Ask Lemmy

How about Wally Gubbins? A series of silly skydiving videos. My father has a ton of them on VHS. I loved it as a kid. I just looked, you can even find them on YouTube. So maybe not that obscure.

In terms of software I remember having several ad games. So, games that are basically just an ad. I had a Bifi game. Some weird game about colours where I don't remember what it was for. And a "game" about Chesterfield Cigarettes. I remember that I had to install QuickTime Player to run it. It was basically like Google Streetview when you walked into buildings with a few interactive elements put in. No idea where I got it. Might even still have the CD somewhere.

Edit: I found the Chesterfield thing: https://archive.org/details/see_you

OK, I'll go all-in on this:

2000 AD Comics' Nexus, The computer game.

Made for the Commodore C128 computer (which oddly ran Microsoft Basic), it was a simple single-screen platform shooter with the twist that you could pile up the bodies of your enemies and use them as platforms.

Back in the heyday of flash videos and before youtube, there was a clerks spoof featuring marvel comics heroes that I remember as being enjoyable, clever, and ultimately just a good tribute/ripoff of the source material. I have no idea how to find that again.

My brothers and I had a handheld game in the 80s that was basically a star wars knock off. It even started each attack sequence with a fast version of a star wars theme. The enemies were all Tie Fighters (all digital pieces that lit up when active been off when not), and you shot them with lasers Galaga-style. If you died, it played part of Jupiter from The Planets by Gustav Holst.

It was called ASTRO Thunder.

A solar powdered handheld called something like Keep the devil rising.

Either windows 95 or 98 I used to play this game my mom set up for me but doesn't remember. Now she needs my help to plug in a USB cable but somehow has a job that uses software and procedures too complicated for me... Anyway I can remember if it was entirely this or just part of it, but the memorable part was the sliding puzzles, like the ice caves in Pokemon. The character might have had skates or something but it's a vague memory that could be wrong.

This is an odd one. Deep Africa is an episode from an obscure series called Inflated, which came out some 20 years ago. I remember someone at a party having a VHS of it.

It features blowup dolls as the main characters. It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen it, probably hasn’t aged well, but I remember aspects of it being funny, if not absurd.

https://youtu.be/nZIpv6TaBE8

I'm still bummed that the band Splashdown was screwed over by the music industry. They were too jazz for pop fans and too pop for jazz fans but had an amazing sound and a brilliant vocalist in Melissa Kaplan. They released a couple EPs and a brief album (Stars & Garters) before their major label debut Blueshift was permanently shelved.

They posted a goodbye collection of demos & b-sides before dissolving into Universal Hall Pass, Freezepop, and Anarchy Club.

Edit: Got nostalgic and searched for news - happy Sol Invictus to me I guess! https://splashdown1.bandcamp.com/track/metamorphosis

There's also the Pine Salad Productions fan-dub of a few Dirty Pair and Macross episodes from the late-80s, I think? I had a 5th gen VHS of a few ("The Dirty Pair Does Dishes" was one). Insane dubs that were absurd and utterly unrelated to the actual plots or even characters. I thought they were hysterical when I was a young edgy person.

A friend found "remastered" versions a few years ago and...the humour has not aged well, to put it mildly. Watch at your own risk. Glad I'm no longer edgy I suppose.

In honor of Xmas, I found this video a decade ago, and it is the version I hear in my head every year.

Last Xmas - Slugabed ruined it

One Way Heroics (Plus)

Made by a guy in Japan. Uses a custom engine and has really intricate rpg elements, super cool and I'm a huge fan. Basically you're constantly moving right because a black fog is consuming the world and if you aren't fast enough then it'll consume you too. Kind of plays like a Roguelike, but runs can have the shorter objectives, or the really long ones.

Granted it's not perfect:

• It was made by one guy so after a certain amount of time you kinda see most things, needs mods (which doesn't exist) or more content.
• You only get one stat per level-up, and if you get like "carryweight" five times in a row, then you kinda just got low-rolled and are weak-af
• You can't actually determine what biomes you end up in so sometimes you just get volcano 3 times in a row and it kinda sucks, it would be nice to see biomes up ahead and chart a course
• There's some "degen weeb" dialogue that's funny about once and then kinda weird. (Characters simp hard af for you after your run if you get SSS rank in a category they rate you in, theres some "prefixes" that give alternate dialogue to npcs, so if you get a "Naughty" Dosey/Frida/Mila then all her dialogue is degenerate af for the rest of the run)

But I still love the game, and one of my first projects I plan on is making a hexagonal-grid version of the engine that would enable the above (gameplay) issues to be fixed, something might come out of it tbh.

Major Havoc.

Super cool arcade game c. 1988 featuring a simple line drawing type environment where the Major runs through hallways, a little like the original Prince of Persia. The controls were a cylindrical scroll wheel and a jump button. The really cool thing though was that there were pads on the floor that would trigger various effects, like a gun that shoots a star shaped bullet down the hall that you had to avoid. Many new and exciting challenges to face with every quarter. Ah, good times.

Elroy Goes Bugzerk and Elroy Hits the Pavement.

Man I want another Elroy game!

My "Learn to Play Didgeridoo With Gram Doe" CD.

Cherry Coke had a promotional game called something like The Lost Island Of Alanna they gave out in the mid 90s. There was a little attack of them in the waiting room of the principles office at my school.

It was a pretty well done short Myst-like.

When you beat it the reward was a guide to read secret messages that were hidden in the squiggles that covered the cherry coke label at the time.

Santa Paravia en Fiumaccio. Try and grow a city-state by strategically distributing resources. Poor distribution results in death by famine, disease or invasion. Good distribution keep state growing and eventually become king to win the game. I played it on a Commodore PET.