games

Lightspeed by MicroProse

It is an Elite like game from the 90s where you had to trade, battle, and negotiate with aliens for fuel and equipment. You could also colonize planets for resources and the like.

There was a company called Parroty Interactive for a few years in the 90s that specialized in making terrible parodies like Pyst and Star Warped. Looking at the list of personnel, they actually had some notable names: Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn and even John Goodman. Too bad they don't really count as games and are also incredibly unfunny.

Sorry about this. I haven't actually played it, but I saw it on steam and it embedded in my mind forever.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/310080/Hatoful_Boyfriend/

Psychopomp is an ambient horror dungeon crawler that costs just ten bucks on steam for its full version but also has its original version for free as a demo, it’s very mindfucky and the protag (who’s in my pfp) is Literally Me (Trueanon listener)

There was this old ass game I used to play on Mac OS 9 that was like a space fighter. You could collect power ups maybe to get different types of lasers. Top down perspective. I've tried to find it on and off over the years with no success :/

Winged warrior was a shareware game that I played a ton as a kid.

Someone already mentioned Summoner. Idk how obscure Out Wars was, but its like hell divers with a huge emphasis on jetpacks.

Outpost

https://youtu.be/-3t2MT5Rjg8

I played the shit out of this when I was younger and forgot all about it until I heard the classical song 'Mars' by Gustav Holst in some OTHER mars building game, which reminded me of Outpost.

Sherlock

https://dosgames.com/game/sherlock/

Apparently you can still download this one which is amazing, but this was my first ever logic puzzle game, we'll before minesweeper came along. It works along the same lines as Minesweeper or Sudoku in that you have a limited bot of information and have to use logic to figure out what the missing items are.

Aurora 4x probably
it's fucking sick though

MEGARACE

It came packed with the PC we had although in hindsight IDK why. It ran at a smooth 4-5 frames and kid me loved every bit of it.

It's kind of like Wipeout before Wipeout existed, plus some very cheesy cutscenes.

There was this one game I played once that left an impression on me but I can't remember the name at all. It was set in a Nordic country in medieval times, it had a top down view of 2D sprites, and it had a super hardcore survival simulation. I remember chopping down a tree taking multiple in game hours (depending on your skill and tools) and a big focus being put on starting and keeping your campfire going in order to stave off hypothermia.

I loved Robosaurus vs Space Bastards. Puzzle platformer (more puzzle than platformer), very 90s culture.

Neverhood was also one of those games i played only like 10 minutes of but it has always been on my mind since.

Stonekeep gave me very fond memories.

As for obscure i will name La Abadia del Crimen. Holy shit it's free on steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/474030/The_Abbey_of_Crime_Extensum

For weirdest in artsy fartsy form i will mention The Path and also The Void.

I remember one where you had to peel potatoes

and another where you were a birthday cake in a maze getting attacked by forks

Genesia/Ultimate Domain, an old 4x game that involved managing individual townsfolk and building placement as well as tile based civ-like combat. Started an addiction.

Also shout out to Chex Quest.

Taco Bell

Not sure if this is niche but I played Stranded 2 which is like a survival crafting game before the genre exploded.

I don't remember the name of this but I also really liked this dungeon mage spelunker game that was installed on laptops in staples lol

Astral Entertainment made some interesting stuff. Pac Guy/Pea Guy springs to mind, but they also had some other stuff. Some detective game that had a sudden shift on the final boss, complete with you going ham with your service pistol and there was a big robot and some excessive Wilhelm screaming.

It's maybe not so obscure now since it's on GOG but Rage of Mages 1 & 2, also known as Allods, famously connected to the horrible Allods Online MMO. I had a CD and even played it online. I remember people made custom farming/cheating maps where a stationary dragon would repeatedly kill high level orcs and you could sneak in and take the loot out of their bags before it got you. The art, animations (especially in the shop), and the music stick with me to this day.

My dad had this weird game on a 3.5" floppy called Heaven and Earth but we had no manual for it so it was particularly hard to figure out how to play. But it had a really interesting aesthetic and pretty good graphics for its time. This is actually the first time I've been able to search and find any trace of information about it

I remember playing some DOS shmup way back in the day called The Last Eichhof. Here's an archive of their website of the game. It has complete school project vibes except they're like Swiss college dudes from the early 90s, so there's so many random jokes that Swiss college dudes from the early 90s would presumably understand but that flew over my head.

I also remember playing some weird shit when I was dicking around with MAME. There's plenty of weird arcade games as well.

are we talking obscure games or old games cause the list is mostly old games

Fine Artist for DOS/early windows. and the hobbit videogame

My sisters and I played a fair number of random DOS games growing up. Probably the weirdest one that I had a lot of fun playing was Pickle Wars. I don't think it is particularly impressive in hindsight, but I had a great time with it when I was younger. We also dumped a lot of hours into Blake Stone and Zoombinis. I think one of my sisters revisited Zoombinis in college and actually finished the game.

I really appreciate this question because while searching for links, I've found a lot of emulators for old Classics that defined my childhood. Now I know what I'm spending my weekend on...

The most obscure, Peter Gabriel - eve. Did not play it a lot.

One I liked especially, Dreamweb. Very weird experience, even the interface, for example, you can pick up individual shoes.