Have you ever loved something, only to realize it’s a commercial flop or just obscure? What’s something that deserves more light than it got?
The TV adaptation of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. The voice acting is incredible and it has the best soundtrack from any media in the last 10 years. It’s a solid show that had virtually no money so they made the most with abstract backgrounds and amazing writing. The show was always under threat of being cancelled and wrapped up so fucking well at the end of season 2 that it was clear the people behind the show knew Disney was stringing them along.
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a reboot of TMNT that removes the bioscience and introduces Yokai/Yaogwai and magic. It’s the best writing TMNT has ever had across any iteration and is on-par with Futurama with delivering a poignant moment in a cartoon full of solid jokes. The turtles learn about their dads and what family means - it’s got family moments as strong as Stephen Universe. I cannot say enough good stuff about Rise.
Moon girl and devil dinosaur is a great show.
Gomi, an early $5 iOS game that involved eating successively larger objects until an objective was reached, utilizing the tilt feature. It had so much potential to be a game with a medium to large speedrun/highscore community.
Dilberts Desktop Games was a cooky arrangement of several different mini games that were fun for kids whilst satirical enough for adults to enjoy.
It came out as a demo on PC Shopper, back when Adams’ politics was tame. The game absolutely bombed on reviews, but the music and the elevetor game live rent free in my head
I still have my original CD-ROM! Techno Raiders was great fun.
Cloud Atlas is my usual mention.
Favourite movie and it’s usually a fairly even split between people like myself who love it and people who think it’s garbage.
Not much middle ground
Rewatched it with my wife recently
Sat on the edge of my seat as the stories came together… Wife was completely non-plussed
Couldn’t stop thinking about that film for weeks after watching it.
I went into it blind, and immediately had to go read the book.
This isn’t alone as a movie steering me towards a book. But nothing else has spurred a drop everything else response like that.
My two all-time favourite videogames, one of them kinda obscure and the other very obscure: What Remains of Edith Finch and Kentucky Route Zero respectively.
What Remains of Edith Finch is a ~2 hour story where you explore your family home as Edith Finch. The Finch family has had a lot of bad luck, and most of its members do not get old. As Edith, you explore the house room by room to see the respective person’s last moments. It’s not a horror game, though I should put a trigger warning for child and infant mortality for the game. Play it in a single sitting, treat it as an interactive movie. I cannot recommend it enough.
The other one, Kentucky Route Zero, is a bit harder to recommend to a general audience. The synopsis is as follows: Conway drives deliveries for an antiques shop, the last one he will ever do as the shop is closing down. On his way to his destination, he asks for directions, and is told he needs to take Kentucky highway 0, an underground highway with a hidden entrance. As the game goes on, we explore the mysterious underground world of Kentucky, with its strange inhabitants and culture, and expand our cast of characters along the way. I honestly cannot give a more accurate description of it without giving stuff away. This game has no puzzles or interesting game mechanics. You cannot alter the story much either. What it offers, though, is a glimpse into a surreal world filled with hope, longing, loss, regret, and, most of all, mystery. The game will not answer all your questions. There is no grand reveal before the curtain closes. You can puzzle things together from your exploration only.
I think that, for many people, it will be quite boring. But it pushes buttons for me that no other media I have encountered does. It is best played at night if you’re tired, as the whole game kind of feels like a weird dream that you struggle to recall as you wake up. If that sounds up your alley, well, here you go.
I think Disco Elysium players could get into KRZ pretty well
I think the actual issue I had at release with edith finch was that it was 20 bucks for a 3 hour non replayable experience
certainly not an obscure videogame, but Prey (2017) is amazing, and for some reason it flopped. Also the DLC might be the best I’ve played, it’s a completely new kind of game
if you check the free epic games sometimes you might have it in your collection
Love Prey. Such a fantastic piece.
@Imhotep @Cantaloupe hmm. I have Prey in both Epic and Steam and never felt the urge to install it.
How does it actually play?
Think bioshock but less repetitive combat and more characters to engage with. Also the environment is so dynamic. I recommend turning off most of the UI hints.
It may be genuinely one of my favorite games of all time. Its one you pick up and don’t pit down till it’s done.
If you have played System Shock 2, it is along those lines.
Prey is a fun game, I recommend you give it a go.
Arkane studios make the best fucking games and they keep getting shafted and its not fair. At least they got their time in the sun with Dishonoured.
I came into this thread to mention Arx Fatalis but Prey is an even better game.
Different Arkane teams in different countries made Prey and Dishonored.
Prey was Arkane Austin, which was forced to make Redfall as a Live Service game to pump up the value of the companybefore being sold to Microsoft, leading over 70% of the Prey team to leave during the development.
Redfall flopped because Arkane Austin wasn’t a Live Service developer and they had zero interest in the game, and Microsoft closed the studio.
Very obscure 45-minute 1991 anime movie: Christmas in January. Rated extremely low (5.46 / 10) on MAL, it’s absolutely one of my favorite movies. It’s whimsical and melancholic and so so interesting. Reminds me a lot of the Ghibli movie Ocean Waves, which is also an underrated gem (and, while I’m at it, the Kimagure Orange Road masterpiece sequel movie from the same director as Ocean Waves).
I really love stories that are just miraculous/odd/interesting excerpts of people’s lives that are otherwise inconsequential. There was nothing grand or life-changing about the events in the story, but I will never forget the delicate social interplay in the shoe store, or the only scene that actually takes place in January at the very end: just a moment of reflection.
Don’t Trust The B in Apt 23
If you’re post edu and wanting more solid structured yet casual learning, The Great Courses offer a fantastic selection of in-depth overviews. I’ve spent many hours in their world history, science, humanities and music courses.
One of my favorite super hero movies to this day is the original kick ass. Beats the pants off any marvel movie by miles. Not exactly a flop but criminally underrated.
It’s interesting that Super with Rainn Wilson was developed pretty much in parallel considering how similar they are in concept. There are scenes in the office where Dwight is looking over paperwork, but in reality it’s just Rainn reading the script of Super.
Personally I found Kick-Ass to be a better overall film. Super had a lot of uncomfortable elements that just left a bad taste in my mouth.
Bryan Fuller’s TV opus, primarily Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies, although the first two seasons of Hannibal are really excellent writing and storytelling. All his work deals with death, but each has something slightly different to say about it.
If I had a mouse for every time I’d seen Pushing Daisies mentioned on Lemmy, I’d probably have like hundreds of mice, because I’ve seen it mentioned twice and those things breed. It was absolutely excellent though and I was so gutted it never got another series. Maybe it was hit by a writers strike? Can’t remember how long ago it came out now.
Good news (from December):
“Absolutely,” [Bryan] Fuller told The Mary Sue recently about wanting to revisit Pushing Daisies. “We have a season three pitch, and the entire cast wants to come back, and we’re hoping we get to return to them. We just have to find somebody who wants to make it.”
Came here to talk about his show Wonder Falls. It only aired 3 episodes on Fox, but the whole season was released on DVD later. I think I’m one of thr few people who watched the live broadcast, because I was recovering from 2 surgeries for like a month, and had nothing to do. Led me to discover the whole Fullerverse.
I watched the broadcast, but even those who remember that it existed at all is a small club. It’s one of my all time favorites. If you haven’t already, look up the plans that they had for the future seasons of the series. There were fantastic ideas to develop the storyline that sadly will never be written.
How to with John Wilson is one of the best shows that has a very simple premise. He basically just finds odd things happening around NYC and gives commentary, advice, and self-reflection, and is very funny.
Zero Effect (1998 film). Charming, smart, funny Holmes update with great performances.
H-E-R-O by Will Pfeifer (DC Comics)
“Love Me, I’m a Liberal” by Phil Ochs.
I enjoyed Zero Effect quite a bit. But yeah, you don’t see much praise for it.
Day of the Triffids
I’ll raise you The Midwich Cuckoos.
John Wyndham also wrote The Kraken Wakes in which aliens try and wipe out humanity via environmental collapse. It’s kinda eerily prescient, only we’re doing it to ourselves instead of aliens. Great author!
Love John Wyndham
PK. A Bollywood movie that really resonated with me.
