Blasphemous

While there’s nothing inherently negative about the terms ‘Souls-like’ or ‘Metroidvania’, you could hardly say that the indie scene had experienced a shortage of either of these genres at any point in the last five years. One could happily play a hundred games that tried to do ‘Dark Souls but 2D’ with a bit of Symphony of the Night thrown in – which is fortunate for me, because that’s approximately how many are released each week – but in such a competitive market, the developer would have to nail absolutely everything in order to stand out; a cast, setting and plot with thematic consistency of tragedy, but not hopelessness. A satisfying and extremely replayable gameplay loop that’s reliably difficult, but not irritatingly so. And a world so beautifully broken that it manages to be awful and awe-inspiring at the same time. Enter Blasphemous. 

Clash at Demonhead

Vic Tokai’s Clash At Demonhead is a rather unassuming game. You might think by the cheesy prog-rock style title and busy, airbrush- painted cover art, featuring a beefcake in metal armor and a radically dressed, short-skirted vixen, that Demonhead is in the vein of pulpy sci-fi schlock from the 1970s. Turn the NES on, though, and the game’s Japanese origins become apparent from the first cutscene with wide-eyed characters that wouldn’t look out of place on a cover of Shonen Jump. 

Yoku’s Island Express

An open-world pinball-based platform Metroidvania. There is no way that this should have worked.

And yet, Yoku’s Island Express is incredibly enjoyable. The combination doesn’t come close to making sense, but somehow works perfectly, making the most of its simple but compelling gameplay and it’s gorgeously colorful visuals to deliver a game that sits alongside Kirby’s Epic Yarn and LocoRoco to be one of the purest expressions of sheer unrestrained happiness found in video gaming.

GunForce II

If you played GunForce, a thoroughly below-average run-n-gun with the occasional neat idea, you’d be forgiven if you skipped the follow-up. But you’d be missing out; GunForce II is an exponentially better sequel that improves on the original in every way. 

GunForce

While most fans of run-and-gun video games know Metal Slug, they might not be aware that its lineage can be traced all the way back to 1991’s GunForce, an arcade game published by Irem in North America and Japan. Upon playing the game, the reasons for its obscurity become clear – this is a decidedly wonky start to the series that is best left as a curio. 

Banishing Racer

The Game Boy had no shortage of platformers, even in its earliest years. From classics like Super Mario Land to creative experiments like Gargoyle’s Quest, there were always worthwhile ones to play. While most efforts never quite matched the gold standard set by Nintendo, many of them at least did something interesting, and Banishing Racer, developed by Jaleco exclusively for Japan in 1991, is no exception.  Banishing Racer features a car as its protagonist and uses this decision to its advantage by incorporating both mechanics and level design that encourage speed and momentum in order to create a unique experience. 

Sumo Fighter

Games about sumo aren’t exactly common, and when they do get made, they’re typically one-on-one fighting games that attempt to simulate the sport. As early as 1991 in Japan (1993 in North America), the developer Kindle Imagine Develop (KID) decided to take sumo in an entirely different direction with Sumo Fighter: Toukaidou Basho (Sumo Fighter in North America) by creating a platformer starring a sumo wrestler rather than a fighting game. 

Electrician

Even in the early 1980s, Mario was a big time video game star, and part of his appeal lied in his everyman, blue collar work ethic, putting him in roles of a carpenter (Donkey Kong), a plumber (Mario Bros.) and a construction worker (Wrecking Crew). One job he didn’t undertake was an electrician, and that role was fulfilled by Synapse’s obscure 1984 release, rather unimaginatively called Electrician.