Video Games you love but weren't popluar or got bad reviews

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I actually liked the E.T. Atari game.

I'd say Dark Souls was well received, well among the journalists whose opinion I give a s**t for.

Edge revew

Edge article

Yep, gamecube version, it added multiplayer, but that's pretty much it. And yes, the reviews were maddening because they all compared it to Sonic Adventure 2, but since I never PLAYED Sonic Adventure 2, I enjoyed Sonic Adventure 2 Battle

Games that weren't popular or well-known:

Outcast (PC) was critically acclaimed but didn't sell. One of my favorite games of all time.
Lufia (SNES) is the best RPG nobody's played.
Home Alone (DOS) is incredibly fun and unique. (NOT the one on consoles. Different game.)
Little League Baseball (NES) is still my favorite baseball game.
One Must Fall 2097 (DOS) is my favorite PC game of the DOS era, and I don't even like fighting games. The robot-building aspect was so addictive.

Games that got bad (or so-so) reviews:

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (PC) was a buggy mess when it came out. Patches have fixed that. It's really a brilliant first-person RPG.
The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall (DOS) ...ditto.
Castlevania (N64) is the red-headed step-child of the Castlevania series. It's not like Dracula's Curse or Rondo of Blood. It's different. I love it anyway.
The Elder Scrolls: Redguard (PC) is similarly the red-headed step-child of the Elder Scrolls series. I guess I have a thing for red-headed stepchildren.
Zelda II: Adventures of Link (NES) Saying it's not as good as the first one is like saying Ossetra caviar is not as good as Beluga.

It's an incomplete game which is why the complete version "Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness" was released the same year on the Nintendo 64.

I realize Castlevania 64 was a flawed game in some ways (jumping) but it had an atmosphere and a character to it. LoD seemed to have lost that somehow. In fairness though, I've only played the first few levels of LoD. I will give it another try.

Here's a couple of mine!

To the Moon: A pretty recent game. It actually got really great reviews, but it's independently made and not very well-known or popular. It isn't for everyone, but in my opinion it is highly innovative for a video game and shows that, as a medium, games have a great deal of potential for storytelling and it really is a shame that the mainstream industry shys away from it so much. Link: http://freebirdgames.com/to_the_moon/

Laura Bow: The Colonel's Bequest: A really old Sierra game, this one always stood out for me. You were in an old southern plantation and had to solve a murder. It was to date one of the more atmospheric games I've played, but it did have a pretty high difficulty and I had to peek at a walk through more than once to finish it lol.

Xenimus: One of the first MMORPGs made, and to my knowledge it was created/run by essentially one person (it's still active also). To this date, it had some of the most exciting and fast-paced PVP I've seen from a MMO. It did have its share drawbacks however, such as a pretty mean-spirited community and a handful of bugs.

El-Fish. An obscure fish-breeding sim published by Maxis and designed by one of the men who made Tetris. It came out while I was in Jr. High. I really loved it even though my PC struggled to play it at the time. Even now I use a DOS emulator to mess with it once in a while. I even made a little website for it AGES ago that I don't have the heart to delete. There' are no other active fans of it online now, that I can find.

It was a total flop, and is considered 'abandonware' now. It seems simulations where you can selectively breed fish and watch them swim around has a very niche appeal.

The Club was awesome, but required a sense of focus and time investment. People won't give this type of thing the time of day, anymore. Handholding and heavily checkpointed FPSes seem to be the order of the day.
It's a score attack game like a 2D shooter, but in a 3D environment with humans rather than space ships. You basically control a participant in a game of survival for the entertainment of the wealthy. To earn medals and to qualify for the next area you must reach certain scores and scores can be increased by killing those who get in your way as stylishly and as brutally as possible.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI1Tl79LrXk&feature=related[/youtube]

I'll second One Must Fall 2097. The tournament mode was glorious and unlike anything I'd played before. It was reviewed very poorly compared to Asian fighters released at the time.

Here are a few that come to mind for me:

1) Mad Maestro (PS2) - It's one of the few music games based around gameplay as an orchestra conductor! Didn't gain a lot of popularity because the concept was aimed at a pretty limited audience.

2) BRAHMA Force: The Assault on Beltlogger 9 (PS1) - Normally I don't like FPS or mecha games for that matter, but this one pulled both off really well, imo!!

3) Gex series (various) - I don't know why this series isn't as popular as it could be. Honestly, if the fanbase of this game was a little bit bigger, it might be able to rival some of the greats!!

4) Spyro the Dragon (PS1 games) - I could go on a rant about how the newer games made the series fall, but that's for another post. I know they did re-release these games on PSN, but even more hype around the originals (along with Stewart Copeland actually releasing the full soundtracks to the fans ) could revive the old fanbase!!

Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast and

Sonic Adventure 2 for the Dreamcast

Clive Barker's Jericho

The Darkness 1

I cannot remember the full list right now.

Jumper: Griffin's Story was a really bad game, but I did love the whole teleporting power. That was a decent feature that is worth playing, despite the weak gameplay.

Really enjoyed that.

shadowman on psone.

some really great imagination put into that game. it was just a bit linear. another great game but similar to shadowman was azurik on xbox