Do you know any obscure 2000s PC games?

After seeing the 2000s-era Internet Nostalgia thread, I wanted to write down a thread about obscure 2000s PC games, sort of a side topic to the obscure 1990s PC games thread.

I'll start off with a couple of obscure 2000s PC games that I know of.

Pizza Dude - a pizza delivery sandbox game released in 2005 developed by Team6 Game Studios. The game is very buggy, has a chance of crashing and has low-budget graphics.

Chris Sawyer's Locomotion - a sequel to Transport Tycoon released in 2004, powered by the same engine as Rollercoaster Tycoon 2. Compared to its predecessor, it wasn't a hit commercially and recieved mostly negative reviews, and many people opted to play OpenTTD or Simutrans instead.

Tycoon City: New York - a city Simulator game released in 2006 that focuses solely on New York City, developed by Deep Red Games and published by Atari.

If you know of any other obscure 2000s PC games, feel free to comment here.

Vivisector: the game about islands and mutants that could come out before Far Cry development started, but something heavily delayed it

10 hours ago, SilverMiner said:

Vivisector: the game about islands and mutants that could come out before Far Cry development started, but something heavily delayed it

Well, Vivisector's problem was that it was supposed to be a Duke Nukem game. And that's not the only problems that it had.

I really don't know what counts as obscure for the 2000's, but one of the most underrated games from the PS2 lifespan was Urban Chaos: Riot Response.

It was a really good game, it was extremely competent as a shooter, it had very good graphics for it's time, it had a fleshed out rewards system that allowed players to complete objectives much like Perfect Dark and GoldenEye. You could either complete missions peacefully, use your riot shield, and stun enemies and arrest them, or shoot them in the face. And then it doubled down on the rewards by allowing you to upgrade your taser or firearms, getting head shots with your pistol enough times let you upgrade your pistol to a damn Gatling gun. It was a really damn good game.

I guess the thing I liked the most about it was that you had so many qualifiers in each level, so you had to go back and play them multiple times to actually finish them. It was nice to play a new FPS that rewarded multiple playthroughs.

A bunch of freeware and shareware games my brother and I downloaded in 2002-05 if that counts.

13 hours ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

Pizza Dude - a pizza delivery sandbox game released in 2005 developed by Team6 Game Studios. The game is very buggy, has a chance of crashing and has low-budget graphics.

Played a game with a similar name if I remember correctly. This one was a Commander Keen clone where the player character is a pizza delivery guy. It's not mentioned anywhere in the fan game list of KeenWiki. I think it was released in 2005 or '06.

Harbinger: Windows, 2003, Silverback Entertainment, Hack'n'Slash. 

Harbinger is near and dear to my heart. It's sad the game flopped because quite some work went into it. The first thing that struck me was the "lore", the devs really got out of their way to to tell a story which stands out:

"The Harbinger is a monstrous spaceship the size of a planet. Controlled by a being called the Overlord and his army of cohorts, the Harbinger is used as a slave ship, laying waste to worlds, enslaving entire races, and then sailing off into the depths of space. Over time, slaves have escaped from captivity and have formed small gangs and colonies deep inside the ship. You're one of them. Living in a small sanctuary called Torvus Junction (which is about the safest place there is on board the Harbinger) your life consists of doing jobs for your overseers and trying not to get caught. Lately you've been hearing rumours from some of the other escaped slaves; the Overlord is losing control, his forces are being weakened by constant fighting inside the ship, and a strange insect-like race (the cimicidae) are breeding like crazy and are dangerously close to seizing control. Oh well, life goes on. It had just better be yours."

The graphics are solid. Some sort of isometric 2D - à la Fallout -  whereas the characters/monsters are in 3D. The result is beautiful for such an oldie. Just like Starcraft, the form of the HUD changes depending of the character you've selected at the begining of the game: Human, Gladiator (kind of Robocop), Culibine. 

The sound work for this game is phenomenal. Some kind of ambient Synth which I couldn't get out of my mind. The music on a whole was foreboding. Some of these tracks even felt "organic", conveying the idea that the hull of the ship was literally breathing. I liked the music so much I looked for an utility to extract it (thank you Dragon UnPACKer ; ). Most of the music files were already in mp3 form and the composer was credited as "Mark Samuels". Great work. Someone on youtube, not me, even posted the soundtrack: Harbinger Soundtrack (Youtube) 

You don't have skills like Diablo II, it's a much simpler gameplay based on hit & run. On that point it makes the Gladiator, the robot, the worst character to start with because he's the slowest. The game was coined "Diablo in Space". This assessment is rather accurate. Still a few reviewers unfairly compared it to Diablo II while in truth Harbinger is much more close to Diablo 1 gameplay-wise. 

One notable innovation for it's time was the "Shared Stash" which could be accessed in Town and even in Dungeons. The only dud for me were the Opening/Ending scenes which felt awful and out of place. 

In the end, Harbinger was the only game developed by Silverback Entertainment. It pains me because the game was quite fun despite it's simplicity. 

Purchase: surprisingly Harbinger can be purchased digitally on Gamersgate for dirt cheap. It's not available neither on Steam nor GOG: Harbinger (Gamersgate)

"The Evil Days of Luckless John" was a mid 2000's adventure game about a guy trying to reclaim his uncles casino from a bunch of mobsters. I remember a time around 2009 or 2010 where Google had zero search results for this game, it was that obscure at the time! I never beat the game, I think I got past the sewer section, but I didn't get past the race section.

I think this was more of a late 90's game, but I remember there was this one top-down space ship shooter that was supposed to take place in your own PC. It took filenames from your own PC and made them into enemies. I can't remember the name of it though. It's one of those weird games that occasionally pops into my head.

Meteor and Meteor 2 were two top-down military shooters from the early/mid 2000's. I used to play the first one quite a lot. The second one was ok but modding was a bit of a pain in that one compared to the first. I made a 8 level mod for the first game that was supposed to be my own take on Call of Duty 4. I even remade the airplane level for its final mission. I unfortunately never released that mod.

Alien Shooter - an isometric top-down shooter developed by Sigma Team in 2003, in which you have to eliminate all the aliens in each level. You can easily grab it on both GOG and Steam.

Hyperbowl - a 3D bowling game released in 2001 by Hyper Interactive, with six stages to play. There was even a two stage demo version include with Microsoft Plus! for Windows XP which was released around the same time. There is even a remastered version on Steam powered by Unity which included extra stages, which was developed by Techicat.

On 1/2/2023 at 3:05 AM, Jello said:

Urban Chaos: Riot Response

Ohh how I wish it was on PC or at the very least backwards compatible with 360.

Not to be a let-down or what, but I feel like what constitutes "obscure" to OP is just, more often than not, all too abstract to me. Alien Shooter was by no way obscure to me, as I l'm aware of a bunch of other people who had it installed in their PC/laptop.

48 minutes ago, taufan99 said:

Not Alien Shooter was by no way obscure to me, as I l'm aware of a bunch of other people who had it installed in their PC/laptop.

For some reason that specific game comes up a lot in discussions about obscure PC games. I pirated it from Reflexive many moons ago. There were several games in the series. I think part of what made it stand out was the fact that it was much more violent than the other casual games it was often featured alongside of.

Didn't intend to throw puns here, but...

But I remember one game that was a casual shareware, but it always gave me chills when I was a kid - AxySnake (2001).

The most eerie thing about it was the fact that bright levels were surrounded by the darkness with predator's eyes lurking for a prey, and when the time was close to running out and the sun was setting, the music changed and creatures from the dark started their hunt for a player...

The Gameplay of AxySnake (YouTube)

Nitro Family - a South Korean FPS game developed by Delphieye Entertainment in 2004 that runs on the same engine as Serious Sam First and Second Encounter.

On 1/4/2023 at 4:00 AM, UltimateDecaf said:

But I remember one game that was a casual shareware, but it always gave me chills when I was a kid - AxySnake (2001).

 

The most eerie thing about it was the fact that bright levels were surrounded by the darkness with predator's eyes lurking for a prey, and when the time was close to running out and the sun was setting, the music changed and creatures from the dark started their hunt for a player...

I remember playing that game and causing a glitch by eating the time bonus after the monsters were out. The game would reset to daylight, but the monsters would still be roaming around (they're just floating black forms).

You guys sure are doing a good job, I've never heard of any of those titles before.

I don't know a lot of obscure games, to be honest! Retro gaming pretty much sums up almost my entire gaming tastes, but I usually tend to play historically significant releases, rather than little known games. I think Gunman Chronicles might fit the bill, though, even if you'd probably be aware of it if you've got some experience with Half-Life mods.

Here's the website: http://gunmanchronicles.com/ (look at that early 2000s design!). It's IMO among the last old-school shooters from the post Half-Life era with a really unique feeling to it. I've never seen any other game with such a strange combination of Western and Sci-fi visuals. The Half-Life engine jankiness only adds to the flavor. It also has this novel feature of every weapon having multiple customizable firing modes, something I've never seen in any other straight FPS, which can often be surprisingly effective if you have the patience for it.

Before they made Warframe, Digital Extremes used to throw out some real fucking clunkers.

Pariah is a sci-fi FPS game that was actually painfully average, which is nice compared to the rest of the shit they made at the time, the story is absolute nonsense and to this day I am baffled about it but it holds a special place in my heart as one of, if not the first, obscure jank FPS game I completed.

I still have the disc of this for PC, I cannot for the life of me get the bloody thing to co-operate on modern hardware otherwise I'd be firing it up and seeing if it was as passable as I remember.

-

There was also Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy that apparently has a PC port, I did not know this. Very interesting third person shooter game about mind powers, I remember it quite fondly and highly recommend it, I would advise emulation however as I dread to think about the condition of that pc port.

Anything that made its way on PC by the infamous Blast! Entertainment, a publishing label that was a joint venture of the Mastertronic Group and Disky Communications.

They are often considered the "European LJN", where they produced some of the worst licensed shovelware games ever made, based on then popular books, TV shows and movies, with each game having extremely lower budgets, bad graphics, unresponsive controls, crappy compressed video clips, no pre-release quality control and extremely poor grasp of the source material.

While they are the most infamous publishers of the lifespan of the PS2 and first few years of the Wii and DS, a couple of their games did get released on PC. Here's the list of them:

Garfield: Lasagna World Tour - a 3D action-adventure game released in 2007 with a PC port in 2008 exclusively in Europe. In North America, only the PS2 version got a release.

National Geographic: Safari Adventures Africa - a 3D adventure game taking place in Africa released in 2008.

The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep - another 3D action-adventure game released in 2007, which is more closely based on the book than the movie from the looks of it.

Mr. Bean (also knows as Mr. Bean's Wacky World for the Wii version) - a 3D platformer game released in 2007 on PS2, 2008 on DS, while both the PC and Wii versions were released in 2009. Interestingly, the latter two versions are slightly improved from the PS2 and DS versions, feature some extra content.

Little Britain: The Computer Game (Also known as Little Britain: The PC Game on the title screen, and released on PS2 and PSP as Little Britain: The Video Game) - a 3D Mini-Game collection released in 2007. It featured a variety of characters in mini-games and received very negative reviews, being referred to by some as one of the worst games ever made. It even features both a crappy Tetris and Columns rip-off set at a party and even a crappy Pac-Man rip-off set in a grocery store.

Wanted to get these games out of the way so that you don't have to.

Flux by Masterworks. Probably not the most obscure game in the world, but the demo for this from RealArcade provided a young me with plenty of fun.

Ocular Ink is another game I loved as a kid. I remember downloading it from a service that was basically like Steam but for freeware and indie games. (It wasn't Desura, looks like it predated that.) Unfortunately I can't remember the name of it.

Space Taxi 2 (2004). It's essentially a remake of as well as an official sequel to the 1984 Commodore 64 game, Space Taxi, by Muse Software of the Castle Wolfenstein fame. Whereas CW's legacy lives on with id Software's Wolfenstein series, Space Taxi got some less fanfare, other than a handful of clones published for Amiga.

The game is still available at the developer's website (both as a downloadable free demo and as a purchasable full version requiring that you contact them via email), however, it needs some tweaks to get it running on modern OS's.

As far as 2000's casual PC games are concerned, I rarely see people bring this one up.

On 1/2/2023 at 9:05 AM, Jello said:

Well, Vivisector's problem was that it was supposed to be a Duke Nukem game. And that's not the only problems that it had.

What do you mean by Duke Nukem game? I don't see any connection. Vivisector is losely based on The Island of Doctor Moreau. Ukrainian developer Action Forms also did Chasm: The Rift in the 1990s. I really enjoyed the latter half of Vivisector. The first half consists mainly of Serious Sam style arena battles and isn't that good, but the game significantly improves after that.

On 1/2/2023 at 4:54 PM, CrocMagnum said:

Harbinger: Windows, 2003, Silverback Entertainment, Hack'n'Slash. 

  

Harbinger is near and dear to my heart. It's sad the game flopped because quite some work went into it. 

I really liked the atmosphere and story in Harbinger. Though I never actually finished the game. I have to reaplay it some time.

23 minutes ago, Tetzlaff said:

What do you mean by Duke Nukem game? I don't see any connection. Vivisector is losely based on The Island of Doctor Moreau. Ukrainian developer Action Forms also did Chasm: The Rift in the 1990s. I really enjoyed the latter half of Vivisector. The first half consists mainly of Serious Sam style arena battles and isn't that good, but the game significantly improves after that.

Vivisector started development as Duke Nukem: Endangered Species. It being so thematically wild ultimately resulted in the scrapping of the initial concept, before it was later taken by Action Forms and finished as Vivisector.

The Arcade - a Europe-exclusive collection for PS2 and PC published by Liquid Games and developed by Ivolgamus UAB in 2005 with ten games heavily inspired by classical titles, with modern graphics and sound.

The games are:

Battling Bats (Pong clone)

Freakoids (Asteroids clone)

Jetpac Jousting (Joust clone)

Moon Mission (Lander clone)

N-Vaders (Space Invaders clone)

Galaxy Warriors (Centipede clone)

Muncher (Q*Bert clone)

Protectors (Warlords clone)

Operation TNT (Bomberman clone)

Pipe Puzzle (Pipe Dream clone)

I can only find footage of the PS2 version, as I couldn't find any for the PC version.

Soldier (2000) based on a movie with a same name

been awhile since i played it and now i cant make it work on win11, sad

New York Race, a racing game based on The Fifth Element.

IDKFA and the ATTE series, both by Aleksander Trojanowski, which was a series of Doom fan-games released in 2001 and 2002, which reused assets from Doom and Hexen among other games such as Witchaven, all using a custom engine. Release dates for these games are as follows:

IDKFA (video game) (June 2001)

ATTE (August 2001)

ATTE2 (September 2001)

ATTE3 (January 2002, unfinished)

Sadly, There isn't any gameplay footage or playthroughs of the ATTE series available on YouTube, because it is nearly difficult to get them playing on modern PCs on DOSBox, and even the forks DOSBox Staging and DOSBox-X doesn't play them nicely either.

Unless one wants to remake these in the actual Doom engine as a WAD file, these games are more obscure than they get.

On 1/15/2023 at 10:11 PM, taufan99 said:

Vivisector started development as Duke Nukem: Endangered Species. It being so thematically wild ultimately resulted in the scrapping of the initial concept, before it was later taken by Action Forms and finished as Vivisector.

Interesting, I didn't knew that. Just read the entry on the Duke Nukem wiki. Do you know if they used the assets from the Duke project because it happened to fit in their concept for Vivisector, or was the whole game designed in the first place to make use of those older assets?

When playing Vivisector it didn't seem thematically wild or inconsistent to me. Basically just Island of Dr Moreau with a cyborg twist.

5 hours ago, Wadmodder Shalton said:

IDKFA and the ATTE series

That is definitely obscure. FPS games written in QuickBasic of all things, and I can't even find footage on YouTube.

Ubersoldier 1 and 2?