Those amazing games no one knows about.

[2D Brain]

Anyone heard of Kula World? Tomba?

No? Okay...

Tomba, for sure. I was really happy when Monkeypaw Games got the licensing and made the emultation finally work for PSN.

Well, I was laughing a lot with this one when I was a kid.

Spoiler

I had that game too. I bought it so that me and my cousin could have two guncons for Time Crisis, and it ended up being really fun.

-Clash at Demonhead (NES): a unique platform shooter where you guide the main character through routes of your choosing to find and defeat the bosses in order to stop a bomb. Has a lot of adventure feel to it with the exploring, and the game is complimented with dialogue between supporting characters and villains.

-Legend of Mana (PS1): sort of considered a black sheep among fans of the original Secret of Mana. It was released relatively late in the playstation's life, and it features a unique method of story progression and beautiful sprites (especially the bosses). Some people are turned off by the art style, sometimes underdeveloped story, and the fixed, unskippable battles.

Clash at Demonhead was awesome. I'm a huge fan of the genre I call "action-rpgs" and the sidescrolling ones like Zelda II/Faxanadu/YS III/Popful Mail (and the Symphony of the Night era Castlevania games imo) are part of that legacy to me... so that game is very important and influential to many of my favorites games. Classic, must own for any NES library.

Legend of Mana was great... I slept on it for a long time even though I bought it when it was new. I think it being different than the SNES original (and the import sequel) put me off... but when I finally got over it, I played that game out big time. Now I think of it as like a spiritual precursor to odd, but awesome games like Odin Sphere that have tons of branching paths, cool animation and art, and some decent action/brawling. Definitely underrated compared to everything else Square put out back then.