Everyone loves an established video game franchise. After all, some of gaming’s best loved characters have been going on adventure after adventure for years, prompting players to line up to reserve the next installment of Super Mario, Link, Samus Aran, or Sonic the Hedgehog. Over the years, however, some games just haven’t struck gold; they’ve been overshadowed by more popular fare that shares the store shelf or are even passed over due to something as petty as unimpressive box art or an unusual premise. They deserve to be remembered and revived, but instead they are The Forgotten.

Vectorman
Developed by Sega/Blue Sky Software
Released for Sega Genesis (1995 and 1996)

Sega struck gold with their new mascot Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991 and spent the rest of the Genesis era searching for another character that could be fashioned into another hit game franchise. Ecco the Dolphin, Streets of Rage, Eternal Champions... the list goes on and on. One of the characters created in this search was Vectorman, a robot who took it upon himself to save humanity from the scourge of evil robot Warhead. The character himself was composed of green spheres assembled into a humanoid shape, enabling him to animate fluidly has he ran, jumped, and shot energy weapons at the enemies in his pseudo-rendered side-scrolling world. Vectorman was a modest hit for Sega at a time when the company needed all the hits it could get, and so a sequel to the game was released in 1995 featuring more of the same action, gameplay, and storyline of the first game. Since then the character has been mothballed and lost to the mists of time as Sega struggled to keep its financial head above water with the Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast.