I gave away a copy of Odama the other day and was trying to think of shit I played that was never cloned, died or was unique in some way. I couldn't come up with anything wholly unique (Odama is just Pinball+RST+Voice) a couple came to mind and a lot of them are well known already:Quarth (GB) - a tetris shmup.Seaman (Dreamcast) - Leonard Nimoy Tamagotchi ChatGPT sim.Bushido Blade 1/2 (PSX) - 1v1 3d weapon based 3d fighter. no health bars, can disable limbs, single headshot kills. Rounds can last seconds or minutes. I always feel the environments/stages aren't mentioned enough when I hear people talking about it, I thought I remembered stage hazards, gimmicks like cutting bamboo or throwing sands, and I think I remember interconnected or 'floorbreak' type area transitionsRetro Game Center (DS) - A game based on GameCenterCX, god I loved this game. Like UFO50 a collection of original retro inspired games, but it has a meta game/narrative/ui where you are a kid playing these games as they come out for each system generation, in game magazines come out where you can read more about the games, upcoming releases, cheats, rumors etc.Alley Cat (DOS) - not a good example of this, just a personal fever dream for me. It was the first copied floppy I got for the Tandy 1000 as a kid. I didn't understand it then and haven't replayed it but I remember it as an arcadey minigame focused cat platformer with bizarre choices. Segagaga (Dreamcast) - I never played it but followed someone that was attempting a translation patch, tried to keep spoiler free and forgot about it entirely. End of life dreamcast meta rpg company management sim with an inside baseball Sega bent, maybe.I also thought of other games I've played like ActRaiser, Guardian Legend, Metal Storm, Steel Battalion, Boktai,etc that had a unique gimmick, controller or scheme, mash of genres etc.Anyone have any truly unique examples, must-play obscurities/oddities or anything of the like?
There were a lot of hybrids on Famicom, lot's of experimentation. For instance there is a pinball RPG, a fighter RPG, a mahjong RPG and even a SHMUP RPG (sorta), without mentionning the half dozen board-RPGs.
PSI-5 Trading company was a game about hiring a crew from a colorful roster of aliens and robots, and trying to get your cargo vessel to the other end of the trade route as swiftly as possible, and in one piece. Every crew member had their own personality, and would interact with you (and sometimes each other) in complicated ways depending on the situation. They had likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, and various other traits. My favorite was Boris, who was an amazing shot with two of the three weapons, but had old enemies who followed him around (meaning more hostile encounters) and he had a tendency to get twitchy and shoot at unidentified vessels sometimes. Gameplay was largely planning ahead, monitoring systems, and managing the inevitable crises by handing orders to your crew, and hoping they didn't panic or make mistakes under pressure. I've never seen a game quite like it.
>AeroStar (sorry for crappy image)Shmup where you have to primarily drive on roads but you can briefly fly in order to clear gaps and jump to adjacent roads.>Silhouette MirageRun 'n gun where you swap polarities depending on whether you're facing left or right.
>>12239095Picrel (Electron version) is Thrust released for a handful of micros in 1986, no official console release (there is a 2600 homebrew port). It essentially combines Asteroids' gameplay with a gravity system and an actual level, your goal being to blast your way through an enemy base and steal an energy pod. You'll then need to drag it back out with the pod also being affected by gravity and inertia. Simple premise, but the latter bit requires some getting used to. It has 6 levels and will repeat those with some changes (reverse gravity, visibility changes and both). Gravitar is the progenitor of this "genre" without a doubt, but it releasing for arcades in '82 (and 2600 in late '83) meant it didn't get much fanfare. Thrust has the advantage of being a micro title, so complex movement isn't as much of an issue for players. Neither really caused an explosion of clones, but generally the more numerous (and divergent) European ones take after Thrust whereas the few US ones closely cloned Gravitar.
AWACS for Apple II puts you in the role of the titular type of surveillance plane. As such it's technically not a shooter, you identify planes (the numbers) to see if they are enemies and then tell the anti-air to fire before they bomb cities, you have a panic button to use in a pinch and a refuel plane that you need to call up at the proper time. Despite seeming more like a simulation game concept, it is an arcade game with simple controls. I guess you can see it as somewhat adjacent to to missile command?The game is likely a cancelled build, very little is actually known about it. There's an unrelated game with the same title which iirc is more of a simulation. Can't really think of another arcade map-based anti-air surveillance game though.
