Patrick Gann writes "One of Quintet's earliest creations has, somehow, remained their most well-known, despite the greater depth and experience offered by later titles (i.e. the Soul Blazer trilogy). But there's something special about this genre-blender that captivated gamers worldwide. Is it the concept of a dethroned God as protagonist, having to fight his way back to top spot against demonic powers while winning back the hearts of the people? Is it the welcome reprieve from lengthy Sim-style gaming to do some mindless skull-bashing in the platformer mode? Maybe the visual qualities, or the awesome soundtrack that could go toe-to-toe with Castlevania any day of the week? Of course, it's a combination of all these things. Take any one away, and ActRaiser wouldn't be as special. This was certainly proven by ActRaiser 2, which cut the Sim element and suffered terribly for it."
The 1990s were a time where mech-suit manga and television shows were starting to filter into the United States. The result was that we got a boatload of cool mech games like Metal Warriors.
Still love the Power Rangers games but most of these underrated games cost an arm and a leg to buy unless you kept them around when they released.
Sparkster. Like Rocket Knight Adventures on the Sega Genesis neither game seems to be brought up much. I played both game a whole lot growing up.
Wow, would you look at that? A game list with some actual forgotten gems. Color me impressed.
Good stuff. 👍
I cannot praise EVO The Search for Eden enough. This game deserves a remake as it’s one of the wildest platformer JRPGs ever made. The concept of spending XP on evolving and devolving on the fly to navigate the world was really interesting. Evolution in games is rarely tackled creatively but EVO nailed it.
Unfortunately, not all the best games are accessible today for a whole host of reasons:
- The title is too rare or expensive to find today
- The translated version of the game never made it to U.S. or the version that came along sucked
- A good or fun game was overlooked in its time and deserves some spotlight
Released only a few months after the Super NES itself, the game quickly showed off the promise of Nintendo’s powerful new system,.
Still unique, one of its kind. I am still waiting for a good spiritual successor or a sequel.