It was one of the first PC games I played as a kid. Incredibly simple mechanics: you are a marble and you roll and try to reach the finish line (sometimes you need collectibles first). But the level design was top notch. Perfect blend of challenging and rewarding.
Retro/Grade is a rhythm/shooter mashup where you travel backwards through time and un-fire a bunch of lasers to un-kill a bunch of ships. It was designed for a guitar hero controller if I recall? I found the visuals nauseating and the music lackluster but that premise is gold and deserves another chance.
Also PLEASE play the music backwards??? It's a game about going back in time, c'monnnnn.
Don't know quite how underrated/forgotten this is, but I wanna see a remake of Vib-Ribbon. That, or have an open source clone of it made by someone who actually knows how to properly program (not me), if it already doesn't exist.
Too bad I don't have access to any apple products I could use to try it. Gonna have to look into this.
Edit: looked it up and it looks like something similar to Vib-Ribbon in terms.of gameplay, but from what I can gather, it's been over a decade since any updates. Also, I'd hope for a PC port of a Vib-Ribbon clone because there's no way you're getting me to play any more rhythm games where you have to use a small touch screen to play. No idea if that Russian Dancing Men has the ability to take local files stored on your phone and use them to generate levels, though, or where you'd go to get a legit copy of the app anymore even if you have an apple product able to play it.
Sexy Parodius is a bit sketchy, yes. But, it's easily the most-fun shmup I've ever played. The music is fantastic, too. I've managed to 1cc the game, but I've never beaten the bonus stage which is just so ridiculously difficult, I question whether it's even possible without a very specific strategy or something.
Unfortunately, the best version is the arcade one, and MAME doesn't do the best job with it. Still playable, though.
Anachronox. Ion Storm at it's best. Engaging plot and characters, humor well ahead of its time for a game script, and party members and environments that I've still never seen many games match to this day. I don't know why it didn't become huge, I think the rpg crowd back then was still pretty married to sword and sandal conventions. If you like old games, I can't recommend it enough.
Yoku's Island Express. Before playing it, I didn't like pinball or search-action games (metroidvanias). I ended up loving it. I still don't really enjoy pinball on its own, but I now have a deep love for search-action.
Kolibri for the Sega 32x addon for the Genesis/Megadrive. Most of the reviewers that weren't down with the game either complained about the difficulty or lack of story/making sense, but it was a beautiful game for the time that took the space shooter concept and made it into a game that was somehow chill while also being difficult enough to sometimes momentarily make you want to rage quit. If you enjoy games like the Raiden series, you'll enjoy this.
Shout to Knuckles Chaotix (the most unique take on Sonic gameplay of the classic 2D era) and also Shadow Squadron (very Star Fox-esque), which are also slept on because 32x.
Exclusive to the Genesis/Megadrive, it's a crying shame that the Vectorman games never received a third iteration and have seemingly disappeared into the grey goo of IP purgatory. Vectorman and Vectorman 2 were amazing for the time: they were arguably the best 2D platformers of the era, graphically beautiful, oozing with charm, and with an amazing soundtrack to go along with it all. It's crazy that the developers were able to squeeze the performance they did out of the hardware and playing emulated versions of it now still doesn't compare to how it feels and looks playing it on the original hardware with a CRT and a nice sound system (but you should still check it out absent that setup).
Descent did get 2 sequels and also a spinoff, Descent: Freespace and later Freespace 2. F2 has seen a HUGE amount of mods, partly due to the engine going open source back in 2002
Freespace 3 could be awesome, what with Elite seeing a rebirth.
Power Stone, fond memories right there. I didn't even know there was a Spawn game on Dreamcast; the only Spawn game I knew of was Armageddon on the OG Xbox
The Dreamcast Spawn game is kinda like Power Stone (it's also by Capcom, so there's that), in that it's a small battlefield and the characters can all duke it out, only there are guns, grenades, knives, swords and blood (also offense/defense/health power ups). The control is rather clunky, as you move with the d-pad instead of the analog stick. Totally worth checking out
Absolver. It was the precursor to Sifu, but with slightly slower and more methodical combat (more like a Soulslike, almost).
The coolest part of it is, as you play and fight players and NPCs, your character will slowly learn and unlock the moves that are used against them, which you can then put into your moveset and chain together with other moves to create your own style. If you don't want to do that, you can join a player-run school, and be given the fighting style of that school's master, which your character will learn as they use it.
The story mode is pretty short. It's mainly about PvP (although, before development stopped, it DID get a free DLC with a co-op dungeon run that's worth killing a couple of hours on). Of course, a PvP-focused game with nobody playing it isn't exactly the most entertaining thing to spend your time on, so- outside of a small collection of diehards- it pretty much stays a ghost town.
It had heart, it had ambition, and it had creativity. My friends and I were really hoping the success of Sifu would mean people might start going back and maybe breathing a little life into it, but that didn't happen. We hoped maybe they'd announce a second one, but that hasn't happened yet, either. It'll probably just be another Sifu. That one was a proven success, so it makes more sense.
The servers are still up for now. No idea how much longer it'll be supported. But, if you've got friends you can play it with, it might be worth looking into and seeing for yourself what the game offered, and what could've been.