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.

Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins
Developed by Nintendo
Released for Game Boy (1992)

Yes, yes, you’re thinking that Mario and friends are the exact opposite of a forgotten game and of course you are correct.  What earns Mario his place in this list, however, is the fact that despite a decade’s worth of games that have been released since his second Game Boy adventure, there has not been an original traditional side-scroller in the bunch.  Super Mario Land 2 is, for the moment, Mario’s last 100% pure side-scrolling adventure.  Wario took over the 2D adventure mantle in Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land and true to greedy form he hasn’t given it back.  Mario went on to star in racing games, party games, fighting games, sports games, role playing games, and most any other genre that you can think of, but with the exception of ports of his greatest adventures to the Game Boy Advance as the Super Mario Advance series, Mario has not gone side-scrolling in twelve years. 

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.

Battletoads
Developed by Rare
Released for the NES (1991), Game Boy (1992 and 1993), Super NES (1994), Sega Genesis (1994), Sega Game Gear (1994), and the arcade (1994)

Before Rare lit up the game world with Donkey Kong Country one of the games the company came up with was Battletoads, a side-scrolling beat-em-up in the vein of Final Fight and Double Dragon. Three of the galaxy’s fightingest toads (Rash, Pimple, and Zitz) set out to defeat the evil Dark Queen with their cartoon-inspired moves, such as fists that become an anvil or standard kicks that become giant boots. Alternating with the side-scrolling levels are a series of vertical drop levels, racing levels, and other such diversions to keep gameplay fresh. Battletoads was ported to a number of consoles and the characters even teamed up with Billy and Jimmy Lee of Double Dragon fame, but after Donkey Kong and friends put Rare on the map they left the ‘toads behind.

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.

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.

Stunt Race FX
Developed by Nintendo
Released for the Super NES (1995)

After launching the SuperFX chip in the Super NES hit Star Fox, Nintendo switched gears from space flights to racing fights in 1995’s Stunt Race FX. In a sign of things to come all racetracks, vehicles, and items on the track are crafted out of polygons; there’s not a single sprite to be found. Players can take one of four distinctive vehicles – a truck, a coupe, an F-1 racer, and a motorbike – out on the race course to speed down the track past checkpoints and across the finish line. Other modes in the game include a stunt mode where players are challenged to collect stars through performing jumps off of ramps, a two-player mode for friends to race head-to-head, and a free trax mode for exploring levels at one’s own pace. Unfortunately the game was hampered by unresponsive controls, an overly challenging CPU competitor, and despite the Super NES’s abilities being pushed to the limit, unimpressive graphics in the age of Donkey Kong Country (an unfair yet unforgivable sin in the eyes of many gamers of the day).

Last year I wrote an article for GameCube Advanced called "The Forgotten" in which I remembered eight memorable games from yesterday such as Kid Icarus and Earthbound and suggested how these games could be revived for today's modern game consoles.  However, as most anyone can tell you, there are more than just eight forgotten classics.  "The Forgotten" lives on here now at Press The Buttons where, from time to time, I'll conjure up the memories of another past classic and speculate on just how these games could be made relevant once again.