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.
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
Valve's Artifact Classic card game. I actually found the basic formula to be really fun.
I think this game died for two reasons:
A) The game was review bombed for its monetization (IMO a lot of this was the non-target audience trying it and leaving a bad review)
B) Valve said following the review bombing that they were going to make major changes. This resulted in a lot of Artifact fans (IMO) leaving the game because ... why invested and learn a game that's going to undergo major changes.
So Valve worked on Artifact Foundry (and never finished it) ... before eventually everyone at Valve gave up and released both Artifact Classic and Artifact Foundry for free. The original Artifact Classic is still a great time with a friend and all cards are now totally free so you can build whatever decks you want.
It's basically a AAA studio card game, with cross platform support, released in complete, for free ... because of some poor decision making. Some things may be unbalanced but if you're playing with friends anyways ... just have a friendly agreement to not use the cards that cause problems in your decks. It also could bounce back into active development if it starts to acquire a player base again (because Valve).
Seibu Kaihatsu's Dynamite Duke (1989), a pretty novel hybrid Cabal-like/Beat-'em-up with a lot of love put into it. The arcade version's got a pretty slick art direction, the environmental destruction vfx rock, and the animation's pretty slick. The whole thing's got that passion project charm to it. Unfortunately, Cabal clones were only really in vogue in that late '80s/early '90s space, and the beat 'em up gameplay isn't fleshed out or consistently applied enough to be satisfying in a post-Final Fight, post-Streets of Rage world. I'd like to see something like it, but there's no way to bring Duke into the world of modern game design practices without drastic reformulation at a minimum.
Notably, Seibu had really high hopes for Duke, being a passion project and a intended magnum opus. Unfortunately, lukewarm reception brought in poor returns, the company slipped into dire straits, and they were forced to make something simpler and lower stakes as a hail mary. That title - a simple, Toaplan-esque shooter nobody had any real faith in - turned out to be Raiden, which would become a darling in arcades, pushing 17,000 units solds worldwide in the first year after release, and becoming the fifth highest grosser on the Japanese market in 1991. (Beating out some offerings from much bigger players like Konami)
Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain. Quite a learning curve, but I loved the different ways you can win (conquest, trade, black ops) and how much you could customize your ships or pick unique races with tolerances for different planets.