The build engine was LIGHTYEARS ahead of anything else omg it wasn’t as apparent back in the day but yo this is like fucking nes to ps2 build against basically everyone else
I love how unpredictable the graphics are. some of the late 90s titles look like early 90s. Bonus round: infestation 1990 behind the iron gate 1995 extreme paintbrawl 1998
Vodeo games were a massive part of my childhood growing up in the 80's & 90's so of course ive played all of these and much more. I was especially all about playing all the obscured games, platforms and accessories that i could get my hands on.
Also thank you for sharing this video because it dose really help preserve the obscured chapters of gaming history for newer generations to come 👍😎👍 💯‼️
My dad and I both played through it when it first came out; I still have very vivid memories of doing so. My mom didn't play BS, but she did play Wolfenstein 3D with us. For same insane reason, episode two was her favorite 🤣🤣
@@belandinoI've not played it but I've seen it discussed in several videos about retro gaming. The one that surprised me the most was Marathon 2. I know mac was not known for gaming at the time but i assumed the game was pretty well known due to the developers later ganes
I remember playing Blakestone, Kens Labyrinth, CyClones, Depth Dwellers, Cybermage, TekWar, Witchaven, Marathon 2, Chasm. I know I can say one thing for sure...I don't miss keyboard aiming.
It wasn't a Quake clone. It used the same technology as Doom, it's just the developer was able to use a ton of tricks to make it look way more advanced than what it was.
@@SamiiYouthe cutscenes are so dang NICE looking for its time. Totally agree with your comment also, very talented and skillful work required to pull of that level of professionalism
@@SamiiYou Not even that. Doom could do sectors, so you could have floors and ceilings that varied in height throughout the level. Chasm was more like a very well disguised Wolfenstein 3D or Rise of the Triad, aka a tile based raycaster. There were no true variations in elevation, those were achieved the same way as the cool architecture, via 3d models. It could do differently angled walls though, as I learned recently. That wasn't used too often as the fake architecture models were designed to fit together on a grid, so they needed to be used in conjunction with 90 degree corners. Many features were added at the same time levels were being designed, so later levels tend to use more of the engine features than earlier ones.
Gelios sure did have an uh... interesting... approach to sound design. Also wild to see Raising Dead at 10:12 and then Redline following immediately, and realize that they were released in the same year.
The second i saw the thumbnail of this video i thought that In Pursuit of Greed would be on the list and it is!! The soundtrack is special because that was composed by Andrew Sega, or Necros. His works in the Crusaders series and also in the Unreal series are fantastic and to be honest the best recommendations on this list goes to Marathon and Chasm: The Rift
I played these five from this compiled nostaglia video: Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold (Jam Productions - 1993) Ken's Labyrinth (Advanced Systems - 1993) 01:36 Terminator Rampage (Bethesda - 1993) 02:12 Corridor 7 (Capstone - 1994) 02:24 Tekwar (Capstone - 1995) 05:24 Witchaven (Capstone - 1995) 05:48 Marathon 2 was mentioned, but didn't the first game get ported to PCs after Macs release? I know I briefly played it on my college dorm roommate (thanks Bullfrog!)'s new PowerMac back then. Also, I only played these briefly with their sharewares and demos. None of them were worth playing their full versions.
Especially that one shooter that had a sprite model of a bodybuilder guy in a Speedo. Bet he thought he was going to be as famous as Schwarzenegger as a result.
Blake stone is an excellent Wolfenstein clone (actually uses the same game engine) hat had the awful luck to come one week earlier DOOM released. Fortunately, I've got this game as a kid got got to know this excellent game that had the bad luck to fall into obscurity.
Damn, I never thought I would want to try some of those games, but there were indeed quite a few good looking ones, both in graphics and gameplay. I was specially interested in those FPS with an aiming reticle independent to the screen direction.
Wow... this is a seriously impressive as hell list. These old PC/DOS FPS games from the 90s and early 2000s are what I've mostly been playing from the time I was a kid up until, well, still currently. I felt like I've had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of most of these old FPS's. But man, there's a good handful I've never even HEARD of before. Great job putting this together. Also really cool to see Wrath of Earth, Last Rites, and Damage Inc get a little coverage, those games actually very underrated for the most part imo.
Played all of them (personally, I think the Blake Stone series deserved more recognition but it was born too late in the 90s)... and most of them used the raycasting technique popularized by Wolfenstein 3D.
They actually bought the game engine from ID software. But they managed to tweak and improve it, to the point it rivalred DOOM engine and Build engine. Check out Rise of the Triad to see how the Wolfenstein engine truly peaked.
4:09 wow, Dungeons of Kremlin! dat a simple but fun one :) afaik game had its own exclusive "engine" and weights 3214352 bytes only. Also had a good music on a splash screen..but only 3 levels I suppose it was write on Borland C++
I've played Robocop 3 and Blake Stone. I've seen Witchaven and Cybermage. I've heard of The Fortress of Dr. Radiaki, The Dungeons of Kremlin, Tekwar, Azrael's Tear, Marathon (including Marathon 2), and Chasm.
I used to play Damage Incorporated ( 9:04 ) a lot back in our iMac days. Looking back, I wish I'd known it was supposed to be a SQUAD shooter, not a do-it-all-yourself shooter. Those old marathon engine games had some pretty ambitious ideas! There was another FPS called Prime Target, which was mostly shooting spies but also collecting tape recorders and stuff to solve a mystery.
Island of the Dead, Ken's Labyrinth, Corridor 7, and Nitemare 3D I played to some capacity with shareware, but the only one I really actually played was Blake Stone.
There’s an old shooter a friend showed me in the 90s, probably 98 or 99 at the latest, where you were in a futuristic setting and their were enemies that lucked like plucked chicken carcasses and you could see some of them in giant tube vats full of liquid in some lab setting. If this rings a bell for anyone I’d love to know what this game was.
Wrath of Earth is a real underrated gem. It's like a System Shock-lite, that works on 386 CPUs iirc. It has some bizzare XMS/EMS requirements, so I wasn't able to play it back in the days, but now DOSBox makes it trivial, it should be revisited
So that's how the hidden treasures of 90's looks like... Some of them looks like the copycats of more famous projects like Shadow Warrior of Duke Nukem. Still, it counts as a lost pages of history, so we gotta treat it the right way.
shocked that zero tolerance isnt on here,that game was my first fps and even though it has aged terribly,ill always have nostalgic memories of it and it was quite innovative for its day
How about Amulets and Armour? Still remember playing demo of it, I ve enjoyed it back then. Also Jurasssic Park fpp stages had very impressive engine considering that this game might been released even before Doom
Amulets and Armor closer to rpg or dungeon crawler, it's not such "classic/boomer fps" as doom, wolf 3d, etc. Still, good game, was spending hours with its quests
I played the shit out of Blake Stone, although I never played BS: Planet Strike until just a couple years ago. I still find it a very enjoyable game to play, all these years later. In the case of the original, it had the unenviable task of going up against DOOM; BS came out 12/5/93 and five days later (on my bday, actually!) DOOM hit the scene. Obviously, we know who ended up coming out on top in that competition 😅 Despite that, I think both games are highly underrated and absolutely worth a play for anyone that enjoys old DOS FPS games. As for the rest of these, I've heard of a number of them, but never played any of them aside from Shadowcaster and HURL (holy hell, I haven't though of THAT one in forever). Civvie11 has some videos for a fair amount of the games on this list, though; his Tekwar one in particular is fantastic, lmao.
Very interesting! Some games like Marathon and Chasm are good, but too many show that Doom was a hit for good reasons Besides flowing faster and looking better than some games released later, it had much better stage design. Many games here seem to be "open space with dozens of bullet sponge enemies" only Also, someone liked Operation Body Count enough to make a playable Doom total conversion mod some time ago...
I'll also recommend Killing Time and Last Rites as good games, underrated and worth playing. Most of the rest were actual garbage and more like reskinned Wolf3D clones than Doom.
I've definitely played at least some of these - I had forgotten all about Ken's Labyrinth but recognised that clip of it. I had that (and a bunch of other stuff) on a shareware disc.
Some of these weren't "obscure" at all. Blake Stone, Dracula, Tekwar and Azrael Tear were important releases at the time and we're always looking for games like Doom in the 90s.
4:01 oh my...that sound effect lol. Ive heard that exact one in thanksgiving episodes of american Western tv shows...from the late 1960s. Lol. Another note; I really like the art direction of that "H.U.R.L." game. It has that sleazy neon graffiti look that just defines my mental picture of early 90s gaming
Island Peril's engine looks way to sophisticated for 1993 - when most "Doom Clones" were actually still trying to catch up to Wolfenstein3D :) I played Blake Stone, Robocop, Terminator Rampage, Cybermage, Witchaven and Shadow Caster. But I didn't consider the latter ones FPS, more like action rpgs, or First person melees ;)
For me, a lot of these games were ruined by the maze like structure. The one I really wanted to like was Terminator Rampage, and it wasn't a bad game at all, just became so frustrating to have to solve what is essentially a maze.
Many. I know I played Tekwar, Corridor 7, Cybermage, Nitemare 3D, Rebel Roon (And Rebel Moon Rising), Isle of the Dead, Terminator Rampage, Operation Bodycount, all three Marathon games, and both Blake Stone games. Also some of the other games seem familiar though I don't know if I played them or watched someone else play them.
It's funny how most of the early ones look more blocky and boring like wolfenstein engine, when Doom had mastered gorgeous level design back in later 1993. Slow to adapt.
There was this one PC game I used to have back in the 90s that was like Wolfenstein, but you had to sneak behind the nazi to get a machine gun, kill dogs and eat their food, and the boss looked like Darth Vader. I wish I remembered the name of it. It wasn't Spear Of Destiny.
I'm not sure I would call Marathon 2 to obscure. Halo has a lot to say about it, But there is actually a pretty loyal following behind it. Especially when you factor the modded open source engine remaster. Credit words due though, it wasn't receiving that well at the time, at least not like it is now.
Some of these games really deserve a remake for modern systems. Can you imagine playing Azreal's Tear or CyClones with an engine like Steam's Enhanced version of System Shock? How about CyberMage using GZDoom? Marathon has already made the leap thanks to Aleph One, why not do the same for some the others?
Great video, I'd never even heard of some of these! I've played and beat both Blakestone games. Played Last Rites on Steam recently for 1-2 levels before getting hopelessly stuck. Played the shareware episode of Ken's Labyrinth and the demos of Shadowcaster, Radiaki, Cybermage, Greed, Witchaven, Rebel Moon, XS, ZPC, Chasm, Mortyr, Redline. Some of the demos I played to completion, some, like Radiaki and Shadowcaster for only a few minutes. Most of these were from PC Gamer Demo disks. Rebel Moon might've been full version, it was a special MMX version that came with my P233, but I only played a level or two.
1999, when you get Medal of Honor, System Shock 2 and Homeworld, one year after Half Life and Ocarina of Time, and you see that game Raising Dead, based on the classic Doom engine. Did it sell even one single copy?
Cybermage (03:48) is actually quite good. It's just finicky with PC speed (it's running way too fast in the video - some things like animations and bobbing speed up but movement does not) I find it runs best with DOSBOX at 200000 cycles (for 640x480 mode)
Beautiful times when nothing in the genre had yet been defined, and everyone was figuring things out, including how to get around hardware limitations. Some of these games are in digital distribution (blake stone, corridor 7) but most are so forgotten that no one even tries to sell them, which is a shame, because I would love to play at least Shadowcaster, but not via dosbox
played mortyr.... depressing game, still remember how downed i felt after playing the game for a day... something about that game graphics and art design really depressed me Chasm was awesome
oh i played through chasm: the rift many times. i don't think i played any of the others , although i cannot say for 100% sure, maybe i played a demo of one or two others. since i played a lot of games in the 90s and had tons of pc magazine discs where those obscurities would often be included.
Nearly two weeks in and this is the first comment to point out the presence of Ken's Labyrinth and its importance to gaming history! You sir, are an educated gamer!
@@GaryRetroGamer 🤓 thank you. I've played a few others here but a lot of them I've never seen. This is great for anyone looking for weird retro gaming stuff
*Turn on subtitles to see the game titles*
Timestamp list:
Corporation (Core Design - 1991) 00:05
Cybercon III (The Assembly Line - 1991) 00:16
Robocop 3 (DID - 1992) 00:27
Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold (Jam Productions - 1993) 00:38
Bram Stoker's Dracula (TAG - 1993) 00:49
In Extremis (Blue Sphere - 1993) 01:00
Island Peril (Electric Fantasies - 1993) 01:12
Isle of the Dead (Rainmaker Software - 1993) 01:24
Ken's Labyrinth (Advanced Systems - 1993) 01:36
Lethal Tender (Pie in the Sky Software - 1993) 01:48
Shadowcaster (Raven Software - 1993) 02:00
Terminator Rampage (Bethesda - 1993) 02:12
Corridor 7 (Capstone - 1994) 02:24
CyClones (Raven Software - 1994) 02:36
Depth Dwellers (Trisoft - 1994) 02:48
Fortress of Dr. Radiaki, The (Future Vision - 1994) 03:00
Hidden Below, The (Soft Enterprises - 1994) 03:12
Nitemare 3D (Gray Design Associates - 1994) 03:24
Operation Bodycount (Capstone - 1994) 03:36
Cybermage: Darklight Awakening (Origin Systems - 1995) 03:48
Dungeons of Kremlin (Gelios - 1995) 04:00
In Pursuit of Greed (Mind Shear Software - 1995) 04:12
Killing Time (Studio 3DO - 1995) 04:24
HURL (Millenium Media Group - 1995) 04:36
La Cosa Nostra (Slade 3D Software - 1995) 04:48
Nerves of Steel (Merit Studios - 1995) 05:00
Old Gold 3D (Gelios - 1995) 05:12
Tekwar (Capstone - 1995) 05:24
Virus Explosion (NAVIGO Multimedia Produktions KG - 1995) 05:36
Witchaven (Capstone - 1995) 05:48
Wrath of Earth (Addix Software Development - 1995) 06:00
Angst: Rahzs Revenge (ManMachineGames - 1996) 06:12
Assassin 2015 (Bluesky Software - 1996) 06:24
Azrael's Tear (Intelligent Games - 1996) 06:36
Cyberdillo (Pixel Technologies - 1996) 06:48
Marathon 2: Durandal (Bungie - 1996) 07:00
Rebel Moon (Fenris Wolf - 1996) 07:12
Rex Blade - The Apocalypse (Xtreme Games - 1996) 07:24
XS (SCI Games - 1996) 07:36
ZPC (Zombie LLC - 1996) 07:48
Chasm: The Rift (Action Forms - 1997) 08:00
Forbes Corporate Warrior (Brooklyn Multimedia - 1997) 08:12
Last Rites (Ocean Software - 1997) 08:24
Lifeforce Tenka (Psygnosis - 1997) 08:36
Mars3D - (Engine Technology CO.LTD - 1997) 08:48
Damage Incorporated (Paranoid Productions - 1998) 09:00
Incidente em Varginha (Perceptum - 1998) 09:12
Liquidator (Partizan Software - 1998) 09:24
Target (DeLyric Games - 1998) 09:36
Mortyr 2093-1944 (Mirage Media - 1999) 09:48
Pyl (Optimus Nexus - 1999) 10:00
Raising Dead (Gelios - 1999) 10:12
Redline (Accolade - 1999 10:24
And now you could add Warhammer
Boltgun to this list.
Boomer shooter lol.
Civvie haven't reviewed most of these
Yet.
"For every memorable Doom clone, there were 10 more forgettable ones."
- Stuart Brown
Many of these were not clones, i.e. they were developed in parallel with their own engines.
@@aleksazunjic9672 They were called Doom clones regardless
@@theopenrift Injustice which should be finally mended 😄
The build engine was LIGHTYEARS ahead of anything else omg it wasn’t as apparent back in the day but yo this is like fucking nes to ps2 build against basically everyone else
@@stepheng8061 It was lightyears ahead, and it was made by a 16 year old hobbyist lol.
Civvie is going to have a field day!
Civvie is a dumb clown
I love how unpredictable the graphics are. some of the late 90s titles look like early 90s. Bonus round:
infestation 1990
behind the iron gate 1995
extreme paintbrawl 1998
Hades 2
Can only speak for myself but back in the 90's 3D graphics was still very niche, I remember seeing DOS games up until the 2000's
@@Imoenn kind of like how VHS was pretty common for a while, well after DVD was introduced. At least where I'm from :)
@@ThommyofThenn Yup same, was very much the same when blue ray came out too
Vodeo games were a massive part of my childhood growing up in the 80's & 90's so of course ive played all of these and much more. I was especially all about playing all the obscured games, platforms and accessories that i could get my hands on.
Also thank you for sharing this video because it dose really help preserve the obscured chapters of gaming history for newer generations to come 👍😎👍 💯‼️
Blake Stone was my first ever FPS game lol
Not obscure at all!
I remember that game when I was a kid!
My dad and I both played through it when it first came out; I still have very vivid memories of doing so.
My mom didn't play BS, but she did play Wolfenstein 3D with us. For same insane reason, episode two was her favorite 🤣🤣
@@belandinoI've not played it but I've seen it discussed in several videos about retro gaming. The one that surprised me the most was Marathon 2. I know mac was not known for gaming at the time but i assumed the game was pretty well known due to the developers later ganes
mine was rise of the triad
I remember playing Blakestone, Kens Labyrinth, CyClones, Depth Dwellers, Cybermage, TekWar, Witchaven, Marathon 2, Chasm. I know I can say one thing for sure...I don't miss keyboard aiming.
Cyclones had mouse aiming in 1994! Way ahead of its time.
@@Quarantineism Agreed. I've been hoping someone with enough free time would reverse engineer the game and make a source port for it for a while lol.
@@The_Cosmic_Navigator Too obscure. I've been hoping for a remake of Blake Stone for a while but even that seems highly ..improbable.
@@Quarantineism I was surprised it got a sourceport.
Chasm: The Rift deserved more attention. It was a good Quake clone shooter.
It wasn't a Quake clone. It used the same technology as Doom, it's just the developer was able to use a ton of tricks to make it look way more advanced than what it was.
I remember this one as well. I played demo only, but ti was memorable in some way.
@@SamiiYouthe cutscenes are so dang NICE looking for its time. Totally agree with your comment also, very talented and skillful work required to pull of that level of professionalism
It literally just got a re-release so it is getting attention once more!
@@SamiiYou Not even that. Doom could do sectors, so you could have floors and ceilings that varied in height throughout the level. Chasm was more like a very well disguised Wolfenstein 3D or Rise of the Triad, aka a tile based raycaster. There were no true variations in elevation, those were achieved the same way as the cool architecture, via 3d models. It could do differently angled walls though, as I learned recently. That wasn't used too often as the fake architecture models were designed to fit together on a grid, so they needed to be used in conjunction with 90 degree corners. Many features were added at the same time levels were being designed, so later levels tend to use more of the engine features than earlier ones.
Gelios sure did have an uh... interesting... approach to sound design. Also wild to see Raising Dead at 10:12 and then Redline following immediately, and realize that they were released in the same year.
08:48 So that's where Doom 3 pistol came from.
I can only confirm Blake Stone and Marathon are still good.
Cyclones was quite nice!
You’d like damage incorporated, as it used the marathon engine.
The second i saw the thumbnail of this video i thought that In Pursuit of Greed would be on the list
and it is!! The soundtrack is special because that was composed by Andrew Sega, or Necros. His works in the Crusaders series and also in the Unreal series are fantastic
and to be honest the best recommendations on this list goes to Marathon and Chasm: The Rift
Andrew Sega? Is his cousin Joseph Nintendo?
I've played most of them, including some of those horrible Pie in the Sky Engine games.
I played these five from this compiled nostaglia video:
Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold (Jam Productions - 1993)
Ken's Labyrinth (Advanced Systems - 1993) 01:36
Terminator Rampage (Bethesda - 1993) 02:12
Corridor 7 (Capstone - 1994) 02:24
Tekwar (Capstone - 1995) 05:24
Witchaven (Capstone - 1995) 05:48
Marathon 2 was mentioned, but didn't the first game get ported to PCs after Macs release? I know I briefly played it on my college dorm roommate (thanks Bullfrog!)'s new PowerMac back then.
Also, I only played these briefly with their sharewares and demos. None
of them were worth playing their full versions.
Cybermage was a WEIRD game but NERVES OF STEEL just unlocked an ANCIENT memory in my brain. I thought I MADE THAT GAME UP :O
Nice to see how everyone tried to do their own thing back in the day, great vid!
Especially that one shooter that had a sprite model of a bodybuilder guy in a Speedo. Bet he thought he was going to be as famous as Schwarzenegger as a result.
Blake stone is an excellent Wolfenstein clone (actually uses the same game engine) hat had the awful luck to come one week earlier DOOM released. Fortunately, I've got this game as a kid got got to know this excellent game that had the bad luck to fall into obscurity.
Most obscure list i’ve seen this is awesome 🙌
Damn, I never thought I would want to try some of those games, but there were indeed quite a few good looking ones, both in graphics and gameplay.
I was specially interested in those FPS with an aiming reticle independent to the screen direction.
Cyclones is definitly worth a try!
A nice compilation of these old pearls. I can say that I actually *played all of them* and many more ✌🏻😉
Yeah, it’s not hard to see why so many of these were obscure. Still, dozens of FPS games I’d never heard of here. Great compilation!
I've probably played about half of these. Of the other half, half of those I haven't even heard of. Good list.
Wow... this is a seriously impressive as hell list. These old PC/DOS FPS games from the 90s and early 2000s are what I've mostly been playing from the time I was a kid up until, well, still currently. I felt like I've had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of most of these old FPS's. But man, there's a good handful I've never even HEARD of before.
Great job putting this together. Also really cool to see Wrath of Earth, Last Rites, and Damage Inc get a little coverage, those games actually very underrated for the most part imo.
Thank you. I finally found an old shooter I played and couldnt remember the name for years😱😍
Oh my... Blake Stone, Lethal Tender, Operation Bodycount... those were some peculiarly intriguing games.
an entire list of games to torture civvie11.
Played all of them (personally, I think the Blake Stone series deserved more recognition but it was born too late in the 90s)... and most of them used the raycasting technique popularized by Wolfenstein 3D.
They actually bought the game engine from ID software. But they managed to tweak and improve it, to the point it rivalred DOOM engine and Build engine. Check out Rise of the Triad to see how the Wolfenstein engine truly peaked.
9:00
Good lord, someone else remembers Damage Incorporated! That was the first fps I ever played on pc. I still have the disc.
I've seen some of these game because of Civvie 11. Very few I've actually played, Corridor 7 is one that stands out for sure.
Corridor 7! Operation body count, Tecwar….I played most of the capstone games, we played so many of these but had all but forgotten about them!
You know you have reached unfathomable levels of skung when some of the stuff presented here makes Witchaven and TekWar look smooth
4:09 wow, Dungeons of Kremlin! dat a simple but fun one :)
afaik game had its own exclusive "engine" and weights 3214352 bytes only.
Also had a good music on a splash screen..but only 3 levels
I suppose it was write on Borland C++
I completely forgot about Nitemare 3D! I had a shareware version from a local library and used to play it all the time. Great vid!
I've played Robocop 3 and Blake Stone. I've seen Witchaven and Cybermage. I've heard of The Fortress of Dr. Radiaki, The Dungeons of Kremlin, Tekwar, Azrael's Tear, Marathon (including Marathon 2), and Chasm.
I used to play Damage Incorporated ( 9:04 ) a lot back in our iMac days. Looking back, I wish I'd known it was supposed to be a SQUAD shooter, not a do-it-all-yourself shooter.
Those old marathon engine games had some pretty ambitious ideas! There was another FPS called Prime Target, which was mostly shooting spies but also collecting tape recorders and stuff to solve a mystery.
I’ve played it as well. Unfortunately, it was only the demo version. It was fun though.
The fortress of dr radiaki that brings back memories i love the intro.
Aww, lethal tender, now that brings me back 😍
I only played Wolfenstein and Doom Gary. But this is great list 👍👍👍
me los jugue casi todos. y mil gracias por subir XS, lo estuve buscando x años y no me acordaba el nombre!!!!
Island of the Dead, Ken's Labyrinth, Corridor 7, and Nitemare 3D I played to some capacity with shareware, but the only one I really actually played was Blake Stone.
Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold and Marathon are the only ones that I remember playing. The rest are them i was not even aware of their existence.
Some of the sound effects are BRUTAL 😂
There’s an old shooter a friend showed me in the 90s, probably 98 or 99 at the latest, where you were in a futuristic setting and their were enemies that lucked like plucked chicken carcasses and you could see some of them in giant tube vats full of liquid in some lab setting. If this rings a bell for anyone I’d love to know what this game was.
Nine. Mad respect for the more obscure ones ♥️
Azrael's Tear 😮. I forgot this Game in my Mind. Thank you. Danke schön. 😊
Wrath of Earth is a real underrated gem. It's like a System Shock-lite, that works on 386 CPUs iirc. It has some bizzare XMS/EMS requirements, so I wasn't able to play it back in the days, but now DOSBox makes it trivial, it should be revisited
Chasm: The Rift was super good. Worked great even on 486 and had polygonal objects.
I like the old fps style, how they were kinda action-adventure games.
GREAT VIDEO !!
So that's how the hidden treasures of 90's looks like...
Some of them looks like the copycats of more famous projects like Shadow Warrior of Duke Nukem. Still, it counts as a lost pages of history, so we gotta treat it the right way.
Some of this is stunning, especially for the time!
shocked that zero tolerance isnt on here,that game was my first fps and even though it has aged terribly,ill always have nostalgic memories of it and it was quite innovative for its day
How about Amulets and Armour? Still remember playing demo of it, I ve enjoyed it back then. Also Jurasssic Park fpp stages had very impressive engine considering that this game might been released even before Doom
Amulets and Armor closer to rpg or dungeon crawler, it's not such "classic/boomer fps" as doom, wolf 3d, etc. Still, good game, was spending hours with its quests
Civvie's still gotta cover some of these.
I played the shit out of Blake Stone, although I never played BS: Planet Strike until just a couple years ago. I still find it a very enjoyable game to play, all these years later. In the case of the original, it had the unenviable task of going up against DOOM; BS came out 12/5/93 and five days later (on my bday, actually!) DOOM hit the scene. Obviously, we know who ended up coming out on top in that competition 😅 Despite that, I think both games are highly underrated and absolutely worth a play for anyone that enjoys old DOS FPS games.
As for the rest of these, I've heard of a number of them, but never played any of them aside from Shadowcaster and HURL (holy hell, I haven't though of THAT one in forever). Civvie11 has some videos for a fair amount of the games on this list, though; his Tekwar one in particular is fantastic, lmao.
Thank you Gary.
Very interesting!
Some games like Marathon and Chasm are good, but too many show that Doom was a hit for good reasons
Besides flowing faster and looking better than some games released later, it had much better stage design. Many games here seem to be "open space with dozens of bullet sponge enemies" only
Also, someone liked Operation Body Count enough to make a playable Doom total conversion mod some time ago...
I'll also recommend Killing Time and Last Rites as good games, underrated and worth playing. Most of the rest were actual garbage and more like reskinned Wolf3D clones than Doom.
Lethal tender feels so under-rated for its time ;-). I always liked as it felt much more realistic than the other games of the time.
I've definitely played at least some of these - I had forgotten all about Ken's Labyrinth but recognised that clip of it. I had that (and a bunch of other stuff) on a shareware disc.
Some of these weren't "obscure" at all. Blake Stone, Dracula, Tekwar and Azrael Tear were important releases at the time and we're always looking for games like Doom in the 90s.
4:01 oh my...that sound effect lol. Ive heard that exact one in thanksgiving episodes of american Western tv shows...from the late 1960s. Lol.
Another note; I really like the art direction of that "H.U.R.L." game. It has that sleazy neon graffiti look that just defines my mental picture of early 90s gaming
I thought I have seen every shooter from 1992 onwards but .. Virus Explosion, Target, Pyl? Wow.
Island Peril's engine looks way to sophisticated for 1993 - when most "Doom Clones" were actually still trying to catch up to Wolfenstein3D :)
I played Blake Stone, Robocop, Terminator Rampage, Cybermage, Witchaven and Shadow Caster. But I didn't consider the latter ones FPS, more like action rpgs, or First person melees ;)
For me, a lot of these games were ruined by the maze like structure. The one I really wanted to like was Terminator Rampage, and it wasn't a bad game at all, just became so frustrating to have to solve what is essentially a maze.
Many.
I know I played Tekwar, Corridor 7, Cybermage, Nitemare 3D, Rebel Roon (And Rebel Moon Rising), Isle of the Dead, Terminator Rampage, Operation Bodycount, all three Marathon games, and both Blake Stone games. Also some of the other games seem familiar though I don't know if I played them or watched someone else play them.
After Cruelty Squad I feel like I've played all of them
It's funny how most of the early ones look more blocky and boring like wolfenstein engine, when Doom had mastered gorgeous level design back in later 1993. Slow to adapt.
In pursuit of greed is one of the few game soundtracks I have on my mp3 player
Honestly, I've played none of these... besides Damage Incorporated, which is PERFECT.
Yeah, Damage Incorporated is still in my top ten favorite video games.
There was this one PC game I used to have back in the 90s that was like Wolfenstein, but you had to sneak behind the nazi to get a machine gun, kill dogs and eat their food, and the boss looked like Darth Vader. I wish I remembered the name of it. It wasn't Spear Of Destiny.
I'm not sure I would call Marathon 2 to obscure. Halo has a lot to say about it, But there is actually a pretty loyal following behind it. Especially when you factor the modded open source engine remaster. Credit words due though, it wasn't receiving that well at the time, at least not like it is now.
Some of these games really deserve a remake for modern systems. Can you imagine playing Azreal's Tear or CyClones with an engine like Steam's Enhanced version of System Shock? How about CyberMage using GZDoom? Marathon has already made the leap thanks to Aleph One, why not do the same for some the others?
Erradicator was a good fps too
Great video, I'd never even heard of some of these!
I've played and beat both Blakestone games. Played Last Rites on Steam recently for 1-2 levels before getting hopelessly stuck. Played the shareware episode of Ken's Labyrinth and the demos of Shadowcaster, Radiaki, Cybermage, Greed, Witchaven, Rebel Moon, XS, ZPC, Chasm, Mortyr, Redline. Some of the demos I played to completion, some, like Radiaki and Shadowcaster for only a few minutes. Most of these were from PC Gamer Demo disks. Rebel Moon might've been full version, it was a special MMX version that came with my P233, but I only played a level or two.
"Yeah, I've heard of a handful of the--MARATHON"
a lot of gems that i didn't knew about! 😍
Please make for 2000s, there is plenty low budget stuff from City Interactive, Groove Games, Buka Entertainment...
A lot of these I remember from shareware releases back in the day. Some are really obscure though!
I remember Techwars, it was pain in the ass ! And i played WItchhaven
1999, when you get Medal of Honor, System Shock 2 and Homeworld, one year after Half Life and Ocarina of Time, and you see that game Raising Dead, based on the classic Doom engine. Did it sell even one single copy?
Nitemare 3D is one of my favorite games on this list
Way more game's using Bungie's Marathon engine than I realized, there were only 2 others on Mac.
Hexen was 1st for my 486 pakard bell. Mostly all used to 3 to 6 floppy discs to install.
Corridor 7 scared the shit out of me when I was a little kid lol
I only knew three games and played two of them. Chasm and Redline. Lifeforce Tenka was on PSX too
I wish they would show the box art; I once wanted some FPS, couldn't get it, and at least would like to know what it was.
Dungeons of Kremlin : chicken noises and cymbals
That's how they get you making
You think oh this game is going to
Be cool play it and it's crap.😂
I can't believe Redline and Raising Dead came out the same year.
I've played way more of these than I should have.
Some of these are way advanced for their time. Mainly those which had the independent aiming mechanic.
Cybermage (03:48) is actually quite good. It's just finicky with PC speed (it's running way too fast in the video - some things like animations and bobbing speed up but movement does not) I find it runs best with DOSBOX at 200000 cycles (for 640x480 mode)
Beautiful times when nothing in the genre had yet been defined, and everyone was figuring things out, including how to get around hardware limitations. Some of these games are in digital distribution (blake stone, corridor 7) but most are so forgotten that no one even tries to sell them, which is a shame, because I would love to play at least Shadowcaster, but not via dosbox
But for the most part, they were just following John's work.
Capstone: The pinnacle of 'fuck it'.
#FreeCivvie
Played every of them, maybe except Mars 3d and Moon Rising. To this list I would add Mortal Coil: Adrenalyn Inteligence
Fascinating! I hadn't heard of Mortal Coil! Thank you for pointing this out to me - will have to plan a Part 2 video now...
played mortyr.... depressing game, still remember how downed i felt after playing the game for a day... something about that game graphics and art design really depressed me
Chasm was awesome
oh i played through chasm: the rift many times.
i don't think i played any of the others , although i cannot say for 100% sure, maybe i played a demo of one or two others.
since i played a lot of games in the 90s and had tons of pc magazine discs where those obscurities would often be included.
You mean to tell me you didnt list Rise of the Triad as an obscure FPS of the 90s??
It wasnt obscure.
Kens labyrinth is a sacred gamer pilgrimage for any build engine fans
Nearly two weeks in and this is the first comment to point out the presence of Ken's Labyrinth and its importance to gaming history! You sir, are an educated gamer!
@@GaryRetroGamer 🤓 thank you. I've played a few others here but a lot of them I've never seen. This is great for anyone looking for weird retro gaming stuff
This is why we like you GARY... No one else does this GARY
Pathways into Darkness needs a mention!