Asklemmy

Underrated:

• Scarlet Nexus
• Wii U Gameland
• Colobot

Deserves a Second Chance:

• Atomega (Died because ubisoft didn't update it)
• Biomutant, Lots and lots of dialogue but I actually liked it

Ark the lad twilight of the spirits. One of my favorite classics!

Retro/Grade is a rhythm/shooter mashup where you travel backwards through time and un-fire a bunch of lasers to un-kill a bunch of ships. It was designed for a guitar hero controller if I recall? I found the visuals nauseating and the music lackluster but that premise is gold and deserves another chance.

Also PLEASE play the music backwards??? It's a game about going back in time, c'monnnnn.

Marble Blast!!

It was one of the first PC games I played as a kid. Incredibly simple mechanics: you are a marble and you roll and try to reach the finish line (sometimes you need collectibles first). But the level design was top notch. Perfect blend of challenging and rewarding.

Dark Savior. I don't think I have ever seen anyone mention this game ever (without googling for it).

Sacrifice. I am so sad it didn't have a bigger impact than it did. What an amazing game.

Sacrifice

Circuit's Edge and Ranger X !

Pokémon Puzzle League! Building up all the chains felt amazing! It’s a feeling I’ve tried to recreate it other similar games but haven’t found one with such a great implementation.

Anachronox. Ion Storm at it's best. Engaging plot and characters, humor well ahead of its time for a game script, and party members and environments that I've still never seen many games match to this day. I don't know why it didn't become huge, I think the rpg crowd back then was still pretty married to sword and sandal conventions. If you like old games, I can't recommend it enough.

Seibu Kaihatsu's Dynamite Duke (1989), a pretty novel hybrid Cabal-like/Beat-'em-up with a lot of love put into it. The arcade version's got a pretty slick art direction, the environmental destruction vfx rock, and the animation's pretty slick. The whole thing's got that passion project charm to it. Unfortunately, Cabal clones were only really in vogue in that late '80s/early '90s space, and the beat 'em up gameplay isn't fleshed out or consistently applied enough to be satisfying in a post-Final Fight, post-Streets of Rage world. I'd like to see something like it, but there's no way to bring Duke into the world of modern game design practices without drastic reformulation at a minimum.

Notably, Seibu had really high hopes for Duke, being a passion project and a intended magnum opus. Unfortunately, lukewarm reception brought in poor returns, the company slipped into dire straits, and they were forced to make something simpler and lower stakes as a hail mary. That title - a simple, Toaplan-esque shooter nobody had any real faith in - turned out to be Raiden, which would become a darling in arcades, pushing 17,000 units solds worldwide in the first year after release, and becoming the fifth highest grosser on the Japanese market in 1991. (Beating out some offerings from much bigger players like Konami)

Solar Jetman.

Elebits! The sequel plays nothing like the original and I would love to have it get a proper sequel! The art and character designs were done by Akihito Tsukushi, who created Made in Abyss, another great thing I love very much!

Valve's Artifact Classic card game. I actually found the basic formula to be really fun.

I think this game died for two reasons:

A) The game was review bombed for its monetization (IMO a lot of this was the non-target audience trying it and leaving a bad review)

B) Valve said following the review bombing that they were going to make major changes. This resulted in a lot of Artifact fans (IMO) leaving the game because ... why invested and learn a game that's going to undergo major changes.

So Valve worked on Artifact Foundry (and never finished it) ... before eventually everyone at Valve gave up and released both Artifact Classic and Artifact Foundry for free. The original Artifact Classic is still a great time with a friend and all cards are now totally free so you can build whatever decks you want.

It's basically a AAA studio card game, with cross platform support, released in complete, for free ... because of some poor decision making. Some things may be unbalanced but if you're playing with friends anyways ... just have a friendly agreement to not use the cards that cause problems in your decks. It also could bounce back into active development if it starts to acquire a player base again (because Valve).

I'll throw out one from my youth that I think would be really good to see updated:
Sentinel Worlds I: Future Magic. It was a very early space RPG which was way ahead of it's time. Something like the recent Heat Signature kinda reminds me of it, though it lacks the scope and depth of combat.

Dragon Valor for Psx.

A playstation 1 game called Nightmare Creatures.