Do you have any games that you love that you don’t think you could convince other people are any good at all? I have some. I guess this is kind of like a guilty pleasure, except that I don’t feel guilty about it at all. They’re just games that I think are good that I doubt people would agree with me about. I’m honestly not sure if this is something a lot of people experience or just kind of a “me” thing. The title of this post is kind of an exaggeration, but I had to make it something snappy. Anyway, here’s some games.

Unreal Tournament (Sega Dreamcast)

Basically no one would argue with you that Unreal Tournament is a great game. It’s a super influential multiplayer arena shooter that was huge on the PC back in its day. But I’m not talking about the PC version. I’m not even talking about the multiplayer mode. I’m talking about the single player campaign in the Sega Dreamcast port.

Don’t get me wrong, back when the Dreamcast was a current console, I absolutely played Unreal Tournament online and had a lot of fun. That being said, most of my time was spend playing the game single player.  I wouldn’t have wanted to tie up the phone line in the afternoon just to shoot some guys with a flak cannon. The single player campaign is just a series of matches against bots in the various game modes. But it’s fast paced and fun and controls surprisingly well on a controller with only one analog stick. I know this, because I played through the whole thing earlier this year, after I had rearranged my bedroom retro gaming setup, which allowed me to plug my Dreamcast back in. I don’t think most people would quite understand what’s fun about bot matches in an old arena shooter, but I had a great time even playing it in 2024.

Dynowarz

Dynowarz is a game I wrote about all the way back when I first started this blog, but I think it fits here too. It’s a weird 2D action-platformer for the NES that features big robot dinosaurs. Sometimes, you’re piloting your own robot dinosaur, getting various power-ups and punching the bad robot dinosaurs. But after each level like that, you get out of the dinosaur and do some jumping and shooting. In these stages, you have to jump on tiny platforms while shooting down annoying enemies before fighting a weird brain thing at the end. Afterwards, you go back through the same level to get back into your robot dinosaur. It’s very easy to die, very repetitive, and I’ve beaten it a million times because I think it’s lots of fun.

Trials of Mana (remake)

Another one I’ve written about on this blog before is Trials of Mana. I love this game. If you’ve been reading the blog a long time, you might remember that it was my third favorite game of 2020. But it’s also a really low budget, not particularly good looking, not very well acted action RPG. But it is fun and silly and I couldn’t put it down. I even started a second playthrough of it, which almost never happens with me and RPGs. The follow up to it, this years Visions of Mana is a game I think almost any RPG fan can enjoy, but I feel like Trials is a game that almost no one will see what I see in it.

So what about you? Do you have any games that you love that you don’t think anyone else does? Let me know!