I love finding Diamonds in the Rough

[Jessweeee♪]

FFIV. I was expecting it to be crap, but in actuality, it was a good game that I just really don't like.

[McLovin']

The first Syphon Filter and Dragon Warrior 7 were 2 games I got randomly and never heard about and became a fan of both shortly after!

Oh Dark Cloud as well. I thought it was gonna be crap and didn't play it for months, letting it sit with the other games, before finally trying it out.

[NeoCracker]

Xenosaga I grabbed at Shopko on the basis I needed a game to play, and I thought the robot looking chick on the front was hot.

[Wolf Kanno]

Some people have touched on games that do hold a special place in my heart, namely: Suikoden Series, BoFIII (though I will give a shout out to the whole series cause its mostly excellent), Front Mission 3 (glad I'm not the only person who loves that game), and Brave Fencer Musashi.

While I would normally use this as a shout out for my SMT titles like Nocturne and Persona series, I feel I have already praised this franchise enough in other places so I feel it would be better to get down to some more weird games...

Silhouette Mirage is a pretty damn fun and wacky Gunstar Heroes knockoff with some pretty interesting game mechanics, proof that Working Design really do have great taste in weird Japanese games.

Robotech: Battle Cry was a game I sorta dreaded but had high hopes for. I'm a huge Robotech/Macross fan and since Sega decided to give the rest of the world the shaft on their Macross title for the PS2 I had to settle for this title. Turns out it was pretty damn awesome in almost every way. Granted its far from perfect but it did give me the taste of what it would be like to be in my favorite anime series so it definetly did its job. I'm just so annoyed by how crappy the sequel was cause the development studio decided that FPS were "in" and chose to go that route.

Mega Man X: Command Mission - this game looked like a bit of a disaster. The X franchise was already losing a bit of their muster and I was almost positive it was going to die after the crappy X7 title which may win the award for being one of the worst Mega Man games ever. Yet here we were trying to build a MMX RPG. Yeah, its plot is a bit contrived and cliche but its still surprisingly good in comparison to other MM titles of the time (except the MMZ series) and the gameplay was simply amazing. I like to think of this title as a sorta spiritual brother to the BoF series cause it really felt like a BoF game. Its still a game that is difficult to recommend outside of MMX fans though...

Um Jammer Lammy - I am a total whore for Rhythm games and I sorta blame it on this game. It was just so weird and strange but the music was totally awesome that I sorta fell in love before I knew it. I still kick myself for not giving Parappa the Rapper a chance.

[NeoCracker]

WHile I agree that MMX: Command Mission was awesome, a BoF spiritual successor? Really? I don't even know how exactly to describe to you the wrongness of that statement.

[Wolf Kanno]

I didn't say successor, I said spiritual brother. The game really reminded me of BoFIV for some reason but it definetly had the later BoF style. Its difficult to describe.

[NeoCracker]

successor, brother, regardless, I think someone be rockin' with Mary Jane. ;P

[Madame Adequate]

Morrowind. I first picked it up when I was 12 and was like "wow this is boring." Picked it up again later and it turned out to be better than I thought, but I didn't want to put a lot of work into it. Picked it up again about 2 years ago and I loved it. Still do In fact, I'm hoping to pick up Oblivion for 360 soon.

Ooh yes, my friend Barry Manilow and I had seen Morrowind in stores a few times and were puzzled; it looked interesting and the case carried high praise, but we had never heard of this "Elder Scrolls" before. I picked it up one day taking a chance, and immediately fell in love; he bought it not long after on my advice, and yeah good times. Obv. TES is big money now but back then it felt like something we had just discovered out of nowhere.

[Polnareff]

WHile I agree that MMX: Command Mission was awesome, a BoF spiritual successor? Really? I don't even know how exactly to describe to you the wrongness of that statement.

Well, with me being the resident Capcom fan around here, I can tell you that there's some truth to his statement. There are a few references to BoF in there with regards to some of the special attacks the enemies do, at least. Also parts of the battle system (mainly pressing buttons to do attacks and use sub-weapons) was basically a revamped version of part of Dragon Quarter's battle system.

It may not be a gigantic reference to the series, but that really gives you no right to tell him he's smoking something.

As for me.

Rapid Reload/Gunners' Heaven: 10 times better than the overrated Gunstar Heroes. It was longer, more difficult, and most importantly, more fun. Only things that kept it down were that it only got a JP/EUR release, and you can only play one player.

Bomberman Hero: At the time I loved Bomberman but wasn't sure how good a pure platforming game with him would turn out. Bought it and was pleasantly surprised. I played it for months. I'm trying to hunt down another working copy as I type this.

Gunbird 2: Like Momiji said. Basically at the time I found the game on Dreamcast I didn't know what it was. Took it home and found out it was a really fun shooter from Psikyo (Capcom published the game for DC, and Psikyo thanked them by including Morrigan from Darkstalkers in the DC version. They also included Aine from Sengoku Blade in there too). It's incredibly hard too for such a weird game. I'd played other Psikyo games before but not like this one. This and Cannon Spike are easily my favorite Psikyo games.

[Jessweeee♪]

I would like to add Mobile Light Force 2! From the cover I was like "oh, I'm not going to like this at all..." but the game ended up not having anything to do with the cover at all.

[Polnareff]

Funny you mentioned Mobile Light Force 2, because Mobile Light Force 1 is a chopped and screwed version of Gunbird, which is the prequel of one of the games I mentioned earlier. Like Shikigami no Shiro's butchering, MLF1 has all the story sequences cut out and a lot of name changes. (most notable is Valnus becoming "MILF-2000." WTF?)

I will never figure out why Xseed Games did that to Gunbird and Shikigami no Shiro. Also of note is that the cover for MLF 1 and 2 are exactly the same pretty much.

At least Gunbird 2 was released here in its original form, and Castle Shikigami 2 and 3 were mostly left alone.