👍
I really considered putting Requiem on this list! I have featured it in other videos...I ended up choosing against including just because it had a pretty big following among my friends and I didn't think it would count as "obscure". But if I do a part 3 of this video, I will definitely include it!
@@GaryRetroGamer make a "not so obscure fps" video. I mean, is there another game like Requiem, Chasm, Shogo, Outlaws (1997) that I haven't heard of yet?? That's the question I ask myself every day. By the way Gary, I've been looking for this FPS that I played as a child, for about 6 years now, and thanks to you, I found it, it was Ashes to Ashes. Thank you very much for your work.
Woah DID's Robocop 3 from 1992 looks cool. Also it's interesting how some early games actually did incorporate first-person weapons on the side rather than straight in the middle. Maybe people thought it would be confusing? Wasn't Dracula the game John Romero liked to make fun of because it seemed so primitive compared to Doom that they were developing? It remained superior to many clones and copies even till the late 90's believe it or not. I loved Cyclones because of how you could free-aim your gun around. Cybermage was cool I remember huge cardboard cutouts for that, or posters, HURL, yeah... man, I think I've seen most of these games because my brother would pass down these ooold shareware and demo discs and me at the time having a crappy computer, well, that was my gaming experience basically. Eradicator is cool, it's on Steam. You know it surprises me how many people still made these objectively inferior games as late as 1996 when Quake and Duke Nukem 3D were dominating the FPS market. I freaking loved XS, which is what inspired Unreal Tournament. Alien Cabal freaked me out as a kid. I wouldn't say Chasm is all that obscure, it was a defining game and I remember huge screens with demos playing on it around the time of Quake. Super glad Defiance made the list, I remember it being impactful because of the narration. Now I'm wondering why Radix Beyond The Void wasn't on the list and Lifeforce Tenka definitely should be more recognized. Malice was cool, I saw that in a magazine, based on a Quake mod I believe, the Xmen game was also built on top of the Quake engine. I remember playing Necrodome a lot... it's a timeless classic, reminds me of that post-apocalyptic taxi game called Quarantine, which also didn't make the list. Damage Incorporated is what got me into death metal. Funny to see how a bunch of games basically did asset swaps even so long ago. Mortyr I wouldn't consider all that obscure either, it just wasn't that successful, it did spawn three sequels and the spiritual successor Ubersoldier in the mid 2000's. Redline was awesome but I only played the demo. I think at the time I was more invested in Blood 2. Surprised things like Requiem, Blake Stone and Shogo (just to name A FEW) weren't on the list!
Interesting list I played a lot of games from this list, about 1/3, I know about 2/3, and never heard about 1/3. One fun fact is the whole transition between the dungeon crawlers and tank likes to the FPS we know today. The other fun fact is 2.5D never died with the 3D
Not sure why cylindrix is on this list. Its a hybrid space/arena vehicle combat game. You can switch between a flight and ground hover mode. It was later totally remade and released as Dead Reckoning.
@@georgeoldsterd8994 I mean the graphics of Half-life makes all of these games look as if they're 10 years older than it. And then I haven't spoken about the narrative aspects yet.
@@MukishPukishTo be fair, most of these obscure fps games were behind the times and shouldn't be compared to HL. HL should be compared to the other top dog fps games like Quake 2, Unreal, SiN, Jedi Knight etc.
The later ones when compared to their contemporaries Quake, Quake 2, Half-Life and System Shock 2, highlight for me just how good those games were...and still are.
I bought Nitemare 3D on a CD bundled with like 50 other games, including a card game with nude photos in it. Amazing what you could get away with back in the day.
I feel like I've _seen_ a surprising number of these - although still less than half - thanks to TH-camrs (stuff like Isle of the Dead) and vague memories of crap I found on shareware discs back in the day (like Operation Bodycount), but I haven't _played_ many at all. Gives me a lot to look more into!
Good collection right there. Knew quite a few of these (maybe even most) either from playing them myself, or from various reviews I'd watched over the years. A lot of gems here, and a bunch of stinkers as well. There's something simply magical about how these games were essentially the same, yet unique in their own ways. I only wish more of them got the Doom treatment and were playable on modern hardware without having to muck around with DosBox's settings.
From the ones listed I've played (as of the time of writing this): Hoverforce Alien Cabal Ice & Fire Isle of the Dead Ken's Labyrinth Alpha Storm TekWar X-Men: Ravages of Apocalypse Angst: Rahz's Revenge Ashes to Ashes Assassin 2015 Extreme PaintBrawl Strife Also the PS1 demo of Lifeforce Tenka and the 3DO version of Cyberdillo.
There are some serious gems in here! "Chasm: The Rift" has been updated on Gog and is well worth a play. ....and I was worried I'd played everything! What arrogance! :) I'm using this as a "What to play next?" list. Good vid and no annoying commentary
Some of them look impressive but came out too late. Something that looks and feel like Doom 1 is sure to be obscure if it comes out in 1998 when Quake and Half-Life were already a thing.
I've pretty much always liked games where you use fantasy or sci fi weapons, not like some typical enchanted crossbow or some words, but like in hexen theres a cool variety of weapons to use for paladin. Or in half life opposing force you got the electric ant, or that spore launcher. Like some living weapons or in blood you got that skull staff. Etc. Something different than those (imo) boring magical swords or typical laser guns etc. Maybe a video about doing one? Would love to know games where you get to use weapons that are not so typical etc.
codename eagle was deceptively fun multiplayer cos the jank physics let you do stuff like drive motorbikes into blimps then jump them out the back into midair while letting the blimp crash into something overhead. good times.
Great selection, but you really should've increased the cycles for some of these when you ran them in DOSBox. Ken's Labyrinth is NOT supposed to chug like that, and I'm guessing the same is true for most of the others that I'm not familiar with. There's no way so many shooters in mid 90s were running at single digit framerates like many of them appear to be in this video. I think Requiem: Avenging Angel probably belongs on this list more than Strife and Chasm which are no longer obscure due to having received Nightdive ports/rematers. Liquidator... how the hell is there a Build Engine game that I'm not aware of? And looks like it was added as freeware on Steam just a couple weeks ago! Will need to check this one out. I played demos/sharewares of (mostly from PC Gamer demo disks): Ken's Labyrinth, Shadowcaster, Specter VR, CyClones, Fortress of Dr. Radiaki, Cybermage, In Pursuit of Greed, Assassin 2015, Rex Blade, XS, ZPC, Chasm, Necrodome, Codename Eagle, Mortyr, Redline. I played through the full version of Eradicator just last year, and Strife Veteran Edition 4 years ago. Also played a bit of the Last Rights, Madspace, and Z.A.R. on Steam. I own Redline and Witchaven 2 on Steam but haven't played them there yet. I was sure I got a free CD with Rebel Moon Rising with the Pentium 233 MMx I bought in '97, and I'd played a bit of it at the time, but I have no idea where that disk is now.
Yeah a whole bunch of these are misconfigured. They're either running too slow or too fast, and there's missing sound effects or music in a bunch of them as well. I kind of wish that people would start recording gameplay from PCem or 86Box rather than DOSBox. Rebel Moon Rising was a pack-in for a lot of vendors since it was one of the few games that took advantage of MMX to have fast software-based color lighting rendering, so your memory is probably correct.
Have this memory of a game there the plot goes something like this. You start in a forest there your plane crashed (black background, sprite trees). After some wondering in the forest you find this castle. In the castle you are greeted by a strange talking cat. You wonder some in that castle in go in the basement there strange things happening and you must survive and escape. I'am trying to find this game for 20+ years with no luck. Or maybe i just imagined this game...
Ah Ken's Labyrinth, classic. Corridor 7 was a classic. The Fortress of Dr. Radiaki, eh I was never very good at it and sadly I think I only had the demo.
Ooof. That's a good one and slipped my mind. That's the one where you walked around the base and had to setup base defense turrets! It 100% should have been in this video. Thanks for reminding me. It'll have to go in v2.1 of this video!
I assume you excluded the well known stuff like Wolfenstein 3D or Dark Forces for being well known, but why are Chex Quest 2 and Witchaven 2 on the list while their first games aren't? (Come to think of it, weren't Malice HACX, Juggernaut and Ravages of Apocalypse mods rather than genuine standalone games?) Good job including all those Russian games, not a lot of people know about them. Glad Eradicator made the list though, I had a lot of fun with it back in the day.
Chex Quest 2 was chosen because while the original was quite popular - the fact that a sequel existed was not widely known. Most kids who got the game in a box of cereal had no idea the sequel was out there. The same idea led to Witchhaven 2 being included; while the original was a bit on the obscure side, few people know it actually received a sequel. Malice/HACX/Juggernaut/Ravages of Apocalypse were actually all retail products that you could walk into store and buy, meaning they were "professional" efforts - not just some freebie user mod (in theory, anyway). They were "standalone" in the sense that they had nothing to do with the original games. Also, I believe there was a version of Ravages of Apocalypse that was purchaseable as a standalone game. Eradicator is totally underrated. Hopefully more people will pick it up after watching this video!
God some of these look positively awful -- like pure asset flips. It's amazing to think that some of the later titles were contemporaneous with Half-Life. From a game preservation standpoint I'm glad these games haven't been lost, but you can almost see why some of them might have been.
No Jurasssic Park DOS fps levels? First game with gun on the side of screen, not i centre. Technically ahead of it times, being released in 1993 had features absent even in 1995 games. Nerves of Stell was first fps profesionally translated to my native language (Polish). Target looks outdatet but had split screen mode- don't remember any pc fps had this then. Cheers!
I'm watching this as it came up randomly but there was a pc fps I used to play in the late 90's snd have no idea what it was called...2-6 players I think... polygon maps with barely any texture but- each team had a base line a castle, you could choose between sniper or rifle and you had c4,my move was to hide in the enemy base and c4 them as they came in or out...is this game in this video? Lets find out
COMPLETE GAMELIST WITH TIMESTAMPS
1990 - Hoverforce (Astral Software - 1990) 00:00:05
1990 - Infestation (Psygnosis - 1990) 00:00:17
1990 - Xenocide (Pangea Software - 1990) 00:00:29
1991 - Corporation (Core Design - 1991) 00:00:41
1991 - Hovertank One (iD Software - 1991) 00:00:53
1991 - Terminator, The (Bethesda Software - 1991) 00:01:05
1992 - Robocop 3 (DID - 1992) 00:01:17
1993 - Bram Stoker's Dracula (TAG - 1993) 00:01:29
1993 - Curse of the Catacombs (Froggman - 1993) 00:01:41
1993 - In Extremis (Blue Sphere - 1993) 00:01:53
1993 - Island Peril (Electric Fantasies - 1993) 00:02:05
1993 - Isle of the Dead (Rainmaker Software - 1993) 00:02:17
1993 - Ken's Labyrinth (Advanced Systems - 1993) 00:02:29
1993 - Lethal Tender (Pie in the Sky Software - 1993) 00:02:41
1993 - Shadowcaster (Raven Software - 1993) 00:02:53
1993 - Specter VR (Velocity Inc) 00:03:05
1993 - Terminator Rampage (Bethesda - 1993) 00:03:17
1994 - Corridor 7 (Capstone - 1994) 00:03:29
1994 - CyClones (Raven Software - 1994) 00:03:41
1994 - Depth Dwellers (Trisoft - 1994) 00:03:53
1994 - Euijeok_Im Kkeokjeong (Accend Inc - 1994) 00:04:05
1994 - Fortress of Dr. Radiaki, The (Future Vision - 1994) 00:04:17
1994 - Freaks (Lovecraft Dreams - 1994) 00:04:29
1994 - Hidden Below, The (Soft Enterprises - 1994) 00:04:41
1994 - Nitemare 3D (Gray Design Associates - 1994) 00:04:53
1994 - Operation Bodycount (Capstone - 1994) 00:05:05
1994 - Red Babe (Dark Cavern Productions - 1994) 00:05:17
1994 - Terminal Terror (Pie in the Sky Software - 1994) 00:05:29
1995 - Bloodwing_Pumpkinheads's Revenge (Bap Interactive - 1995) 00:05:41
1995 - Cybermage_Darklight Awakening (Origin Systems - 1995) 00:05:53
1995 - Dungeons of Kremlin (Gelios - 1995) 00:06:05
1995 - HURL (Millenium Media Group - 1995) 00:06:17
1995 - I.M. Meen (Animation Magic) 00:06:29
1995 - Ice & Fire (AnimaTek) 00:06:41
1995 - In Pursuit of Greed (Mind Shear Software - 1995) 00:06:53
1995 - Iron Assault (Graffiti - 1995) 00:07:05
1995 - Mortal Coil_Adrenaline Intelligence (Crush Ltd - 1995) 00:07:17
1995 - Nerves of Steel (Merit Studios - 1995) 00:07:29
1995 - Old Gold (Gelios - 1995) 00:07:41
1995 - Tekwar (Capstone - 1995) 00:07:53
1995 - Virus Explosion (NAVIGO Multimedia Produktions KG - 1995) 00:08:05
1995 - Wrath of Earth (Addix Software Development - 1995) 00:08:17
1996 - Angst_Rahzs Revenge (ManMachineGames - 1996) 00:08:29
1996 - Ashes to Ashes (Deep River Pubishing - 1996) 00:08:41
1996 - Assassin 2015 (Bluesky Software - 1996) 00:08:53
1996 - Bust Hillary 3D (Tenkiller Inc - 1996) 00:09:05
1996 - Chill Manor (Animation Magic) 00:09:17
1996 - Cyberdillo (Pixel Technologies - 1996) 00:09:29
1996 - Cylindrix (Goldtree Enterprises - 1996) 00:09:41
1996 - Eradicator (Accolade - 1996) 00:09:53
1996 - Hamster's Adventure (Laser Point - 1996) 00:10:05
1996 - Metal Rage_Defender of the Earth (Titus France - 1996) 00:10:17
1996 - Rebel Moon (Fenris Wolf - 1996) 00:10:29
1996 - Rex Blade - The Apocalypse (Xtreme Games - 1996) 00:10:41
1996 - Strife (Rogue Entertainment - 1996) 00:10:53
1996 - Westworld 2000 (Brooklyn Multimedia - 2006) 00:11:05
1996 - Witchhaven II_Blood Vengeance (Capstone - 11996) 00:11:17
1996 - XS (SCI Games - 1996) 00:11:29
1996 - ZPC (Zombie LLC - 1996) 00:11:41
1997 - Alien Cabal (QA Soft - 1997) 00:11:53
1997 - Alpha Storm (TAG - 1997) 00:12:05
1997 - Chasm_The Rift (Action Forms - 1997) 00:12:17
1997 - Chex Quest 2_Flemoids Take Chextropolis (Digital Cafe - 1997) 00:12:29
1997 - Defiance (Logicware - 1997) 00:12:41
1997 - Forbes Corporate Warrior (Brooklyn Multimedia - 1997) 00:12:53
1997 - HACX_Twitch and Kill (Banjo Sofrtware - 1997) 00:13:05
1997 - Last Rites (Ocean Software - 1997) 00:13:17
1997 - Lifeforce Tenka (Psygnosis - 1997) 00:13:29
1997 - Madspace_To Hell And Beyond (Maddox Games - 1997) 00:13:41
1997 - Malice (Team Epochalypse - 1997) 00:13:53
1997 - Mars3D - (Engine Technology CO.LTD - 1997) 00:14:05
1997 - Necrodome (Raven Software - 1997) 00:14:17
1997 - Operation Omega (Pro One Software - 1997) 00:14:29
1997 - Quiver (ADvertainment Software - 1997) 00:14:41
1997 - Smuta_Living Dead (Gelios - 1997) 00:14:53
1997 - X-Men_Ravages of Apocalypse (Zero Gravity - 1997) 00:15:05
1998 - Abyss, The_Incident At Europa (Sound Source Interactive - 1998) 00:15:17
1998 - Damage Incorporated (Paranoid Productions - 1998) 00:15:29
1998 - Extreme PaintBrawl (Creative Carnage - 1998) 00:15:41
1998 - Incidente em Varginha (Perceptum - 1998) 00:15:53
1998 - Juggernaut The New Story (Canopy Games - 1998) 00:16:05
1998 - Liquidator (Partizan Software - 1998) 00:16:17
1998 - Mr. Pibb_The 3D Interactive Game (Brand Games - 1998) 00:16:29
1998 - Osarium (Stratos - 1998) 00:16:41
1998 - Sword of Ares, The (Seth Galbraith - 1998) 00:16:53
1998 - Target (DeLyric Games - 1998) 00:17:05
1998 - Tyrannizer (Viper Bytes - 1998) 00:17:17
1998 - Z.A.R. (Maddox Games - 1998) 00:17:29
1999 - Codename Eagle (Refraction Games AB - 1999) 00:17:41
1999 - Escape (Ben Glick - 1999) 00:17:53
1999 - Exploding Lips (Galaxy Games - 1999) 00:18:05
1999 - Hades 2 (Espaco Informatica - 1999) 00:18:17
1999 - Mortyr 2093-1944 (Mirage Media - 1999) 00:18:29
1999 - Pyl (Optimus Nexus - 1999) 00:18:41
1999 - Raising Dead (Gelios - 1999) 00:18:53
1999 - Redline (Accolade - 1999) 00:19:05
1999 - Russian Roulette 2_The Next Worlds (Logos - 1999) 00:19:17
1999 - Saints of Virtue (Shine Studios - 1999) 00:19:29
1999 - Skout (Soft Enterprises - 1999) 00:19:41
1999 - War In Heaven, The (Eternal Warriors LLC - 1999 00:19:53
Hey man love ya and what you do for us, thanks.
Played Terminal terror with my bro in law. The nostalgia vibes bit hard as he came off his bike and died not long after. Rip bro.
The first ones really make you appreciate how revolutionary Doom was
Or even more revolutionary: Ultima underworld. It had sloped floors, sloped walls, bridges/level over level, polygonal geometry instead of sector based, textured walls, ceilings and floors, a rudamentary lighting system, rudamentary player physics (jumping, swiming, sneaking), looking up and down with correct perspective and it pre-dates Wolfenstein 3D. They went for an immersive sim RPG, so they didn't need the framerate to be as high and they made the viewport smaller, but they never had to bother with the "2.5D" raycasting Doom did; they just went with full 3D levels. That game is so out of its time that it's like finding rabbit fossils in precambrian rock; it just shouldn't exist.
I've been having flashbacks of some of these from when I was a kid but couldn't for the life of me remember their names. Thank you!
Cyclones blew my mind as a kid, was the first FPS with mouse look I ever played.
Finally i found the names of two games i remembered playing a bit as a kid, "Ken's Labyrinth" and "Nitemare 3D". I probably played some of the others but this two alonside with Catacomb where my favourites i really enjoyed the psicodelic style of those even as a kid.
You can see why some of them were obscure 😅
Some really good ones though 😘
Oh, a list of games to make Civvie play. Neat.
I know of a few of these, and have played even fewer. I think I've only actually played Strife, Chasm, and Eradicator. By pure coincidence, I have the last two installed on my computer right now.
WOW, I'm OCD about this subject, I want to play all the old school FPS, it's an obsession I have, thank you very much 😛
@@marceloavila786 Same here.
Nice work Gary these look amazing
12:18 Chasm: The Rift from 1997 was not obscure, it was a great game for its time. I remember playing it at my cousin house on his PC. The game for me was so advanced! Just look how different it looks! Half of this games from the early 90s looks like shitposts with awful textures and terribble framerate :) Chasm looked fantastic!
7:54 Hey look, it’s Civvie’s favorite game.
I KNEW it was TEKWAR!
@ The Matrix level’s what truly made him fall in love with the game. (And William Shatner)
its funny to see in 1997 the transition of FPS games, some still using the old Doom or Build engine and others starting to use the Quake 1 or their own 3d engine
I remember Damage Incorporated as CORPS on the Mac 😉
I like how this one also has many other games I didn't know of yet, in addition to others already covered by a bunch of people from the past. Goes to show how much effort you've put into researching these games!
The 90's and the dawn of the fps was an amazing time to be alive. I'm so lucky i got to experience it as a teenager. Great compilation!
Actually Robocop 3 was first game featuring 3d hand to hand combat - levels where player fight cyberninjas if external view chosen.
Malice was great, a Quake total conversion. It predated Half-Life, and in a lot of ways did many new things within the genre that Half-Life gets credited with. Lots of other great games on here that I was able to play back in the day, thanks to sites like Home of the Underdogs and Emuparadise.
Yep, Malice was really great 100% agree 😎👍
Mortal Coil: Adrenaline Intelligence was insane good back in the days, i remember i was surprised by graphic and game mechanics. There a lot of good sci-fi and supernatural things in this game, i love how you can choose other teammates as playable character or just play your game as a first person shooter or a third person game. Ty for this list, i've found a lot of ms-dos games i never played before :)
Great video and content bro, awesome!! ❤️
When I watch this video, for some reason the games made by Capstone look good, starting from the UI or HUD, the graphics, and the gameplay looks smooth and solid, for that era. 👍
Amazing work again Gary. My favorite genre of gaming. No Requiem: Avenging Angel though??!
I remember that one, still got the disc for it! 🙂
Maybe its not obscure enough. I know it, although I've never played it.
@@marceloavila786 I mean, Chasm is on here. It's pretty obscure. All respect to Gary for still compiling this list though.
I really considered putting Requiem on this list! I have featured it in other videos...I ended up choosing against including just because it had a pretty big following among my friends and I didn't think it would count as "obscure". But if I do a part 3 of this video, I will definitely include it!
@@GaryRetroGamer make a "not so obscure fps" video. I mean, is there another game like Requiem, Chasm, Shogo, Outlaws (1997) that I haven't heard of yet?? That's the question I ask myself every day.
By the way Gary, I've been looking for this FPS that I played as a child, for about 6 years now, and thanks to you, I found it, it was Ashes to Ashes. Thank you very much for your work.
You definitely missed a few, like Radix: Beyond the Void. I remember reading about Redline in a gaming magazine.
I love how most of them used a modified Wolfenstein 3D engine or something similar. Raycasters all the way to '96.
I even spotted reused Wolfenstein textures. The amount of shovelware using the Wolf engine and later the Doom engine is stunning.
1996 was such a weird year for gaming on pc
Some should stay forgotten. But as a 9
year old Nightmare 3D was the best I had and I loved every minute of it
Woah DID's Robocop 3 from 1992 looks cool. Also it's interesting how some early games actually did incorporate first-person weapons on the side rather than straight in the middle. Maybe people thought it would be confusing? Wasn't Dracula the game John Romero liked to make fun of because it seemed so primitive compared to Doom that they were developing? It remained superior to many clones and copies even till the late 90's believe it or not. I loved Cyclones because of how you could free-aim your gun around. Cybermage was cool I remember huge cardboard cutouts for that, or posters, HURL, yeah... man, I think I've seen most of these games because my brother would pass down these ooold shareware and demo discs and me at the time having a crappy computer, well, that was my gaming experience basically. Eradicator is cool, it's on Steam. You know it surprises me how many people still made these objectively inferior games as late as 1996 when Quake and Duke Nukem 3D were dominating the FPS market. I freaking loved XS, which is what inspired Unreal Tournament. Alien Cabal freaked me out as a kid. I wouldn't say Chasm is all that obscure, it was a defining game and I remember huge screens with demos playing on it around the time of Quake. Super glad Defiance made the list, I remember it being impactful because of the narration. Now I'm wondering why Radix Beyond The Void wasn't on the list and Lifeforce Tenka definitely should be more recognized. Malice was cool, I saw that in a magazine, based on a Quake mod I believe, the Xmen game was also built on top of the Quake engine. I remember playing Necrodome a lot... it's a timeless classic, reminds me of that post-apocalyptic taxi game called Quarantine, which also didn't make the list. Damage Incorporated is what got me into death metal. Funny to see how a bunch of games basically did asset swaps even so long ago. Mortyr I wouldn't consider all that obscure either, it just wasn't that successful, it did spawn three sequels and the spiritual successor Ubersoldier in the mid 2000's. Redline was awesome but I only played the demo. I think at the time I was more invested in Blood 2. Surprised things like Requiem, Blake Stone and Shogo (just to name A FEW) weren't on the list!
Oh I remember Iron Assault. I was like 7 years old and played it on a PC at my dad's work. Probably my first PC game
Interesting list I played a lot of games from this list, about 1/3, I know about 2/3, and never heard about 1/3.
One fun fact is the whole transition between the dungeon crawlers and tank likes to the FPS we know today. The other fun fact is 2.5D never died with the 3D
HURL unlocked a core memory
Yes, finally! Bless your heart and channel!
1:17 This game looks INSANE for 1992! It makes Wolfenstein 3D look like outdated shovelware!
For anyone wondering, the key has already been claimed; apparently, it was for "High On Life".
Thanks for letting us know!
Very nice highlighting of these obscure games.
Some of these could do with the Nightdive Studios treatment e.g. Codename Eagle and Mortyr.
Not sure why cylindrix is on this list. Its a hybrid space/arena vehicle combat game. You can switch between a flight and ground hover mode.
It was later totally remade and released as Dead Reckoning.
Man if you see all this... Makes you appreciate even harder what kind of a masterpiece Half-life (1998) was.
nah its really overrated, there a lot of good fps before Half Life.
What's there to appreciate? The uninterrupted narrative and the full-3D environment? I mean, yeah, but not every fps needs it.
@@georgeoldsterd8994 I mean the graphics of Half-life makes all of these games look as if they're 10 years older than it. And then I haven't spoken about the narrative aspects yet.
@@paolopatti4409not overrated at all. Half-life is definitely one of the great 90s fps games.
@@MukishPukishTo be fair, most of these obscure fps games were behind the times and shouldn't be compared to HL. HL should be compared to the other top dog fps games like Quake 2, Unreal, SiN, Jedi Knight etc.
There was a fps around the band KISS that even released for the dreamcast. I think it was made in 1999 or 2000
The later ones when compared to their contemporaries Quake, Quake 2, Half-Life and System Shock 2, highlight for me just how good those games were...and still are.
Awesome Gary, very cool
Metal rage blew my mind as a kid with how open it was
I bought Nitemare 3D on a CD bundled with like 50 other games, including a card game with nude photos in it. Amazing what you could get away with back in the day.
I feel like I've _seen_ a surprising number of these - although still less than half - thanks to TH-camrs (stuff like Isle of the Dead) and vague memories of crap I found on shareware discs back in the day (like Operation Bodycount), but I haven't _played_ many at all. Gives me a lot to look more into!
Good collection right there. Knew quite a few of these (maybe even most) either from playing them myself, or from various reviews I'd watched over the years. A lot of gems here, and a bunch of stinkers as well. There's something simply magical about how these games were essentially the same, yet unique in their own ways. I only wish more of them got the Doom treatment and were playable on modern hardware without having to muck around with DosBox's settings.
Although i consider myself a huge gaming nerd quite a few were unknown for me. Some i had almost forgotten.
Not bad!
You missed Lunicus!
One of the only ones of these ancient obscure shooters that I've actually played.
I also think NAM and Terra Nova Strike Force Centauri fit the obscurity bill
From the ones listed I've played (as of the time of writing this):
Hoverforce
Alien Cabal
Ice & Fire
Isle of the Dead
Ken's Labyrinth
Alpha Storm
TekWar
X-Men: Ravages of Apocalypse
Angst: Rahz's Revenge
Ashes to Ashes
Assassin 2015
Extreme PaintBrawl
Strife
Also the PS1 demo of Lifeforce Tenka and the 3DO version of Cyberdillo.
There are some serious gems in here! "Chasm: The Rift" has been updated on Gog and is well worth a play.
....and I was worried I'd played everything! What arrogance! :)
I'm using this as a "What to play next?" list. Good vid and no annoying commentary
Some of them look impressive but came out too late. Something that looks and feel like Doom 1 is sure to be obscure if it comes out in 1998 when Quake and Half-Life were already a thing.
Pra quem veio pelo game br do post, é hades 2 de espaço informática
i subscribed, this type of contednt makes me hapopy
I've pretty much always liked games where you use fantasy or sci fi weapons, not like some typical enchanted crossbow or some words, but like in hexen theres a cool variety of weapons to use for paladin.
Or in half life opposing force you got the electric ant, or that spore launcher. Like some living weapons or in blood you got that skull staff. Etc. Something different than those (imo) boring magical swords or typical laser guns etc.
Maybe a video about doing one? Would love to know games where you get to use weapons that are not so typical etc.
0:42 Dementia Jaxxon.
RoboCop 3 is a unknown gem, and even more so for bring licensed from such a terrible movie. It blew my mind back in the day.
It would have been great if they put a lot of these out on the snes when they were current.
Now I finally know where 30% of doom mod assets come from
Also.
Chasm. That's the only one
obscure you say ?
its a goldmine for expanding my backlog.
Haha Bust Hillary 3D have the Titel Music from X-Files. 😅
This is great, can you do the same for 2000s?
Tek War..I spent so many nights playing it!
codename eagle was deceptively fun multiplayer cos the jank physics let you do stuff like drive motorbikes into blimps then jump them out the back into midair while letting the blimp crash into something overhead. good times.
The first Parkan misssing because not obscure enough or because half a space sim?
Otherwise, great list. Would be nice to see some of them remade.
Shadowcaster was excellent for the time. Just compare the graphics with other titles from 1993
That first person hadouken is so cool 😎
Redline!
Never heard of it, but it immediately caught my eye. That game looks sick.
great job! love that much
J'adore
Wondered if War in Heaven would end up here. Had to wait until the very end.
Im an old school fps fan, loved a lot of these games back then but man some are utter shite 😂
Where's Witchaven (1995) ?! That game was epic!
You forgot the marathon.
Great selection, but you really should've increased the cycles for some of these when you ran them in DOSBox. Ken's Labyrinth is NOT supposed to chug like that, and I'm guessing the same is true for most of the others that I'm not familiar with. There's no way so many shooters in mid 90s were running at single digit framerates like many of them appear to be in this video.
I think Requiem: Avenging Angel probably belongs on this list more than Strife and Chasm which are no longer obscure due to having received Nightdive ports/rematers.
Liquidator... how the hell is there a Build Engine game that I'm not aware of? And looks like it was added as freeware on Steam just a couple weeks ago! Will need to check this one out.
I played demos/sharewares of (mostly from PC Gamer demo disks): Ken's Labyrinth, Shadowcaster, Specter VR, CyClones, Fortress of Dr. Radiaki, Cybermage, In Pursuit of Greed, Assassin 2015, Rex Blade, XS, ZPC, Chasm, Necrodome, Codename Eagle, Mortyr, Redline.
I played through the full version of Eradicator just last year, and Strife Veteran Edition 4 years ago. Also played a bit of the Last Rights, Madspace, and Z.A.R. on Steam. I own Redline and Witchaven 2 on Steam but haven't played them there yet.
I was sure I got a free CD with Rebel Moon Rising with the Pentium 233 MMx I bought in '97, and I'd played a bit of it at the time, but I have no idea where that disk is now.
Yeah a whole bunch of these are misconfigured. They're either running too slow or too fast, and there's missing sound effects or music in a bunch of them as well.
I kind of wish that people would start recording gameplay from PCem or 86Box rather than DOSBox.
Rebel Moon Rising was a pack-in for a lot of vendors since it was one of the few games that took advantage of MMX to have fast software-based color lighting rendering, so your memory is probably correct.
I thought I was aware of most obscure shooters from the era and yet half of those were completely new to me. Where do you even find this stuff?
BLOOD is the best game for me. Now It's Blood Fresh Supply. You can do many movement-pro-tricks.
Have this memory of a game there the plot goes something like this. You start in a forest there your plane crashed (black background, sprite trees). After some wondering in the forest you find this castle. In the castle you are greeted by a strange talking cat. You wonder some in that castle in go in the basement there strange things happening and you must survive and escape. I'am trying to find this game for 20+ years with no luck. Or maybe i just imagined this game...
That's got to be Chub Gam 3D
@@krad2520 omg THANK YOU. I really started to think that i imagined this game.
Ah Ken's Labyrinth, classic.
Corridor 7 was a classic.
The Fortress of Dr. Radiaki, eh I was never very good at it and sadly I think I only had the demo.
Does anyone remember a game called Defcon 5? It was released on DOS, PSX and Saturn.
Ooof. That's a good one and slipped my mind. That's the one where you walked around the base and had to setup base defense turrets! It 100% should have been in this video. Thanks for reminding me. It'll have to go in v2.1 of this video!
@@GaryRetroGamer exactly... never figured out what I was supposed to do in that game... also, there was Congo and Robotica for Sega Saturn.
My AUNT showed me Hades 2 once NEO and TRINITY from matrix show up as civilians you gotta rescue!!
I assume you excluded the well known stuff like Wolfenstein 3D or Dark Forces for being well known, but why are Chex Quest 2 and Witchaven 2 on the list while their first games aren't?
(Come to think of it, weren't Malice HACX, Juggernaut and Ravages of Apocalypse mods rather than genuine standalone games?)
Good job including all those Russian games, not a lot of people know about them.
Glad Eradicator made the list though, I had a lot of fun with it back in the day.
Chex Quest 2 was chosen because while the original was quite popular - the fact that a sequel existed was not widely known. Most kids who got the game in a box of cereal had no idea the sequel was out there. The same idea led to Witchhaven 2 being included; while the original was a bit on the obscure side, few people know it actually received a sequel.
Malice/HACX/Juggernaut/Ravages of Apocalypse were actually all retail products that you could walk into store and buy, meaning they were "professional" efforts - not just some freebie user mod (in theory, anyway). They were "standalone" in the sense that they had nothing to do with the original games. Also, I believe there was a version of Ravages of Apocalypse that was purchaseable as a standalone game.
Eradicator is totally underrated. Hopefully more people will pick it up after watching this video!
yes! what a good video!
Tbh i want them all, atleast 5 minutes
God some of these look positively awful -- like pure asset flips. It's amazing to think that some of the later titles were contemporaneous with Half-Life. From a game preservation standpoint I'm glad these games haven't been lost, but you can almost see why some of them might have been.
Hovertank was great. Corridor 7 ❤. Wrath of Earth cost me a lot time. Metal Rage ❤❤❤❤.
Hell yeah, Rob Zombie!
No Jurasssic Park DOS fps levels? First game with gun on the side of screen, not i centre. Technically ahead of it times, being released in 1993 had features absent even in 1995 games.
Nerves of Stell was first fps profesionally translated to my native language (Polish).
Target looks outdatet but had split screen mode- don't remember any pc fps had this then.
Cheers!
Do you mean Jurassic Park Tresspasser? That's really a game that wanted to be VR before VR was a thing :)
@thewhyzer No.
Jurassic Park 1993 DOS game.
@@hubertmitura2587 Oh, I just looked it up and it does indeed have FPS sections. Something else new I learned today then, thanks!
This is all the games you’d get on a bootleg PS5 from India
It would be a pleasant surprise...these games would certainly be better than anything in the PS5 library ... no woke crap
I played Corridor 7 demo :)
And played Kremlin too 😅
Quake 1 Malice and X-Man is very cool!
Smuta 1996>Smuta 2024!!! 😜
Ive got 6 points!
In Extremis needs a GZDoom port.
Wrath of Earth looks like Dark Messiah of Might and Magic V: World of Xeen
Nunca vi nenhum desses, de fato, obscuros.
Regarding the early ones, the first terminator and shadowcaster were quite mainstream back then, not really obscure.
Name of intro music?
Face à ces jeux là, l'atari jaguar et la 3DO n'avait pas du tout à rougir.
Kickstarter top 100 games
and Forbes Corporate Warrior is a Cruelty Squad: The Original
I'm watching this as it came up randomly but there was a pc fps I used to play in the late 90's snd have no idea what it was called...2-6 players I think... polygon maps with barely any texture but- each team had a base line a castle, you could choose between sniper or rifle and you had c4,my move was to hide in the enemy base and c4 them as they came in or out...is this game in this video? Lets find out
Nope the game I was looking for is not here.must be too obscure
juggernaut не малоизвестная же)
17:47 battlefield granpa
Where is exhumed aka powerslave?
18:05 Is that a fucking eva?
I don't recognise any of them
scary games