Syndicate was one EA’s most unique and controversial games. Developed by Bullfrog Productions (Populous, Dungeon Keeper), it’s one of the few games that put you in control of the fictional evil empire rather than rebelling against it. Taking place in a dystopian future controlled by corporations, you lead a team of brainwashed cyborg mercenaries committing various crimes for your corporation. These missions include kidnapping, assassination, and theft. After each mission, you collect taxes from regions under your control to purchase upgrades for your agents. Along with an assortment of weapons, you have a device called the Persuadertron which brainwashes people, converting them to your side. The game received an expansion pack entitled American Revolution, and a sequel, called Syndicate Wars. Bullfrog tried to make another sequel, however they were unsuccessful, and we wouldn’t see the franchise again until Starbreeze released an FPS reboot earlier this year. The original game is available on GOG.com for those who have yet to experience this classic.

Romancing Saga 3 is the sixth game in the Saga series. While the Saga series is quite popular in Japan, only a handful of games in the series have made it over to the US. The three game boy games were re-christened Final Fantasy Legend, while the Super Nintendo games (including this one) weren’t released over here at all (of course, I have it on good authority that a translation exists somewhere on the internet) outside of a poorly-received Playstation 2 remake of Romancing Saga 1. It’s a shame too, because despite its differences to Square’s flagship RPG, Final Fantasy fans in the U.S would eat this up.
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Earth 2140 is an old-school RTS in the vein of Command and Conquer. Strangely, it had more of a following in Turkey than in American and Europe. It told the story of two warring factions: The Eurasian Dynasty and the United Civilized States. This is your typical dystopian future, where Earth has been bombed into a nuclear wasteland and rival factions are at war for the world’s remaining resources. This is pure 4X strategy gameplay (expand, exploit, explore, and exterminate). Gather resources, build bases, and construct units. The soundtrack is a strange blend of jazz and adult contemporary, and the plot is light compared to the sequels. However, this is still a fun classic RTS. You can buy it from GOG.com for $5.99, and teh game includes the DOS version, and both expansion packs.

So this is one of those rare non-gaming Lost Classics, but it’s justified since there are plenty of games based on the WWF (or WWE as it’s called now), and there are plenty of games featuring hip hop music.
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Apogee Software created Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold shortly after Wolfenstein 3-D was released. Using a modified version of the Wolfenstein 3-D engine, the game depicted Blake Stone, a sort of futuristic James Bond as he tries to stop Dr. Goldfire from taking over the world using a race of genetically engineered aliens. Like Wolfenstein 3-D, Blake Stone was a fun and fast paced FPS game from the genre’s early days. Unfortunately, the game had the misfortune of being released a week before ID Software’s Doom, which turned the genre on its head. Thus, Blake Stone, and its sequel Planet Strike were criminally overlooked. Thankfully, you can find both on GOG.com for cheap.

Many younger Poweteers recognize Factor 5 from their PS3 disappointment Lair. A few older poweteers remember them for their awesome N64 and Gamecube Rogue Squadron games. Before those however, they created the equally awesome, yet severely overlooked Turrican games, which hit the Sega Genesis, Commodore 64, Amiga, and the Super Nintendo. Super Turrican 2 for the Super Nintendo is actually the third Turrican game released on 16-bit systems, with Super Turrican being released on SNES and Mega Turrican being released on Genesis. Like its predecessors, Super Turrican 2 is a side-scrolling platformer in the vein of Metroid (although the stages are linear). However unlike other games, Super Turrican frequently incorporates other styles of play, mainly vehicles. Many levels you’ll take control of a tank or jeep. Sometimes you’ll even engage enemies in a Mode-7 sequence. When he is on foot, your character has several weapons, including a grappling hook straight out of Bionic Commando. While Super Turrican 2 was nothing groundbreaking, it was still an excellent game that exemplified what was great about SNES platformers back then. All three Turrican games are available on Virtual Console, so check them out.

Okay, so this isn’t a video game, or even video game related (although War Machine is a playable character in Marvel vs Capcom 1 and 2, and makes appearances in other games that feature Iron Man), but it is a slept-on classic. In 2001, Marvel introduced Max comics, a sub-line of books aimed at mature audiences (a’la DC’s Vertigo). Although many of the books were hit or miss, the line was used to introduce some pretty creative concepts at the time. Alias introduced the character of Jessica Jones to the Marvel Universe, while Garth Ennis’s hideously gory take on The Punisher was a hit with readers. Writer Chuck Austen contributed a brand new take on War Machine, Iron Man’s buddy. Although he may have been one of comicdom’s most hated writers, Austen scored a hit with this series.
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Quake III, along with Unreal Tournament (which was released 10 days earlier) introduced the concept of multiplayer-centered play in FPS games. These days, FPS multiplayer is just as important of a component in many FPS franchises as the single player experience, if not more important. However, from the late 90s to the early 2000s, it was unheard of to build an FPS game around it’s multiplayer component, even with the popularity of Doom deathmatches and Goldeneye. However, ID software did just that with Quake 3, and just like they did before with Doom so many years ago, they changed the way we look at the FPS genre.
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